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SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

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Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#71

Post by r3trohack3r »

echelon wrote: post #3

I wish it was more like this at existing companies. Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few quarters of leaning into risk. Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is healthy . The "SpaceX dia…

Ex-Netflixer here.

I've come to appreciate that equity for your time !== equity for your money. Take cash in excess of your burn rate in-hand over equity any day. Then take that excess cash and buy equity.

Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a startup, it's substantially better to take a $500k cash in-hand offer from FAANG and use your extra $250k to cut angel checks. Some early-stage startups that try to court you will instead take a $10k check on the spot as an early investment. So not only do you diversify your investments and get a better class of equity with cash, you also get the upside of guaranteed outcomes on a salary.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#72

Post by kortilla »

dpifke wrote: post #65
_just7_ wrote: post #23

What is up with that site giving me three seperate popups warning me that the site uses cookies

What is up with comments that go against the guidelines? From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

Guidelines can’t prevent people from complaining about getting eye fucked by a website.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#73

Post by mr90210 »

8note wrote: post #16
mr90210 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those folks are locked in golden handcuffs, some are expats on green cards, and some simply enjoy a less complex life of that comes with being a well-paid employee working for a well-known company.

The green card let's you do what you want, no? The h1s and tns, etc are locked in

Thanks, I had H1B in mind.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#74

Post by ramraj07 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #38
ramraj07 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is private and Elon isn’t exactly known for paying a ton so no?

Actually yes. SpaceX doesn’t pay a ton in salary, but their equity options have been incredibly valuable, so overall compensation has been good. If they’ve been around for a while and have had time for their shares to vest, they’re probably millionaires. SpaceX is worth a ton of money, and even tho SpaceX is private, they do regular private sales so employees can sell their shares. The early employees in particular h…

That sounds great indeed. Didn’t think of private sales that let you cash out your entire portfolio (or even a large fraction of it) were practiced. Anyone here have an idea of current spacex valuation?

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#75

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

pptr wrote: post #59
echelon wrote: post #3

I wish it was more like this at existing companies. Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few quarters of leaning into risk. Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is healthy . The "SpaceX dia…

Googler here. If you work at a big tech company you can improve the products used by millions if not billions of people. I find that very rewarding.

I guess that's one way to delude yourself. I'm just here (different big tech company) to get the biggest paycheck for the least amount of harm I could inflict on the world.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#76

Post by kortilla »

jiggawatts wrote: post #54
throwaway1777 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks GDPR!

Thanks marketing people that decided to double down despite the clear distaste of the general public at their relentless tracking.

Is this the clear distaste of the general public or an overreaction with bad regulation by a government authority?

It’s been how many years now and GDPR has done very little to improve anything despite the cookie prompts on websites everywhere?

At this point they are as useful as TOS (not) with the annoyance of seeing one every website.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#77

Post by mjevans »

PeterisP wrote: post #67
dmix wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers like Firefox could hypothetically kill cookies in their browser tomorrow but doesn't. Or at least make a big stink about it. Do you think they should? Do you think we'd be better off as a society?

Browsers can't tell if a cookie is a generic setting ("chose Yes/No on a banner") or a uniquely identifiable one; and they can't tell if a cookie is functionally required (ID for a logged-in session) or not (ID to track random visitors). The distinction is legal, not technical; so it has to be enforced by legal, not technical means.

Firefox COULD default to cookies off (with an in menu widget to force them on for non-automatic handling), and if any forum submission happens _ask_ if the end user wants to accept the site's cookies.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#78

Post by jdeibele »

iscrewyou wrote: post #45
nier wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling content blockers, I can see what you’re describing. Seems like satire.

way of tangent from this thread but which content blockers do you use?

Not the poster but the Hush extension for Safari seems to work well on this site because I didn't see any notices. And that's what it's supposed to accomplish. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900

I'm sure there are similar things for FireFox or Chromium browsers but Hush seems Safari-only.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#79

Post by sva_ »

dmix wrote: post #56
jiggawatts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks marketing people that decided to double down despite the clear distaste of the general public at their relentless tracking.

Browsers like Firefox could hypothetically kill cookies in their browser tomorrow but doesn't. Or at least make a big stink about it. Do you think they should? Do you think we'd be better off as a society?

I think when you click "accept", you also accept to things like fingerprinting and storing a fingerprinted identity on their server, as well as perhaps supercookies, that allow your ISP to track you.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#80

Post by bdcravens »

dpifke wrote: post #65
_just7_ wrote: post #23

What is up with that site giving me three seperate popups warning me that the site uses cookies

What is up with comments that go against the guidelines? From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

> In Comments

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

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