Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Downsides to working at a tech giant

blog.garrytan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 583 posts

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#361

Post by techslave »

jarjoura wrote: post #221

For all the startup founders and VCs in this conversation, you are cheap motherf*ckers. When I read that engineers and employees prefer FAANG companies because they pay better, I want to remind you that it wasn't always like this. 10-15 years ago startups paid way better than big tech. Big Tech rewarded you by getting to specialize on problems and working at scale. The reason FB and Google pay well is because when th…

> The reason FB and Google pay well is because when they were startups, they were paying WELL!

they most decidedly were not. everyone there was taking $25k if not $50k pay cuts to be part of it.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#362

Post by ska »

garry wrote: post #268
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…

We usually encourage folks to give at least 10% of the equity to the first 10 employees. That's what Stripe did and it worked well. That number is going up over time, so I can report at least a little bit of improvement, though certainly not fast enough.

Honestly I think 10% should be a floor for this, and considered completely separately from the usual 10%+ option pool (for the ones that come after the first approx 10).

For that matter heading out of a seed round with very roughly 1/3 founders 1/3 employees 1/3 angels/whatever seems pretty sane to me, although a bunch of that first 2/3 should not have vested yet. Your second tranche their would hold a largish option pool for growth, and a bunch of "founding employee" equity. You are all going to get diluted to hell, but however it eventually shakes out I think that collectively those starting key employees should see roughly the same outcome as individually a founder does....

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#363

Post by tabtab »

whatshisface wrote: post #330
pm90 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is totally super optimistic, but can we change the perspective from > is a really, really big hit. to > really amazing payoff for the early engineers/employees My very limited understanding of the growth of the SV tech community is that its a generous cycle of people creating wealth, and then using that wealth to fund the next generation of tech. So it seems completely logical for SV founders to want to d…

Whether it's a big hit or an amazing payoff are actually irrelevant, there is a going rate for engineers who are willing to accept startup risk (in a job market where anyone can get hired right after it fails this is not a lot of risk), and that's the price that will be paid.

When I was young and naive, they paid employees the "risk bonus" in stock shares, not cash. I asked for more cash, and they said, "nobody takes cash, stock shares are the thing". They were the dud thing.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#364

Post by camelspade »

CydeWeys wrote: post #320
camelspade wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who/what is a “sub-FAANG SWE”? Are you suggesting software engineers who don’t work at one of the FAANG’s are subpar? Apologies if I’m misunderstanding.

I think it's more referring to compensation. If you're only offering half the pay of some of the alternatives, you're simply not going to get a shot at most of the highest-skilled job seekers. They will, sensibly, tend to go work for the highest-paying employers. Free market for labor and all that.

I guess I can see that (to a certain extent), thanks for offering your explanation.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#365

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

KaiserPro wrote: post #310

The problem is that people seem to think that one must drink the coolaid to do well. I have worked for both small, large, internationals and startups. A startup is a massive risk. 99.5% of them fail, of that 0.5%, >50% are acquired which is a spectacularly brutal experience. Odds are, your startup will fail, and take you with it. (especially as those of you in the US have to think about health insurance.) Most of the…

Begging your forgiveness, it's Kool-Aid.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#366

Post by briandear »

milofeynman wrote: post #325
cosmodisk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit sad how the rest of the world don't put such reward for dev jobs.Even here, in London,I'd need to be a quant to pull such a salary.

The rest of the US does not pull such salaries. That's pretty exclusive Silicon Valley / Seattle.

You can easily make $100-$120k in Houston and that’s still much higher than London salaries. I had offers for $135k in Connecticut, offers for $90k in Kansas City.. still vastly better than London and the rent is a hell of a lot cheaper.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#367

Post by briandear »

TuringNYC wrote: post #343
cosmodisk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit sad how the rest of the world don't put such reward for dev jobs.Even here, in London,I'd need to be a quant to pull such a salary.

London is an expensive town, so I'm sorry to hear that. But for others -- dont be too jealous, because a lot of that high salary is just a rent premium and ends up with landowners. Great if you are a landowner, but otherwise, you're mostly breaking even after taxes and rent unless the markets riso to make your stock grant in the money. (and well, if all the math is on stock anyway, you can work anywhere and just buy…

> because a lot of that high salary is just a rent premium and ends up with landowners.

And London has cheaper rent?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#368

Post by johnmarcus »

employee #10 at palantir, that investor would fly down from anywhere just to interview and write checks to at the table - this is not your average developer. If your that talented of an engineer - than yes, you would be selling yourself short working as a cog - at a shitty startup whos management is too cocky to know when they are wrong - or a big company whom needs a level-ish playing field for everyone.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#369

Post by garry »

diafygi wrote: post #348
garry wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started in 2006, here, just like you, reading Hacker News. I spent most of my day writing code. I learned on this site how to build things for other people, ship and release them, and yes, eventually build a company. I learned I wasn't meant to have a boss. The only reason I became a VC is that I want to be here to help people who really should be start companies actually figure out that they can! People helped me…

> The world is full of capital, and it's not going to the right people who can solve problems. Hmmmm, isn't being a VC kind of exacerbating this problem? The business model of being a VC is entirely based around moonshots, which means that you are pigeonholed into only making bets on certain types of founders that either (a) already have extremely high risk tolerance or (b) can be pushed by VCs to take risks beyond t…

If you look at our portfolio we do try to find people who are not necessarily that classic "moonshot" type. Things that turn out to be moonshots often look like niche businesses.

We try to put what you say to practice, but it's an inexact art, far from a science.

I still look for two things: a/ great engineers/designers/product folks with deep empathy for problems people have, and b/ a real problem to solve.

From my experience as a YC partner it seemed clear to me most of VC-dom uses the wrong criteria: buzzwords (like Realtime or AI), and resumes (ex-Google ex-Facebook Stanford Stanford Stanford etc). Better to use first principles and try to find that which is signified, than just use of credentials that are just dumb signifiers.

But in order to do that, you kind of have to be an engineer/designer/product/marketer yourself, and that's why I think our approach can work. Ask me in another 10 years.

You're absolutely right that VC makes this problem worse. I'm sorry for the industry, but we are trying to do better.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#370

Post by malisper »

marcyb5st wrote: post #318
malisper wrote: post #157

If you want a good reason to not join Google in particular, Google does not train their managers. When I was interviewing with Google, I interviewed around 8 friends of mine that worked or previously worked at Google. Lack of management training was a something that every one of them brought up. Two of them had even been managers at Google and basically said "yeah, we weren't trained". The way it's been described to…

Googler here. I'm not sure when you interviewed or your friends worked at Google, but nowadays managers undergo some training (I can't tell you how thorough that is, because I didn't do it yet). Also, right now, I believe the norm is to have managers and TLs as separate positions, even in small teams (like mine, 5 people in total).

Over half of them worked for Google within the past two years. This is across New York, San Francisco, and Mountain View. One of them said they had a friend that wanted to become a manager and they were made a manager just like that.
Post reply on HN