How to Not Get Screwed over as a Software Engineer [video]

Post by dukeyukey » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 12:42 AM UTC

yu3zhou4 wrote: post #188

cutemonster wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you'd find the Big Five personality model interesting as well (if you haven't seen), in particular assertiveness vs agreeableness

Thanks. I have some experience with Big Five and MBTI, but I’m not satisfied with them since they are too general in what they describe and also they’re not scientific enough imho. I’d be happy to see more rigorous research in this area because it could be both useful for self-development and it sometimes might help to understand oneself as well. And it’s also fun to do these assessments :p I’m curious of your take o…

Post by ramraj07 » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:39 AM UTC

smokel wrote: post #25

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #11

Industry wide, not even in startups, the people who get screwed the most are the ones working under the hood. I am not even talking about the disparity between SWEs and C-suites. I'm talking within the engineering domain. The closer you are to the application side the more credit you get for the effort, even if it might have only been possible through the hard work of recent under the hood technological advances. A p…

Only a few people who were in the right place at the right time and struck AI gold got lucky. Many PhDs have been slaving away and metaphorically died in several harsh AI winters. Nothing to be jealous of. There are several examples of people who got lucky with infrastructure or more technical engineering, but it is not because of their perceived role or something superficial.

Post by gghffguhvc » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 2:33 AM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #194

alexawarrior2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen brother/sister. Was founder, co-founder, early employee, or investor in eleven startups, ten of which went out of business or were bought with no net equity earnings for myself, one of them had a $250m exit from which I netted $130k, after seven years. It's not that retirement-level-net-earnings startups never happen, just that they happen only about 1 out of every 1000 times on average according to my research.…

> only capitalists - the existing 1% - have an odds-on shot at startup success By the VC definition of "startup," which is not universal. This is why I advocate for bootstrapping on the side until the revenue exceeds your salary. Pieter Levels famously did so and many others are also generating $10k or $20k+ MRR and living well. They can always sell that cashflowing asset for a 5x multiple and enter the HNWI territor…

Post by vikramkr » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #141

Aurornis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But getting "founding engineer" level equity on the order of 0.5% (before dilution!) seems to basically be a scam, where you're working 2x the amount for lower salaries than the market, 0.5% at an early stage with below market compensation, no refreshers with future rounds, negligible comp increase with future rounds, and below-market salary is indeed a scam. A lot of startups are happy to operate this way. On the…

Serious question: if you're truly being paid a market-rate salary -- e.g. roughly as much as you could make at any other VC-funded enterprise, any FAANG company, etc, not the same $110k/yr you'd make at a bank or consulting firm -- why would you get any equity? The whole point of equity is that you have skin in the game and "work harder" (whatever that means) to make the company a success. At least in the early days…

Post by eweise » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

nick222226 wrote: post #208

saliagato wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

Pay to exercise options and pay for imputed taxes. In a year or two company folds and you get nothing.