Downsides to working at a tech giant

#1

Post by razin » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

Downsides to working at a tech giant
blog.garrytan.com

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#2

Post by lordleft » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

The simple truth is that working for the equity of an unproven start-up is a gamble, and statistically unlikely to pay off. And sadly more and more start-ups are undermining access to equity in shady ways. Not that one should never work for a start up on the hopes it breaks big, but we should also never forget that the successes are outliers, by a massive margin.

Just understand the trade-offs of your decision and the probabilities involved with your decision.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#3

Post by isseu » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

Survivorship bias

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#4

Post by adamnemecek » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

OK this is a lot of money, but you really wish you had been involved with palantir? Like the company whose product is fascism?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#5

Post by throwaway2048 » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

This is a lot like saying not buying a winning lottery ticket "Cost you" the jackpot.

Opportunity cost is a very real thing, the vast majority of startups fail, or do not deliver any meaningful amount of equity to their employees (compared to the huge pay cut they take).

This is a blog by a VC so its pretty obvious where his interests are aligned on this.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#6

Post by williesleg » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

That's funny, now you write a blog.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#7

Post by wrigby » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

There's a LOT of survivorship bias in this article. I personally worked in small companies (30 - 200 employees total) and startups (4 employees, including myself) before ending up at a big tech company, and I would have preferred to do this journey in the opposite direction - that is, work a few years at a BigCorp, and then work for a startup.

Getting to see what works and what doesn't work in the context of a bigcorp is really valuable, and I think this post discounts that. A lot of technical mistakes I've made could have been remedied by simply seeing industry best practices, and there was no way I would have learned these things in school.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#8

Post by wrigby » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #4

OK this is a lot of money, but you really wish you had been involved with palantir? Like the company whose product is fascism?

To be fair, he actually did join Palantir a couple years later.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#9

Post by evmar » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

His "cost me $200m" is of a $20b company, so by the math he's suggesting he would've had 1% of the company after it went through all the dilutions on its path to $20b.

So yeah, if you have a chance to get nearly a cofounder's amount of equity in a company that will end up 20x a unicorn (which got that name because of how rare they are), then definitely go for it.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#10

Post by nostromo » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

Not buying Apple Stock in 1999 cost me $200M too.

Not to mention what not picking those winning lottery numbers cost me...