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Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#121

Post by jorblumesea »

save_ferris wrote: post #61
birken wrote: post #53

One thing that gets glossed over a lot with startups is that often times the technical skill level is really low. If you are a young engineer and you are hoping to learn technical skills, be very very careful about which startup you join because you might end up at one where nobody actually has any idea what they are doing. And if you yourself are in the learning phase of your career, you might not have the experienc…

> At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is that the technical skill level will be good I don't believe this is a universal truth, especially since your experience at a large company is largely dictated by the specific team you work on. I've definitely worked for small startups that were far more talented than some of the technical teams I've worked on at big companies.

I agree, but anecdotally I believe there is a correlation between salaries and talent level. Larger companies have the budget to buy talent, startups need to entice them with equity and interesting work. But overall, I've noticed it's hard for startups to compete with the money the FANGs throw around.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#122

Post by [deleted] »

birken wrote: post #53

One thing that gets glossed over a lot with startups is that often times the technical skill level is really low. If you are a young engineer and you are hoping to learn technical skills, be very very careful about which startup you join because you might end up at one where nobody actually has any idea what they are doing. And if you yourself are in the learning phase of your career, you might not have the experienc…

[deleted]

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#123

Post by ojn »

kenneth wrote: post #112
everdev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. This is such an important point for people to know when they're joining startups. You're basically investing in the startup. If you're going to be an investor it's good to know what your alternative investments are. If you put $50k in the sto…

An exit would usually be considered long-term capital gains under the tax code, which luckily tops out at 20% (+ state income tax)

Only if you joined early enough that doing early exercise of stock options is financially viable.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#124

Post by pdimitar »

thefujin wrote: post #118
pdimitar wrote: post #104

> In my experience, the deadline-driven culture crushes any scope for creativity and experimentation. This is very well compressed criticism of our modern breed of capitalism. Creativity is very rarely given a true chance.

The example which author provides does not strike me as a great illustration for this point though. > “Hey, I think we should experiment with Kotlin. It has lots of traction, Google officially supports it on Android and seems might help us write better code. Here is a PR showing how it’ll fit into our project.” > “Umm, engineers will need to learn a new language. We have other priorities right now. Let’s consider it…

I agree.

The part I quoted just got me thinking about a much bigger picture and things I have been witnessing my entire life.

I realize that my previous comment is broad and vague.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#125

Post by ragona »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #26
aggronn wrote: post #14

This is knitpicky, because OP's point may still stand, but as a founder, this is what comes to mind after reading this: When I hear "work for a startup", I don't assume that means "be the 10th engineer at a company". You might make some money at that point, but you're not going to get financial independence unless there's a billion dollar IPO. By BigCo standards, 10 engineers is a tiny startup. By venture/founder sta…

Okay, and as someone who has hitherto largely worked at startups (2/3rd of my career), let me tell you the counterpoint. There is not a lot of risk from your perspective, but there is a large amount of risk for us . At a startup, you push all you can towards steering the ship in the right technical direction. For example, unlike at a BigCo, you are likely to be that person who will write the technical debt that later…

Agreed. I'd also add that there is frankly risk to your resume by working on a failed product that no one has heard of. (Or perhaps it's even worse if it's a failure that people HAVE heard of!) Working at a BigCo at least gives some weight to your resume.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#127

Post by maxxxxx »

everdev wrote: post #79
acconrad wrote: post #21

As someone who was a 1st engineer of a startup that successfully exited I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. It was a net-neutral outcome to be the 1st engineer at a startup that actually exited for a substantial (8-figure deal) outcome which already puts me in the minority. So no…

> I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. This is such an important point for people to know when they're joining startups. You're basically investing in the startup. If you're going to be an investor it's good to know what your alternative investments are. If you put $50k in the sto…

“If you put $50k in the stock market every year for 5 years @ avg. 8% return, your have ~$400k. Over 10 years it's ~$900k.”

That’s not always the case. Stock market returns are not guaranteed. If you start in the wrong decade you may be losing money.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#128

Post by hedora »

kenneth wrote: post #112
everdev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. This is such an important point for people to know when they're joining startups. You're basically investing in the startup. If you're going to be an investor it's good to know what your alternative investments are. If you put $50k in the sto…

An exit would usually be considered long-term capital gains under the tax code, which luckily tops out at 20% (+ state income tax)

In CA the max marginal rates are close to 40% for long term capital gains and 51% for short term / income tax.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#129

Post by jedberg »

In my career, I've made all my money from working for public companies, and I've gained a lot of experience from both. The experience I got at the big co's was more around how to manage, how to manage up, how to drive big technical project to completion, and also some very niche, specific technologies. At the startups I got very broad technical knowledge, got to build full app stacks on my own, and also got to create and run a hiring process.

Overall I'd say the startup experience was more fun and more valuable, but the experience at the big co's was still worthwhile and more than made up for by the compensation.

However, I wouldn't have given either one up. Having both made me a well rounded engineering and employee.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#130

Post by candybar »

Over the past few years, I've talked to numerous early-stage startups of various kinds and all of them were making offers where the valuation would have to be 10-20 times their seed round valuation - which is already inflated, due to liquidity preference if you're merely taking RSU/options - for me to break even. And rarely was there significant sweat equity, nor were the founders' background substantially better than mine in any of those cases. If the potential for those startups was so great as to make their offers for early employees fair, they were essentially paying themselves millions a year, assuming most of the founders' equity was also being vested. And looking back, none of them found any kind of success where I would've come even close to breaking even.

I'm at a point where doing my own startup is beginning to look attractive and this is a concern - would my investors force me to make these types of offers to early employees? What kind of employees would I be able to attract with that? Is this just entirely about attracting anti-big company people, delusional true believers or those who have no shot at getting a decent offer elsewhere?

Btw, I've worked at startups, small companies and big companies and I don't buy that the rate of learning is higher at a small startup. At a big tech company, junior engineers already work on very large, complex problems and have tons of great people to learn from. As an engineer, there's no shortage of opportunities to learn. What can be potentially higher at a smaller company is the rate of career growth - if you're at a company that is growing at a crazy rate, you can become a somebody and have large managerial responsibilities quicker because being an early employee and having those relationships and foundational knowledge give you an advantage even over outsiders who would otherwise be more qualified. But even this is probably overstated at this point if you're not a founder, since tech culture is much more fungible than they used to be and nowadays everyone feels much more comfortable hiring experienced external managers over promoting internally those that aren't quite ready.

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