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Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

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Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#191

Post by spoonjim »

adflux wrote: post #51
eecc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what Wiener suggests in Uncanny Valley, when she describes the windfall when Microsoft bought the GitHub shares she had the option to buy during her time there. It wasn’t life-defining, plus she noticed that many other employees didn’t have enough savings to actually exercise.

Couldnt a bank front the cash to exercise the options? Not familiar with the matter but it seems like an easy thing to get a loan for

Yes, but then you’re holding illiquid startup stock that can easily to go 0 in value.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#192

Post by WJW »

rrdharan wrote: post #67
notjustanymike wrote: post #53

I personally work for startups because I prefer building and owning big projects over maintaining someone else's cog in the corporate clocktower. I'm not interested in working on the "retention" team, or the "console ad integration" team. I want to build the main thing and feel like I make an impact every day I go to work. It is possible to do that at a larger business but the odds are stacked against me. Google has…

The average engineer at a startup is far more likely to work on something for two years that ends up being pointless, and canceled, by economics, when the entire startup fails.

Or even if the startup is successful, because no initial MVP survives 10x userbase growth. Every company I've ever worked for was constantly reworking parts of the codebase that were "good enough" 2-3 years ago but aren't anymore.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#193

Post by softwaredoug »

10+ years ago part of the allure of tech startups was they really “got” what made technologists jobs fulfilling. Back then companies had management that had no idea how to build high quality software. There was lots of waterfall like process and TPS report style bureacracy.

Fast forward to the present. FAANG companies dominate the economy. They pay well, offer upside in actual stock, AND most crucially: they do a better job giving more fulfilling tech work than most startup

Who wants to work at a startup where management likely sucks? They might have no real track record building good tech or empowering great technologists.

You’d rather have your 40 hr / week FAANG job doing what you love, spend time with your kids and family, where you know the balance of risks means you’ll likely end up in a position of upper middle class life (if not outright wealthy...)

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#194

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ryanSrich wrote: post #178

I’m biased because I run a startup and have only ever worked at startups. But I’d say it basically comes down to different strokes. If you’re in it just for the money AND you have the background and interviewing skills to get a job at a FAANG then you’re better off doing that, you’ll make far more money. For me though, there’s not many salaries that don’t end in “million” that you could pay me to work at a FAANG. Not…

Wow and a startup employee is different? Not a wage slave? So many more compromises in work quality and delivery get made at a startup vs FAANG. Not building a quality product. Building an MVP that fools a few early adopters to part with their money. Then sell out and cash in (not you; the founders).

Ok not a wage slave, because the wage isn't worth it. To work overtime without compensation or really any hope of compensation, to help somebody else win the lottery. Just a sucker I think.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#195

Post by encoderer »

Startups shouldn’t be romanticized so much, but it can be a good job.

A good startup experience can help you figure out what you really like to work on. In a big company things are already specialized — it’s pretty hard to be a data engineer and move over to the android team. Not impossible, but hard. That’s why people say you go to startups to “learn” — because in our line of work you learn by doing and in a startup you can usually do a lot.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#196

Post by rantwasp »

nt2h9uh238h wrote: post #151

Startups are the most efficient organisations in the economy. Because you have to get shit done and can't fuck around. A lot of people love to fuck around and do "fake work". Only output and impact matter. Hard work is "hard", and at startups you can't hide "not working". It sounds pedantic but that's quite the reality, a lot of people just don't know what "work" feels like, and don't want to do it.

hah. nope. you are simplifying things a lot.

working hard does not mean shit. whenever you hear someone saying they want hard workers you should turn around and run.

delivering results is where it’s at. people do this at startups and companies of all sizes. nobody is gonna keep you and pay you if it does not make financial sense.

what happens in the case of a startup is that a lot of corners are cut in order to get something out the door and gain customers/marker share. it’s do or die. but: this corner cutting has its cost that, if successful, you will pay back with interest in the later stages. it’s not good or bad. it just is what it is.

bigger companies have more structure and are better about both optimizing for cost (ie we don’t want to build something that will cost us X now and 100X over the next 5 years) and optimizing for risk (if X leaves or we learn about Y market factor we should be able to keep going without going bankrupt).

the “what work feels like” is some bs. you define what work is for you and diminish other people that just don’t know the feeling. please.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#198

Post by gorbachev »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #125
rjzzleep wrote: post #101

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…

It's funny how often I got rejected after saying that I am not 24/7 available and that I believe that, if someone needs to have this kind of availability, it means that something in the company is not working and needs to be fixed. The words they used in the rejections were always something like: "we feel like you are not willing to put enough skin in the game" or "everyone else sees the opportunity here is is willin…

Funny how those same companies never are willing to pay you for that 24/7 availability. I'd be happy to do that, if they paid me for it, and not with bullshit options.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#199

Post by danShumway »

varjag wrote: post #163
rjzzleep wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire for it? Don't coerce your employees into doing something you you don't want to pay for? What most people don't think of is that when you're on 24/7 duty your salary is less than half of what it should be. Halfway decent enterprises will reimburse you for off-hour duty usually at multiple times your normal rate plus a minimum pay. Or just hire someone in a different timezone. The reality is though, most people do…

Isn't that what the company in question was trying to do, hiring the devs who are willing to do 24/7 too?

Sure, but then the lesson to take away from this is that the company in question apparently isn't offering enough to make that job worthwhile, and that's not the fault of the people turning them down.

When the company phrases their rejection as "we don't think you're committed enough to do this", that's when things smell off to me. They're hiring for a specific role, they should act like it.

As an analogy, if you hire me to build software, and then slip in that you expect me to spend 10 extra hours a week doing cold sales calls, I might turn down your job because I don't want to do sales, I'm an engineer. And the problem at that point isn't my commitment to the company, the problem is that the company hasn't figured out it needs to make the sales tasks part of the job description.

How do interviews get to this point? How does a company get to the point where you're talking to the CEO, they're laying out their exit strategies, and the job requirements still haven't been made clear?

> "we feel like you are not willing to put enough skin in the game" or "everyone else sees the opportunity here is is willing to work their asses off, why are you different?"

Those quotes say to me that the owners are viewing this as a question of "loyalty" or moral obligation, not as a normal part of a job negotiation. A good test: if the CEO feels offended that you ask for more compensation in exchange for being online 24x7, then this isn't about trying to hire a specific role, it's about their ego/entitlement.

Re: Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

#200

Post by rohanstake »

It depends.

If you want to learn a lot, get a sense of startup, have great founders, bootstrapped company then startup is a good idea. Especially at the start of your career.

But if you are late in your career with family, responsibilities and health issues - then startup isn't the best place to work.

I hope - you decide weighing everything and enjoy the process.

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