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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

#561

Post by cunac »

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…

you say pessimism I say the experience and better insight how life really works YMMW

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#562

Post by dang »

thesausageking wrote: post #552
elamje wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone has the same views on business and morality. Morality is completely gray for almost everyone. I understand where you are coming from, but retroactively punishing people who are associated with a business who only recently (last 2 years) had bad publicity is why people are scared to actually have public opinions about anything. Even typing this comment will be misinterpreted in 30 years. Palantir is in an…

It’s not the bad publicity that’s the issue. It’s their helping the government put 7 year olds who have done nothing wrong into detention centers for months and lock up their parents when they come to claim them. Read the ACLU’s reports on this if you believe it’s just “bad publicity”: https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-p... Does everyone agree with this? Of course not. A large % of the US are…

Even if we assume you're right on all that, you're condemning him for not having known the future 10 years in advance, which is absurd.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#563

Post by ehnto »

nullspace wrote: post #536
ehnto wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a lot of joy in smaller, industry niche companies. Like 1-20 employees small. Not VC funded startups, but long running companies with proven value in an industry outside of the startup bubble. There is a lot of them, and they can be very rewarding to work at. While they'll have less compensation, it's in real money and they're often located in smaller cities with lower cost of living. You get to work directly…

Just curious can you give examples of this?

A few examples of ones I have worked at or friends have:

A company that created a novel commercial solar estimation algorithm, and ran a B2B SaaS with it.

A small platform specific agency, 10-20 people specializing in a specific eCommerce platform.

A company that had been producing IoT software and devices for farmers.

A slightly bigger company that produced backbone software for bank management, I think they had closer to 100 employees eventually but the dev team was still relatively small. Bank software takes a lot of extra curricular activity it turns out!

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#564

Post by marta_morena »

This article seems like clickbait and bad advice. This is like selling this ridiculous American dream to someone. Oh, come to us, work hard, wash some dishes and you gonna get far! What pile of garbage. Yes, it works for some lucky few, but that's about it.

The truth is that most startups fail and most people in startups that don't fail, worked their asses off and still only get scraps. Comparing today with 2003 is nuts. The times are so different that there isn't even a remote resemblance.

Yes founding a unicorn can make you rich. Doh! Who would have thought...

But also if you worked at Amazon in 2008, saved all the stocks, re-invested excess money in stock, even as an entry level engineer you would be a MULTI MILLIONAIRE ten years later... Its just crazy to give advise to people to prefer insane risk for a chance to get 200 million, over guaranteed few millions in a safe job.

Yes there are people who really can't work at big tech and who want to hack some startup code together. Go for it! Sure. For everyone else, big tech is preferable by a large margin. And there I can work on projects startups could never even dream of doing. The reason for that is that big tech works with economy of scale. What is profitable for Google and Amazon might very well be suicidal for startups.

And to top it all off, the author even says that Peter Thiel wrote him a yearly salary as check. That devalues this article even more. Anyone, yes ANYONE should have taken this offer. This wasn't about risk whatsoever. This was about a 23 year old guy who didn't understand how the world works. And that applies to literally anyone young.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#565

Post by darkwizard42 »

askafriend wrote: post #214
Justsignedup wrote: post #193

Building a network is an important thing... But let's not kid ourselves: Most startups offer very little % for equity. And that equity often amounts to next to nothing. Look at Uber or WeWork. Most founders end up as assholes. Some are great, some care, some what to learn. Learning as a manager/founder is someone else's job. Stress is real. People do shut down from stress. If you are a founder, that's great. If you a…

> And that equity often amounts to next to nothing. Look at Uber What are you talking about? Everyone who was early Uber is a millionaire now.

Sure, but they spent 6+ years getting underpaid and could have made much more at a Google/FB whose stock value has tripled with maximum liquidity throughout that time.

FYI if you joined Uber after 2014 your shares are currently underwater aka you have LOST money on your initial grant... your actual total compensation over the years went DOWN...

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#566

Post by someguydave »

manigandham wrote: post #557
someguydave wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would imply that they make revenue, which is somewhat unfashionable.

You need cash to run a business, wherever it comes from. Otherwise you don't have a business in the first place.

You need engineering talent to run a tech business. Otherwise you don’t have a tech business in the first place.

Money comes from anywhere, tech talent is fixed in supply.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#567

Post by techslave »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #416
senordevnyc wrote: post #21

This is such a weird post. Big fan of Garry, but I don't agree with most of this. 1. Just because it turned out that you would have made $200mm doesn't make it a mistake. If anything, that outsized return proves just how rare this kind of outcome is. If you look at the YC startups graduating every year, maybe 1 will ever generate $20mm for an early employee, let alone $200mm. Joining a new startup for that kind of ou…

> If you look at the YC startups graduating every year, maybe 1 will ever generate $20mm for an early employee YCombinator -- like all other VCs -- has the data trivially available to show actual compensation of early employees across entire classes of startups and not just cherry-picked best cases. After all, they have the cap tables and the exit dollar figures and how long it took to reach those exits and how many…

> They probably show that stuff under NDAs to their LPs.

Probably not. I can’t imagine why LPs would care. it’s not their problem.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#568

Post by jasonsamoa »

someguydave wrote: post #531
munk-a wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a really good argument as why graduated corporate taxes really need to be increased in the US. I'd be curious how productive you felt at each position and if you think the FAANG job is more difficult and stressful. I'd like to think that no matter which of these paths we chose - the more stressful and risky life or the more secure and corporate FAANG one - we'd all have a chance to live a decent life.…

No it’s a good argument for eliminating corporate tax- no matter what the level it hits entrepreneurs the hardest.

This. In my experience, the burden of taxes and regulations are most felt by new entrepreneurs and smaller organizations.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#569

Post by manigandham »

someguydave wrote: post #566
manigandham wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need cash to run a business, wherever it comes from. Otherwise you don't have a business in the first place.

You need engineering talent to run a tech business. Otherwise you don’t have a tech business in the first place. Money comes from anywhere, tech talent is fixed in supply.

A business needs cash to operate. It doesn't matter what talent you have if you can't pay them. Startups die when they run out of cash, not because they couldn't hire anyone.

Startups offering more cash has no implication that they must generate revenue (although that's obvious to building a good business). The point is that operational costs exist - and so a business must already have cash to exist - and increasing costs for better salaries and benefits is a better trade-off than increasing equity which is mostly worthless anyway.

Also global tech talent has more supply than demand once you get past the SV/HN bubble. No serious startup has failed because they didn't get the perfect engineer.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#570

Post by someguydave »

manigandham wrote: post #569
someguydave wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need engineering talent to run a tech business. Otherwise you don’t have a tech business in the first place. Money comes from anywhere, tech talent is fixed in supply.

A business needs cash to operate. It doesn't matter what talent you have if you can't pay them. Startups die when they run out of cash, not because they couldn't hire anyone. Startups offering more cash has no implication that they must generate revenue (although that's obvious to building a good business). The point is that operational costs exist - and so a business must already have cash to exist - and increasing…

That’s an interesting point of view. Do you think engineers are much more “interchangeable parts” than most HN folks seem to believe?
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