Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 7:10 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #298

confluence wrote: post #247

I'll repost a previous comment for the benefit of the HN community concerning exactly this situation for start-up employees from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362 (great discussion there btw), for those who missed it the first time around (hope that's ok): ... Here are a few tips for others startup employees: 1. Take the least amount of stock possible - your startup is statistically unlikely to succeed. It…

"Relentlessly cynical", you sound like a great person to hire! Someone like you shouldn't work for a startup. Go and work for a big company, go poison the atmosphere there. It's just not a good fit on both ends. If they're cheating you so bad, if it's so obviously a bad deal, why do you even care? In your view, startups suck and no one makes a lot of money or learns anything, so you aren't missing much. Go work at Or…

I don't think you should get the downvote but I think you're completely off base. The parent makes great points; one of the best comments I've seen on HN in a while. I think these points should be something that anyone looking to join a startup understands. The culture fit as discrimination, t-shirt as indoctrination, the idea of giving up salary for modest are all real negatives in many cases that seem great to many, especially younger people. Not all startups play these games. If you want to work for a startup that does, that's fine, you may have a good reason to, such as a belief it will be a hit or wanting the experience, or what have, but be informed that these things really are tricks and games, whether or not the founders realize they are playing these games or are just "cargo culting" things they read in TC.

Realizing these things does not make you a corporate workaday drone.

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

#322

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 7:21 AM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #154

michaelochurch wrote: post #7

The 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…

> ...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". So what made that 40-year-old think he wanted to work for the startup in the first place? if the founder's position is too risky and insane for his taste, how is an employee position going to be any better? I mean, everything he's saying is true, and the take-away seems to be that 40 year olds with…

A startup doesn't have to be an unstable get rich quick scam as you seem to imply. In other industries besides our's, people expect a new company (also known as a startup) to also be ... you know ... a company. Honestly, it's comments like these that I feel make tech startups look like caricatures and just silly.

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

#323

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 7:30 AM UTC

guptaneil wrote: post #175

pg wrote: post #133

This entire thesis is a red herring. I doubt we've ever had a conversation with a startup about what sort of benefits they should offer. Since the startups in a position to hire lots of people will presumably have raised money from later stage investors, if anyone is giving them advice about this, it would probably be them. FWIW, if anyone did ask my advice about what benefits to offer, I'd tell them to err on the si…

I'd argue that being less generous with benefits is a good filter for hiring candidates that are genuinely interested in what the startup's doing (which is crucial in early employees) rather than somebody who's just looking for another job, like the author. Edit: To clarify, there is huge difference between offering no benefits and offering fewer benefits than a large company. I'm not advocating treating employees li…

This is exactly what's wrong with many tech startups and what makes caricatures of them. You're view is to be a stingy miser and just believe that you will be filtering out those that want to exchange work for money (what a horrible idea in a capitalist economy). So you get the kids that do understand what equity means or what "vesting" means or "at will" employment means that are excited, they burn off a couple years of their 20s not realizing that even if this supposed great idea was successful that they basically get nothing anyway, and you're arguing that is the proper way to be? It's hard to argue the economics of that for your favor .. but you can see how unsustainable that would be if all the founders felt the way you did and the works ... gasp .. actually figured this out. I think there have been a few events in history that have occurred during such realizations ... something about October? ... :)

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

#324

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 7:32 AM UTC

avenger123 wrote: post #187

guptaneil wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that being less generous with benefits is a good filter for hiring candidates that are genuinely interested in what the startup's doing (which is crucial in early employees) rather than somebody who's just looking for another job, like the author. Edit: To clarify, there is huge difference between offering no benefits and offering fewer benefits than a large company. I'm not advocating treating employees li…

This is a good point, so why not just come out and say it! I see a lot about how these start-ups state "competitive salary, great compensation, etc." Instead, just say, "hey, we will pay you crap but come work for us anyway because you believe in our idea." Somehow, I don't think that would get traction, when its put that way.

You might want to add "... and you think we are cool personalities and you want us to get rich of the back of your labor." :)

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

#325

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 7:49 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #118

I don't think benefits are the main reason to work anywhere -- doing meaningful work and working with great people far exceeds financial benefit, and salary/bonus/equity should dominate fringe benefits. However, why do benefits packages need to be uniform? 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 de…

> I don't think benefits are the main reason to work anywhere -- doing meaningful work and working with great people far exceeds financial benefit

You've got to be kidding me. I mean that's nice. But it's just so idealistic and so outside of the realities of the vast majority of people that live on planet Earth. I just see too much anti-money stuff on HN sometimes. It's as if everyone thinks their startup is changing the world for the better but many times it's just some CRUD based marketing tool or something ... not exactly feeding kids Sudan.

> (I pay $118/mo for better coverage than ~any company I've seen)

I don't know how old you are but that is unlikely to last. If it does, you are in such a minority here that I don't see how that furthers a point (along with the "money's no big thang" deal, it's a very anomalous situation). Just being honest.

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

#326

Post by whynotbalu » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:00 AM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #297

philco wrote: post #236

I don't think he gets it. The choice is clear, do you want to earn, or do you want to learn? Going to an early stage startup as a non-founder is learning...you don't have the upside of a founder, but you're exposed to a lot of really cool shit. You want to earn? Then go earn where people will pay you what you want? The post had nothing to do with benefits, it had everything to do with money. IF you want to make money…

> Going to an early stage startup as a non-founder is learning Really? So startups do not need any experienced developers and architects? It's the other way round, the founders usually need to do the learning (fast!) and they'd better hire experienced people who can teach them something.

Your argument about experience probably holds a ton of water in other domains, but I question that it applies to every technology startup. A lot of technology startups are better off not hiring any any experienced folks (developers, business people, whatever) for a long long time. Young people learn and adapt faster and are less blinded by past knowledge and heuristics by how the world operates, so there are tons of technology startups that can probably go a long time without bringing on experienced folks.

This is a specific argument, cannot be generalized for all startups.

Full Disclosure: I'm a "young person".

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

#327

Post by droithomme » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:18 AM UTC

jroseattle wrote: post #31

seeingfurther wrote: post #20

Every thing comes down to risk vs reward. Founders risk it all to found companies and rightfully have the greatest reward. Startup employees haven't risked as much but their risk is compensated with appropriate equity the earlier they join and the more risk they take on in the form of lower salary and benefits. YC definitively reduces risk and increases the potential for reward. It's easier for YC companies to raise…

Heh, well kind of. I've learned that founders have a much greater risk/reward ratio than employees. The ratio is really not even close. The assumption that founders risk it "all" is a fallacy. The assumption that employees have less risk is also inaccurate. It depends on the situation, sure -- but I know plenty of startups founded by people who can crash and burn and not have their livelihood affected. As for "risk c…

> Given that most successful exits nowadays are through acquisition

Yes. We should also note that IPOs are much more rare than they once were, the entire world economy is flat or failing, and the flurry of $1M/employee acqu-hires from last year by Apple, Google and Facebook was an aberration and not an economic principle that is likely to be repeated, and even then didn't benefit the actual engineers.

The reward upside on yet-another-startup doing the same thing is quite poor.

On the other hand, creating your own business and avoiding VC's entirely is still a good bet compared to these other alternatives. For those who want risk, it's a great way to go. For risk avoiders, there's tons of well compensated employment working for mature and reasonable companies.

What is the value proposition of these startups that have low compensation, completely retarded so-called products, and almost no chance whatsoever of going public? None.

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

#328

Post by meerita » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:42 AM UTC

herdrick wrote: post #296

meerita wrote: post #147

The panorama in Spain for many startups: - 30k/year (minus all the taxes) ~21/23k/y - 28 days for holidays. - No health insurances (free health insurance on the country) - No conferences - No pluses. Profitable companies: a bit more of money, but not that much: 35K/year. About shares, as usual: the promise. some of them makes you sign something but to opt those you need to stay around 5 years, wait to be IPO or you c…

How much does a house cost where those startups are?

by house you mean housing for companies or families? A house in Barcelona costs around 200k-500k.

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

#329

Post by abalashov » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:34 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #246

llimllib wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working for an established company will give you a far better expected financial outcome at lower risk. Tiny, tiny nit: that final phrase is redundant. Calculating an expected financial outcome includes the risk. Agree with everything you're saying.

The risk also needs to be considered separately, though. For example, which of these is better compensation? $100,000/year or Each year, there is a 0.1% chance that you will be paid $1 billion. Simple math tells us that the second one has a 10x higher expected financial outcome. But few people would actually consider that to be better compensation. Lower risk is better, to an extent that can outweigh a higher expecte…

I think once you take into account our relatively short biological lifespans (and the subsets of them in which we are healthy and fit to do whatever we like even shorter), the second option just doesn't make any sense for most people. There is value in having $100k now.

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

#330

Post by coldtea » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:41 AM UTC

aplusbi wrote: post #225

guptaneil wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a startup doesn't offer lots of monetary benefits doesn't mean it doesn't respect its employees. Generally, the advantage of a startup is that you get far greater independence and autonomy than in a large corporation. You have to personally weigh what matters to you more: money or independence. My point was that startups should favor employees who want independence more than money because as it has been…

You just pointed out why your argument fails - it's a poor indicator. A company that doesn't offer lots of benefits may or may not respect its employees. Likewise an employee willing to accept a below-market offer may or may not be committed to the vision.

>Likewise an employee willing to accept a below-market offer may or may not be committed to the vision.

What vision? I thought we are all professionals working for the money.

It seems bleeding edge capitalism forgets the "free market" and "egoism turns out for the best" and resorts to idealism and religious-like "visions" for the company -- in order to have fools work for less than they could.