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Working for a startup makes less sense

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#81

Post by senordevnyc »

savrajsingh wrote: post #77
senordevnyc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I really don’t think this is representative. I’m a self-taught iOS dev who has only ever been self-employed and I just got a $420k / job from a public company. And I’m smart, but not some unfathomable genius. I think every engineer should at least do some mock interviews on data structures, algos, and system design (there are TONS) of free study resources and then do a round of interviews. You only need one yes.

Congrats dude! All salary or salary and equity?

$220k cash, $200k equity (or whatever it’s worth in 12 months!)

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#82

Post by zebraflask »

aeternum wrote: post #19

Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…

"No guardrail environment" is a great way to put it.

I've worked in a large corp IT department and for start ups.

I'd say the most value in working for a start up comes from being in the core group of founders and first employees. After that point, my perception is that it's more of a toss up - if you're going to be a rank and file junior developer on the periphery of the decisions that shape the company, an established company could in many cases be a better choice.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#83

Post by irjustin »

yoz-y wrote: post #26
aeternum wrote: post #19

Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…

I've had kind of the opposite experience. At the startup we were really sluggish it was hard to learn anything because we were jumping into any possible business opportunity before even thinking about ROI because money was always tight. 80% of the time was wasted supporting clients and fixing bugs that were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early. I think the biggest difference is money. A well funded…

> were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early.

Can you explain more about this? The mantra is generally ship early and iterate fast.

How come the tech team was spending 80% in a bugs rat race?

The earlier statement of "80% of the time was wasted supporting clients" seems perfect? i.e. what else should you be doing other than supporting clients who are willing to pay with features and bug fixes?

Feel like I'm missing something.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#84

Post by bigiain »

harimau777 wrote: post #61
neltnerb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is whether you see learning to do meaningful things on a shoestring budget to be itself a useful skill. Boeing won't care if you save the project $5k by spending a week of your time coming up with a clever workaround. The week was more important than the $5k. Same for a high level role generally. But not getting work done for a week because your boss won't approve a $500 purchase... that would be frust…

On the other hand, it seems like a savvy engineer could work that into a story to tell a Boeing interviewer about how they took the initiative to think outside the box and develop a solution that saved the day when the team was under a time constraint.

Sometimes the people who are best at "working stories up for interviewers" don't always feel the need for there to be any truth behind those stories...

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#85

Post by zmj »

garry wrote: post #29
eanzenberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a VC, scraping off net innovation minus startup-wages is a win. It's a lose for the employees, of course.

I was a software engineer who learned to start a company right off the pages of the site you're looking at right now, Hacker News. It was here where I learned to start a startup. I later worked for Y Combinator as a partner helping founders make products and services. The best ones made something that touches millions of people now. While there is a lot of zero sum thinking in startupland and finance/capitalism in ge…

> Where else can you, with just your hands and a laptop on the Internet, create something a billion people use?

At companies that already have a billion users?

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#86

Post by sokoloff »

munk-a wrote: post #78
aeternum wrote: post #19

Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…

Briefly to begin, I'm going to read the above extremely uncharitably, not in an effort to besmirch aeternum but instead to try and tear down some terrible guidelines about life choices that I've seen going around. Here follows my translation of the advice above: > Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. You'd personally benefit more from work…

It sounds like you shouldn’t go to a startup. I’ve done a mix of both (from #1 hire out of 2 total engineers all the way to a Fortune 25). Across the board, I’ve found the smaller the better (more enjoyable, more learning, more energy, more urgency, better colleagues).

Yeah, there’s no formal time laid out to do step X in the course of development. There’s the chance that you won’t make payroll someday.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but when you get a good team together on a good project, it’s fantastically energizing.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#87

Post by foota »

neltnerb wrote: post #39
yoz-y wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had kind of the opposite experience. At the startup we were really sluggish it was hard to learn anything because we were jumping into any possible business opportunity before even thinking about ROI because money was always tight. 80% of the time was wasted supporting clients and fixing bugs that were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early. I think the biggest difference is money. A well funded…

The difference is whether you see learning to do meaningful things on a shoestring budget to be itself a useful skill. Boeing won't care if you save the project $5k by spending a week of your time coming up with a clever workaround. The week was more important than the $5k. Same for a high level role generally. But not getting work done for a week because your boss won't approve a $500 purchase... that would be frust…

I find that saving developer time or large amounts of money can be rewarded well in my position at a FAANG, you just need to save an amount commensurate to the opportunity cost.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#88

Post by hibikir »

avl999 wrote: post #64

It has always been mindboggling to me that startups are still so all in on the Bay Area. Most problems mentioned in the article go away if/when you are willing to staff developers in an area that is not as ridiculous in terms of cost of living as the Bay area. According to StackExchange data, the 50th percentile pay for a Full Stack Developer with a Bachelors degree and 3 years experience (a profile that would seem r…

Being a developer in St. Louis, the median developer that makes 85k here is not really the kind you’d find at a good Bay Area company. When you look for the good ones, they often have competing remote offers with salaries not that different from the bay: The biggest difference is that nobody gives real, useful, valuable RSUs the way FAANG does. Barring one of those jobs, the trade off is pretty appealing for developers.

The problem for a startup here is money and customers. There is some local money, but in practice, you will be raising from firms in SF or Boston. To do that well, you will be sending a founder on trips a high percentage of their time: Our CEO was out 50 percent of the time this year. It’s OK with three founders or a small team already, but the seed stage is very rough, especially for a solo founder.

There is also the matter of customers. If you are doing B2B for startups, or straight sales to developers, the market isn’t here. Consumer? Any physical bits are not going to grow the fastest here. Do you want to start selling to large masses of people with little time and loss of disposable income? Not the best test market. So you better be doing something that is better done from here. An agriculture startup, with farms across the river, for instance. Still, it will be rare for this to be your ideal location there.

Still, I wish for more startups here, but the negatives are very visible, and we have very few success stories that tell people it’s worth trying.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#89

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

lpolovets wrote: post #49

My experience: engineering at Startup #1 for 2 years, then Google for 3 years, then Startup #2 for 4 years, and now I've been working with seed stage companies as a VC for the last 7 years. The amount I earned as an engineer was highest at Startup #1 (got lucky!), significantly lower at Google, and a little lower than that at Startup #2. Startup #2 is still chugging along, which could eventually make it on par with o…

I've noticed the same thing in biotech startups. Some people are meant to be part of smaller, bootstrapping companies and others are meant to be part of more established, good business corporations. The most interesting people are the ones who get in early and stick with it, growing along with the company.
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