how is honeycomb a startup? why are 7+ year old companies with hundreds of employees considered a startup?
On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#12Say no to things, have meetings, play telephone between layers of management. Got it. I think I'll stick to being a lowly producer.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#13This series of blog posts have had some really great insights. However, they’ve also left me feeling uneasy for reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on. It finally clicked when I read the section justifying the company's low compensation: > Industry data shows that Honeycomb is about average in this as a series D startup, not an outlier. I have friends who are line managers at larger companies who take home more t…
They should definitely renegotiate ("complain") if they're not being paid a fair market rate... Comparing "relative to the world median" is just absurd, the comparison can only be to others in similar roles/locations.
Is she $200k, $400k, or more? Potentially line managers in big companies could be earning more than any of those numbers.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#14how is honeycomb a startup? why are 7+ year old companies with hundreds of employees considered a startup?
They aren't public, so they get lumped in with the startups.
A more accurate description is probably "privately held".
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#15> While engineering teams often thrive on routine and ritual (sprint planning, on-call rotations, recurring retros, etc.)
My eyes rolled back so hard I'm not sure they'll ever face forward again.
Lotta good stuff in this essay, but that one missed the mark a bit.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#16This series of blog posts have had some really great insights. However, they’ve also left me feeling uneasy for reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on. It finally clicked when I read the section justifying the company's low compensation: > Industry data shows that Honeycomb is about average in this as a series D startup, not an outlier. I have friends who are line managers at larger companies who take home more t…
What is left unsaid: working at a startup at an executive level typically involves whole percentages of equity in the company.
If honeycomb continues to succeed and there's some sort of exit or liquidation (which can happen in series D, E rounds for select individuals like executives) then I am sure the total comp is not "about average" but instead much greater than average.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#17This section describes a tremendous amount of bureaucratic overhead for a company that appears to only have 200 employees. It feels like they have adopted processes that are really only needed for much larger orgs
> for a company that appears to only have 200 employees I was wondering how big the company was. 200 employees isn’t a small company any more, but the bureaucracy and alignment challenges described in the post made it feel more like a 2000 person company.
Yeah exactly. 200 is still a level where everyone knows everyone in their team and all the leaders know each other personally.
I mean spending a lot of time aligning with other leaders. How many director + leaders can there be? Five?
Similarly how heavyweight can the planning and performance process be when you are that small?
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#18This series of blog posts have had some really great insights. However, they’ve also left me feeling uneasy for reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on. It finally clicked when I read the section justifying the company's low compensation: > Industry data shows that Honeycomb is about average in this as a series D startup, not an outlier. I have friends who are line managers at larger companies who take home more t…
What is left unsaid: working at a startup at an executive level typically involves whole percentages of equity in the company. If honeycomb continues to succeed and there's some sort of exit or liquidation (which can happen in series D, E rounds for select individuals like executives) then I am sure the total comp is not "about average" but instead much greater than average.
Exit liquidity for executives is great for those executives, but it doesn’t help the rest of the employees.
If leaders are writing blog posts about how everyone needs to accept “average” compensation while cashing out high equity grants for themselves, that actually makes it worse.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#19This series of blog posts have had some really great insights. However, they’ve also left me feeling uneasy for reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on. It finally clicked when I read the section justifying the company's low compensation: > Industry data shows that Honeycomb is about average in this as a series D startup, not an outlier. I have friends who are line managers at larger companies who take home more t…
They should definitely renegotiate ("complain") if they're not being paid a fair market rate... Comparing "relative to the world median" is just absurd, the comparison can only be to others in similar roles/locations. Is she $200k, $400k, or more? Potentially line managers in big companies could be earning more than any of those numbers.
I was thinking more about all of the employees at the company who aren’t VP level and are paid significantly less than this.
When a company espouses “about average” compensation as one of their core principles while simultaneously espousing excellence in everything else, there’s a mismatch.
Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering pt. 2
#20> While engineering teams often thrive on routine and ritual (sprint planning, on-call rotations, recurring retros, etc.) My eyes rolled back so hard I'm not sure they'll ever face forward again. Lotta good stuff in this essay, but that one missed the mark a bit.
Yep. In my experience, the only people who like sprint planning and retros are the PMs.