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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?

#621

Post by lgregg »

blasdel wrote: post #529
lgregg wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 contribu…

Absolutely focus on the problems you've solved, and also the problems you failed to solve after getting deeply involved in them. They know that you'll have to learn their proprietary technology stacks, which are always both ahead and behind the public stacks they inspired. At some companies they won't ask anything about your resume keywords after the phone screens. Most Big 5 companies use what's called "Behavioral I…

I'm good at "S.T.A.R.", most of my effort in the past is using CAR and PAR but it's not a hard shift. I'm glad to hear they don't limit it to just technology problems.

>"the problems you failed to solve after getting deeply involved in them". I have done it before in interviews when asked about weaknesses or failures; I've never done it on a resume though. How would you go about representing that on a resume?

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

#622

Post by shamino »

warcher wrote: post #588
shamino wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that startups are not competitive in recruiting good talent, and they go to the large companies.

I disagree- I’m really good. They just have a very large hammer they swing. Anybody can get good results with the resources they bring to bear. Getting good results with jack shit takes talent, haha. The answer is not and will never be writing bigger checks with money you don’t have. It’s getting real up close and personal with your team and figuring out a way for everybody to win. If folks want to ride my ride, that…

True, but you don't have anything a big company doesn't have, or can't have. Therefore, to differentiate yourself from your talent going to FAANG, you need to provide more equity to early employees than what is the status quo. They joined your startup for risk, and your rewards need to match up with that risk. A large company has professional development, a great lifestyle, and mentorship. What they don't have is huge upside if there is a huge exit, and the early employee at a startup needs to capture that.

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

#623

Post by shamino »

whb07 wrote: post #602
shamino wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue is that just because something was hard before you came, but you're just as talented, why do they get 10x in compensation ? It's kind of like saying because Steph Curry came to the Warriors 3 years before when they weren't a Championship-contending team, he deserves 10x Durant's salary. Curry was drafted by the Warriors and started the culture and created small-ball, but could you imagine his salary being so…

Your example isn’t that accurate. Imagine being a talented sailor coming into an already sea worthy vessel. That’s for sure worth something. Now imagine having to create convince people to invest in your crazy boat idea, build the darn ship, prove it won’t sink, and then finally do some sailing. In no alternate universe is sailing a ship the same as all the other steps. Maybe you’re just as talented as the main dude/…

Good point. Let's say you do have that experience or skill in building a sea-worthy ship. Let's say you are more valuable than your founder given where the company currently is. Maybe the company is in the growth stage, and your skills matter more to the company's survival than the founder. Why, oh why, does the founder make out like a bandit, and you make out like a chump.

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

#624

Post by kentonv »

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…

> Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.

But why not?

Obviously you shouldn't only hire $400k-TC engineers. But if you're going to hire a team of 5-10, wouldn't it make sense to hire at least one more-senior engineer to help lead and mentor the more-junior ones?

When I was an early-stage startup founder, I was told by various advisers* that $150k should be the absolute upper limit on engineer salaries, and that I should try to talk engineers down to $110k or even sub-$100k by selling them on the "vision". I was told I should make up the difference in equity, but also that I shouldn't give an employee more than 1% in equity or maybe 2% for a "rockstar".

Do the math here. A company raises a typical seed round at $6M valuation cap, and is offering 2% over four years (considered VERY generous!). Even if we pretended that was preferred stock rather than common, it's worth $30k/yr. So you're trying to hire senior engineers while offering less than half their previous total compensation.

What ends up happening is you hire people straight out of college or away from other startups. But you cannot hire a senior Google engineer.

In my opinion, a tech-oriented startup should plan that exactly one of their first 5-10 engineers should be a senior engineer for whom they offer a salary of $200k-$250k and equity of 3-5%. Aim to poach an L6 from Google with this offer. (But only hire one such engineer early on. A team with too many senior engineers can be even worse than a team with none.)

Or alternatively, make sure one of your co-founders is such an engineer and is able to focus their time entirely on engineering, not other founder duties.

* Advisers all say different things, often contradictory. It's probably best not to listen to them, TBH. Yes, that advice applies to this comment as well, and even this footnote. Have fun.

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

#625

Post by sumanthvepa »

A perspective from India. I was at one of the big 4 when I made the decision to leave for a startup. (The salaries at FAAMG aren't quite so eye popping relative to other companies in Bangalore and are about 1/3th to 1/10th those in the Bay Area.) I tried to look for a founder for whom I could work for, but the conclusion that I came to, was that it made no economic sense working for an early stage startup (pre Series-A) as an employee in India. Equity had no value, particularly as it not only had all the problems that equity has in a Silicon Valley startup, but given the very weak legal system, it would be impossible to enforce contracts. Post Series-B the salaries are quite attractive by Indian standards (still 1/5-1/10 of bay area). So I went the founder route. The irony is that as a founder, this situation now comes to bite me. It is next to impossible for an early stage startup to hire engineers, even at market rates. You have to pay a substantial premium over market to compensate for the risk the employee is taking. This may be one of the reasons, that India will have trouble starting hard-tech companies. The startups that I see getting traction, are typically market focused -- e.g. food delivery, etc. So are not as tech-heavy as as say a SaaS startup might be, as they rely on scaling up a low-skill workforce (delivery men etc...)

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

#626

Post by Latteland »

mathgeek wrote: post #214
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…

> these guys come out of the woodwork to tell you that their brother’s girlfriend’s roommate makes $400k at Facebook Reminds me of grade school, when "my uncle who works at Sega" always had let their loving nephew/niece play that game that wasn't out yet.

It's not that amazing. I work at a startup, 300k cash comp, plus probably worthless options :-0.

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

#627

Post by KirinDave »

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…

Is that "$400k in base salary and max bonus?" or is that "$400k a year in base salary, max bonus, considering benefits and stock grants which are taxed heavily unless they're held 2 years?"

I very much dislike the habit of people not explaining what goes in the knapsack.

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

#628

Post by tayo42 »

saryant wrote: post #461
jzl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400 is starting to push into standard deviation territory but 300 (total comp) is absolutely right in the center of the bell curve for a mid-level engineer (not a rock star), from everything I've seen and heard both first and second hand. In the valley, anyway.

That's where I am. I'm pushing $300k total comp at Twitter as a senior SWE out in Colorado. Before this I was first employee of a startup that eventually sold to Google. Even if I'd stuck around for the acquisition I'd have gotten $0 from my stock options—employee options were wiped out completely. Why put up with that bullshit when a big publicly-traded company will reliably deposit large sums of money into my bank…

how did you get that much? Hired as senior with a lot of rsu? is it mostly rsu after the jump the last few weeks? If I got to senior I wouldn't be making that much based off what Im being told about comp increases. I must have gotten a shit deal when I joined lol

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

#629

Post by KirinDave »

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.

$400k salary is decidedly not average for non-principle engineer salary at Amazon, Google, or Facebook.

The thing is, part of my job lets me see some outlier salary data for AI jobs and uh, I see the extreme right end of the salaried with-benefits spectrum hit a base cash comp around $300 with bonuses to $400.

Now, if we're talking, "With stock, benefits and maximum bonus included" then yes, $400k is high end but not absurd. And if you're talking a lot of work as a contractor I'd expect more.

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

#630

Post by starmole »

I worked at a few startups over ten years ago. As a SW engineer I had unique value to the company back then - me being able to hand optimize code better was what set the company apart from the competition.

But SW has grown up a lot since then. Now you need more commodity, reliable engineering. Most of the low hanging fruit in SW have been picked.

Today's startup key employees are the designers, copy writers, sales people, and marketers. HW might still be where SW was 10 years ago.

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