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?

#421

Post by dunpeal » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #354

dunpeal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> how much revenue they earn per engineer That does not necessarily correlate with salary. At least it doesn't outside of SV.

It correlates with how much a business will be ultimately willing to pay a developer, if they have to.

If I'm making a $1M profit on you, I'll be willing to pay you up to a high fraction of this amount if I have to. Financially, even if I pay you $950K, I'm still making money. Assuming my business scales, I'd hire as many engineers like you as possible, and pay them the same. Why not? I'm making a profit for each one. Great deal for me.

Of course, if you're willing to work for $100k, I'd rather pay you that instead. Hell, I'd rather you worked for me for free!

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

#422

Post by ironjunkie » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #408

ironjunkie wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see. But for most people, when they look at their W-2 they will see the total cash they earned.

The stock could have gone down also. Total comp cannot take the upside of the stock.

You could have invested in the same stock and receive the same upside also. This is part of the luck in being in the right company or pick the right stock. That's why Total comp should be the number you got with the information you got at the time of the offer

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

#423

Post by freedomben » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

dunpeal wrote: post #178

jboy55 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be warned, a startup often has the promise of more autonomy, but there are plenty of startups run by ego-centric micromanaging wanna-be engineers. Be careful equating, 'being able to talk to the CEO' as autonomy, you may find yourself having to explain your decisions/code to people who's engineering skills are 'being able to convince a VC to give them money'. You'll also probably not tackle 'large problems' but…

That's absolutely true. The assumption "that you will always get more autonomy at startups" is fanciful. In reality, many if not most startups are run by inexperienced and often immature managers and engineers who are substantially less qualified and skilled at running a team than their equivalents in more mature tech companies.

I have seen this too. Particularly when the first round of early employees don't have a lot of experience, but have a significant amount of influence and sway simply by nature of being an early employee. It can be very frustrating being someone with experience that has to sit back and watch big mistakes be made despite warnings from people who have done it before.

There's an attitude I've noticed also of, "we're not Xyz." Hate to break it, but most problems aren't really that unique. If you resist learning the lessons from other companies, you will repeat their mistakes.

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

#424

Post by aswanson » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #114

ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

FAANGMUA. The acronyms just keep getting better.

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

#425

Post by biztos » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

I worked at startups back in the day and am now at a MediumCo and pretty happy with the situation, though missing out on the SV gold rush. I do think sometimes about returning to that world but I would need at a minimum:

* At least equal total compensation and benefits beyond the stock options.

* Reasonable compensation for the loss of job security.

* Support for my work-life balance, i.e. for my nonstandard schedule and geography requirements.

Given those things, what would motivate me to go to a startup?

* Solving a problem I care about, i.e. not selling ads or throwing elections or increasing device addiction.

* Serious, grown-up founders and leaders: no Boy Wonders, no Tech Bros, etc.

* Using technologies I respect.

I don't know how helpful that is to your overall goal, but it might be interesting as an "older" guy's perspective (mid-40's). I sort of doubt I'll get involved in startups again but if I do, I strongly suspect it'll be either as a technical founder or as the technical founder's VP of E.

For people like me, the "YC Consulting" model proposed in another comment could be pretty attractive. I guess it might already exist at e.g. Google (Ventures).

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

#426

Post by rifung » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #114

ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

I work at Google, used to work at Amazon, and had an offer from Microsoft.

From my experience, Google/FB pay much more than Amazon and Microsoft if we're talking about total compensation so I think it's a little more rare than what you're saying.

I don't think it's that easy to hit L5 either. My teammate is amazing and had like 8+ years at Microsoft before joining Google but was hired as an L4.

For most SWEs, L5 would be the last level they ever reach in their entire career..

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

#427

Post by lgregg » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

TheHydroImpulse wrote: post #263

lgregg wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I doubt I'll even bother to apply to the big 5, maybe even the big 20. I'm coming out of a yearlong software intensive in October with a liberal art major from a marketing background. I know a few people at those companies but there is also the question of leetcode. I think my chances are much higher with other types of companies, startups included.

As someone without a degree, getting an interview at the Big 5 was quite easy. Passing those interviews is another thing entirely but having the right experiences in your resume has been more important in my case.

That's the thing, right now, I don't really have the "right experiences" that's why startups do seem appealing.

I have the skills people are looking for but not the resume validation with internships, the right degree, or school. I got an internship at the start of my intensive where I got to work on some fun problems and used my marketing skills too.

I think the only other track would be through open source contributions. If we circled back in December or January, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up at a non-tech SMB, small consultancy, or startup because of my prior experiences in marketing paired with my new SWE skills.

Something I was wondering, in your experience or anyone reading, do I have to always focus all the technology stacks for each role and project or can I focus more on the problem I solved?

For example, in my internship, for one problem that made a big difference was setting up all their email automation and tieing it into their website. That project wasn't a ton of programming but my work; but by the end got them about $150k in revenue with my other work on their Black Friday sale, as an intern. Most of the SWE projects I got started but wasn't able to finish in the 3 months (priorities kept changing) like a tool that converted audio from videos into searchable indexes for their youtube videos (granular text searchable video basically). I'm hoping to redo that project on my own. I did get their website to speed up though (an older WordPress website).

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

#428

Post by gdltec » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

To me, the cons of working at a startup in SV are these:

- lower salary than bigger cos

- mostly smaller/less challenging projects

- low chances of ever liquidating RSUs and if you do, the value will more likely be low with some very rare exceptions

- it's harder (or impossible) to achieve a decent lifestyle living in SF/Bay area with a startup salary

- lack of diversity in most small startup teams

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

#429

Post by akhilcacharya » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

neutrino7 wrote: post #224

akhilcacharya wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But the Big5 have tons of locations Name one Big5 job in the entire U.S. south. Or at least one that pays as well as them. There aren’t any.

Google's Skia team* is in Chapel Hill, Microsoft has a team in Raleigh working on VSTS. I know a few folks that have interned there.

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

#430

Post by colordrops » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #57

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…

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…

Maybe I'm in a bubble but everyone around me is making at least 400k total comp. Doesn't seem that uncommon in California.