121–130 of 430 posts
The author also fails to mention the stock option trap. I've seen offers at early state companies like this: * $150k base (take-home $100k) * $30k/yr options that expire 3 months after you leave or 10 years. You have to either set aside 30% of your take-home to invest in a extremely high risk single stock or you're chained to your desk until the company exits. If you golden handcuff your way to an exit, you better ho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author likely comes from a structured, religious background How on God's green Earth did you jump to that conclusion? Can't it just be a matter of personal preference, as you said it yourself?
>>> The author likely comes from a structured, religious background >How on God's green Earth did you jump to that conclusion? The author wrote: "From the ages of 19-21, I spent my time as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon church. I worked 12 hours a day for two years straight with only Christmas and Mother’s Day off. [...] For this job, I was paid a total…
I think this is a really good article, but I think that one of the things it misses is that a huge reason the math works out so badly for startup employees is because founders and VCs take the lion's share of the gains. I mean, in my experience at startups, founders typically own around 40% of the equity. The option pool for all other employees is around 10-20%. Now, I certainly believe startup founders deserve far m…
> what founders risk in terms of opportunity costs and lower wages is usually only slightly more than very early stage employees Maybe this is different for others, but my co-founder and I spent 2 years bootstrapping before we got our first customer. We gave up 2 years of wages and consumed our savings to do this with no assurance of success, and even after that first customer it was another full year before we had a…
Many of the payoffs I've seen for startups that did well for early employees put earnings on par with what I've done at a large company without the startup risk. And that's for the ones that do very well which is a low chance.
So in the end I personally would get a lot more stress and a lot less income to usually being equal in a great case.
So generally it doesn't seem that worth the risk, low control, and probably low payoff.
I'd actually be more likely to join a startup in some years when I'm financially at a retirement or FIRE point. But then it's like, working for a founder on their idea, and maybe the pressure to hold out for 5-10 years there for the actual payout.
Just my mental space around it.
I had my own startup at some time, and worked for both other people's startups and for big corps. I used to maximize career and CV over quality of life. I was easy prey to assholes/takers/sociopaths. Burned 15 years of my life without much to show. On the upside, I really appreciate now working for good bosses and good leaders. I could easily earn 1.5-2x in a soulless corporate job. But I know my current employer would go out of its way to try to not screw me over while the 2x employer will throw me under the bus the second I stop being useful.
You can study or do research on your spare time. Good bosses will understand if you eventually move on. And some might even help you progress against their convenience.
I think this is a really good article, but I think that one of the things it misses is that a huge reason the math works out so badly for startup employees is because founders and VCs take the lion's share of the gains. I mean, in my experience at startups, founders typically own around 40% of the equity. The option pool for all other employees is around 10-20%. Now, I certainly believe startup founders deserve far m…
From my own household/wife I have a person who's worked her ass off for a hugely incompetent CEO who has a majority stake. When I say ass off I mean 12-14 hours a day even on weekends. A promise of unlimited holidays and then coercing all employees to work during government mandated holidays and now he's trying to scam her out of her less than 1% options by coercing her to write a maternity leave policy that would ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Savings should only come into it if you're leaving before the liquidity event. Which is another way some startups screw people. If the company is not willing to budge on the "standard" 90-day exercise window, there shouldn't be any negotiation. Just walk away.
There are two types of options, NSO and ISO. You want ISO as an employee because it's better for taxes, but that has a 90-day exercise window set by the IRS. You can push for yourself paying higher taxes in exchange for more flexibility, but it's a tradeoff. https://carta.com/blog/pte-90-day-window/
He compiled a list of startups with sane exercise windows:
It also makes a huge difference if the startup is your primary source of income or not. My wife worked for several startups, all of which failed. But since I had a more stable paycheck, it wasn't so bad, and we just treated the extra startup income as a bonus, and had very low expectations on cashing in on the equity.
Problem is, how do you support this? You must have made a lot of money to both (a) support your family, and (b) pay for the childcare that your wife would have been too busy to help very much with. Either that, or you lived in a low cost of living area and were able to do some kind of price/salary arbitrage. And if the solution was "make a lot of money", then that again makes childcare doubly important, because if yo…
My opinion is to try working for early stage startups while one is young and idealistic, choosing it by heart, thus maximizing its chances to success. Getting familiar with different techs and stacks. Getting a good networking while visiting meetups and hackathons. Even if the startup won't fly, it will help to get much more interesting position in established company later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my own household/wife I have a person who's worked her ass off for a hugely incompetent CEO who has a majority stake. When I say ass off I mean 12-14 hours a day even on weekends. A promise of unlimited holidays and then coercing all employees to work during government mandated holidays and now he's trying to scam her out of her less than 1% options by coercing her to write a maternity leave policy that would ma…
I’ve never had these abuses working for a startup. I feel like you have to push back against things instead of just going with it. Or choose the position better because they sound like bad jobs regardless of the type of business. That’s what I can’t help thinking when I hear that because I’ve now worked for 5 different startups and while there was some crunch time occasionally the majority by far was an 8 hour day an…
edit: don’t want to blame founders, they also need to preserve their equity for future employees but there has to be a better balance