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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

#131

Post by submeta »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

I have seen this kind of behaviour in the consulting business here in Germany many times. Actually so often that I started to believe this is the culture around those companies. No integrity, no real teamwork, lying behind your back, ego driven, playing the blame game, very poisonous atmosphere.

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

#132

Post by hikawaii »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108
throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

> Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc. Also anecdotal, but this is identical to my experience with a handful of ex-employees of some Elon companies. They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themse…

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades.

If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

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

#133

Post by kodah »

chatmasta wrote: post #112
kajecounterhack wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, not everyone who optimizes for cash is "obsessed with cash" or a "cash obsessed optimizer" -- life circumstances like dependent family, the oppression of college debt, etc make stability of a large corporation attractive to some, even if they would take on risk given other circumstances. Example: taking 80k/yr out of college while having to retire 2k/month of college debt, then using the rest to afford ba…

Oh, totally agree - what you optimize for is a personal preference. I don't have a wife nor kids and that significantly affects the constraints of what I'm willing to do. And I've got nothing against anyone who chooses to work for FAANG, this is just my personal outlook: if you're concerned about money, you should take it from the people willing to pay you for your work. But if you've got an investor willing to pay y…

> if you're concerned about money, you should take it from the people willing to pay you for your work

I think this is half-right. When I evaluate startups I'm often expecting FAANG pay, but I don't expect some of the benefits. Generally the hefty expectation is in RSUs, because at a FAANG those are almost a third of what I make. I also don't accept inflated future leaning valuations, I rate them at current value. If I'm taking a gamble on a third of my salary I want to put the risk multiplier on that third, so I'll charge more.

Passion can get you so far in startups, but if you're engineer (especially not engineer zero) then you likely won't walk away with much unless you're accurately assessing risk. That said, there's a fair amount of startups that are not worried about having a reputation of early engineers working away with very little.

That said, I still have a mortgage and that's what informs my strategy when dealing with startups. If I didn't have a mortgage, I'd probably accept lower RSUs and a higher cash incentive.

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

#134

Post by hemloc_io »

adastra22 wrote: post #123
r3trohack3r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a startup No startup offers such high salaries.

at least one does (I interviewed and got a similar offer)

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

#135

Post by santoshalper »

hikawaii wrote: post #132
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc. Also anecdotal, but this is identical to my experience with a handful of ex-employees of some Elon companies. They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themse…

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades. If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

Or maybe it's just the ones who left?

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

#136

Post by oldstrangers »

adastra22 wrote: post #123
r3trohack3r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a startup No startup offers such high salaries.

Oh they absolutely do.

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

#137

Post by makeitdouble »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #111
makeitdouble wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incumbents like Adobe , Meta or Google were allowed to reach their size by letting them kill or buy the competition every time something else was rising. As long as regulators won't do anything about that, the next startup challenging an incumbent is just poised to be bought("congratulation on your exit!") and killed. Figma is the latest example of this.

Figma's not a great example of "buying to kill" though -- I'd guess that Adobe would sooner deprioritize their existing products that compete with Figma and redirect their effort. And I don't see much wrong with FB buying Instagram or Adobe buying Figma or Google buying YouTube because these services actually got better to the consumer's benefit (and I guess to a limited extent the enriched early employees perpetuate…

Google buying Youtube was the only outcome where Youtube would survive, at least at it was. The same way Napster wouldn't have survived as it was.

We're in agreement here, but it's I think a broader discussion on how media companies make money and where we stand as consumer, in particular how we feel about RIAA/MPAA.

I still think Google is doing a good job, better than most of us would have predicted, but I personally would have preferred a world where Youtube was viable on its own. Looking at Spofify for instance.

> FB buying Instagram

Even the regulating agencies that let the deal pass are looking back at it as a wrong decision.

I personally can't find any single meaningful aspect where we benefit from FB owning Instagram.

I partially fault Instagram for having a shitty business plan aimed at being acquired from the start, and kinda wish they had to make the hard decisions at the end instead of selling the whole audience to the worst company to handle it.

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

#138

Post by pstorm »

adastra22 wrote: post #123
r3trohack3r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a startup No startup offers such high salaries.

They do, the catch is that 250k of equity has a high chance of ending up as $0

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

#139

Post by jpgvm »

santoshalper wrote: post #135
hikawaii wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades. If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

Or maybe it's just the ones who left?

Or fired.

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

#140

Post by SCUSKU »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

My personal anecdote is that I had an ex-SpaceX engineer as a VP of Engineering for a startup I worked for. And he was great. He is a nice guy, super friendly, very knowledgeable, solid manager, always bringing people into the fold, and technically very talented.

The company he was the VP of Engineering for was an indoor vertical farming startup (which is failing), and he moved onto a new venture in the climate space.

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