Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally

every.to

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 430 posts

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

#331

Post by robomartin »

dchichkov wrote: post #247
robomartin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are taking the same risks as the founder Not even close. You can quit and go get another job any second of any day with zero consequences. You have zero financial responsibility or obligations to the investors. You have zero responsibilities and obligations to clients/customers. You have zero obligations to financial institutions (banks, loans). You have zero or little reputation on the line in the industry bei…

Founder has all the control - Employee has none. So employee takes more risk. Founder has all the information. Employee wouldn't even know, if the stock was diluted twice. Or if the company is going to seize to exist next day. Employee is in the fog - so employee has more risk. Employee risks with her reputation. A nut case founder can consider employee a traitor for leaving the company and give bad references to fut…

> Founder has all the control

It reminds me of a story. Back about thirty years ago I bought a used surface mount assembly line from this guy who dealt exclusively in used manufacturing equipment. He was much older than me, a father figure, if you will. He was interested in what I was doing in my little startup. We got into a conversation while we setup the assembly line. I talked to him about some of the challenges I was facing. At one point he stopped, thought about it for a while and told me: A business is like a living breathing beast that has a mind of its own. If you think you can train, mold it or control it, you are likely to be wrong. The business tells you what you are going to do every day. The business pushes and pulls you around. The best you can hope for it so generally guide the zig-zag path in the direction you want to go and hold on. It's like sailing in a storm. You are not in control of the sailboat, the ocean is.

Fonder is in control? Ha. Very funny.

> Employee has none. So employee takes more risk.

I am not sure how to say this. Here it goes again: The employee can pick up and go any microsecond of any day. At least in the US. Nobody can force anyone to work under any conditions. That's control. That is having 100% control.

> A nut case founder can consider employee a traitor for leaving the company and give bad references to future employers.

I don't know where you are from. In the US that would be one of the worst mistakes a founder, company, executive or manager could make. Depending on circumstances the resulting lawsuit could yield millions of dollars for the ex employee. Nobody does that (unless they are suicidal).

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

#332

Post by robomartin »

vinay_ys wrote: post #251
robomartin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are taking the same risks as the founder Not even close. You can quit and go get another job any second of any day with zero consequences. You have zero financial responsibility or obligations to the investors. You have zero responsibilities and obligations to clients/customers. You have zero obligations to financial institutions (banks, loans). You have zero or little reputation on the line in the industry bei…

> Don’t work for less than you are worth. The OP's question was about how to do that and my entire response was to that question. > Assume options are worthless. That's bad advise for senior engineers with relevant experience. No startup I know can afford to offer cash compensation that matches the cash+stock comp from previous employment. Startup stocks have value – you just have to get better at figuring out its ri…

Without having done any accounting I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of startup options end-up being worthless. This is a simple logical conclusion from the fact that most businesses fail. So, no, I disagree, don't work for less than you are worth and, yes, assume startup options are worthless.

What ends-up happening is that the sexy startup culture sucks in young people with little life experience who haven't seen enough to be skeptical enough about these things. And, yes, under that context, if things go wrong, the end result is that they feel used and abused. You never hear complaints from anyone who worked super hard at a successful startup that made it and the early employees did very well.

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

#333

Post by m463 »

taurath wrote: post #261
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm part of a mentoring group for recent college grads. One of our biggest challenges is that much of the conversation on HN, Twitter, Blind, and other sites assumes that FAANG admission is guaranteed. This becomes a major struggle for juniors when they realize that there aren't any FAANG offices in their location. Many others apply to FAANG but don't receive offers, which is devastating if every HN comment, medium a…

They also know that the money/prestige they start making at the beginning of their career can vastly change their trajectory in economic terms. I would argue that the chance of making $500k/yr 10 years into their career will be vastly different if someone goes to FAANG vs a Microsoft temp role.

I suspect it's not a carefully-planned long-term strategy on the part of new college grads - they're just comparing offers and picking the best.

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

#334

Post by 8note »

robomartin wrote: post #222
vinay_ys wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are the second employee (first engineer) at a tech startup with a solo founder company, most likely you can get more than this. Nobody will give you more than what they have to unless you educate yourself and negotiate on your own behalf. You are taking the same risks as the founder and you being there is directly helping the founder raise funds and hire other engineers. Don't under-value yourself. Your previo…

> You are taking the same risks as the founder Not even close. You can quit and go get another job any second of any day with zero consequences. You have zero financial responsibility or obligations to the investors. You have zero responsibilities and obligations to clients/customers. You have zero obligations to financial institutions (banks, loans). You have zero or little reputation on the line in the industry bei…

How much of this liability is mitigated through making a company rather than doing all of this in your own name?

Is your business set up such that you personally owe the investors when the business goes under? Or is the business liable?

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

#335

Post by jerzyt »

One of the biggest risks for a startup is becoming a consulting firm. Once you do that, you won't be able to scale up. Been there, done that. That's why the FAANGs are so successful - they have millions of clients, without a single one who could control their destiny.

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

#336

Post by m463 »

cudgy wrote: post #17

What is success? The article assumes for the most part that success is mainly monetary, and further it makes the classic mistake of comparing success monetarily to companies like Facebook. Success is different depending on many factors. For example, if a person needs or likes guidance and structure, a startup is likely not a good fit, especially when they are inexperienced. There are some good points about the strong…

In my experience, working at a startup can get you more experience and responsibility faster, and the work itself can be more satisfying.

The compensation itself is a lottery and should be treated as such. And there will be shenanigans.

I do think that startups more closely align with people with less personal responsibilities and a higher tolerance for risk.

EDIT: downvotes? just saying - this was my personal experience. YMMV.

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

#337

Post by Mike8435234 »

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.

Startups do need to be efficient and optimal, but actually most of them are incompetent. Most of them fail.

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

#338

Post by Brystephor »

novok wrote: post #320
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…

FANG also has many lines of business where each one would be equivalent to a startup sized company. You can have way more impact than you think, on the specific product you work on. You'd be surprised how small many engineering teams are at apple for example, working on discrete products used by hundreds of millions of people.

My understanding is that he was referring to impact on the company. At FANG, there is no single product where your impact has a significant impact on the company as a whole.

Sure you can go to AWS and work on Lambda. And then you can work on a feature of Lambda. It's very likely that the feature is going to have an extremely minimal impact on Amazon as a whole company.

I'd imagine the same is for apple. You can join, go work on a secret feature of a feature on the iPhone, launch it, and then yay. You've now contributed to a feature of a feature of a product with 100s or 1000s of other features.

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

#339

Post by Eridrus »

achillesheels wrote: post #307
Eridrus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable doesn't really describe early stage startups at all. Just because there is a paycheck doesn't mean there will be one when a big account falls through. But anyway, I would urge founders to think more about the logarithmic utility of money and whether it makes sense to take 30x+ the gains of early employees. In particular, think of the number that make it all worthwhile and ask if you need to capture all the gai…

Why should leaders and team builders be more “equitable” than what is transactionally afforded by their diligent appreciation of their assets? How is the utility of money not best suited for those who created something from nothing versus those who entered into the tent after it was pitched? Aren’t there gradients of personal ambition being demonstrated between the two parties? If so, wouldn’t society be abler if the…

We're in a thread talking about how equity compensation at startups is generally not sufficient to overcome the pay cut that folks would take from working at a top tier tech company, so even if you come at this from a purely transactional perspective, you may want to be less stingy with equity.

You can do whatever you want of course, but I think people should ask themselves if trying to hold onto all the returns is helping them achieve what they actually want.

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

#340

Post by Grimm1 »

zepto wrote: post #215
Grimm1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I feel like you have to push back against things instead of just going with it. In a bad startup you typically can’t ‘push back’ meaningfully. If the management doesn’t understand how to treat people well, people pushing back won’t educate them, and employees have to get work done to justify their presence rather than fighting battles all the time.

In that case, you leave.

If you're a decent engineer you'll find work in a few weeks and any other startup will be happy to have you.

Unfortunately for non engineers I understand that may be more difficult and for those starting out too. So matter of perspective definitely since engineers aren't the only employees at a startup, but I would hope with due dilligence that is caught while you're interviewing.

Post reply on HN