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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#221

Post by hmmm-i-wonder »

kijin wrote: post #137
itake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tracks. I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Early engineers often have first dibs on higher level roles, like CTO or director over people that join late. Your initial grant might not be great, but being director at such a company is huge

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…

That doesn't really address that the burnout/startup/hustle culture is part of the risk/reward valuation employees make to work at a startup.

If I can get the same compensation working at a FAANG with less stress, better hours and more balance/control over my life, and the resume entry may be 'more interesting' in some ways, but its hard to argue with FAANG on a resume either why wouldn't I? the choice to risk all of that for only a chance at reaching that compensation is a hard sell.

The possibility of pouring your hard work into a company from the start/early on with others equally dedicated, and if it blows up you all blow up is the selling factor.

On top of that, how many startups came from employees of previous successes that turned that wealth into more innovation? Restricting that path to wealth for many and concentrating the profits to a smaller and smaller group doesn't seem to me the best economic bet to make long-term.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#222

Post by wslh »

InkCanon wrote: post #129
wslh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is about a specific technology, like software, not technology at all. For example, we continue to use the same vehicles (e.g. cars) with a well known technology while SpaceX is advancing on sending rockets to the space. Technology is advancing but some technology is well known. This is not to say that software is not evolving but most startups don't have an issue with building software but with business dev…

But there's still a ton of innovation going on in cars. Tesla and BYD are some of the biggest companies in the world. And conversely, rockets was regarded as a sleepy, government contracting business for a long time. I don't particularly understand why (some) people say X technology has stagnated, like web or apps. There's a ton of innovation going on - off the top of my head, WebGPU and WASM will unlock huge amounts…

There is innovation, but you’re operating within the same business domain. I wasn’t talking about stagnation but addressing the point made in the article as a software-based founder: will you compete with NVIDIA? Highly unlikely. Will you create an AAA game? Unlikely. Will you advance AI at a fundamental level? Again, highly unlikely.

When I said “no way” I meant the chances are close to epsilon. In the past, there was more room for improvement and breakthroughs in these fields. This doesn’t mean you can’t create a successful startup based on AI, but its success will likely stem more from the business development side than the software itself. The secret lies in bizdev.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#223

Post by adamc »

jajko wrote: post #39
benjaminwootton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest rates are like a dial which turns economic activity up and down. I’ve always understood that in theory but it’s the first time I’ve actually lived through it and it’s wild. A few years of higher rates and half of the tech industry and the people who buy tech seems to be on hold. It makes me realise how vacuous the last decade was and how a lot of our jobs and businesses existed because of dirt cheap money. I…

If you were older, you would still consider current rates low and recent past an obscurity that couldn't last long. I can say that definitely about Europe, ie here in Switzerland interest rates used to be around 7% for quite some time and economy was doing fine, then it dropped to negative and afterwards people complained when they rose to 1-2%. 0.4% now, not complaining.

Yep. When we bought our first house (mid-1990s), interest rates were over 7%.

The future is hard to know, but demographic changes are going to move a lot of money out of the stock market (because retiring boomers and soon gen-xers will want safer investments). At the same time, labor will itself become more valuable, because the same forces are going to tighten the labor market. To me that is suggestive of an environment where the rewards of startups vs. engineering jobs are weaker.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#224

Post by adamc »

arccy wrote: post #197
jajko wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were older, you would still consider current rates low and recent past an obscurity that couldn't last long. I can say that definitely about Europe, ie here in Switzerland interest rates used to be around 7% for quite some time and economy was doing fine, then it dropped to negative and afterwards people complained when they rose to 1-2%. 0.4% now, not complaining.

If you're that old, you probably already have a house when it was much cheaper relative to income levels. Now, a tiny shift in interests rates affects not only the general economy, but people paying back mortgages which can take a significant chunk out of your income.

Yeah. I lost my house in a divorce, and it was quite a shock when I looked at the "new" pricing. Not sure that can last.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#225

Post by whstl »

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

Sorry, my mistake. It's all shares, I don't know why I said stocks/options.

But it's all shares. First from being early in a marketing startup that recently closed, second from being one of the first engineers of an event ticket marketplace that's holding on for dear life, third from a tourism unicorn that paid half my salary with instant-vesting shares during Covid.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#226

Post by jollyllama »

itake wrote: post #107
aqme28 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the second engineer (series A) at a company that IPO’d at a unicorn valuation. By all rights that’s a great outcome. I made about as much in that exit as I would have if I were just at a FAANG instead

This tracks. I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Early engineers often have first dibs on higher level roles, like CTO or director over people that join late. Your initial grant might not be great, but being director at such a company is huge

It depends on the investors. Sometimes they will insist on bringing in their own people who will skip ahead. This can happen if bigger investors are brought on late or if the business is not developing according to plan and equity has to be sold.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#227

Post by Twirrim »

tossandthrow wrote: post #5

IMHO building startup became a status symbol which means that the payment in respect for making a courageous adventure is lost and commoditized. We are slowly seeing the same for academia. Point 2 resonates with me. Risk adjusted it is very unlikely that one will make a reasonable salary doing startups. So it is conviction and heart that needs to drive it. For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea ab…

> For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem. I think this is endemic - the entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed.

I think this is in part a market correction. Whether it's over correction, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

There's been a lot of really bad startups making a big splash, often without any experience or knowledge of the field they were trying to disrupt (so they don't actually know what the problems really are, or what was really needed), and with far too vague hand wavey ideas on how they'll actually reach sustainability.

There's been far too much of engineering being a hammer, and seeing every problem is a nail

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#228

Post by adamc »

InkCanon wrote: post #59

On the last point: "The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find." It is a repeating pattern in history that people think technology and science have reached a dead end. Michelsen (falsely attributed to Kelvin) declared principles of physics were already established before quantum mechanics. Watson said there was de…

There will always be more to find out, but there are a ton of counter-examples to your claims. Engineering related to radio was huge in the 1920s and 1930s and is... not today. A lot of key problems got solved and the focus turned to other industries and other problems.

The world will continue to have interesting problems. Whether those will have much intersection with writing software is less certain.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#229

Post by dare944 »

the_af wrote: post #123
matwood wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only realy reason to join a startup is that you either believe in the "mission" or that you believe it will bring you joy to work in that way. If the goal is economic security (FU money) then the quickest path is to get a job at a big tech company. This requires engineering skills and also the ability to play the various corporate games (ugh). For the rest of us there's entrepreneurship and joining startups.

But there are plenty of "startup games" to be played at startups. Maybe slightly different to corporate games, but also unnerving.

Having done both for a long time, I have to agree. However, generally, there's more choice as to whose games you want to play with startups. And being a startup with limited resources means there's only so many games that can be played before the noise overwhelms the signal and the company goes under (essentially a self correcting effect).

At big companies with lots of revenue the shenanigans can become fortresses of crazy (cough Google cough) that can go on forever.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#230

Post by wat10000 »

the_af wrote: post #199
wat10000 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you think you’re special. You know it’s risky and many people fail, but you’ve got the right idea, intelligence, work ethic, etc. It might even be true sometimes. I’m sure success isn’t randomly distributed. The trouble is figuring out if you really do have it or if it’s self delusion.

I'm not saying it's completely random. It's very likely a combination of skill [1] and luck, with luck being the bigger factor. So even if you're "special", you're unlikely to make it. [1] And possibly contacts, or safety net, or wealthy family and/or friends.

I think there are special circumstances where success, while far from assured, is a lot more likely than usual. Apple and Google probably had decent odds. (Where “decent” here means something like 10%.) But they’re really rare, and honestly and correctly evaluating whether you have an opportunity like that is really hard. I think that’s why a lot of people do startups, anyway.
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