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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?

#591

Post by snowmaker »

itissid wrote: post #406

Speaking about a few cons from an H1B perspective from countries like India. 1. The nature of H1B Visa makes it inherent for people to not take the risk of working at a startup. Part of the problem is the short time between layoffs and finding another job. H1b's may have very little time[1] to search for a job after a layoff. A startup could make it easier for them. Short of a layoffs due to financial reasons, startu…

That's an excellent point about the terrible H1B grace period policy. A lot of good companies have an informal policy about that, but I agree it needs to be more widespread. Do you know if any companies offer that policy publicly?

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

#592

Post by rossdavidh »

I worked at a startup of a semiconductor fab early in my life, which was not quite the same as what you mean but I think the reason still applies. I wanted to see how these messes get made. After working in old organizations with lots of legacy problems, I wanted to see first-hand what the process was that led to these situations. It did.

Having worked as a contract programmer at software startups, I can say that the main reason would be, to have more power to direct how the software develops, instead of just having to accept so much of it as a problem on top of which too much as been built, and which cannot be fixed.

However, I worked at a software startup only as a paid-by-the-hour contractor, because frankly the attitude towards early employees time is appalling, and I have seen this in how many, many other people got treated at other startups. There really isn't enough of a potential payoff for early employees to justify the hours that they are made to work, and in many cases it is done mostly because it is so easy to demand that and no justification is required. Founders are by nature egomaniacs with ruthless focus on their business, and that can turn even very good people into the sort of person you don't want to work for (unless you're charging by the hour).

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

#593

Post by chambo622 »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #583
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…

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Every one of my friends who is a senior software engineer, including myself, at a decent-sized company has a total compensation between $300-400k per year. One of my good friends has a total comp of $650k, with almost $300k base salary. I have friends at Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Apple, etc. We all share compensation information with each other. My friend at…

Where does your friend with $650k TC work and what is their role/level?

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

#594

Post by kika »

snowmaker wrote: post #589
kika wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of shares. One can argue that early startup shares are less diluted and thus comprise a bigger piece of the company, but the risk is disproportional to dilution. When evaluating an offer, you just multiply this number to the projected IPO price given the comparable (same industry, company size, etc) IPOs recently.

FWIW, I wouldn't recommend using the number of shares as the benchmark for comparing offers (across any two companies, startups or otherwise). Actual share counts are quite arbitrary. It's common for startups that are going public to do a 10 to 1 stock split shortly beforehand. Using your algorithm, an offer from that company would 10x more valuable the day after the split! Much better would be to compare the expecte…

True. This metric is as good (or bad) as any else, a percentage of the company included. You can't predict dilution or stock split (the only startup I joined early enough to have the strike price of 11 cents which went IPO, did a _reverse_ stock split). But somehow the number of shares granted in a company of 20 ppl with stage-A money and 0 revenues is within 10% of the company with 3000 ppl and doing 300M in revenues. And also within 10% from the company with 200 ppl and 30M in _profits_. Go figure.

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

#595

Post by humanrebar »

bad_user wrote: post #266
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…

Not that 400K isn't believable, I don't think it's the norm, but being outside of the Bay Area or the US for that matter, I'll buy it. However there's one other area where startups have failed to evolve, doing a worse job than big companies actually and that's accepting remote employees. Big companies have been doing better because at the very least they are opening offices in multiple countries, whereas most of the…

> For somebody living outside of San Francisco's bubble or other expensive and overrated cities like New York or London, 150K is actually better than 400K.

There's no way that's true. You can easily save six figures per year on 400k total comp, no matter where you live. Saving 100k per year on 150k is much more of a challenge, especially when health insurance and taxes are accounted for.

Point being, you need to measure net savings. And you don't want to adjust that by cost of living.

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

#596

Post by throwaway7551 »

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.

Just to add another data point. I'm a Google L5, and make nowhere near $400K. My RSUs would have to quadruple in order to even get close to that. I think your idea of a normal L5-6 salary here is a vast overestimate.

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

#597

Post by tedsanders »

pm90 wrote: post #574
dunpeal wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median employee at FB is making $240k. We can safely assume the median engineer is making more than that. I never claimed that median engineer is making $400k. This entire thread is about the senior engineers and their payout after 4-5 of working at a company like FB vs at a startup. If you could do good work as an engineer at a startup for 4-5 years, pulling $400k at FB is very realistic for you. With the median…

> I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup. I think there has been a common disbelief among many commenters on this forum about engineers making that high compensation. There really isn't any upside to trying to convince others of this reality. Its easier to mock you…

No one doubts that some developers are paid that much. What they doubt is that that compensation is normal. To me, the argument implicitly seems to be over the definition of what's "normal" rather than the actual existence or non-existence of highly paid developers. Of course highly paid developers exist.

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

#598

Post by taysic »

Chyzwar wrote: post #466
bad_user wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that 400K isn't believable, I don't think it's the norm, but being outside of the Bay Area or the US for that matter, I'll buy it. However there's one other area where startups have failed to evolve, doing a worse job than big companies actually and that's accepting remote employees. Big companies have been doing better because at the very least they are opening offices in multiple countries, whereas most of the…

I disagree. There is nothing worse than teams scattered around the world in "Tech Hubs". Big companies have no idea how to run remote teams, they only know how to outsource. A startup needs to deliver fast and have access to capital. SV, in particular, have most important ingredients - money and talent.

Being remote is one of the few things startups can compete on for really talented employees who for whatever reason don't want to live in a tech hub.

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

#599

Post by milosdog »

j_monroe wrote: post #264

-A perspective from Chicago- Early stage engineer at startups (including a unicorn): pros: Fun work, you learn a ton, unlimited PTO (if you can actually use it), lavish benefits like free lunch, decent company culture, opportunities to try new things. cons: Poor work life balance, low chance of a bonus, low equity if any, poor management/leadership, lots of hand wavey bs about being number 1, poor career progression,…

> compensation: Average for the market in Chicago, depending on where you land as far as talent and skills you can probably get 100k-200k base.

Could you name any of these startups that you are talking about? I'm also in the Chicago market and I'm curious. It's hard to tell on Glassdoor or Paysa what salaries are and I definitely don't see many being in the 150-200k range.

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

#600

Post by joshuamorton »

ironjunkie wrote: post #422
dmode wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes it can. I don't say my total comp in a given year was my salary and the target performance bonus. I say it was my salary and my actual bonus. Stock comp is much the same.
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