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

  * More choice in terms of technologies you get to work with
  * Less bureaucracy 
  * Once you've launched, typically a very fast life-cycle in terms of conception to production
  * Early on, you can fit the entire company in your brain
  * Investors are less likely to bring in stodgy "babysitters" and just let the founders do their thing

Cons:

  * Limited transparency from founders
  * Weak technical leadership in many "technical cofounders" or CTOs
  * Widening compensation gap versus established companies
  * Equity offers are often poor (related to above point)

My first engineering job was at a startup. I learned an enormous amount in a year because there were never more than 3 engineers in that period.

I had to learn the basics - git etiquette, how changes are managed, how work is planned. But I also had to learn almost every technical layer. One day you're setting up DNS records for a new subdomain, the next you're choosing a JavaScript test framework, the next you're working with the CTO on designing an offline job-processor. It's a great breadth of experience that's hard to get at big companies, where projects typically have much longer timelines. People stay on one team, on one project, for years.

At a startup, you do it all in a mad dash, probably absorbing technical debt, which is also important. "Shit, the database migration didn't work, I just took down the site, shit shit shit" is a really important lesson that you can be hard to get at a big company.

I've worked at companies ranging from 3 employees up to 50,000+. Definitely learned the most at the smallest scales.

I see this when hiring, too. It seems from my experience that an engineer with 1 year of experience at a startup is typically much better-prepared than an engineer with 1 year of experience at Google (sample size < 10, I am likely biased by my experience and expectations, many exceptions possible of course).

The grassroots side seems to be "give us more comp or we go work for Google" - which is roughly the same map as above but from a different direction.

However I suspect the chances of landing a gig like that are similar to landing early employee at a 50Mil exit. Or perhaps I need to go work in SF, or charge more in London...

What seems to be missing here is not a path to a new socialism (not a bad thing TBH) but that the risk / reward ratio has shifted - usually to justify large rewards there needs to be concomitant risk. But it seems to me that product market fit is being found earlier with less capital cost. And then the sheer scale of the market when you do find a fit is returning a reward out of all proportion to the investment at risk. From Whatsapp to Trello, a small team can find product market fit and go global.

In which case the reward for capital should come down in a sane market. The risk is not as big as it used to be, so the price must come down.

That seems a good thing ?

When evaluating an offer, you just multiply this number to the projected IPO price given the comparable (same industry, company size, etc) IPOs recently.

Hours and days don’t capture the value. I have risked my house, every minute of spare time, I have put Heroku bills on my personal credit card, paid contractors out of my pocket and had to create something out of nothing within a difficult market vertical. Comparing that to a “long day at the office” doesn’t even compute.

Early employees also get paid. In my little company, I am the last person to get paid. My employees are the first even when it’s coming out of my own pocket.

It’s asinine to equate an early employee with a founder. As far as 12-16 hour days for employees — if that’s the case then you are doing it wrong. Nothing good comes from those sorts of hours — it isn’t sustainable even for a little bit.