Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
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Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#2Based on how he's valuing his PTO, he's valuing his time at either $328, $218, or $447 per diem.
I hope he's not valuing his PTO based on the salary he's getting.
I'm a 24 year old with no college degree and I currently cost about $800 per day on contract. (Not hypothetical, billing at that rate right now.) I'd rather make twice as much money consulting, pick my own damn healthcare plan, go to whatever conferences I want without asking^H^H^H^H^H^Hbegging, and stash that much more money towards runway.
I just left a YC company myself. I would only work for a YC company because it was time for me to learn, it no longer is.
It's time for me to earn, so I'll contract until I get a business rolling.
If you approach working at a YC company like a piker, you're going to be disappointed. It's an opportunity to build up a network and learn how startups work so that you can eventually do your own thing. (IMHO anyway)
Employee equity is consistently pathetic. Not worth it.
It also doesn't seem like he's asking for what he wants. Does he not know how to negotiate? Tell the YC founders what you want.
People are really bad at getting what they want unless it's offered to them on a silver platter.
Edit: The whole post, frankly, seems like an advertisement for his irrationality with regards to the expected value of perks.
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#3The entitlement culture in the tech industry is mind boggling. One day we may look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. Perhaps we'll even envy the person paid $1 per day to suck the gold off our old circuit boards.
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#4The entitlement culture in the tech industry is mind boggling. One day we may look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. Perhaps we'll even envy the person paid $1 per day to suck the gold off our old circuit boards.
Those of us with an ounce of humility or perspective (I suspect that includes you) seem less likely to have that kind of problem... though honestly, I don't think this "entitlement culture" is an industry-wide problem. It seems, from what I'm seeing, largely concentrated on the coasts, particularly the one mentioned in this post. Attitudes and perspectives are vastly different in other places, even more than you would normally expect outside of tech.
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#5The entitlement culture in the tech industry is mind boggling. One day we may look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. Perhaps we'll even envy the person paid $1 per day to suck the gold off our old circuit boards.
Entitlement is when you're a welfare recipient smoking dope and watching TV all day and demanding everybody else cover your existence.
Demanding market rates is a rational response to a job offer, and I do not understand why otherwise rational engineers romanticize working for less than they are worth simply because "engineers make a lot of money."
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#6> Though they brag about their "Unlimited Vacation" (today's buzzword), they offered only 15 days of PTO, standard for any professional job in the United States.
Has anyone ever tried to take advantage of "Unlimited Vacation" at an early startup? I mean, sincerely tried to invoke that contractual promise as a way to take 3+ weeks consecutively?
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#7The prestige asset generated by YC is interesting, because I bet it's going to have an unintended consequence of increasing the social difference between founders and employees.
If you're a YC founder, you're in the club. You were picked. It's great if you succeed; if you fail, you have a network. If you're a YC employee, you're just an employee of a small startup. YC founders seem, at least from this, to be blind to the fact that their employees aren't able to cash in on the prestige of being YC and will therefore expect hard currency.
I think that crappy benefits send a pretty awful signal: we're not committed enough to making your life not suck. A 25-year-old founder is going to think of that stuff as an afterthought, while the 40-year-old is thinking, "kid, if I wanted to take on that kind of risk and insanity, I'd have your job". Health insurance is a goddamn mess and a company can't expect to get it right in an afternoon, but it is important.
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#8> Though they brag about their "Unlimited Vacation" (today's buzzword), they offered only 15 days of PTO, standard for any professional job in the United States. Has anyone ever tried to take advantage of "Unlimited Vacation" at an early startup? I mean, sincerely tried to invoke that contractual promise as a way to take 3+ weeks consecutively?
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Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#9> Though they brag about their "Unlimited Vacation" (today's buzzword), they offered only 15 days of PTO, standard for any professional job in the United States. Has anyone ever tried to take advantage of "Unlimited Vacation" at an early startup? I mean, sincerely tried to invoke that contractual promise as a way to take 3+ weeks consecutively?
this will never happen. They say unlimited vacation policy as long as ur manager approves.
Re: Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup
#10The entitlement culture in the tech industry is mind boggling. One day we may look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. Perhaps we'll even envy the person paid $1 per day to suck the gold off our old circuit boards.
People in tech don't realize just how lucky they are. I'm 20 with no wife or kids, and I'm making more per year than certainly almost all of my friends will be making after they choose to actually finish college and get a salaried job. However, I'm told by people that myself and my colleagues are getting underpaid (we work at a startup). Ridiculous.