221–230 of 269 posts
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The more interesting skills someone learns when implementing Heroku is when they learn it doesn't scale and the challenges in migrating off of it.
haha! sadly true. I really wish they had the equivalent of aurora serverless.
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haha! sadly true. I really wish they had the equivalent of aurora serverless.
Even if they did whichever startups that end up using it would have to get a few more funding rounds :)
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401k’s haven been that spectacular for the last 15 years
My Vanguard account, which I've had since 2007, is showing 10.8% returns over the past 10 years.
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…
But you could arguably get the same result working for a larger company, getting paid market rate for a 9-to-5, and putting in a few more hours at home working on open source or managing a solo side project from scratch. You might even end up with a side project that earns you passive income in the end if you're lucky, but you had to be lucky to get a "break-even" payout from startup-life anyways as you have said.
Source: while taking a stint in engineering project/product management, I was a core developer on a popular open source project for 5 years.
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They were ISO's, I only knew how many shares I was granted, but by the time of the exit, following several rounds of funding, it ended up being around 0.02%.
This is the context everyone needs to share when telling their story of startup compensation. It very much looks like you got screwed on equity even before dilution. An early and somewhat senior employee should be getting anywhere from 0.5% to 1%. If the company is high quality, raised funding on standard terms and is actually successful, you'll still get diluted but not down to 0.02%. Your comp sounds off by an orde…
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…
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This number makes complete sense. I was a 'key employee' once upon a time - in a startup that had just raised f&f, and I received a FULL 2% (unheard of for Canada). Fast forward through the (usual) reality of 6 rounds of dilution, and my 2% was worth less than 0.02%. If the startup went from a $2M valuation to $200M (as it did) then my take would have been $40K. Do with that what you will.
Something I am always curious about is, was your company / CEO open and honest with you about how your shares were doing? If you worked somewhere for 5 years, it could be easy to think you're safe but meanwhile the CEO is diluting your equity to fractions of what it originally was? Don't they have to report that to employees?
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…
That should be your entire career. The statement also strikes me as quite self-aggrandising.
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After accounting for inflation and dividends, 7% is average (historically) for annual returns. So only a little high. If the parent was not accounting for inflation, 8% is low.
I see the 7% return figure trotted out as average equity returns; but I think that number reflects a lot of “easy money” from the asymmetry of global industrialization in the post-WW2 era. Europe and America spent the 1920s through 1940s building fossil fuel powered heavy industry through a couple of particularly destructive wars. Then we spent the next 50 years spreading it around the globe, with American and Europe…
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…
> learning phase of your career That should be your entire career . The statement also strikes me as quite self-aggrandising.