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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#211

Post by cdavid »

KaiserPro wrote: post #169
kijin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is often overlooked in all the talk of $300k FAANG salaries. Few people get those senior salaries, and those who do get it because of their unusual skills and experiences. A stint at a startup is still a pretty good way to get those skills and experiences, compared to spending the same amount of time as a junior developer somewhere else. If you can make capital gains equivalent to FAANG senior salaries whi…

levels.fyi will give you some confidence in the wage. Google, Meta, Amazon & microsoft all do banding, so the base wages is mostly public (hence why its all bollocks about wage negotiation, there isn't any.) The first level of senior for most of these orgs will tip the scales at around $300k Having worked at both startup and FAANG, I don;t think startups actually give you the skills to flourish here in corp land. Sur…

negotiation is very much a thing even at FAANG. If anything, it can help you being at the top of your assigned band. Other things can be negotiated.

Source: I am no great negotiator, but I've always negotiated my salary and got 10-15 % more than what I would have had w/o asking anything. This compounds after a few stints. And I've been a manager in startup/mid size/big tech: always negotiate.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#212

Post by pcl »

chamomeal wrote: post #187
whstl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly did. I have options/stocks from 3 different companies, all vested, but zero expectation of seeing any money out of it. One of them recently went belly up and had an exit for peanuts. I didn't go for big tech but I did pick a job on a YC startup that, while demanding, allowed me to purchase my own house and work on my own stuff in the evenings.

Your options haven’t expired since leaving those startups? I recently left a job at a startup where I had some options vested. It would be like 6k to exercise them. I was leaning towards leaving em, and now this thread has kinda convinced me

I think the calculus is different for exercising options after leaving than the scenario the GP described, in which the company is pitching current employees on a stock purchase scheme.

There’s nothing inherently wrong in the latter, but it’s super unusual, and it’s pretty safe to be wary of startups shouldn’t do unusual things with their financing / cap table.

Exercising options post departure, on the other hand, is par for the course with any option-based compensation (note that this shouldn’t apply to RSUs, since those are usually owned outright after vesting).

A similar question arises with payment of taxes for 409a elections. Can be pricey, but it doesn’t raise the same red flags as a founder asking you to pay to work there.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#214

Post by throwaway9191aa »

HWR_14 wrote: post #195
throwaway9191aa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I joined AWS 9 years ago, and left the startup world. I own (still?) 15% of a company as a founding engineer (with no voting rights). As part of a raise, the company sold its IP to another company for a 0.5% stake in that company. So now I own 15% of 0.5%....... I just didn't understand the business side of all this at the start. As I understand it, the raise wouldn't have happened and the original compan…

15% of 0.5% of a billion dollar company is just over $700,000. That's not FU money, but that's a down payment on a 3.5MM home.

My other option was AWS though. That $700k is like 4 years of effort, and I get vacations. Actually realizing a sale on a billion dollar company after 4 years is just incomprehensibly low. TBH Amazon is also less work than running a startup. If you think AWS oncall is bad, think about having even less people on your team to handle the load, or to build the product durably in the first place :)

Also, I have no way of knowing if the same ownership thing is going to happen again. Giving me another 0.5% of the above calculation. Sure, lots of people make millions in a startup. Way more people make millions, although over a longer time span, in tech companies and index funds.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#215

Post by blindriver »

KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory Unless you're a founder, you're unlikely to make any money, and predatory VC/backers using convertibles/senior debt to turn your equity into Zimbabwean dollars. Thats before any stats are calculated for lasting long enough to either IPO, make money or get bought out. As someone who did successfully exit, the stories of multiple-m…

I was the ~15th engineer at a YC startup that had a very big exit. Over 4 years I made less than $80k total (20k/yr) from my options while the founders made high 8 figures. Had I joined BigTech I would have made over $1 M just from stock and I would have worked less.

Back during the dot com days, everyone from the secretaries to the chefs to the founders were getting rich but nowadays YC teaches their founders to keep the money and stock options for themselves and for the investors. The only way employees make life changing money is if the company exits for over $10B.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#216

Post by dare944 »

pjc50 wrote: post #86
diggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory I wouldn't say I'm an old-timer by any metrics, but even back in 2012 when I first discovered and joined HN, I remember it was pretty clear in the community (and people I spoke to around me) you shouldn't go to work at a startup if you were looking for "a lot + safe" money. Sure, you could belong to the 0.001% and work on the n…

Here's a question: what's the list of startups fitting the criteria of - after 2008 Great Financial Crisis - actual startup, not spinoff from larger company - financially successful exit - early non-founder employees made a substantial amount of money?

Everyone has a different interpretation of "substantial", but I'll say Nest.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#217

Post by varelse »

blindriver wrote: post #215
KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory Unless you're a founder, you're unlikely to make any money, and predatory VC/backers using convertibles/senior debt to turn your equity into Zimbabwean dollars. Thats before any stats are calculated for lasting long enough to either IPO, make money or get bought out. As someone who did successfully exit, the stories of multiple-m…

I was the ~15th engineer at a YC startup that had a very big exit. Over 4 years I made less than $80k total (20k/yr) from my options while the founders made high 8 figures. Had I joined BigTech I would have made over $1 M just from stock and I would have worked less. Back during the dot com days, everyone from the secretaries to the chefs to the founders were getting rich but nowadays YC teaches their founders to kee…

[dead]

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#218

Post by dsugarman »

dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#219

Post by Twirrim »

cushychicken wrote: post #144
clumsysmurf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years > That never was sustainable, I think Another aspect with this being (un)sustainable is lack of affordable healthcare. I bet many people would take more risks if they didn't have to worry about this aspect of their lives.

The Swedes sure seem to think so. Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone, and they’re convinced that it’s that aspect of the social safety net that help prop up that high level of personal risk taking.

Most (all?) of the Euro Zone has "free" Healthcare, so it's not just that.

(I put free in quotes to avoid any reply guy "itself not actually free" blah, blah, blah)

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#220

Post by blindriver »

t43562 wrote: post #102
KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory Unless you're a founder, you're unlikely to make any money, and predatory VC/backers using convertibles/senior debt to turn your equity into Zimbabwean dollars. Thats before any stats are calculated for lasting long enough to either IPO, make money or get bought out. As someone who did successfully exit, the stories of multiple-m…

It's so nice to see my homeland is famous for something! :-) Zimbabwe Dollars FTW. I have 500 billion dollars in a cupboard somewhere BTW.

I have the $100 trillion dollar iirc.
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