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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

#391

Post by reikonomusha »

NeverFade wrote: post #360
reikonomusha wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a company that doesn’t offer a total compensation package competitive with a FAANG, but still definitely very healthy, and we do lose many straight-outta-college candidates all the time who are demanding base pay of $200k+ because “that’s what I’d get if I worked for Google.” After denying that, unfortunately, some candidates insinuate that being offered $1.x * 10^5 for an entry-level position is a shrewd p…

> After denying that, unfortunately, some candidates insinuate that being offered $1.x * 10^5 for an entry-level position is a shrewd ploy to brazenly take advantage of their valuable skills at low cost. There are no absolute anchors in the compensation market, it's all relative. Once enough companies pay $200k for entry-level, then anyone paying $130k is underpaying, regardless of how "big" that number looks to you,…

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to maximize your pay, and I don’t give anyone flak for that. I don’t think anyone has to settle for less if they have opportunities to get more. (Mind you, 95% of the time, when people say they could get more, they don’t actually have another offer in hand, they just posit the existence of it based off of what they’ve heard.)

But I’d prefer engineers simply reject the offer as opposed to insinuating they’re somehow being swindled. It’s ridiculous, especially given all the context.

It’s rich to discuss market economics, because there’s probably fewer than 100 companies, all located in the bay or NYC, and all rather prestigious, that pay the mad money being discussed. By and large, the majority of the market does not pay this much money, and the majority of software engineers could only dream of $200k base salary for an entry-level position. Pretty frequently, it is “snooty young devs scoffing”, especially when they have zero other offers in hand, and no prospects of getting them.

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

#392

Post by fingerlocks »

ffggvv wrote: post #385
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I believe you. I was shocked by how low Amazon offered for a senior-ish position. I walked away from it. Went to a medium-sized high-growth pre-IPO company with Facebook+ comp. FAANG is overrated.

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

#393

Post by SZJX »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #365
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…

This is a well-known phenomenon around subjective well-being. It plays out in very interesting ways, for example, most millionaires don’t view themselves as wealthy. People untrained in escaping these dark thought patterns usually aren’t as happy as they could be.

It's not necessarily "dark" in the sense that human beings are programmed to always look for betterment for a reason. If human beings didn't have this drive to always do better and get more, we definitely wouldn't have the highly developed modern society that we have nowadays, with broadly speaking the best living conditions in history.

Of course there are people who argue that the hunter-gatherers might well have been happier in some aspects, but the point is even they didn't think differently: A tribe living in an area with abundant resources might still always dream of greener pastures.

One should definitely learn to strike a balance between wanting more and enjoying what they have, though my point is that to totally label such thoughts "dark" doesn't sound fair to me. If human beings lose this drive altogether, we'd be in for very dangerous times with nobody having the ambition to strive and improve anything.

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

#394

Post by SZJX »

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…

Even then, I don't think lumping all "startups" in one basket is fair. A friend of mine joined Snowflake (and rejected some FAANG offers) when it had ~40 engineers, i.e. when it could still well be called a "startup". He can literally retire after his options are fully vested, just 4 years after he joined (barring some catastrophic event to Snowflake withinin a couple of years' time horizon). AFAIK aiming for late-stage startups has been a common strategy for people trying to strike gold. Maybe it's less valid nowadays? But it doesn't seem to make sense to me to say that working for a startup is 99% of the time worse than working for FAANG. "Overrated" it could be, and many startups, especially early-stage ones, suffer from a huge amount of uncertainty for people aiming for the liquidity event, which they may well underestimate. But I can't imagine anybody, by working at FAANG, getting the amount of money he is now projected to get.

Another interesting (and non-US-centric) factor for me is the flexibility a startup can offer in terms of your work and compensation, especially in an era where going remote seems to be an unstoppable trend. If the company is willing to pay all employees the same amount of salary, regardless of where they live in the world, it could be a no brainer for somebody not living in the US to work for such a startup. The salary they get can easily exceed Google L4 total pay (e.g. in the UK and in Germany, not to mention in most other countries). Of course, many companies such as GitLab aggressively adjust their salary according to where you work from, but I've seen more and more companies that don't. It will be very interesting to see how the market sorts itself out in a few years' time: Seems to me the proliferation of remote work could result in US salary and remote salary meeting somewhere in the middle.

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

#395

Post by SZJX »

A friend of mine joined Snowflake (and rejected some FAANG offers) when it had ~40 engineers, i.e. when it could still well be called a "startup". He can literally retire after his options are fully vested, just 4 years after he joined (barring some catastrophic event to Snowflake withinin a couple of years' time horizon). AFAIK aiming for late-stage startups has been a common strategy for people trying to strike gold. Maybe it's less valid nowadays? But it doesn't seem to make sense to me to say that working for a startup is always worse than working for FAANG. "Overrated" it could be, and many startups, especially early-stage ones, suffer from a huge amount of uncertainty for people aiming for the liquidity event, which they may well underestimate. But I can't imagine anybody, by working at FAANG, getting the amount of money he is now projected to get.

Another interesting (and non-US-centric) factor for me is the flexibility a startup can offer in terms of your work and compensation, especially in an era where going remote seems to be an unstoppable trend. If the company is willing to pay all employees the same amount of salary, regardless of where they live in the world, it could be a no brainer for somebody not living in the US to work for such a startup. The salary they get can easily exceed Google L4 total pay (e.g. in the UK and in Germany, not to mention in most other countries). Of course, many companies such as GitLab aggressively adjust their salary according to where you work from, but I've seen more and more companies that don't. It will be very interesting to see how the market sorts itself out in a few years' time: Seems to me the proliferation of remote work could result in US salary and remote salary meeting somewhere in the middle.

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

#396

Post by nickfromseattle »

>When I first started learning about technology companies in college, someone showed me a video of Elon Musk buying a one-million-dollar McClaren supercar after selling his first company. The clip is a classic of startup lore. He states that three years prior he was “sleeping on the office floor,” and now here he is buying one of the world’s most luxurious vehicles.

I know an early employee at Zip2 who told me some amazing Elon Musk stories.

One of the stories relates to the quote aebove.

Elon Musk spent almost all his money on this McClaren - to the point he couldn't even afford the insurance on it.

But, this person claims it was an incredibly smart move - because it allowed Elon to start hanging with other super car owners, who were also the movers & shakers of SV at the time - like Jerry Yang, the CEO of Yahoo.

This network would prove invaluable to everything Elon did after Zip2.

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

#397

Post by kirso »

The interesting point in this that resonated is the elephant in the room that no one is every addressing which is background. For 99% of people FAANG is out of reach... I am talking about globally. In fact that most of the people don't even get the chance to interview there and won't go through gatekeepers is what makes a lot of people go to startups. One of my best professional experiences was randomly joining a company with 0 revenue and going towards series A, opening offices in every continent. Did skills get me there? No... pure luck and wondering around the world searching for better opportunities with no-name school in 3rd world country and random career background where I knew in fact FAANG wouldn't every even spend more than a second on the resume.

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

#398

Post by kirso »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #262
nrp wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree that the fervor around FAANG is unhealthy. However, if you are just at the start if your career, that is the best time to move to wherever the jobs you are interested in are, rather than restricting yourself to what is available near where you currently are. There will be folks that have obligations preventing that, but most recent college grads should have little holding them from moving.

This comment is a good summary of the problem I was describing: It's easy to say that anyone who can get a FAANG job should get a FAANG job, but if circumstances don't line up, what else? That's where many students draw a blank, because all of the advice they've consumed revolves around FAANG job offers that may not arrive. Statistically, more people are rejected than accepted by FAANG companies. A lot of my mentorin…

That is because a lot of people don't realize that we are not all based in the bay area and in fact in majority of the countries you have to scrape for 100 bucks after college with no skills and no name university. I am not being negative here, but its just the fact that privilege (even geographical) makes up for a lot in this case...

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

#399

Post by mattgreenrocks »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #184
hellcow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Wealthy folks that can afford to start a company for little/no pay are always imagining some kind of moral superiority. I told a startup boss who tried that out on me e.g. "I'm risking my house too!". I said "you mean your 2nd house. I'm risking my first house. And my family's stability." He had nothing to respond to that.

This is one of the chief reasons why startups have problems finding senior engineers.

The risk calculus is simply too different versus a younger person.

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

#400

Post by robomartin »

8note wrote: post #334
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…

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?

It's about far more than that.

I had a pretty ugly business failure back in 2008. Every single one of my employees went off and got jobs. Some of them were snatched-up by competitors. One of them was my director of sales. When he came onboard he knew nothing about the business at all. Nothing about the technology. No contacts in the industry. I worked with him one-on-on and taught him everything, even how to sell the products. In fact, he didn't even have sales experience, in his prior job he was in marketing and I gave him a shot in sales. The value of that education cannot be understated. Of course competitors grabbed him as soon as they could. He went on to have a (and continues to have) a great career in that industry.

While my employees went off to grab new jobs pretty much without delay in income, I couldn't simply abandon ship. As this evolved I took out a second mortgage on my home and filled credit cards to keep everyone employed as long as possible. We had the potential for sales that would pull the company out of the dive the 2008 economic implosion caused. When those fell through I told everyone I had nothing left to give, go find a job.

Could I go find a job? No way. I was trapped by my own business until the bitter end. I had obligations. I couldn't just walk away. When millions of dollars are on the line, doing so is professional suicide.

So, no, not even close. People who think employees have the same risk as founders have no clue what they are talking about. As is always the case, most of these comments tend to come from people who watch from the outside and think they understand reality.

As my wife likes to say "No, your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree".

Or, as Mark Twain said: "A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way".

If you haven't held the cat by the tail you have no idea.

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