How (not) to get a job at a startup... • Hacker News Board

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#81

Post by auston » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 3:16 AM UTC

geuis wrote: post #59

auston wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're paying market: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681

Yeah, thanks for proving my point. All of you people in South Florida need to sink into the ocean. I was the IT admin for a mid-sized real estate company for 2 years and while I liked my job and loved the people I worked for, the pay was crap. I looked for 6 months for a job after leaving there and jobs like yours were the only ones that kept popping up. You expect to get the most skilled person in the world, yet onl…

Right, so in an area where water front condos are $1000 a month (http://tinyurl.com/64hphe) 3 - 5 times that each month is definitely NOT reasonable.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#82

Post by strlen » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 6:24 AM UTC

Actually, if you're looking to "make money in a start-up", you'd join a start-up that you believe has growth potential and ask for an appropriate equity stake. As a trade off, you yourself accept a below market rate as a form of an investment.

If one is not seeking money in a start-up, but rather experience, environment and personal growth it would make sense for them to ask for a market rate salary (which is a valid concern if they've got a a family to feed or a mortgage to pay). Before you say "but isn't the experience/environment worth something" - yes it is, and the trade offs they make to gain that experience would be working longer hours, less job stability as well as lack of chances/challenges/opportunities/perks that only a big company could provide (e.g. if you're looking for a great UX/UI person you are probably competing with Yahoo, who has a really strong UX/UI organization; Yahoo offers its developers the challenge to scale a web application to thousand node deployments and billions of page views, you would never be able to do that).

For an employee applying to your start-up, taking a higher salary may as well be a smart thing to do, as judging by your posting (again, I may be wildly off track here and I mean no offense) you're building yet another LAMP webapp - not anything that's going to be wildly different from what there is on the market - in other words, you aren't building the next flickr/delicious/twitter much less youtube/facebook (and of course not the next google/yahoo). That's fine and there are always the above mentioned reasons to join your start-up (experience, environment) but the equity may not end up amounting to much (you could build a viable small business, but you wouldn't have a spectacular exit, especially for employees holding 0.25-2% equity which would be typical for a lead engineer).

Another point: if an employee sells themselves short to you (e.g. less options, less salary) how do you know they won't sell your product short (e.g. write worse code to save time; or purchase inferior hardware/hosting services to save money -- or even literally, sell your product for less than it's worth if they're a sales person).

So in short, your choices are either to expect an employee that matches the compensation you give them (below average comp. - below average employee, "market comp" - average employee, great comp - great employee) or convince the employees that their equity will amount to something. That's not always the wrong way to go: if building customer facing web applications isn't your company's core competency you don't need a great UI hacker - but that clearly isn't your case.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#83

Post by HansF » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 11:22 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #8

abstractbill wrote: post #4

I agree he was obnoxious in his email, but the "We’ll take care of you ... trust me" response doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, sorry. Surely this is what stock options are for?

I was going to say the same thing. "We'll take care of you" is simply not a promise that startups can make. You might work your ass for them for a year at a below market salary, only to see the whole thing tank.

True, or to be laid off if you're considered 'too greedy'. Let's not forget your employers had this great idea and you should be happy to be honoured to contribute to that great idea. After all, you're jut a code monkey.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#84

Post by HansF » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 11:30 AM UTC

auston wrote: post #28

alaskamiller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From looking at their job posting and their website it sure gave me a good impression of how great they are... Wait, no, see they (I'm assuming it's you now) didn't. They didn't explain why it is they offer something beyond money as an incentive to work for them. They don't talk about their passion, office situation, their work ethic, or what it is they're working on. The job posting itself was just bland and generic…

Ha. Everyone here encourages thinking that differs from ours. I suppose we are generic in the job posting (I really appreciate the feedback) and again, as I stated, we're trying to find someone who is looking for more than just money, someone looking for place to work where they fit in and feel at home. If you were trying to meet a decent girl with values, would you go around waving $100 bills and wearing diamond pen…

So you need someone who has lots of ambition AND doesn't object to put in a lot of work AND get a low paycheck AND is SOL when your startup dies. Good luck in finding that person.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#85

Post by 13ren » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 12:48 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #76

13ren wrote: post #58

There's an attitude of putting people down going round HN. The applicant in the story put down the other applicants. LeadLog put down him, publicly. And now, HN is putting down auston. Everyone is criticising everyone else's spelling and grammar - and therefore becoming more self-conscious of their own. If you are truly capable of creating value for others, putting others down is pointless for you. But it's worse: fo…

I largely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: a little hostility helps people to check themselves. It forces you to think before you speak and before you post, which means there's a good chance you check yourself before you submit thing. It ensures a degree of quality control, and that's something that I think Hacker News benefits rather than suffers from. The first forum I joined was one of people who enjo…

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

I think you've combined two meanings in the word hostility: one is to argue and debate, i.e. antagonistic or Socratic; the other is to be disrespectful and insulting - aggressive domination, to win by making the other lose. The same with nice as its opposite: one meaning is to approve of anything with no objectivity or truth; the other is to respect others. I agree that challenging people is a good thing (even though it can feel uncomfortable and "not nice"), provided it is done is in a respectful way.

I think the key is whether one's goal is to get to the truth and learn and build; or whether one's goal is humiliation to show your superiority. However, it's fraught with danger to evaluate what someone else's goal is, because your interpretation of their intention is necessarily a step distant from the truth about them. But I see many comments on HN that are clearly seem way or the other (the remainder I'm not sure of).

I really love being shown I'm wrong by someone who sees more than I do. For the supernatural sense of expanding one's world, it's second only to experience. :-)

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#86

Post by unalone » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 7:54 PM UTC

13ren wrote: post #85

unalone wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: a little hostility helps people to check themselves. It forces you to think before you speak and before you post, which means there's a good chance you check yourself before you submit thing. It ensures a degree of quality control, and that's something that I think Hacker News benefits rather than suffers from. The first forum I joined was one of people who enjo…

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html I think you've combined two meanings in the word hostility : one is to argue and debate, i.e. antagonistic or Socratic; the other is to be disrespectful and insulting - aggressive domination, to win by making the other lose. The same with nice as its opposite: one meaning is to approve of anything with no objectivity or truth; the other is to respect others. I agree that challe…

Hacker News has turned nasty very recently. I mean, there have always been people who get into furious discussions, but now those are starting to become front-and-center of the site. I think it's in response to the noise the site is getting, but it's annoying nonetheless.

I've always defined hostility in a kind of weird way. For me, it's absolute intolerance to new ideas until a good reason is given for them. Which is to say, if somebody suggests something new, the burden of proof is entirely on them to explain themselves, before I'll consider the idea. In return, I assume everybody else works similarly, and post accordingly. It's a policy that leads to people contributing lots of fleshed-out ideas, and it keeps noise way down.

Of course, by that definition it's possible to be both hostile and polite. I just see hostility as being a slight notch above debate: in debate, there are two well-defined sides that play off each other. On a site where there can be a wide variety of opinions and ideas, the barrier for entry should be set a wee bit higher.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#87

Post by 13ren » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 8:22 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #86

13ren wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html I think you've combined two meanings in the word hostility : one is to argue and debate, i.e. antagonistic or Socratic; the other is to be disrespectful and insulting - aggressive domination, to win by making the other lose. The same with nice as its opposite: one meaning is to approve of anything with no objectivity or truth; the other is to respect others. I agree that challe…

Hacker News has turned nasty very recently. I mean, there have always been people who get into furious discussions, but now those are starting to become front-and-center of the site. I think it's in response to the noise the site is getting, but it's annoying nonetheless. I've always defined hostility in a kind of weird way. For me, it's absolute intolerance to new ideas until a good reason is given for them. Which i…

I can see that would work well for when you're posting.

For when you are reading, I guess it keeps your own personal attention uncluttered by noise. It also implies you wouldn't challenge poorly presented ideas, but just ignore them as noise. Interesting.

Yeah, I was mainly thinking hostile as opposed to polite.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#88

Post by noodle » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 8:29 PM UTC

auston wrote: post #40

axod wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45-60k is market? :/ ouch.

It is in Broward and Palm Beach county, Florida.

after cross-referencing salary.com and payscale for boca raton, the average pay for someone with 2 years experience (just to approximate the skills required for the position) is about $58k. $45k is off the bottom end of the chart, approaching the 0th percentile.

to pay above market, you'd need to be paying $60k minimum, not maximum.

all of this is, of course, assuming benefits (health/dental/etc).

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#89

Post by unalone » Wed, Nov 12, 2008, 8:39 PM UTC

13ren wrote: post #87

unalone wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has turned nasty very recently. I mean, there have always been people who get into furious discussions, but now those are starting to become front-and-center of the site. I think it's in response to the noise the site is getting, but it's annoying nonetheless. I've always defined hostility in a kind of weird way. For me, it's absolute intolerance to new ideas until a good reason is given for them. Which i…

I can see that would work well for when you're posting. For when you are reading, I guess it keeps your own personal attention uncluttered by noise. It also implies you wouldn't challenge poorly presented ideas, but just ignore them as noise. Interesting. Yeah, I was mainly thinking hostile as opposed to polite.

Depending on how a bad idea is presented, I either downvote (if it's presented without any backup whatsoever, like "Mac users suck") or I ignore. If it's making a case with faulty information, I try to at least correct the information in the post. But I try only to focus on the really relevant threads of conversation, the ones that I have a chance of learning from.