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Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

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Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#121

Post by Mimu »

fivedogit wrote: post #103
patio11 wrote: post #57

Joel Spolsky had a really interesting insight [+] once about hiring pools: they're disproportionately filled with people who you don't want working for you, because if you're hireable, you exit the hiring pool fairly quickly, and the dynamics of this system quickly mean that the pool is filled full of people who aren't even FizzBuzz qualified. I think the other side of the market is isomorphic to this: any publicly a…

Note: I originally posted this reply about 2 hours ago and then deleted it. But actually, I think it's worth leaving up. I really respect Joel Spolsky's accomplishments (I've mentioned him recently in my own comments), but I found the blog post you cited wrong at best and offensive at worst. It perpetuates one of the most frustrating things I experienced while job hunting: the stigma of unemployment. Even though I vo…

Or maybe they tried the 0 team experience dude once, and it was a disaster.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#122

Post by unreal37 »

fivedogit wrote: post #103
patio11 wrote: post #57

Joel Spolsky had a really interesting insight [+] once about hiring pools: they're disproportionately filled with people who you don't want working for you, because if you're hireable, you exit the hiring pool fairly quickly, and the dynamics of this system quickly mean that the pool is filled full of people who aren't even FizzBuzz qualified. I think the other side of the market is isomorphic to this: any publicly a…

Note: I originally posted this reply about 2 hours ago and then deleted it. But actually, I think it's worth leaving up. I really respect Joel Spolsky's accomplishments (I've mentioned him recently in my own comments), but I found the blog post you cited wrong at best and offensive at worst. It perpetuates one of the most frustrating things I experienced while job hunting: the stigma of unemployment. Even though I vo…

To take the other side of that argument, as someone who has seen hundreds of resumes and interviewed hundreds of developers in the past, you do have a challenge in front of you to overcome the "never had a real coding job" stigma. Focus on your strengths when selling yourself (like, being a totally awesome rock star developer who can tackle any challenge).

The stigma is real and you can't fight it on those terms. But you've got other qualities that people want, and you can "win" those interviews if you can get that point across. Make your resume scream "rock star coder".

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#123

Post by itsybitsycoder »

fivedogit wrote: post #103
patio11 wrote: post #57

Joel Spolsky had a really interesting insight [+] once about hiring pools: they're disproportionately filled with people who you don't want working for you, because if you're hireable, you exit the hiring pool fairly quickly, and the dynamics of this system quickly mean that the pool is filled full of people who aren't even FizzBuzz qualified. I think the other side of the market is isomorphic to this: any publicly a…

Note: I originally posted this reply about 2 hours ago and then deleted it. But actually, I think it's worth leaving up. I really respect Joel Spolsky's accomplishments (I've mentioned him recently in my own comments), but I found the blog post you cited wrong at best and offensive at worst. It perpetuates one of the most frustrating things I experienced while job hunting: the stigma of unemployment. Even though I vo…

As someone who used to be very pro-self-taught programmers, I changed my mind after actually working with some (and having to maintain the code of others). Most of the ones I've run into have holes in core skills that are taught as part of a CS degree, like threading, pass-by-reference vs pass-by-value, DB normalization, separation of concerns, basic optimization, etc... To be fair a lot of CS grads haves holes too (including me), but at least you can assume some sort of base to work from. I'll never forget the blank stare from one of my self-taught coworkers when I tried to explain that it was a bad idea to try to do a full parse of a Turing-complete language with just regexes. He seriously thought that if he just tweaked his regexes a little more it would work.

Also, working on code in a team is very different from working on personal projects alone. It adds in a whole bunch of things that aren't necessary on personal projects. You don't just need to know how to use a VCS but how to use it in a way that won't cause headaches for your coworkers. You need to know how to write code that people other than you can read and maintain it. In many cases you may be responsible for drawing out requirements from users. You need to communicate effectively with the rest of the team. None of these skills are exercised or put on display by your typical github repo.

So, personally, I can see why someone would be very hesitant to hire a self-taught programmer with no experience. If someone has a degree and a little job experience, you know they at least know enough to pass their courses and survive in a team environment. With the unknown guy, you need to do some very rigorous testing to make sure you're not getting a dud. A lot of companies might not have the resources to do that.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#124

Post by 001sky »

geebee wrote: post #65
hkarthik wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, the metrics around prevailing wages to hire an H1B are not adjusted based on the local market. So you can get away with paying an H1B the same in the Bay Area as you would in suburban Iowa.

Would you share a link? My impression was that market wages actually need to reflect the local wages, not national, but I'm not sure of this.

well, one way to a self-fulfiling proheshy is to advertsie below market jobs in the market you are looking at.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#125

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

ant6n wrote: post #117
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, why the hell would anyone leave that much money on the table? If you're asking me to do something crazy, you better be willing to pay for it. At most early-stage startups, there is no money on the table. If you want to maximize your earnings, focusing your job search on pre-Series A startups is a horrible waste of time. The OP seems to be asking for startup excitement, reasonable hours, high salary and meaningf…

The expected value of a startup, even pre-Series A, is not 0.

You seem to be confusing the expected value of a startup with the value of one's equity. There is a reason that the vast majority of vested stock options go unexercised when employees leave companies.

Additionally, you are not factoring in liquidation preferences. Rhetorical question: what's 10% of $10 million when your investors put in $5 million and have a 2x liquidation preference?

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#126

Post by brudgers »

dsacco wrote: post #116
brudgers wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple are the exceptions. They are massive profitable publicly held companies. And they don't compensate ordinary hires with equity on a percentage basis (maybe x number of shares as a bonus/retirement package). They are so big that they have HR policies and anyone you are likely to know well enough to give a heads up on a job at either company is not high up enough to shirk the formal HR process. Small co…

I'm on a first name basis with well-known engineers high enough to shrink the formal HR process at Google, Yahoo and Facebook. If I asked to interview with them tomorrow, they'd put me in the process immediately, in an expedited manner. I'd probably go straight to the on-site interview. I'm not bragging about this, because it really wasn't difficult to do. I didn't go to school with them, and with one exception I met…

The comment to which I responded mentioned an internship at Google and a [presumably early career stage] job at Apple. I consider it an orange relative to a situation where a person has developed collegial peer relationships over some number of years in a profession.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#127

Post by brudgers »

jacquesm wrote: post #109
brudgers wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as it becomes hardball negotiation, then the context of later events is the same "what can I get out of this" finite pie. The goal is not a percentage but an opportunity for a life-changing payout. 1% or so means that the major shareholders aren't concerned if my working hard doesn't get me rich in circumstances where they become rich. They're fine with us all having worthless stock together. What I am gettin…

That goes to the heart of the most frequent cause of trouble between shareholders: badly aligned interests. Even so, if you're looking at the stock as a lottery ticket and the company does take off you're in a good position to make a fair amount of money, you just shouldn't count on that. But if you're going to play you might as well play for stakes that are worth it. Each to his own, I think a big part of the 'compe…

Badly aligned expectations are perhaps worse than badly aligned interests because they spoil what could be an otherwise good relationship.

Shares that signify that the owners want a person to help run the company are different than shares as a form of payment. There's nothing wrong with either so long as everyone understands which it is. If it's compensation, then it's mostly a distraction from evaluating the job offer. The ringside seat to a rocket-ship ride comes with or without shares.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#128

Post by fivedogit »

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #123
fivedogit wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: I originally posted this reply about 2 hours ago and then deleted it. But actually, I think it's worth leaving up. I really respect Joel Spolsky's accomplishments (I've mentioned him recently in my own comments), but I found the blog post you cited wrong at best and offensive at worst. It perpetuates one of the most frustrating things I experienced while job hunting: the stigma of unemployment. Even though I vo…

As someone who used to be very pro-self-taught programmers, I changed my mind after actually working with some (and having to maintain the code of others). Most of the ones I've run into have holes in core skills that are taught as part of a CS degree, like threading, pass-by-reference vs pass-by-value, DB normalization, separation of concerns, basic optimization, etc... To be fair a lot of CS grads haves holes too (…

I appreciate the thoughtful response and I don't really disagree with you on any of this. In fact, if I were interviewing for positions, I'm not sure I'd handle it any other way -- it's human nature to choose the "safe" option -- but that doesn't make it right or optimal. But it's also taken to an extreme: I have a BS in CompSci (from 12 years ago), but "never been a professional coder" almost always outweighed everything like a fat kid on a see-saw. It's a double-whammy: not only are they looking at self-taughts harder, self-taughts are naturally going to be less comfortable with best practices, lingo and other general experience they'd pick up in a month's time on the job.

In trying to put my thoughts into words here, I found it easier to whip up some pie graphs instead.

http://www.fivedogit.com/2015/the-problem-with-technical-hir...

Damn! I forgot to include "Do you have exp with the company's stack?". Oh well. That's more about getting the interview in the first place, so I guess it's ok.

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#129

Post by brudgers »

jacquesm wrote: post #53
ConfuciusSay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or getting "let go" 24 hours before vesting date.

Accelerated vesting upon termination is your friend here. Have your lawyer look over the contracts.

There's a good metric buried there:

    Is the deal so good to a first approximation
    that paying a lawyer to review it is clearly
    a no-brainer?

Re: Startup jobs with low salary and negligible equity, what gives?

#130

Post by lsc »

debacle wrote: post #118
lsc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to spend 8 hours interviewing for a job and not get it, right? so I try to get the likely dealbreakers out of the way up front. Of course, it never works. You don't get to talk with the people that matter until you are in the interview, at which point, well, I haven't found a way to let them gracefully cut things off early, you know? In this case, I had been working for a company that I owned most of for…

I understand your reasoning, I was just wondering if you had like an actual list you attach to your resume.

hm. that sounds like a better idea than trying to, you know, talk with people, because the decision makers usually see the resume, while you only get to talk with people that don't matter until the actual interview.
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