Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018? • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by kenhwang » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #383

kenhwang wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my most mediocre acquaintances have jobs at FAANG/Big N. You don't have to be exceptional to land a high comp job there, you just have to be exceptionally tolerant to BS and mindnumbingly boring work and be willing to grind interview prep. If anything, landing a job at an unicorn is much harder cause they care about things like culture fit, enthusiasm, esoteric FotM frameworks, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Trading one anecdote for another: I've met plenty of mediocre engineers at unicorns. Every company has its own flavor of BS and "mindnumbingly boring work."

I have a friend that I consider borderline incompetent. He works for an unicorn. He claims he makes up for it in spirit in charisma.

Point is, compensation and skill don't correlate as strongly as people think.

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

#392

Post by k5jhn » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #104

k5jhn wrote: post #68

Currently a dev at a pre-Series A startup. Pros: - both the freedom AND responsibility to build things that'll directly translate into increased growth/profits, or the opposite in the case of failure - close-knit dev team, and in general everyone is chill, i.e company culture is great so far Cons: - my salary compensation is pretty average so I am hoping for an eventual big pay-out, but it's hard to gauge what the pa…

> I am hoping for an eventual big pay-out Please, please, make sure you have a plan for when this does not happen, your company evaporates overnight (because leadership didn't tell you) and you find yourself out of a job.

:thumbs-up:

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

#393

Post by hello_moto » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #273

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #25

Open plan offices and general lack of a quiet, contemplative, professional working environment is the hugest con to me, even huger than the compensation issues pointed out by other commentors. I would look to start-ups to be leading the effort to improve industry practices for software development ergonomy and human-centric working spaces (i.e. focus on privacy, quiet and individual customizability). But instead, sta…

I review the Joel Test occasionally, even if some of the items are kinda dated. It's amusing how both big companies and startups consistently fail two of them (and the test says if you're at 10/12 or lower there are serious problems). 8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions? 9. Do you use the best tools money can buy? Startups could out-compete larger companies here by providing both shared working space and…

"... programmers are easily bribed by giving them the coolest, latest stuff. This is a far cheaper way to get them to work for you than actually paying competitive salaries!"

Past time (20 years ago) programmers yes. Today's programmers? No.

The Math is very simple: if a company throws a lot of money, I can buy the latest coolest stuff for the next 10 years.

I doubt programmer is that gullible (otherwise they're probably a "Yes" man).

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

#394

Post by snowmaker » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

makeramen wrote: post #384

While I absolutely agree with the comp aspect and think that's probably the biggest point, I want to add that management skill is also a huge factor. I've seen a lot of startups (YC and otherwise) fail to grow the team well because the founders are good hackers but not good managers. In a large company your manager has a manager who will help guide and review them, and you can switch teams without risking your curren…

Those are all excellent suggestions, thank you.

I'm intrigued by the idea of a "way to try out/transfer between startups who allow it". Would anyone else be interested in that, if we could broker it between a set of companies?

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

#395

Post by _m96l » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #340

dunpeal wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Simply untrue. Many early startup employees work intense 12-14 hour days. Are you saying founders work 1,200-1,400 hour days? Early startup employees also risk about the same as founders. Maybe a little less, financially. > Founders generally aren't getting paid (at least until revenue or significant fundin…

> Many early startup employees work intense 12-14 hour days. Are you saying founders work 1,200-1,400 hour days 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’…

> 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.

First of all, kudos to you for being so dedicated and courageous.

Most startup founders that I know aren't like you at all.

Often they have seed funding very early. Not only do they pay nothing out of pocket, but typically they can draw a modest salary pretty early on.

The other thing is that nobody is claiming you shouldn't get more equity, that is fair. My argument is against ridiculous assessments that "founders always work x100 harder than any employee".

Most founders I've seen weren't like you, and I've seen early employees working harder than founders in some cases.

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

#396

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

ironjunkie wrote: post #381

dmode wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The other thing that people seem to forget is that a lot of people calculate their FAANG Total Comp with the value of the stock today, not on the day they were given to them. This simply because you could have yourself bought those stocks at the same price back in the days. You cannot include the increase as part of your total comp This in some case makes a huge difference, especially now, where all the tech stocks h…

[deleted]

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

#397

Post by ironjunkie » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #387

ironjunkie wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing that people seem to forget is that a lot of people calculate their FAANG Total Comp with the value of the stock today, not on the day they were given to them. This simply because you could have yourself bought those stocks at the same price back in the days. You cannot include the increase as part of your total comp This in some case makes a huge difference, especially now, where all the tech stocks h…

FAANGS give you RSUs, which are cash equivalent. When I am referring to 400K, I am referring to "total cash in hand" at the end of the year. Generally the comp you get quoted when you get hired is $200K base + $200K in RSUs based on hire date's stock price. So in today's frothy stock market, you would at least earn $400K and possibly more.

that's what I'm saying. I'm clarifying that the value of the RSU is when you got them at the time of the offer. Not at the time you sell it or vest it.

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

#398

Post by jjmorrison » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #218

shamino wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I joined a moderately successful startup (good acquisition where founders made > $1 m) and the rewards were not worth the risks as an early employee. Also, the RSUs are low risk, high rewards at the "usual suspects". Unless you love working on a small team with more autonomy, but without comfortable resources and losing sleep over whether your company will be there next week, I just don't see the attraction of…

> Why do founders get over 10x early employees? Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Founders generally aren't getting paid (at least until revenue or significant funding comes through) and they have 100x the impact that an early employee does on the success of the company. If an early employee doesn't work out, the founders just replace that pe…

This.

It's really only obvious why founders deserve a much larger exit than employees after you've tried to start and run a company.

There's plenty of edge cases where it doesn't feel fair, but in general, starting and running a successful startup is nothing like being an engineer. And it deserves a very different level of comp.

Also - there's plenty of engineers at startups that wouldn't get a job at a large tech companies.

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

#399

Post by roguecoder » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

snowmaker wrote: post #219

roguecoder wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One idea to reduce volatility in financial outcomes: offer equity in the YC fund itself in addition to the equity in individual companies. That would also give employees an incentive to support other employees in the cohort.

We've looked into that. It's hard to make the math work - when you slice up YC's equity into that many pieces, each piece becomes very small.

Well, presumably you'd have to take (at least some of) the companies' option pools as well, but I'd believe that the math still doesn't work: that just reflects that the equity for employees is not a valuable deal in general.

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

#400

Post by dunpeal » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #296

dunpeal wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Simply untrue. Many early startup employees work intense 12-14 hour days. Are you saying founders work 1,200-1,400 hour days? Early startup employees also risk about the same as founders. Maybe a little less, financially. > Founders generally aren't getting paid (at least until revenue or significant fundin…

Valuing a startup and being in a position to receive a meaningful amount of compensation from said startup if/when it IPOs are two very different things. I am not an expert, but between dilution of stock, the high risk involved with any startup, the timeline to payoff on equity and accompanying opportunity cost for non-founding engineers, and the overall lack of control which even early employees have relative to fou…

I agree with what you wrote, but the reality is that startups can't pay market rate in most cases. So they should at least offer more equity.

Or, you know, they can try to keep getting away with offering 0.01% non-preferred stock, and telling every employee that the startup will sell for $1BN at least, and they will become millionaires.