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

Some pros:

More ownership/authority/responsibility over the tech stack means more flexibility and opportunity to shift rapidly when necessary (lots of tech debt potential, though).

Smaller teams make communication more efficient.

Cons:

Compensation is generally terrible. We might expect lower base/cash compensation, but total comp (cash, equity, benefits) is also much lower.

The equity portion of compensation is extremely lopsided in favor of the founders and investors. Early employees are taking almost as much risk as founders. It's a different risk, but mainly in kind and less so in degree. There are no good reasons for the parsimonious grant percentages, the terrible vesting schedules, or the lack of protection against dilution.

Startups won't compete on this, and so when they complain about a shortage of willing workers it looks like they don't understand or care about really basic human relationships.

The fix for this is straightforward: pay larger cash salaries and offer more attractive equity (shorter vesting, more RSUs versus options) and better protection against dilution. A 0.5% equity grant should not mean "0.5% (for now)".

A lot of comments are complaining about the comp and the cons of a startup, I think when you join a startup you are basically making a decision that is risky and challenging in the first place especially if its a no name startup and the comp is really just part of the risk you acknowledge.

The real pro of joining an early stage startup (note: not a famous one with billions in the bank) is really I would say the satisfaction of being in a life-changing startup and grinding with a team, ultimately its really the developer experience you're going for. (Otherwise if its a unicorn, you're probably going for brand recognition, flexibility and comp)

Stock markets have fared quite well in the past 5 years which explains why compensation is so good. But what if there is a market crash?

One of the “weak” points a startup has is the brand perception.

Some-role at FANG sounds more impressive than same-role at a no-name startup.

Even the startups themselves like to brag that they were started by alumni of brand name employers, rather than alumni of other startups.

So, in what concrete way can you shift this?

There is no easy solution, but you can try and follow the same route you did for startups.

No-name (YC 18) is a better brand then just-no-name.

Allow/encourage employees and encourage/require your startups to brand people as “YC Startup Engineer” rather than “no-name Engineer”.

It may sound a little strange at first but there is a probability bigger than zero that if you promote this correctly, as you did for startups, you may end up at top of the prestige pile.

Just 2 cents from a guy with none ;)

Con: The leadership is typically really, really bad. Either clueless, sociopathic, selfish, or a combination of those three. Many founders become C-level by default without ever having to learn the skills they would need to have if they had to get hired by another organization.

Con: As mentioned by others, compensation and especially equity are ridiculously out of balance. A few years ago, a startup I was at (and had left a few years prior) found a buyer. I spent 5 years there, and I got about $50k. Meanwhile, a C-level employee who was there for less than a year before the company sold got $5M.