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Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#291

Post by dabockster »

avip wrote: post #97
ggregoire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I joined a startup and the rewards were not worth the risks as an early employee. Which risks did you take?

Risk of not being employed by big-paying corp + risk of not having that big-corp on my resume which consequence with the risk of being unemployed for 3-5 months once startup is gone + risk of working nights and w-ends because of reasons + risk of having a tiny network for my next job hunt + risk of pivot every N months + ... maybe I should really quit my startup and apply to Bezosland.

> maybe I should really quit my startup and apply to Bezosland

You should. They're constantly impressed with the quantity of their applicants that they will only reply to you if they want to hire you at all. Otherwise, you'll spend another six months waiting for an email that will never come.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#292

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

ryanSrich wrote: post #77
rukenshia wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it Working at a BigCorp(tm) right now, this is somewhat of a false statement imo, at least for us. Being in such a standardised place, it is very hard a lot of times to find new inspiration for technologies to adopt and things like conferences or me…

Yeah, and I didn't mean to slam conferences. I enjoy going to conferences and find the well regarded ones beneficial (especially ones offering workshops and certifications). My point was more about the token conference goer. I have an acquaintance that has given the same talk at 13 different conferences over the last 12 months. I don't know how that benefits him or the company. He's also on twitter literally all day.…

Are you really saying that you don't get how presenting to multiple conferences benefits the presenter, or the company he works for? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

From my perspective it seems that there's tremendous benefit in becoming known by thousands as an expert in a particular topic and in having the skill to present that material to others.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#293

Post by shamino »

kwindla wrote: post #146
shamino wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that since we are drawn to startups, we tend to read material about startup by startups. And startups would never say joining one is bad, since they need employees. And they would never make it easily known that founders get most of the benefits here. They throw things around like "great culture" and "office perks" but at the end of the day, they walk away with millions and you walk away wiser. Saying…

I'm a startup founder and will happily say that if you are an engineer, in Silicon Valley, in 2018, and you are maximizing for income, then you should not work at an early-stage startup. I did some hand-wavy math, here: https://medium.com/@kwindla/what-kind-of-silicon-valley-comp... Dan Luu did some, too, here: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

I'm happy you say this, and I wish it was more well known, even if obvious. People join early-stage startups for the potential bucks. I'm not saying that's a good reason, but I'm saying most graduates, who are not as educated about the world, will join a startup for the money upside. Being honest like you are is not the same as admitting there is some degree of deception in the culture about how well off you'll be as an early employee in the startup world.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#294

Post by citilife »

dunpeal wrote: post #158
nieksand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core of a "fix" is here. If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only or build it somewhere which is not SFO/SEA/NYC and friends. An underwhelming bay area compensation package puts you at absolute top-of-market in most European cities. So Y-Combinator can help companies get out of dodge immediately after raising a seed round. For recruiting, warm up a pipeline of talented enginee…

> If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only There's a reason why so few startups go the remote-only route. How many remote-only startups ended up a success? I can't recall a single remote-only unicorn, for example. > For recruiting, warm up a pipeline of talented engineering managers outside the tiny handful of overheated areas in the US. Finding good engineering talent anywhere is hard. Y…

There's Automattic (creator of wordpress):

http://time.com/88025/wordpress-parent-automattic-joins-the-...

There's also companies like Craigslist who has ~50 employees, but is another billion dollar company:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2017/05/03/how-does-cra...

Even if it's not remote, it's small enough to basically be fine in the bay area because finding 50 engineers to manage html webpages is relatively cheap.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#295

Post by quadcore »

To hire better you have to look at the past source code. I got hired once in a startup in France and what the CEO did is that he looked at all or so of my personnal projects. He could figured out I was a good programmer because I was able to run most of my programs and talk about them in depth. If you want to work in innovation, you have to have side projects. Has anybody tried that? Sounds quite like a silly question but I'm curious.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#296

Post by adamsea »

dunpeal wrote: post #252
inimino wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do founders get over 10x early employees? Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Founders generally aren't getting paid (at least until revenue or significant funding comes through) and they have 100x the impact that an early employee does on the success of the company. If an early employee doesn't work out, the founders just replace that pe…

> Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Simply untrue. Many early startup employees work intense 12-14 hour days. Are you saying founders work 1,200-1,400 hour days? Early startup employees also risk about the same as founders. Maybe a little less, financially. > Founders generally aren't getting paid (at least until revenue or significant fundin…

Valuing a startup and being in a position to receive a meaningful amount of compensation from said startup if/when it IPOs are two very different things.

I am not an expert, but between dilution of stock, the high risk involved with any startup, the timeline to payoff on equity and accompanying opportunity cost for non-founding engineers, and the overall lack of control which even early employees have relative to founders, it’s not unreasonable for an early employee to say “I do value the company but do not want to bet the farm on it for the next five years of my life. I will, however, as an employee, give it my all.”

Especially if said employee is > 24 years of age.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#297

Post by hello_moto »

sidlls wrote: post #73
ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out…

Fine, leave those FAANG "outliers" out. Startup comp is still wildly below market.

There's a group (Dropbox, Airbnb, LinkedIN, Splunk, etc) between FAANG and Startups and this group pay really well too.

I heard Oracle OCI also pays in the 300-400k range (even for Seattle).

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#298

Post by nawitus »

dunpeal wrote: post #158
nieksand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core of a "fix" is here. If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only or build it somewhere which is not SFO/SEA/NYC and friends. An underwhelming bay area compensation package puts you at absolute top-of-market in most European cities. So Y-Combinator can help companies get out of dodge immediately after raising a seed round. For recruiting, warm up a pipeline of talented enginee…

> If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only There's a reason why so few startups go the remote-only route. How many remote-only startups ended up a success? I can't recall a single remote-only unicorn, for example. > For recruiting, warm up a pipeline of talented engineering managers outside the tiny handful of overheated areas in the US. Finding good engineering talent anywhere is hard. Y…

There's the problem with the sample size, but Twitter for example outsourced some early development to Eastern Europe.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#299

Post by eloisant »

CryoLogic wrote: post #242
dmode wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG + Microsoft + Uber + Airbnb hire thousands and thousands of engineers in the Valley and Seattle every year. 400K is L5-L6 salary (senior engineer, first level manager). There are a TON of engineers making that money. They are not really outliers, and FAANGMUA is also not really outlier considering Google itself has 80K employees and Amazon and MSFT have over 200K employees.

400k is an outlier for sr engineer or 1st level manager. Most all of them fall into 200-300/yr in the valley or Seattle at those companies.

200-300/yr still doesn't get you less than winning the startup lottery as an early employee. So it's better to get that than risking getting only half.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#300

Post by dunpeal »

rconti wrote: post #95
swimorsinka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 to this. 10 years ago you couldn't make 400K at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Now you can. Startups made a lot more sense when your opportunity cost was 50-150K per year.

Basically, startups started taking more funding, and VCs realized there was more money to be made, so they're squeezing the little guy with terms. A small startup taking less (or no) funding can 'afford' to give more equity to employees, who are effectively providing the capital (in the form of labor) to the business. Today's startups taking huge amounts of funding AND cheap labor are trying to have it both ways.

Yup, they just realized "hey, why should we pay random engineers millions of dollars on successful exists?".

They never stopped promising them, they just stopped putting any terms in the equity plans that would lead to them.

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