171–180 of 326 posts
If you are a great engineer that can get a job at FAAG, joining a start up is almost never worth it from a strictly financial point of view. 17 years ago, Paul Graham was able to post this essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html - nowadays, the compensation in tech has shifted upwards so much ( https://www.levels.fyi/ ) - that start ups are just not competitive when you adjust for a risk premium. Finance capture…
When I was at PowerBI in Microsoft, all the execs hailed it as Startup within Microsoft. Come work here instead of Uber. I worked like a dog, sometimes till 2am in morning. My manager would routinely ask us to come on weekends. I was naive, I thought we are growing customer base, this is what a startup looks like. The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microso…
>The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock. I joined a startup in 1999. There were 3 founders and I was employee #2 after that. I received a ton of options (this was before RSUs became popular). We had a great product and a great team, but 18 months later ran out of money and unfortunately it was right after…
Tech companies are the largest companies in the US economy these days. They are the economy. For better or worse they're now too big to fail, and in some severe recession they would end up being bailed out like the banks were in 2008 since the alternative is a complete economic implosion.
I treat my RSUs as cash that has some variance to it (less variance than crypto, and roughly the same as the stock market overall). I even auto-sell them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock. I joined a startup in 1999. There were 3 founders and I was employee #2 after that. I received a ton of options (this was before RSUs became popular). We had a great product and a great team, but 18 months later ran out of money and unfortunately it was right after…
The thing most people forget about options & RSU is that one is taking away a big chunk of the TC and delay it to a future year. Even when you hate your job, you will be hesitant to leave the company because of FOMO and sunk cost fallacy That said, anecdotally, every one of my close circle of friends made decent amount money from equity (one of the many companies they worked at did very well) - far higher than the 10…
That's not my experience. My TC is the amount I'll actually make this year (and have made in previous years), which includes my salary, bonus, and the value of the RSUs at vesting, which I auto-sell. I'm not "delaying" anything; I'm making great money right now. Unvested shares only matter to the extent that your future income might over/underperform current predictions to some extent. I definitely don't consider them "mine" yet in any way; they're simply a leading indicator of my estimated future TC at this company if I continue to stay employed here.
Options, yes, are a different matter, but RSUs in big companies are almost as good as cash (and when the market is going up, as it has been this past decade, they're better than cash).
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This is very cherry-picked. Actually research has found that prior business success does not predict future success at all. Though failure does predict failure, so at least avoid that.
How is it mathematically possible for prior failure to predict failure, without prior success predicting success?
1. Take a population of 100 people. There is a 50% chance that a random person from that population can create a successful business (obviously 50% is a made up number)
2. All 100 attempt to start a business. 50 succeed, 50 fail.
3. The 50 that failed now have a 25% of succeeding in their future business endeavors. The 50 that succeeded apparently have the same 50% of success.
4. Now, given the same population, there is only a 37.5% chance that that a random person will succeed in their next business, which is in direct contradiction to point number 1.
I'm not entirely sure I did that right. I'm no statistician so there may be some glaring logical flaws there, but that seems correct according to my intuition.
(edit: formatting)
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I’d you are going to start something on the side, carefully read your current employment agreement, particularly the part about IP assignment. Most Silicon Valley companies I’ve worked with, including FAANGs, claim ownership of everything you produce, inside or outside of employment, at home or in office, using their equipment or yours. You don’t want to lick into a unicorn idea and have your former employer’s lawyer…
Are these actually enforceable?
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How is it mathematically possible for prior failure to predict failure, without prior success predicting success?
Yeah, I'm wondering the exact same thing. 1. Take a population of 100 people. There is a 50% chance that a random person from that population can create a successful business (obviously 50% is a made up number) 2. All 100 attempt to start a business. 50 succeed, 50 fail. 3. The 50 that failed now have a 25% of succeeding in their future business endeavors. The 50 that succeeded apparently have the same 50% of success…
This is the most glaring wrong assumption that causes your and GP's confusion.
90+% of startups fail.
Note: "failure predicts failure but success does not predict success" could still be true even if business failure rates were >= 50%! But the fact that failure rates are higher than 50% is the first and simplest mistake in this line of reasoning.
When I was at PowerBI in Microsoft, all the execs hailed it as Startup within Microsoft. Come work here instead of Uber. I worked like a dog, sometimes till 2am in morning. My manager would routinely ask us to come on weekends. I was naive, I thought we are growing customer base, this is what a startup looks like. The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microso…
It’s a no true Scotsman scenario. Obviously working on a “startup” in a big company isn’t the same as starting a new company. But... you get to enjoy the bigco benefits and security while avoiding a lot of bigco bullshit. I did something like this in a public sector org. We got to do something new and exciting, many of the team ended up getting promoted, and the big shots got to pay themselves on the back too. We did…
BT gave me a £25 pound voucher which I put together with my previous projects £25 voucher and brought a diamond Rio MP3 player.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it mathematically possible for prior failure to predict failure, without prior success predicting success?
Yeah, I'm wondering the exact same thing. 1. Take a population of 100 people. There is a 50% chance that a random person from that population can create a successful business (obviously 50% is a made up number) 2. All 100 attempt to start a business. 50 succeed, 50 fail. 3. The 50 that failed now have a 25% of succeeding in their future business endeavors. The 50 that succeeded apparently have the same 50% of success…