Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 968 posts

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#111

Post by shamino »

drb91 wrote: post #90
shamino wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I joined a moderately successful startup (good acquisition where founders made > $1 m) and the rewards were not worth the risks as an early employee. Also, the RSUs are low risk, high rewards at the "usual suspects". Unless you love working on a small team with more autonomy, but without comfortable resources and losing sleep over whether your company will be there next week, I just don't see the attraction of…

> I just don't see the attraction of joining a startup as an early employee. You can learn a whole lot from a "usual suspect", where the world's experts reside, and a whole team of competent and hard-working people are also. I’ve noticed people tend to specialize at larger places, and not everyone wants to go deep rather than wide. Startups are a super easy way to optimize for a wider skill base, albeit at a sharp co…

I see your point, and I agree. I'd also say that even though people are "deeper" at larger places, there are so many different "deep" people that you tend to get "wide" if you need to. Just ask a different person.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#112

Post by [deleted] »

john_moscow wrote: post #92
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

I think the open secret is that in 2018 most people who go work for startups are those who simply couldn't get a better offer from one of the big players.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#113

Post by emodendroket »

leahcim wrote: post #35
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

Stock markets have fared quite well in the past 5 years which explains why compensation is so good. But what if there is a market crash?

I guess a lot of startups would shutter

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#114

Post by dmode »

ryandrake wrote: post #57
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out…

FAANG + Microsoft + Uber + Airbnb hire thousands and thousands of engineers in the Valley and Seattle every year. 400K is L5-L6 salary (senior engineer, first level manager). There are a TON of engineers making that money. They are not really outliers, and FAANGMUA is also not really outlier considering Google itself has 80K employees and Amazon and MSFT have over 200K employees.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#115

Post by chasedehan »

nieksand wrote: post #65
polskibus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now the VCs that made lots of money selling their Google, etc., would now have to spend much more on giving a new startup runway. That's also a reason why many US startups and corporations hire dev teams in Eastern Europe and make it much harder to hire for local startups.

I think the core of a "fix" is here. If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only or build it somewhere which is not SFO/SEA/NYC and friends. An underwhelming bay area compensation package puts you at absolute top-of-market in most European cities. So Y-Combinator can help companies get out of dodge immediately after raising a seed round. For recruiting, warm up a pipeline of talented enginee…

YC could do that, but it goes against YC's mantra of the importance of having a team working in the same office of a startup and it being located only in SV.

https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire

Thats not to say that it is the right policy, but if I were founding a startup I would definitely be looking for remote workers in other locations.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#116

Post by 0wl3x »

nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

is the compensation really like this for a mid level engineer at a FAANG? I'm still fairly new into my career and I can't believe that the enterprise money is sooo much better than the startup world. I'm currently earning around 120k a year with health insurance and no equity. Should I really be designing on trading up into a nice big enterprise job?

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#117

Post by sharemywin »

snowmaker wrote: post #36
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #22

Having not worked in the Valley or a startup, I can say the biggest con to me is a lack of stability. You can get a job at BigCo or even MediumSizedButBeenAroundTwoDecadesCo and be reasonably sure you'll still have a job... as long as you want to work there. But with a startup, either they run out of money and you lose your job, they pivot and don't need you and you lose your job, or they get acquired and you very li…

This is an interesting idea. We've talked about ways that we could help create more job stability for people joining a YC company.

When I was a consultant, I liked two things about my company. I was paid by the hour, which kept my company honest.

I was paid when I was "on the beach"(bench), but I was expected to train and get tech certifications

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#118

Post by Beefin »

Have founded a startup, worked at a startup and worked at several fortune 500s and I can say the most interesting thing on my resume for the fortune 500 interviewers is by far the startup experience.

Showing that I can pull my weight, have a sense of leadership, drive, ambition, etc are traits that every employer wants to see but not many employees get to flex.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#119

Post by driverdan »

I've seen most of my pros and cons covered by others so I'll list my biggest con.

CON: Too many startups want you to be there in person. YC actively discourages remote employees. This is 2018. Remote work is not only reasonable it's beneficial. As an employer you can get higher caliber employees for less money. As an employee you get far more freedom and don't have to live somewhere you don't like.

Post reply on HN