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Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#191

Post by lovecg »

AmazingAtalanta wrote: post #116
save_ferris wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is that the technical skill level will be good I don't believe this is a universal truth, especially since your experience at a large company is largely dictated by the specific team you work on. I've definitely worked for small startups that were far more talented than some of the technical teams I've worked on at big companies.

Maybe a different way to think about it is not that the skill level of the team is low (because people aren't talented), but that at start-ups, you tend to have smaller teams or a lot more work is distributed across a fewer number of people. So if you are a young engineer, you might not have access to a good mentor at a small start-up. More onus will be on you to develop skills and learn things by researching and ing…

> So if you are a young engineer, you might not have access to a good mentor at a small start-up. More onus will be on you to develop skills and learn things by researching and ingesting material outside.

Necessity is the mother of invention. For the right kind of person, the quickest way to learn might just be because something that needs to be done yesterday requires a specific skill or a piece of knowledge. There’s nothing quite as motivating as “the business is on fire and you can personally fix it, but you need to learn how right now”.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#192

Post by bluedino »

exelius wrote: post #184
jaredklewis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After accounting for inflation and dividends, 7% is average (historically) for annual returns. So only a little high. If the parent was not accounting for inflation, 8% is low.

I see the 7% return figure trotted out as average equity returns; but I think that number reflects a lot of “easy money” from the asymmetry of global industrialization in the post-WW2 era. Europe and America spent the 1920s through 1940s building fossil fuel powered heavy industry through a couple of particularly destructive wars. Then we spent the next 50 years spreading it around the globe, with American and Europe…

401k’s haven been that spectacular for the last 15 years

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#193

Post by paulkrugman101 »

exelius wrote: post #184
jaredklewis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After accounting for inflation and dividends, 7% is average (historically) for annual returns. So only a little high. If the parent was not accounting for inflation, 8% is low.

I see the 7% return figure trotted out as average equity returns; but I think that number reflects a lot of “easy money” from the asymmetry of global industrialization in the post-WW2 era. Europe and America spent the 1920s through 1940s building fossil fuel powered heavy industry through a couple of particularly destructive wars. Then we spent the next 50 years spreading it around the globe, with American and Europe…

Well you should write an Article and collect your Nobel Prize since this flies in the face of 50 years of Economics.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#194

Post by exelius »

bluedino wrote: post #192
exelius wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the 7% return figure trotted out as average equity returns; but I think that number reflects a lot of “easy money” from the asymmetry of global industrialization in the post-WW2 era. Europe and America spent the 1920s through 1940s building fossil fuel powered heavy industry through a couple of particularly destructive wars. Then we spent the next 50 years spreading it around the globe, with American and Europe…

401k’s haven been that spectacular for the last 15 years

Exactly my point! We can’t grow at 7% in perpetuity; so at some point it’s going to have to slow down. It feels like that’s starting to happen.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#195

Post by dang »

cmonnow wrote: post #149
orky56 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually FAANG pre-Netflix

faag ?

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're trying for something better than that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#197

Post by freewilly1040 »

zapita wrote: post #42
acconrad wrote: post #21

As someone who was a 1st engineer of a startup that successfully exited I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. It was a net-neutral outcome to be the 1st engineer at a startup that actually exited for a substantial (8-figure deal) outcome which already puts me in the minority. So no…

There is still a financial aspect though: that rapid increase in responsibility and experience most probably translated to higher income at your next jobs. And there is a compounding effect each time you change jobs, so the earlier you were in your career when you worked at a startup, the more you gain from it financially over the course of your career. I think we have selection bias on Hacker News because many of th…

At your next jobs where? Other startups? If increased responsibility means managing people, I don't think that's a positive - the management experience is going to be discounted by the relative lack of hands on technical experience.

Even if more responsibility means more hands on responsibility, it's a mixed bag because your experience tends to be broad but not deep. Still valuable, but not really worth the comp tradeoff IMO.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#198

Post by arcticbull »

jaredklewis wrote: post #145
zapita wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still a financial aspect though: that rapid increase in responsibility and experience most probably translated to higher income at your next jobs. And there is a compounding effect each time you change jobs, so the earlier you were in your career when you worked at a startup, the more you gain from it financially over the course of your career. I think we have selection bias on Hacker News because many of th…

But most startups fail before they achieve any sort of name recognition. In those cases, how much does being the CTO of a company no one has heard of and no longer exist boost one's resume?

In that case IMO it's not about the title but about the responsibilities and achievements. Don't just write "CTO of Waggletech (2018-2019)" and call it a day, but instead spell it out.

Example: "Defined the technical architecture of the MVP and implemented large portions of it. [Platform-specific stuff here]. Lead the recruiting effort to bring the company from 2 to 10, interviewing over 100 applicants. Participated in raising seed-stage funding from X VC and N seed-stage investors." IMO the thing the Bay Area does better than everywhere else is in the face of failure, the immediate follow-up question is "so what did you learn?"

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#199

Post by hobofan »

mgkimsal wrote: post #83
hobofan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there are extreme breakthroughs in making software engineering approachable for currently not quite as qualified people, I don't see it changing. Breaking the social stigma of "nah that is extremely complicated, I can't learn that" would also be a big one. BIG SIMPLIFICATIONS AHEAD There are a lot of new software engineers popping up all the time, but very few ever reach a "senior" change, and a lot of them en…

> There are a lot of new software engineers popping up all the time, but very few ever reach a "senior" change And yet many of them still get the 'senior' title and role, and still end up producing unmaintainable systems. I've had to clean up after quite a few.

Yep. I think this might even be a symptom of the shortage of engineers. A "senior" title might often be the only way for the CTO (or equivalent) to justify what is perceived by the rest of the company as high salaries.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

#200

Post by sarthakjain »

15k at a $200M outcome (ignoring liquidation preferences) means he had 0.0075% assuming 70% dilution from the time he joined to exit. He joined at 0.025%. assuming everyone before him got on average got 5x what he got that's still 1.5% to all the first 15 employees combined. Which is beyond attrocious.

My guess as to what happened here is op got bored with job at big co. Startup offered 10% higher or same salary. Told him he is getting some stock, he didn't bother to find out how much.

What you should get as employee 15 at a startup if your 2+ years of experience (according to ops resume on his website) is at least 0.1% which would have translated to $70k (assuming 70% dilution). In India a big co employee at 2+ years probably makes $40-50k at best including stock. That's close to 1.5 years salary at least at exit having worked for 2 years at the company. Assuming 25% of salary was in stock at big co he lost 20k in stock over 2 years. 70/20 is 3.5x and gives an annual rate of return of 80% which is roughly similar growth to big co. in it's best years.

Moral of story count your stock when joining a startup.

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