Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where specifically are you located? Northern East Coast is a little vague.
Pennsylvania.
Email me at ojbyrne - at gmail - dot - com.
Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
131–140 of 172 posts
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#132Just to give you an idea of where you stand pay-scale wise, I am a student employed part-time. I make about the same as you during breaks when I have the time to put in full-time hours. You are making student money for professional hours.
To further goad the OP to immediately leave his current job: between junior and senior year of college, I made a bit more than the OP's yearly pay in a 12wk internship.
Please, for your wife and kid(s), get out of this horrible situation.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#133Since you are an independent contractor and not an employee, did you sign a contract stating that all your work was a "Work For Hire"? If not, then you likely own the copyright to all the work you've created -- which means that while your boss may have a legitimate license to use the work you've created to date, he doesn't have the right to create derivative works (read: modify the software) or sell copies of the work.
You may find these articles interesting: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29953.html http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/ownership.html
If you were an employee on a W2 then this wouldn't be an issue -- your work would be a "Work For Hire" by default.
Your boss has created a legally perilous situation for himself. If you're a contractor, then he likely doesn't own the software he thinks he does. If you're an employee, then he owes a lot of taxes.
So if you're ready to burn a bridge, here's an idea. Find an attorney who will take your matter on contingency -- many will do a no-fee consult to see if there's a case. What you want to do is license your code to your former boss (the code he thinks he owns already) for a reasonable but substantial one-time sum. Low to mid five figures doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
And as everyone else has said, find a new job. If you're looking for contract work and you know CodeIgniter, email me (in my profile).
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#134This type of post brings out the best of HN.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#135There are plenty of examples of entrepreneurs cajoling employees into working for little or no pay, sometimes with a false promise of stock options which are a tiny fraction of outstanding stock. But this is one of the worst I've heard. I'm sure the other comments from the smart folks who hang out on HN will echo the above. So I'm going to suggest a strategy for you that is as exploitative as your boss is being: 1. D…
This is the best advice of all that I've read in this thread. I wanted to add that strategically, you definitely want to have that job in hand before you quit.
Firstly, if you're interviewing at other places when you already have a job, they are usually willing to skip references and hire you based on tech knowledge and interviews alone. Grabbing tech talent these days is really tough, and most recruiters know they have to be discreet with people transitioning from a current job.
Secondly, the job you're at is likely to give you a crappy reference after you give notice. You want to be well on your way to making that next employer your next reference as soon as possible. The alternative, i.e. being unemployed with them as your most recent references, makes you harder to hire.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#136Also another piece of advice...I would aim for at least 60k$ a year in your next job (but tell them 65-70k$) based upon your 2 years of experience and you are not in a major metropolitain area...but due to the fact that you do not have a completed degree, especially a university one, I would expect it to be harder to negotiate salary terms.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#137How come the asshole bosses always end up finding people that will 'take it' ?
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#138You probably already know the answer if you have talked to a tax accountant..if they set the hours than its employee and they need to withhold taxes.
First, find some other projects/gigs to cover your expenses and do not tell the startup.
Second, when those other gigs are secured ..spend $150 on a CPA that does tax work..have him compose a letter stating that under work conditions at startup that they need to state you as employee and withhold payroll taxes. Give cpa any docs that he needs to document this.
The purpose is not to force startup to do anything. it sot protect you and your family.
From now on, if firm sets working, hours, and has full quality control of the work than you need to only accept w-2 employee status.
Your local cpa will have a employee/ tax check list as far as conditions make it employee and which ones do not so ask for that.
if you cannot afford he $150 to $250 ask your local CPA state board or SBA office to give you a list of those CPAs that sometimes do free advice workshops on this.
And most important do not under any circumstances let the startup know your anger..just get the extra gigs so that you can get out of the situation.
S the project manager I am using know states, you have to care about the money as the right startups will than take that market rate of a freelancer(no not salary rate) and say well we can do 75% and pay rest in stock is that acceptable and as employee.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#139The only way to get paid the correct amount you "really" deserve is to be a founder yourself. But it is definitely not the easy way. The founder is clearly exploiting you, but he sure has justifications in his head. Something like, it was all my idea, I took the risk, it was my execution, etc.. etc.. I think you must negotiate with the founder. Basically a bit of everything that you just wrote above.
"The only way to get paid the correct amount you "really" deserve is to be a founder yourself."
If you make something that it turns out people don't really want, though, you could get paid nothing. While that's the amount you really deserve in some sense, I can see the appeal of hedging that by letting someone else take most of that risk/reward, which is what all employees do.
Re: Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to agree, dude you are making 26k a year. Starting salary for a fresh junior is 40k and that is just someone who know HTML, CSS and Photoshop let alone if they actually know a server side language. He is lying about the 1099 being cheaper, that is only true if you are an S-Corporation, right now you are responsible for a little over 15% for social security, something that you are not if you are W2 or a corp. $…
Just as a tangent, because I didn't want to bother with my own Ask HN: > Starting salary for a fresh junior is 40k and that is just someone who know HTML, CSS and Photoshop let alone if they actually know a server side language. I know, like the back of my hand: HTML, CSS, Photoshop (and Illustrator/InDesign/Premiere/etc), Javascript, PHP, Ruby (not specialized to Rails, but with a year or two of experience in it), a…
You say:
> I know, like the back of my hand: Javascript, PHP, Ruby, and C/C++. I've had more than a year's experience in: Java, Lua, IA32 and ARM assembler, Haskell and Clojure.
And:
> I have no proof that I can do any of the stuff I can do.
I don't see how both these statements can be true. If you know some language "like the back of your hand", you'll have written significant amounts of code in it, at a bare minimum I'd say a few thousand lines.
You're claiming to have done significant work in 9 languages, and have no code to show for it? That's a bit odd, isn't it?