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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?

#441

Post by dunpeal »

kwindla wrote: post #329
dunpeal wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of the most valuable, hard-working engineers I know at startups have a few years of big company experience in their recent past, and are choosing to do the startup thing all in. I completely agree with this, except for the "all in" part. If you re-read my GP reply, that's what I was disagreeing with. Not that they're not valuable - on the contrary. An engineer who did well at Google for 5-6 years is going to b…

Three thoughts just based on my own personal experience working at startups for ~20 years: Many, many people are committed to jobs for reasons other than money, across all walks of life. This is often true for engineers, too. Few experienced engineers in SF (who are also US citizens or have green cards) are locked into any job. If you're making $750k/year at Google, the Apple or LinkedIn or Salesforce or Facebook wil…

> Many, many people are committed to jobs for reasons other than money, across all walks of life. This is often true for engineers, too.

Of course. But there's a reason why SV begun this expensive tradition of giving engineers substantial equity: the realization that startups and other ambitious companies must align employee incentives with company success.

It's possible that the employee will develop some irrational dedication to his job that is not based on any rational incentive structure, but that's not something you want to count on, especially with the type of intelligent, rational employees you hope to hire.

Incidentally, I've seen this position of "employees should just be dedicated regardless of equity" elsewhere in this thread. It feels like a step back to me. SV took a big step forward giving employees meaningful equity some 50 years ago. Now we're trying to roll this back in the name of... what? VC greed?

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

#442

Post by nvarsj »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #435
nvarsj wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they all pay less outside of their HQ location. At least in London, salaries are significantly less for the equivalent role.

In America, they generally don't. It's a mild adjustment at worst. Chicago is the biggest I've seen - $98.5k base vs. $110k base for L3 SWE - but FB doesn't change their comp, Amazon and Microsoft only increase it in the SFBA and NYC (IIRC). In fact, for new grads Amazon pays the exact same TC in Seattle and in Detroit.

Oh cool, didn't realize that. Hopefully London will catch up.

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

#443

Post by lgregg »

walshemj wrote: post #432
TheHydroImpulse wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this might be true if your lucky I was up for a FANG position in London but I have an atypical education I I suspect my lack of a degree counted against me. With the best will in the world some low level recruiter working out of Spain is not going to be able to read between the lines and work out that actually working for a world leading RnD org on campus at one of the elite UK universities might actually mea…

I'm like you, I've got some really niche experiences. I went to a #1 program at an arguably #1 school for undergrad for the industry I was planning on going into. I also have a unique personal background (extensive life-long travel) which has been helpful in more than one way but it's hard to see that on my resume.

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

#444

Post by ryan-allen »

My two cents is that all the low hanging fruit is gone and start ups are now 'mainstream', 10 years ago you could make a nice looking TODO list and as long as it had shareable lists and deadlines you could flip it for a few million.

I think the kind of work that is required to build something is much harder. I'm probably wrong though.

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

#445

Post by colordrops »

jensvdh wrote: post #437
colordrops wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But if you work at Uber/Airbnb/Whatever out of that 400k total comp 250k is just paper money.

naw, the people I know work at netflix, apple, amazon, google, spacex, microsoft, tesla, etc

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

#446

Post by stealthmodeclan »

dunpeal wrote: post #421
GordonS wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Where does the money come for dividends, taxes, and overhead?

If there is enough supply of engineers at the same quality, no one will pay more.

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

#447

Post by dunpeal »

freedomben wrote: post #423
dunpeal wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

As is often the case...

Very often the first generation of employees at a startup will consist mostly or solely of folks with 0-3 years experience at most. Then if that startup survives, all these people are "naturally" promoted to senior / team lead / tech lead levels...

> 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.

I feel you, brother. I've been there too.

> There's an attitude I've noticed also of, "we're not Xyz."

It's called "young arrogance".

"Hey, we're a bunch of straight-out-of-school engineers, but clearly we can do better than Google because we're awesome!".

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

#448

Post by justinzollars »

Wow, when did we all lose our souls? So many pro "FAANG" comments. Working at a big tech company totally sucks. Its soul sucking.

Personally speaking, I made about 300k at a FANG adjacent company - and I hated every moment of it. I quit to make less money at a startup. And I'd do it again.

Today, especially today, what is there to be proud of in working for a FANNG company? Google is working with the Pentagon on war technologies and new ways to abuse their users privacy with Internet spyware and spam; Facebook is a master of fake news and Donald Trump; Amazon is an anticompetitive monopoly.

If its only about money, check out mikekij's comment:

> "If you are a smart, quantitative person looking to maximize your income, you should go into investment banking, not software engineering. Partners at an investment bank can make $5M a year. You won't make that as an engineer at Google."

Hacker news is the place to be positive about startups, the future, and technology.

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

#449

Post by [deleted] »

RangerScience wrote: post #38

In terms of how to move the needle for early employees, at my prior (and first) startup, I watched us go from 15-20 employees to >300. One of the interesting things that struck me was how much advisement/mentor/training/etc investment went into the founders/C-team, and how little went into all the rest of us. (Totally reasonable that this was a situational thing, but I don't think it is). There's fame and reputation…

[deleted]

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

#450

Post by jiveturkey »

mariusz331 wrote: post #216

I'd like to recommend something: discourage 1-year cliffs in vesting schedules. I recently joined a BigCo where your stock vests monthly as soon as you start. I felt comfortable accepting that offer because I knew I could quit without leaving money on the table if I hated it. Before BigCo, I was at a YC startup for 8 months that I disliked working at, but felt that I needed to hit the 1-year mark for the equity. That…

Good one. This is entirely consistent with the thought behind the 10 year exercise -- don't shackle the employee.
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