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Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

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Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#81

Post by TheBlerch »

danShumway wrote: post #79
ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

> without giving them founder equity To me, it's not a question of monetary reward so much as agency. If you want me to care about something deeply, then I need to have say in how it works. I'm not going to be blindly devoted to a plan that could change at any moment for any reason. Of course, compensation/equity matters as well, but as a programmer I tend to get heavily attached to work that matters. Nothing is more…

Agreed. Could you please elaborate on the “rise in popularity of worker collectives”? Curious what examples you’ve seen, especially in tech and business.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#82

Post by arvinsim »

coldfire wrote: post #65
Reedx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they usually fall short on equity and terms. With salary startups can't compete vs established companies, fundamentally. As for learning, obviously it depends on the specific companies and what you're interested in. But what Naval is talking about here is becoming a founder. At startups you're wearing more hats, can have a bigger impact and are closer to how things work. You'll probably learn a lot more about b…

Everyone will have different experiences, but I had the same observation as you, and that's why I choose start-ups over big companies for my first two jobs. But then I had to get into the "big" companies for visa reasons, and honestly I don't miss start-up world anymore. The learning has been pretty steep, yes in a start-up you wear more hats. But in my experience, the attention to detail and investment on engineerin…

Big companies usually are invested in making things maintainable while startups are usually focused on their first-to-market goal.

As a software developer, the differences in goals have a significant impact on how I design and implement code.

I prefer big companies because I am usually a stickler for good conventions and proper coding structure.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#83

Post by [deleted] »

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

[deleted]

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#85

Post by alain94040 »

takanori wrote: post #75
genbit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think vc/founders need to innovate on this topic to: provide better effort/reward incentives, and reduce risk for employees, giving that they have less voting control over equity. Could be something like: - companies keep lower number of employees, higher grants, but demand founder-like effort for early years - early employees get substantial equity grants 5-10%, that must be sold to VCs on secondary offering at ne…

Idea #2 is genius. In my experience early employees become a liability as you scale and exceed their experience skill level. This makes it a win for them and for the org. Nothing worse than an early employee who is hanging on to a high level role when everyone knows they aren’t cutting it. What are some possible downsides of this?

In other words, idea #2 is to have a mini-IPO (liquidity event) for the early employees, by round A or B. B might make the most sense. Kind of like a super-bonus or extra warrants. So at least the early employees don't have to wait 7-10 years to see an outcome, but can expect a (smaller) windfall within 1-3 years, to put them on par with high-paying jobs if the company is successful enough to raise a B round.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#86

Post by genbit »

takanori wrote: post #75
genbit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think vc/founders need to innovate on this topic to: provide better effort/reward incentives, and reduce risk for employees, giving that they have less voting control over equity. Could be something like: - companies keep lower number of employees, higher grants, but demand founder-like effort for early years - early employees get substantial equity grants 5-10%, that must be sold to VCs on secondary offering at ne…

Idea #2 is genius. In my experience early employees become a liability as you scale and exceed their experience skill level. This makes it a win for them and for the org. Nothing worse than an early employee who is hanging on to a high level role when everyone knows they aren’t cutting it. What are some possible downsides of this?

Downsides could be - more risk for founders raising rounds, since its unconventional - increase of tax complexity for both employees and employer - more complex cap tables and/or processes around converting stocks, since employees are usually owning common stocks, while investors are looking to get new preferred stocks issued for round

But I think big vc orgs and especially YC could pioneer / help with new approaches

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#87

Post by danShumway »

TheBlerch wrote: post #81
danShumway wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without giving them founder equity To me, it's not a question of monetary reward so much as agency. If you want me to care about something deeply, then I need to have say in how it works. I'm not going to be blindly devoted to a plan that could change at any moment for any reason. Of course, compensation/equity matters as well, but as a programmer I tend to get heavily attached to work that matters. Nothing is more…

Agreed. Could you please elaborate on the “rise in popularity of worker collectives”? Curious what examples you’ve seen, especially in tech and business.

Few ungoing experiments in the US (that I know of), more hype in news articles and conversations about tech policy, which is why my optimism is still very cautious. There are a lot of things that sound good in theory but fall apart when tried out in practice. So I'd like to see more evidence that flat management structures really work at scale before I jump on that train.

But in principle it makes enough sense that when I see an article in Slate or similar[0] that's championing them, I don't dismiss it out of hand. I want to see more evidence that any working examples that do exist aren't just very rare, temporary exceptions to the rule that hierarchy is necessary. But the idea seems worth looking at.

This principle is the same reason I'm also very cautiously optimistic about ideas like UBI. I'm cautious of anything that sounds great in theory but that has comparatively little practical data behind it. My understanding is collectives are more common in Europe, but it's not clear to me how that experience will map to the US.

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75a8/worker-owned-apps-...

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#88

Post by ninetax »

dang wrote: post #21
throw_14JAS wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally see At least, that's what it would take for me to join a startup as first engineer versus starting my own business.

When you say 'first engineer' do you mean literally the first employee, or early (say 1 thru 5)? If the former, what do you think would be appropriate levels for, say, employees 2 thru 5? If the latter, are you arguing that the first 5 employees should be offered 50% of the company? Just to be clear, I'm not disputing the point and don't have a strong opinion. I'm curious where HN users—who include many prospective e…

Since no one threw out any percentages, I'll take a shot at it.

I think the first engineer employee should get 2-3%, next three should get ~1% each. Sam Altman has said he thinks the first 10 should get 10% total [1], so you could front load the early employees even more.

We're a long way from that. The offers I got were in the .02-.03 percent range with most of the standard terms. Not even a 10 year exercise window. This was as one of the first 5 engineers.

Why is it like that? Guess people can hire a sufficient number of engineers without offering more. Maybe with FAANG squeezing everyone out we'll see the numbers go up, I wonder if they've been going up already.

I was certainly disappointed with my equity offers, for that YC has said about rewarding early employees, I was expecting more. Oh well.

[1]: https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#89

Post by steve1977 »

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

Those fluff pieces also assume there is something to be learned in the first place. Luck is a huge factor in startup success.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#90

Post by unlit_spark »

> People will say, “Well, I’m not the founder. I’m not being paid enough to care.” Actually, you are: The knowledge and skills you gain by developing a founder mentality set you up to be a founder down the line; that’s your compensation.

Basically what I understand is that I should care as much as the founder even though I don't get paid enough. It's about other skills I gain by doing this. I highly disagree. No matter what I'll do it's all about the short-term compensation when working for others because I can get other skills both if my pay is low or high. And I prefer having a high pay and also getting soft skills. This guy sounds like he's a founder and tries to convince readers to be a good employees and care about others' businesses.

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