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Startup employees don't earn more

80000hours.org

121–130 of 162 posts

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, someone gives a company $1million and you claim that the person is playing with dreams, time and skills? Give us a break. No startup has to accept investor money. If you don't want their million, don't take it. Bootstrap with your own cash. The reality is that going into startup for money is a big risk, it's a big gamble. Go in for the fun, go in to learn new things, play with new tech, go in to avoid ( big comp…

> Do it for the for the fun and if you make money great, if you don't, you come out with new experience. Long before fullstack became a buzz word, I earned my badges due to startup. I coded, I did design, I touched the DB, I setup the servers, wired the network, setup the firewalls. It was hella fun, I made $0. But my experiences from then still serves me till this very day. You can have these experiences at a large…

More likely you will be pidgin-holed into a very narrow area of responsibility with no autonomy or opportunity to grow.

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#122

I'm gonna be straight with y'all, I earn more as a post office mail carrier than I ever did as a programmer for a silicon valley startup with $1 million dollars seed funding. I also surprisingly have more freedom even though I work basically like a slave. Nobody wants to admit it but we are in a tech bubble. Sure, if you are in the right startup things might be different. I had a great valley experience - but it was…

Thank you for sharing! (Not sarcasm)

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#123
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To help keep our employees happy (and to be competitive with bigger companies when recruiting), we try to get as close as possible to big-company salaries, we don't expect anything beyond 40 hrs / week, 100% paid health benefits, 401k, 25 paid days off per year, snacks, food, full financial transparency, etc. These sound reasonable. Quick question - has anyone you tried to recruit walk away because you mentioned th…

> has anyone you tried to recruit walk away because you mentioned the 40hr/week expectation? Why would they? Are you imagining somebody who only wants to be part of a team that's overworked?

In the book Chaos Monkey [1], Antonio Garcia Martinez writes:

  I recall very little from the interviews, except a comment from 
  one of the DabbleDB engineers. After getting through the stress 
  questions, I asked him, "So what do you like most about Twitter?"
  
  By this point, we'd build a decent rapport, so with a nod and a 
  wink, he said, "Well, you know, in companies like Facebook and 
  Google, they serve you breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here at Twitter, 
  they one serve you breakfast and lunch."
  
  I cringed inwardly. So the big selling point was that nobody worked 
  late into the night, so we could have that chimerical work-life 
  balance? I smiled to keep the warm vibe going. But that comment more 
  than anything else sealed my decision. I was not going to blow the 
  biggest career wad of my life on a company that hesitated to work 
  past six p.m. daily.
  
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it isn't a bubble the rest of the world is in an 'anti-bubble', which will hopefully anti-pop any time soon resulting in more money for tech workers :-)

Demand for good developers is extremely high in the US. Which is why salaries are so high.

How can one tell if they are a good developer or not? It's about one-for-one that whenever I read a statement that demand is high I recall a story (even some posted on HN) of someone struggling to find work and vice-versa. Is the demand at a historical high or presently higher than other industries, but still cannot keep up with the supply? Or are only a fraction of those job seekers good?

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, someone gives a company $1million and you claim that the person is playing with dreams, time and skills? Give us a break. No startup has to accept investor money. If you don't want their million, don't take it. Bootstrap with your own cash. The reality is that going into startup for money is a big risk, it's a big gamble. Go in for the fun, go in to learn new things, play with new tech, go in to avoid ( big comp…

> Do it for the for the fun and if you make money great, if you don't, you come out with new experience. Long before fullstack became a buzz word, I earned my badges due to startup. I coded, I did design, I touched the DB, I setup the servers, wired the network, setup the firewalls. It was hella fun, I made $0. But my experiences from then still serves me till this very day. You can have these experiences at a large…

Yep. In a corporate environment, I've had far more freedom to explore new technologies and work on things outside of my specialism, than I ever did in startups.

When I was in startups, anything other than working in a tried-and-tested fashion using known technologies to solve the business problem was seen as forging more nails for the company's coffin.

In a big organisation, I've had the freedom to fail in pursuit of innovation, without worrying about losing my job and the jobs of all my colleagues.

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do it for the for the fun and if you make money great, if you don't, you come out with new experience. Long before fullstack became a buzz word, I earned my badges due to startup. I coded, I did design, I touched the DB, I setup the servers, wired the network, setup the firewalls. It was hella fun, I made $0. But my experiences from then still serves me till this very day. You can have these experiences at a large…

More likely you will be pidgin-holed into a very narrow area of responsibility with no autonomy or opportunity to grow.

Not if you keep moving.

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#127
post #100
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, many people believe the value of money in non-linear but most of those people believe that the marginal utility of each additional dollars diminishes as your wealth increases, rather than increasing. I.e. even if you might earn more money on average at a startup (which the article claims isn’t the case), it still wouldn’t be worth it because it’s better to earn a decent salary from a big company with high probabi…

With $1M net worth (expect $40k/year annuity,) you'd have to live frugally to be truly independent, especially of you have a family. With $5M net worth, you could live well, independently. A 9-5 is unlikely to let you save $1M, much less $5M, unless you're high level in a big company. If you're very early in a big success, you can get there. However, in many ways, employee 15 and up is the worst of both worlds. Small…

[deleted]

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some people enjoy being postal carriers?

Ask any postal carrier if they would take a job that paid $20K more. I guarantee they will say yes. Stop thinking everyone is happy with their job because they have "a good life." Money still rules this world. Why else do people spend 8-10 hours a day trying to make money?

Depends what your perspectives are. Money is a means to an end, and accumulating assets and material belongings doesn't lead to true happiness (just more stuff to maintain). I have a friend who has hardly anything and he is free to move around the world and do menial work in different locations, but importantly he is able to move freely and live in different parts of the world for as long as he wants, even if he has little materially.

Re: Startup employees don't earn more

#130

I'm gonna be straight with y'all, I earn more as a post office mail carrier than I ever did as a programmer for a silicon valley startup with $1 million dollars seed funding. I also surprisingly have more freedom even though I work basically like a slave. Nobody wants to admit it but we are in a tech bubble. Sure, if you are in the right startup things might be different. I had a great valley experience - but it was…

Wow, someone gives a company $1million and you claim that the person is playing with dreams, time and skills? Give us a break. No startup has to accept investor money. If you don't want their million, don't take it. Bootstrap with your own cash. The reality is that going into startup for money is a big risk, it's a big gamble. Go in for the fun, go in to learn new things, play with new tech, go in to avoid ( big comp…

Fun doesn't pay bills.
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