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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?

#191

Post by hkmurakami »

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.…

There’s certainly career value to being a “celebrity programmer” of sorts and it can be a signaling thing for the employer and hiring pipeleine.

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

#192

Post by snowmaker »

wtvanhest wrote: post #149

Hi Jared, I'd advise you and your team to take a hard look at GIPS (global investment performance standards) and create a similar model for startup equity packages. Call it whatever, but the standards would have employee friendly terms so that people joining early stage companies would actually get something if the company liquidates. Little stuff like recruiters need to not say stuff like "we are already valued at X…

Thanks for the pointer to global investment performance standards - that's a good analogue.

We already agree about 10 year exercise windows (https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity) but we need to do more to make it a standard.

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

#193

Post by kelnos »

aphextron wrote: post #6
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just 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…

>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. I can second this. But it's not just the m…

I work for a tech company that's public now, but has had an unlimited vacation policy since before IPO. I take 5-6 weeks of vacation per year (in addition to the 10 fixed holidays we get). Who cares if you don't "feel comfortable"? Do it anyway! Trust me, you'll start feeling comfortable real fast once you have a reasonable work-life balance.

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

#194

Post by ddebernardy »

As a pro, methinks "everything needs to get done" is the main one. It's a trait shared with all small companies, and can be petty things like buying the coffee to coming up with a plan to do X and overseeing it because nobody else has time. If you're able to take initiatives the startup/SME world is for you.

The main con in my personal experience is the grueling entitlement of some founders. Not saying this applies to any or all YC startups (never worked for one) but there are founders out there who expect an arm and a leg and then some, fully expecting their employees will work long hours for peanuts. I'm assuming this is less of a problem at YC companies since they seem reasonably well funded and able to actually pay employees properly (if not you're doing a good job at PR but shame on you), but it's worth raising if only in passing.

Another big con IMO is lack of experience of quite a few founders. The best way to frame this might be a lack of insights in the industry they're targeting. Rewarding turning a business model into something that can work with a pittance of cash and equity is not very enticing to say the least. I've seen this play out from within and without and it's just plain ugly to see whoever came up with the bright idea being thrown a bone as means of thanks while the founders and their VCs laugh on their way to the bank. With respect to this, methinks try to teach humility to founders you work with: if an employee or a consultant shows a much better way then by all means invite that person to the team as a cofounder or nearly so. It doesn't matter if there has been 3 or 5 years of work poured into a hopeless idea before that. I've seen more than a few startups where someone put a brilliant improvement forward only to be shown a bone as a reward, finding a new job as a result, and the startup eventually going nowhere or failing from lack of execution.

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

#195

Post by roguecoder »

nieksand wrote: post #2

Just 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…

What this suggests, capitalistically-speaking, is that there is insufficient supply of developers and the supply that does exist can be most effectively employed by large companies. Is the problem that startups are not an efficient way to use scarce developer resources, because there are too many of them producing too little value? Or is it that the supply of developers is too small?

A YC apprenticeship program, with in-house coaching, could play a similar role to traditional union programs.

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

#196

Post by cortesoft »

ryanSrich wrote: post #23

Pro (from my personal perspective, YMMV): You get to work on something that will actually see the light of day. For me, there's nothing worse than being this tiny little cog in the machine that comes into work from 9-5 and produces something so microscopic that you question your importance at all. Working at a startup means you have to pull your weight, wear many hats, and get shit done. This also means you can climb…

Huh, I really had the opposite feeling when I went to work for a big company instead of a startup.

Both startups I worked for never had serious traction and both shut down as failed. We worked so hard to create really cool products, but there just was not the demand for what we made. Cool software with no users.

Now, I work for a huge company. My work gets deployed to tens of thousands of servers, and I know that people use and need what we make (because they pay us a lot of money). I can tell people who I work for and they know who it is, and I can point to things they do in their daily lives that my work touches.

I feel like I have a much bigger real-world impact at my current big company than the startups.

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

#198

Post by ryanobjc »

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 sorry but I don’t buy it. Startups employees are squeezed out by vc dilution and lack of big exits. Those $1m total equity cash out from startups I fear are fairly rare.

Whereas working for faang type companies, a l5 is more or less guaranteed to make $300k a year. $500-750k is doable without being a “brand name”. Timing and luck, but the spread is much smaller.

Startup founders have made a devils deal with vcs to underpay employees. You know it. Unless you issued preferred stock to all employees?

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

#200

Post by flybrand »

snowmaker wrote: post #192
wtvanhest wrote: post #149

Hi Jared, I'd advise you and your team to take a hard look at GIPS (global investment performance standards) and create a similar model for startup equity packages. Call it whatever, but the standards would have employee friendly terms so that people joining early stage companies would actually get something if the company liquidates. Little stuff like recruiters need to not say stuff like "we are already valued at X…

Thanks for the pointer to global investment performance standards - that's a good analogue. We already agree about 10 year exercise windows ( https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity ) but we need to do more to make it a standard.

Per your other comment on CEO ethics - the CFA Institute - GIPS creator, while focused on public equities, has great materials for illiquid alternatives as well.
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