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Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
161–170 of 968 posts
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#162I guess as long as you don't care about the $ might be fun
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#163I worked as an engineer at a startup early in my career (looong time ago). Company went under, stock => $0.
However, I am extremely grateful for that time. It taught me a wide range of non-technical skills that have proved invaluable throughout my career.
Most of those non-technical skills revolved around leadership opportunities, being given huge responsibilities vs. my skill/age (and having to figure it all out on my own), and getting to participate in many aspects of the business.
It ingrained in me ownership; and I've never been able to shake bringing that startup mentality to everything I do at a larger company.
Just my experience. Much of this perhaps is achievable while at larger companies, depending on the situation.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
You actually get to do something meaningful, at least to the company. vs working at one of the big companies and doing fuck all.
"do something meaningful" I don't see what about the problems YC18 are tackling are any more meaningful than FANG. Can you enlighten us?
Yeah, I look at Silicon Valley, and all I see are a bunch of webdev businesses. Sure, they dress themselves up as all kinds of different services, but ultimately most of the sweng jobs are webdev jobs. It makes me want to run the other direction, because the idea of doing webdev for a living makes me want to smash my fingers with a hammer.
On the other hand, where I live, in North Texas, the bulk of the tech industry here is telecom. Telecom work is far more interesting to me than webdev, and honestly if I ever move out of town, I'm going to be very sad that there won't be as many telecom jobs. And I sure as hell wouldn't ever move to SV.
On top of the work itself, I also find that I prefer the corporate cultures of enterprise B2B telecoms to webdev-centric startups. Going back to a B2B telecom after spending a few years working at other companies (first an abusive startup, then an academia-centric defense contractor) felt like coming home, and now that I'm home I don't ever want to leave the industry again.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#165This is such a great area to work on. The equity side is pretty rough. Founders are very sensitive about disclosing important information about company performance. They are sensitive about disclosing the cap table. Some will share info with investors that they don't share with employees. And they are sometimes trying to pitch optimistically and leaving out items that don't fit the narrative. So you end up with a ver…
Those are two great concrete suggestions. I agree with both of them - a standard of transparency and 10 year exercise periods.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#166Agree with the points around increasing equity and comp. One thing about option plans is that the devil is in the details. How things play out in a liquidity event or the tax ramifications can be large based upon how the plan was set up years prior. My guess is founders probably don't spend a lot of time sweating these details and the lawyers are concerned about protecting the company. YC could help by pushing for plans that are employee friendly. Publish articles about how to set up plans in a good way. Publish articles about what employees should look for when comparing offers. Possibly publish legal docs that companies can start from similar to other sets of documents you've published.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#167Earlier 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.
I wonder how sustainable this is. Its 400k while their stock price is crazy high. But If we really are in a tech bubble, that money is back to the typically 80-120k of most tech jobs.
If there is a bubble + a burst, I'd rather be at a big company flush with cash. (Note: I'm currently at a startup!)
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this too. There is a tier of engineers that are good, but for whatever reason, can't get into the big 5. They're bad at white-boarding or maybe they don't live in an area where the big 5 have offices. In those cases, maybe a startup makes more sense.
Often I find a number of great engineers that the big 5 disqualify for two main reasons: Location or Education. The big 5 tend to not allow remote work and if you don't have a college degree it's often hella hard to get an interview.
But the Big5 have tons of locations. Amazon in particular has tech centers in places like Phoenix and Detroit, while Google is in Chicago. Microsoft is even in Fargo!
Unless you want to be a digital nomad I guess. Then it’s probably not ideal, but I do know some fully remote positions exist at the L6 level at Amazon.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#169Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…
is the compensation really like this for a mid level engineer at a FAANG? I'm still fairly new into my career and I can't believe that the enterprise money is sooo much better than the startup world. I'm currently earning around 120k a year with health insurance and no equity. Should I really be designing on trading up into a nice big enterprise job?
If you are in FAANG, and in bay area, then your numbers look too low. I know mid-level engineers in bay area, can make ~300k. All this assuming a good engineer who has been performing consistently, and is among the top 10% in his/her team.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#170Earlier 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…
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.
Most people who think of 400K (or even 200K in some previous discussions) as "outlier pay" are probably just not familiar with big tech pay and how much revenue they earn per engineer.