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

Seconded.

It seems like net share settlement for employee option exercise would benefit early employees considerably without really costing the issuing company much. For example, if I have options to purchase 100 shares at $1 each and current market value is $2, instead of me having to pay $100 to exercise I can pay in shares, so I instead end up with 50 shares of stock ($200 current value minus $100 to exercise, so I get net $100 in value, $100 / $2 = 50 shares).

This is pretty common in the convertible bond world. When I first learned that employees had to write a check to exercise that sounded crazy to me. I’m curious why net share settlement doesn’t seem to really exist in the startup world. Maybe due to the difficulty in determining current market price?

I have found that working for startups, that unless you're the team lead or the only dev, there is usually very little room for growth or advancement. The annual pay increases are terrible and the employee turnover rate is usually quite high.

These pros/cons are based of my own experiences (I'm based in the UK).

The pros: - Come into work whenever you like (within reason) - Working with latest tech - company culture is usually great - Your team are usually very motivated and passionate about what they do - The challenges you usually face are exciting and interesting - Being present when the company meets new milestones is very satisfying

The cons: - Sometimes the features requested doesn't have enough information. This leads to the development team to either chase management for more information or make do with the information thats there. Which then leads to complaints or feedback after the work has completed (which could've been outlined before the work started) - Management usually want to know the fastest way to do a feature and then claim to allocate time to deal with the technical debt later (it usually never happens) - Management also doesn't prioritize the stabiliy of the application which in turn can lead to more issues and bugs along the way. - Deadlines get shorter and stricter as the company gains momentum. As a result you're expected to do more overtime or work later if you fall behind. There is usually no room for error here. - Work/life balance is not so great - Doesn't provide great benefits such as pensions/healthcare/dental - No room for advancement

I don't think its too bad working in a startup, but once I became employed to a (self-funded) medium sized company, their culture seemed significally better. They provided all the pros outlined above and had fewer cons. Work/Life balance was much better, allowing us to work from home or flexibility to do so if we needed to be home for a delivery or take the car to the garage for example.

Also, its more relaxed. While there were deadlines, we're also not encouraged to rush anything, we were the ones who dictated how long it takes to add a feature and set our own deadlines based on the complexity of the feature. We also had the ability to push back the roadmap accordingly if necessary in order to make sure something is done right. The reason for this is that bugs or issues can really damage the companies repuation and so its pretty important we take our time and do all the due-diligence required before our releases.

I suspect working for a self-funded company is better because the clients/customers are already there or on-boarded. There is no/little pressure from the shareholders or investors to get things done quickly. I would imagine that a startup has a lot to prove and so needs to impress in order to get more funding.

Note that these are my personal experiences, I've only worked for 4 startups but I've had very similar experiences with all of them. If Startups are able to at least alieviate all of the cons I've outlined above then I would be happy.

I consulted for a certain 'unicorn startup' based in India during their stealth stage. I joined another (now defunct) startup as employee #2. Worked my @$$ off for 3 years before I called it quits. From my own experience:

Pros: - No layers of management BS

- Startups seem to be more flexible about work hours and remote work

- More wiggle room to experiment; open to embracing new tech

Cons:

- Inexperienced leads, managers, CXOs. I can't stress this enough.

- Uncertainty. You gotta have a bag packed, ready to hit the streets at short notice

- Slog it out as an 'early employee' for years and watch the company go down the drain. That is the story of most startups. The chances of making it big are astronomically low.

Everywhere I've seen/experienced unlimited PTO has been utter BS. Usually there's a culture along with it of 'not taking too much time off' which kind of defeats the point. Would rather have a fixed number of days with a min required per year and maybe some year to year rollover/accrual of extra days for years of service.