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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

#391

Post by bigiain »

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…

> The real substance is — how the fuck did he meet Peter Thiel at 23, and how can somebody recreate that?

He kinda answers that fairly early on:

"I'd just graduated in 2003, and my friends were starting a company with Peter Thiel. They flew me down to have dinner with Peter."

So to get rich, all you need to do is come from enough privilege that you graduate well connected with rich friends...

Sounds like your story supports that too - if you didn't connect with rich people in school, meeting (and becoming friends with them) at startups is a reasonable second alternative.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#393

Post by ptx »

elfexec wrote: post #380
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…

> The pessimism in this thread really bothers me. It's the demographics. The HN population skews extremely old and older people are generally more pessimistic, cynical and risk averse. Also, there is a large amount of traditional media workers on HN and they, for obvious reasons, are not fans of the tech industry since the tech industry is eating their lunch. Don't let the thread get you down. It's a skewed and biase…

"Extremely old" compared to the general population? Are you saying HN mostly consists of retired Cobol programmers?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#394

Post by digianarchist »

briandear wrote: post #367
TuringNYC wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Right that point broke down pretty quickly. Rent in London is more expensive than most of the United States.

I found pay-salary ratio worked best in Toronto provided you don't expect to own a home in the city.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#395

Post by sjg007 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #382

Dear @garry - Thanks for your article. I'm curious if you could comment on VC-driven "founder salaries" for startups. I've seen some fair setups and some very unfair setups. I can appreciate this from the VC's perspective, they want the founder to be working to grow equity worth, not just to draw salary. But I can also see how sub-market "founder salaries" would bias startup ownership towards either those with extrem…

Trade more salary for less equity? Or ?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#396

Post by TuringNYC »

digianarchist wrote: post #394
briandear wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because a lot of that high salary is just a rent premium and ends up with landowners. And London has cheaper rent?

Right that point broke down pretty quickly. Rent in London is more expensive than most of the United States. I found pay-salary ratio worked best in Toronto provided you don't expect to own a home in the city.

That is why the post started off with "London is an expensive town, so I'm sorry to hear that. But for others --"

Some cities are not rational. The best game to play when you have irrational rules is to not play. That is why the post was directed "To others: "

London and NYC are not rational cities. To some extent, also Vancouver. Some of these cities are places where foreign cash comes to be parked in, often empty, apartments. They raise prices for everyone and ruin market dynamics. SF/Bay Area is irrational in a sense because you are competing on a time spectrum -- a rational job for someone who purchased a house in 2004 is an irrational job for someone who needs to rent at 2019 rates.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#397

Post by nullspace »

Apocryphon wrote: post #321
nullspace wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that now Google and FB pay way more. More than startups could ever dream of competing with. Logically speaking, the only way that a company can pay more and still be profitable is if they produce value more efficiently. On a general, macro level. So, if startup founders cannot even dream of providing either cash or equity (adjusted to risk) comparable to the big-techs, does this mean that startups…

Could it be because BigTech, collectively, have created an oligopoly? Perhaps making it easier for startups to compete is another reason for antitrust.

Or alternatively (and in my mind, more likely), the massive gains coming directly from computer technology has reached its peak. There will never be another new purely "technology" (i.e. where the business is primarily built-on computer software, internet, and/or hardware) company that's as profitable and powerful as Google or FaceBook

There will always be scope for solid good new businesses with big and small margins, but maybe the next FB / Google will be in some other field? Maybe biology or nutrition, maybe quantum physics, who knows. I wish I had some ideas though.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#398

Post by rajacombinator »

pm90 wrote: post #285
novok wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Especially when you consider the diminishing returns on wealth. And presumably you should be able to attract higher quality employees who are more incentivized to work hard. Resulting in faster and more efficient growth. So you may never even take a “hit” to wealth. Unfortunately most founders and VCs have resorted to exploiting the social dynamics of the engineer class instead.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#399

Post by BlueTemplar »

t34543 wrote: post #259
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…

I can’t stand startups. Low pay, long hours, loys of aggravation and often socially toxic environments. The social toxicity is a big one for me. I have always struggled in this area and it makes things SO much harder outside of work.

In what sense? Also, would insisting on a 35 hours work week fly badly at startups?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#400

Post by Grimm1 »

Edit: The sites I'm using make it seem like the RSU compensation is the one time grant for 100k+ over the 4 year period so if its really a 400k+ stock grant over the 4year period then yes there's really no way to compete with that for early stage companies and leaving that amount of money on the table is inadvisable if you can avoid it. That said I still hold my point about the type of experience you'll gain at a startup and how quickly you'll gain it.

People keep talking about how "they don't know anyone at the big tech companies making less than a 225k salary with the average being more like 300k". Those numbers are bunk, the salary is the base amount before stock contributions and you are most certainly including RSUs to get those numbers. Including RSU's in your annual salary is a crazy and incorrect thing to do. The average turn over at large tech co is a little over 2 years. This means 50% of people never see more than half of their RSU compensation. An L5 (5 years or so xp and roughly the same across companies) for instance has an average base salary of 165k and an additional 100k in RSUs. Assuming that person works at large tech co for the average 2 years and they sell the RSUs as soon as they can their total compensation in a given year is 165k + 25k, or 190k. Successful startups most certainly can come close to that. Anyone making a base + 225k salary before RSU is an L7 or distinguished contributor with 10+ years of experience. So while maybe startups can't compete for compensation for people who are very established in there careers, I've seen more than a few who can compete for people in the 0-10yr range. I've always seen startups as a way for people to prove themselves very quickly in ways that would take people who took the corporate path 15 years to do. High risk, high personal growth, and hopefully high reward.

That said I think startups do need to rework their equity compensation structure for earlier employees to make them more fair. It is very easy to get screwed as an IC in startups right now even as an early one.

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