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Downsides to working at a tech giant

blog.garrytan.com

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Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#291

Post by Roritharr »

Having spent the past 15 years chasing the dream, working as a Founder and a couple of C-Level positions while not really amassing any sort of wealth I can't recommend enough to do your financial due diligence when accepting trade-offs for chances to reach your life-goals.

I'm close to 32 and have two kids now, so the financial pressure is there, while having accepted relatively low pay in high cost-of-living locations for roughly a decade left me without a semi-large cushion to reorient my career or even take a sabbatical to spend with my kids. This also limits my options, just leaving for another country for a potentially higher paying job with lower job security is a risk that might be too large...

Use your twenties wisely, i'd recommend first amassing a cushion at a FANG or freelancing if possible, before trying to "learn the art" at a startup. There surely is a great many things I can teach now, having picked and fought and won my own battles for quite some time now, but there is a high chance it leaves you and your loved ones in an unenviable position compared to just grinding away in your FANG Job.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#292

Post by garry »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #225
garry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started here on Hacker News as a software engineer. I learned that I could build software for others, ship it and release it. I did end up taking the venture path, and now help others on that path. The key here is that magic can be created by people, and I'm not that different than a lot of people on this site. I also got very lucky, and I'm thankful for that. Startups are hard, and most fail, and most startup stoc…

> But if you read my post, I'm trying to point people to the fact that the deeper lesson is to be able to learn to ship to real customers quickly. The video title is "My $200M mistake" and you spend 90% of it talking about the money. In what way is the point of this learning to ship to real customers quickly?

I threw it in at the end but honestly your point is valid. I should have expanded that part and will do so in the future.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#293

Post by [deleted] »

novok wrote: post #255
pm90 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founders should be willing to give a lot more equity to the first employees. I don’t get the logic of not doing this. You want your engineers to feel as if they have ownership in the equity that you’re building. It’s such an easy way to keep engineers engaged and productive that it baffles my mind that it’s not done more widely. I hate working for BigTech. Startups expect too much and compensate very little. The swee…

It's the math again. Go do a spreadsheet and simulate a company as it grows and you see treating your first 10 employees in line with big tech expected value outcomes is a really, really big hit.

[deleted]

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#294

Post by Apocryphon »

account73466 wrote: post #289
Apocryphon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a heated discussion thread we forget that web forums and bulletin boards are not the best place for realtime conversations.

On HN people often do not reply on replies to their comments and it does not mean that they do agree. It seems like a rather nice thing which helps to avoid many ego-battles.

Not to start an argument, but that could also be because HN doesn't automatically notify you of replies. I'm subscribed to the email notifier, but that was created by a third party and I doubt if a majority of the users know about it.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#295

Post by garry »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #189
garry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started here on Hacker News as a software engineer. I learned that I could build software for others, ship it and release it. I did end up taking the venture path, and now help others on that path. The key here is that magic can be created by people, and I'm not that different than a lot of people on this site. I also got very lucky, and I'm thankful for that. Startups are hard, and most fail, and most startup stoc…

I doubt many people have a passion for shipping to customers quickly.

You're right, they don't. It's my hope that more people do, though.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#296

Post by garry »

sabas123 wrote: post #266
garry wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe more poker than a lottery. A lot of luck, but there's still a little bit of skill in there. I appreciate the feedback though. I know this is just one voice of many, but it's also what I experienced. I think it's up to the viewer to decide if my experience is applicable. I think Paul Buchheit said it best: Advice is merely n=1 experience. This was my n=1.

> I appreciate the feedback though. I know this is just one voice of many, but it's also what I experienced. I think it's up to the viewer to decide if my experience is applicable. How do you feel comfortable spreading your own experiance in a manner that purposefully tries to persuade opinions while you know your experiance is non-generalizable?

Hm, is it truly totally non-generalizable? There are a lot of people who are very capable for whom the real risk is not taking risk at all. I meet them regularly.

It's not the norm, but just because it applies to a set of the very skilled doesn't mean it is not generalizable. It just isn't applicable to all people. I admit that.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#297

Post by account73466 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #294
account73466 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN people often do not reply on replies to their comments and it does not mean that they do agree. It seems like a rather nice thing which helps to avoid many ego-battles.

Not to start an argument, but that could also be because HN doesn't automatically notify you of replies. I'm subscribed to the email notifier, but that was created by a third party and I doubt if a majority of the users know about it.

It contributes as well.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#298

Post by goatinaboat »

keithwhor wrote: post #90

The pessimism in this thread really bothers me. I’ve read anecdotes on entrepreneurship being on the decline, but it pains me to read so many negative takes on startups. We’re actively training our young people to avoid taking risks, and it’s going to fuck us — especially if some of those young people have the ambition be early employees at, say, a startup that takes on climate change in a big way. Look — the fact th…

it pains me to read so many negative takes on startups. We’re actively training our young people to avoid taking risks

The maths has changed, substantially. As late as the 90’s if a startup was a success then all the early employees would make life-changing sums of money. Even the secretaries at Microsoft and Apple got equity. Nowadays all the value is captured by founders and VC’s - by spinning the myths from the 90’s and ruthlessly exploiting any workers young and naive enough to fall for it.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#299

Post by garry »

mikewhy wrote: post #222
garry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I wanted to say was that if you are capable of building great software, you should join the .01%, because that was my experience. I started as a reader of Hacker News just out of college, and it taught me a lot. Many of the founders we back came through Y Combinator and learned about startups here.

I have a hard time not reading this as a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps".

I grew up poor as the child of refugee immigrants. I was food insecure. My dad was an alcoholic. Being obsessed with computers was literally the thing that changed my life.

That's just my experience, YMMV.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#300

Post by vchak1 »

unnouinceput wrote: post #270
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #213

>Working for Microsoft cost me $200 million And not playing the Mega Millions Jackpot lotto cost me $1.6 billion. I had the opportunity to pick the winning numbers, but instead, I didn't even play! What a chump I was. Don't make my mistakes.

Well, if is to use your analogy then you had the opportunity to turn down somebody that gave you free money to play the lottery, because that's what Thiel did to Garry, it gave him a check that covered one year of what Microsoft paid him.

The analogy does not hold because you still lose time, which is IMHO the most valuable commodity because it represents opportunity cost.

In built into a lot of these discussions is a major assumption - that a startup is a "typical" silicon valley startup with the goal of being a massively valued entity. That changes the risk structure dramatically. If instead you tried to bootstrap something into a 2M annual revenue enterprise with minimal (say 200k) worth of investment, the equation changes quite significantly.

I'd assert that in that situation, playing the role of "early tech adopter" into new problem spaces dramatically reduces the risk as well.

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