Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup

I'm on my phone. In landscape it's readable, but in portrait the lines break weird like an email program wrapped them wrong.

1. I was never independent. I had a "client", or a "contractor", I was obligated to fulfill. I only got paid if I did so, and I only got more contract jobs if I did a good job.

2. When one contract was over, I had to run out and find another one. While doing so, I was making exactly nothing. If I timed things right, I'd go from one contract to another, but that's not always possible, so I'd have a week or so of dead time where I should have been making money, but didn't.

3. If I was sick, there wasn't a team of structure in place to deal with it. I was sick. I didn't get paid. It sucked. Often it meant I had to do double-shift days to make up the lost time.

4. There was absolutely no "reward". There was just a steady, sometimes unsteady, stream of money, which worked out to about what I'd make salaried somewhere after I factor in everything.

5. As a salaried employee, I was still completely free to quit. No one could "make" me stay at a job I hated. And there aren't many (if any) legal ramifications of doing so. However, as a contractor, I might have a legal obligation (literally a contract), and the client had a completely valid way to sue me if I broke contract by not completing the work. Some clients demanded real contracts for long-term projects, and that absolutely sucked.

6. Founder spend payroll? Great. Contract abruptly ended. Scramble to find more work, no idea when I'll get paid for the money they already owe.

Being a contractor doesn't make you free or independent in any way that a salaried employee isn't.

The only way it works out is if you turn yourself into a business, and hire other people. That's basically what I did, and even now, I'm not really independent. I have employees/clients counting on me.

The only real "independence" comes from wealth that isn't generated or dependent on labor.

It could have been good for people job hunting or interested generally at an "inside look" at the market.

There's nothing wrong with looking at all your free market offers and making your choice.

For some reason I can't understand though, you crossed the line into "YC companies owe me better". They don't. They owe you what ever offer they seem reasonable if they took the time you interview you. You owe them consideration of their offer and an answer. That's the dance.

I personally hate having "benefits" in my compensation which come out of my salary which I don't really want. Sometimes companies get tax savings (i.e. they can deduct, I can't), but VERY RARELY do they get actual dollar savings (health insurance is one weird case, due to some people being more expensive to insure than they could ever pay, and that risk being spread across a group).

My personal ideal benefits package is: 0) Private office, 24x7 hvac, a door, decent security, locking storage, parking on-site ideally with a guard or gate. Essentially non-negotiable (or, wfh). EV parking would be nice too soon.

1) Max 401k match and maybe even profit sharing (in California, I'd happily take $1 of salary and put it into employer 401k match) -- I think you can get up to 46k/yr max, so 15k personal contribution, 5% salary match, and the rest as profit share up to 46k.

2) FSA, Transportation accounts (fully deductible for employer, and non-taxed). I ended up buying a bunch of air filters and condoms when I had an FSA, and I guess I could find a use for a TSA.

3) As much hardware as I realistically can use ($10-20k/yr -- not just computers, but I'd love to have a budget for a hw lab). Someone recently questioned whether a $4k per developer laptop budget was legitimate, and I seriously question why someone would deny a $1-2k marginal expense on a worker generating >$500k/yr in returns.

4) Conference/books/etc. (time is the big cost for the company there, not the cost) -- and "if you're speaking at a conference related to work, we cover nice travel)

5) Free food/etc. (i.e. RG's "unlimited Seamless"). Bad food is of negative value, since I'll feel obligated to eat it.

6) Decent travel when travel is required. Not first class, but helping you make it less painful -- either letting you do your own bookings (I'm better than any corp travel agent I've used), or doing it for you. Optimize for ff status. I pretty much need a $65/day car vs. a $30/day car (and tend to pay for the upgrade out of pocket when it's not covered), but would in exchange prefer a more complex $300 routed ticket vs. a $500 direct flight, and would stay on starwood points sometimes vs. paying cash.

7) I prefer to keep my health insurance separate from the company, for practical and philosophical reasons. (I pay $118/mo for better coverage than ~any company I've seen). Give me $5k/yr into my HSA instead, and pay any other marginal insurance benefit to me as extra salary or more RAM or something.

8) Use of company resources for personal projects (e.g. hosting a tech user's group, or helping friends launch their own startups by letting them use conference rooms when meeting with people, etc. etc.

I'm curious if people are "picky" like me, or would just prefer a bunch of benefits as a package. There are HR reasons to give everyone the same thing, but IMO one of the advantages of being a small startup is being able to customize packages for people. If I hired someone with sick kids, I'd obviously make sure there were a group health insurance plan for him or her. If I hired someone who was on an H1B or otherwise needed citizenship sponsorship, I'd call in favors with undersecretaries to write letters on his behalf. etc. There's no need for a small company to act like a megacorp.