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

I think it is great that Michael understands exactly what he wants in terms of a compensation package. And for a variety of reasons, its pretty clear that a "startup" isn't going to meet those needs. So he's currently "Contractor at Self-Employed" which is also fine because you really do have a lot of flexibility as a contractor that you don't have as a rank-and-file employee at BigCo.

But the anger and the hurt, that is not healthy.

The impression that rant leaves me with is that Michael feels he brings great value to the organization, and wants to be compensated commensurately with that value. And yet nobody has agreed to his terms. It may be they can't (reading his list is a lot of capital to invest in a single employee), it may be they disagree about value, or it may be they have structural issues around it (managing the expectations of other employees, Etc.) The "shut up and pay me what I'm worth" mantra is not a healthy internal dialog, it instantly makes you enemies with the very person you're trying to be friends with, the guy with the job. Worse it focuses your effort on the wrong question.

Lets use a very simple analogy for how this can go wrong. Lets say you own a bicycle, and one of the tires has a slow leak. You go into an "inflation" store and the sales guy has really nice compressors, they've got pressure values that are accurate to within 1/10th PSI, they have valves to deliver exactly the right amount of inflation, large multi-gallon storage tanks to deliver air efficiently and on time, and valves, a most wondrous universal valving system that pretty much guarantees you will never have a tire that this thing can't inflate. All for the low low price of $899. And the bike rider says, "I really just need a hand pump, I'm prepared to pay $25 for it..."

Now is our consumer some ignorant boob that can't see the value of a truly fine tire inflation apparatus? No. And the sales guy shouldn't get mad if the customer isn't willing to over pay so much to achieve their goal of keeping a leaky tire from going flat.

The key is that it isn't that the tire inflator isn't "worth" the money, its that the problem isn't worth the inflater's price. It would work, but the extra cost doesn't bring extra value.

So Michael's rant might be he cannot find a company yet that has the size problems that he can solve. No doubt there are such companies, but the larger the problem size, the harder it is to connect with the person who is looking.

Some folks take the path of being 'under employed' to get at least some benefits while they seek out the right spot, some start their own thing, but yelling at the YC founders and insinuating that their goal in life is to fleece their employees in the pursuit of their own success does Michael a disservice.

Although there aren't tangible or financial benefits for working at a startup, there are definitely benefits that a large company simply can't provide, like experience and independence. For someone in their early 20's straight out of college, those benefits can outweigh the financial benefits of a big company.