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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

#381

Post by jchonphoenix »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #112

Almost everything mentioned about startups here has an equivalent trade off at large companies. It’s particularly amusing that he mentions Facebook towards the end as a potential place to work, given the pockets of high stress and long hours that I’ve heard about from folks who have worked there. Most of FAANG is no different. In comparison, most startups that I’ve worked at valued work life balance highly. Every wor…

Having been at FB as well as multiple startups that became unicorns, I can tell you the "high stress" at FB is nothing compared to startups. On a whole, FB is a great place to work with very solid WLB.

My theory on the FB comments is because a lot of employees at FB have not worked elsewhere and compare to friends at Google or Microsoft. If you compare FB to startups or even finance, you're working significantly less with less aggressive targets and pressure.

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

#382

Post by meekmind »

stavros wrote: post #371
meekmind wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To that end, Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible did me personally a great service in bridging the gap between these seemingly opposed worldviews. JP is considered by many to be a Christian apologist and has done a incredible work in describing a completely rational and sympathetic view of Christianity. I can't recommend highly enough his lectures freely available on Youtube. Having listened to most of them, he c…

But why not just let religious people be religious? I don't understand why I have to watch some lectures just so I can let people believe in whatever they want.

Like it or not Western civilization is permeated with Christian mores. As practiced in the West, large chunks of law, philosophy, and science all have historical roots in Christian culture. You can choose whether or not to understand how the cultural, socio-economic and political environment affects you and your beliefs and the beliefs of those around you. You can "let" people be whatever they want, but you cannot occur in a vacuum and would presumably stand to gain from learning how much of what you may consider crazy and irrational was in-fact based in psychological and physiological reality that is just as relevant today as it ever was.

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

#383

Post by zepto »

Grimm1 wrote: post #375
zepto wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not going to necessarily escape terrible bosses just by going to an established org No, but you will be paid more over time and switching jobs won’t cost you deferred payment in terms of vesting. If you can land a startup job with the same salary and benefits as a bigco, then by all means do so. This is more about the poor value of deferred compensation.

> 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. Is what started our sub thread here, I didn't believe we've been talking financials. If we have been, then in base salary I guess I still disagree,…

> Is what started our sub thread here

Our sub-thread is in the context of the overall posting, which is about what a bad deal it is to work at startups. The entire point is about the risk not being worth the financial reward. Our sub-thread is discussing one aspect of that.

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

#384

Post by [deleted] »

zepto wrote: post #383
Grimm1 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Is what started our sub thread here, I didn't believe we've been talking financials. If we have been, then in base salary I guess I still disagree,…

> Is what started our sub thread here Our sub-thread is in the context of the overall posting, which is about what a bad deal it is to work at startups. The entire point is about the risk not being worth the financial reward. Our sub-thread is discussing one aspect of that.

[deleted]

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

#385

Post by ffggvv »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #373
ffggvv wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ironically google pay is competitively low when youre at that tier. having worked there and other places google pays the least out of top tier companies. (no im not considering amazon or msft as the same level)

Which companies do you consider top tier?

airbnb facebook stripe snap google uber lyft and others (not even including hft firms like two sigma or jane street or citadel)

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

#386

Post by enra »

novok wrote: post #311
hellcow wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

ISOs also don't save you from the AMT trap, so they're not really that useful.

I think the AMT fear is overblown, you can avoid it in most situations, especially if you exercise early

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

#387

Post by dang »

NeverFade wrote: post #352
dang wrote: post #344

This article is responding to the romantic version of the startup story that was popular 10-15 years ago, in the early heyday of YC and HN. In that sense it is 10 years out of date. There has been since at least one major wave, which was characterized by disillusionment and cynicism about startups ("just buy a lottery ticket", "startup equity isn't worth the paper it's printed on", etc.). This became standard fare on…

This is an interesting take, and largely correct, but you describe these "waves" as if they are some literary or artistic trends that just play themselves out, and not takes on a very real situation, which is what they really are. Yes, the 2nd wave of cynicism is now well-established, the comments are predictable and preaching-to-the-choir. However, has it become any less correct or accepted? This isn't literature or…

I agree with you except I don't think it's that binary. There's a lot of hiring going on at YC startups, so "everyone now knows and agrees on this take" is a considerable overstatement.

Here's where I do agree: (1) the impact of FAANG compensation is enormous, to such an extent that a lot of people (including on HN) simply refuse to believe what they hear about it, because it breaks their model of the world—even though those things are often true; (2) startups need to adjust to this. I've felt for years that the equity shift that took place from investors to founders needs to be followed up with a comparable shift in favor of early employees.

On the other hand: while this shift has been happening somewhat, it's surprising to me that it hasn't taken deeper hold yet, which makes me wonder what I'm missing. I would have thought, and it sounds like you think so too, that startups have little choice but to make this shift quickly or die from starvation for top talent. It's not playing out that way. Startups continue to thrive, even though there haven't been massive structural changes yet. (I'm looking at it through YC-colored glasses, which is a privileged position, but not one that's so dissociated from the larger ecosystem as to change this point.) It may not be thriving to the extent that FAANG is, with some exceptions—but that's because nothing is.

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

#388

Post by KwisatzHaderack »

jhbao wrote: post #138

This article isn’t about if you should join a startup vs. a big company. It’s about if you should join a startup vs. a FAANG company, which offers outrageous compensation & benefits. From that perspective, FAANG is the obvious choice 99% of the time. The more and apt comparison would be if you should work at a startup vs. a corporate job at a HP or Qualcomm. At those type of companies, compensation is not competitive…

Ding Ding Ding! And here’s the quote from the article:

> contrast, if you were to take a job at a tier 1 tech firm, such as Facebook or Google, as a high-quality engineer your salary can be $200-400k with an additional $100-250K in equity.

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

#389

Post by astrange »

wreath wrote: post #269
domano wrote: post #98

Man, if i look at the numbers people are throwing around i start to think that Europe is another planet. Well at least we have better social benefits all around i guess.

We do indeed have better social benefits. But are they really benefits for a SWE in 2021? The social benefits in Europe are great for people with low-mid salaries but as an SWE, I'd rather take a US salary with less social benefits than a European salary.

Benefits for a SWE in the US are probably better so long as you stay one. (My medical benefits are better and cheaper than the universal ones in other countries I’m a citizen of.)

In retirement you might be better too. The US does have a lot of welfare, it’s just mainly targeted at the old and poor.

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