321–330 of 943 posts
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Where would the stress come from? You get a paycheck and there is no personal downside except opportunity cost (and perhaps reputation). You don’t lose any money if your startup fails.
A lot of people (esp people that performed extremely well in school and in corporate environment) find "failing" and "losing reputation" very stressful.
Posting from throwaway so I can be very open. I joined a YC startup as engineer #1 with close to $200k salary and 2% options vesting at the usual 4 years, with a 10 year window. I feel like this was bettern than usual, and for a while felt like I struck an awesome deal, but as time went on I realised I was building everything single-handedly, while getting (at best) 2%, which started to annoy me deep down. Over two y…
Early employees are better rewarded for the risk, but later employees (e.g. #10) will get basically nothing. It's all about tradeoffs
Secondary at Series A is very rare. Part of the reason more early employees don't get included in secondary sales is because of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 14e-2. If you have more than 10 sellers involved, the transaction can be considered a tender offer, which triggers additional regulatory requirements and disclosures. > As of 4 months ago I left a very successful stealth startup (which grew to 40M in ARR i…
> Please let us all know how that's working out for you in 5-10 years. 4 months in and no stress? Must be easy riding from here! Honestly VC-funded startups seem like a cake walk compared to actually starting a small business. Your biggest challenge is walking into a room full of rich dudes and schmoozing for your pay cheque. If you fail you get acquired and get golden handcuffs. If you start a real business you can…
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All you’re saying is that in the contemporary context it’s exceedingly foolish to be an employee at an early startup. The VCs and founders have optimized away all the incentive. Eventually the message will reach even naive 22 year olds.
I'd tweak this slightly: "It's exceedingly foolish to be an employee at an early startup for the money. " I think there are a lot of us who struggle to fit the larger corporate mold who pretty much only thrive in the startup world. I can't speak for all of them, but I've been very willing to take the balance of lower cash compensation and a fistful of lottery tickets and not having 12 layers of middle management brea…
At a startup you have more autonomy and power over your personal position. I wrote 90% of the code that is generating company growth, released 2 months after a layoff. If I had taken longer to release that code or if my code didn't work the company would be in a worse financial position.
But that also means a lot of personal stress. There aren't 4 layers of middle management to catch flak for you. If you fuck something up, you are directly responsible and depending on the environment that can result in some heated conversations. I also work way harder at a startup than I ever did for a big company
Posting from throwaway so I can be very open. I joined a YC startup as engineer #1 with close to $200k salary and 2% options vesting at the usual 4 years, with a 10 year window. I feel like this was bettern than usual, and for a while felt like I struck an awesome deal, but as time went on I realised I was building everything single-handedly, while getting (at best) 2%, which started to annoy me deep down. Over two y…
out of college directly, would you recommend a similar position? looking for early career options
I worked at a preseed company recently. Here's my experience: - Work 9 to 7 everyday. 6 days a week. - People are working 9 am - 5 am in crunch time. Then joining again at 10 am. - Monetary Comp is exactly market average. - Equity Comp is even more paltry since founders raised at a huge valuation. - Founders make unrealistic promises. Eg: It took a competitor with 7 people, 3 months to make a product. The founder tol…
it's important to figure out where to set your own boundaries. people out to exploit you will seek to see how far they can push. congratulations for leaving. one thing that catches out some junior folks is that they may believe this kind of behaviour from bosses is normal and unavoidable as they have only worked for exploitative bosses at places with toxic cultures. you can do better, you're worth it. get out. find a…
People don't like to say "no" or "can't do it in that timeline" and other permutations of these statements. If you can't even challenge or disagree with anything, then you're doing something wrong, or you're in the wrong environment, or both.
20 years into my career and still practicing this.
One hack: I can't respond when I'm asleep! So, I head to bed pretty early (9:30-10 EST).
I recently left a long career in FANG to roll the dice on an early startup. I was pretty surprised by the uneven terms between founders and early employees. From what I could tell the early employees takes more risk than the founders because they don't get that magic token dollar turning into their share of the founding equity event and have to pay the fictional valuation of the seed to convert their options. Dependi…
1. You get to see what it's like under the covers, as you said. It's not nearly as glamorous as it looks from the outside. And yes, as an early engineer, you share in a lot of the downside without nearly an equal share of the upside.
2. You get to leave. Unfortunately, the startup I joined entered a tailspin. But, my name wasn't attached to the company, and I didn't have a fiduciary obligation to our investors. I had a lot of "stake" myself after putting in years of 12-hour days, nights and weekends, but at a certain point I saw that my career was actively being harmed by staying. That "founding engineer" role on my resume got me the job I'm at now, at a level that skews higher than my YOE.
Do those two points mean you should get a fraction of the equity (or rather, a fraction of the options) as the founder? Honestly... maybe. I've now seen a few founders fail. It can really be a career-killer.
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This is the model, you can see a lot of early stage founders looking for a "founding engineer" which is really just an excuse to pay founder salaries for 1% of the company rather than 50%. If the founding engineer quits without buying their options, then the founding team recoups the 1% equity. Its a recipe for the founding engineer to be burned out and pushed out.
What if they give 1-2% and good market rate salary (~200k/y) to a founding engineer? Is that still a bad deal?
OR....you could just become a founding engineer by actually founding and keep 90% of the equity. You can get that salary with an equity raise, its worth not being the low-person on the totem pole.
I recently left a long career in FANG to roll the dice on an early startup. I was pretty surprised by the uneven terms between founders and early employees. From what I could tell the early employees takes more risk than the founders because they don't get that magic token dollar turning into their share of the founding equity event and have to pay the fictional valuation of the seed to convert their options. Dependi…
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Market salary with stock upside plus the chance to level up a job title has potential to be a great deal
Yeah, that's my thought too. Many companies give ~$200/y for way less upward mobility, impact and voice, and without any equity. Maybe you'd lose our on some tiny perk/benefit but that's not always the case. So I'm not seeing what's wrong with this deal with the only caveat that the engineer has the experience not to overwork/burn out.
The startup can go bankrupt any moment, thats a big deal. You get crappy perks, often poor benefits.