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Working for a startup makes less sense

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#281

Post by dgudkov »

lpolovets wrote: post #49

My experience: engineering at Startup #1 for 2 years, then Google for 3 years, then Startup #2 for 4 years, and now I've been working with seed stage companies as a VC for the last 7 years. The amount I earned as an engineer was highest at Startup #1 (got lucky!), significantly lower at Google, and a little lower than that at Startup #2. Startup #2 is still chugging along, which could eventually make it on par with o…

>But money isn't everything.

That's a very good point. Money isn't everything. Pretending that money is the ultimate goal of life can be off-putting in the startup world and in the American lifestyle in general.

Obsession with money is an easy way to envy, burnout, depression, and loneliness.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#282

Post by aledalgrande »

yoz-y wrote: post #26
aeternum wrote: post #19

Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…

I've had kind of the opposite experience. At the startup we were really sluggish it was hard to learn anything because we were jumping into any possible business opportunity before even thinking about ROI because money was always tight. 80% of the time was wasted supporting clients and fixing bugs that were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early. I think the biggest difference is money. A well funded…

Working for startups I usually hit the ceiling pretty fast. Not enough time for formal learning, because of fires or hundreds of menial tasks, and on-the-job learning is just not enough after a year or so.

Anyone stuck in this situation?

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#283

Post by Animats »

buzzkillington wrote: post #194
streetcat1 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there are actually three tech revolutions going on in parallel: 1) Kuberentes 2) Microservices. 3) AI All of them are based on open source, and all of them are permissionless (I.e. the startup does not need permission from a big company, e.g. an app store owner). They also erode the build-in advantages of big tech: 1) Kubernetes erode cloud lock-in on compute/storage. 2) AI is best serve on the edge. I would say t…

Kubernetes is a solution worse than the problem. Microservices are unix pipes but slower. AI is linear algebra that costs x1000 because of the brand name. There is no revolution in software. We are just building crud as high and as fast as we can because the quality of developers tends to zero as the number of developers increases.

Well, arguably that's true in the webcrap space. The HTML->CSS->JS->Webasm line of development really is crap on top of crap. Trying to fix the design problems of one layer by putting another layer on top of it only sort of works. It gets worse over time. "The mold seeps through the wallpaper" (a comment I usually make about C++ collection classes trying, but only partially succeeding, to hide the problems of C arrays).

I was doing "microservices" on QNX using MsgSend/MsgReceive for hard real time over 15 years ago. It doesn't have to suck; the mainstream is just using the wrong tools for doing it fast. The QNX people managed to shoot themselves in the foot by going closed-source -> open source -> closed source -> open source -> closed source, after which their developer community was fed up.

Machine learning is not linear algebra. It's nonlinear. That's what makes it useful.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#284

Post by modo_mario »

sokoloff wrote: post #104
munk-a wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather educate the population on the pitfalls of startups so that people going into them are less naive and so that the experience of working there can be more enjoyable and fairly compensated. I have really enjoyed working at small companies as well - not two person startups working on hopes and dreams, but companies under a year old that are struggling to stablize their offering of a product that they know ther…

What problems do we see that are evidence that government intervention is needed or would be helpful? I see a lot of people very much willingly freely entering into contracts that are beneficial overall for society. That many startups fail and few result in king’s ransom payouts for employees who put up no money to form the company seems ok and preferable to an environment where government has a heavy role in picking…

The implication of it being you and your buddies being that you won't get shafted if it goes well or shafted more than is reasonable if it doesn't.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#285

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

echelon wrote: post #213
buzzkillington wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kubernetes is a solution worse than the problem. Microservices are unix pipes but slower. AI is linear algebra that costs x1000 because of the brand name. There is no revolution in software. We are just building crud as high and as fast as we can because the quality of developers tends to zero as the number of developers increases.

> Kubernetes is a solution worse than the problem. Not if you're a 1,000+ engineer org with an SOA. > Microservices are unix pipes but slower. Humans are way more expensive than the machines running our code. You can always spend more on spinning up additional instances. In reality the overhead isn't that bad. The principles of immutable stateless deploys free up so much mental energy when it comes to thinking about…

>> Kubernetes is a solution worse than the problem.

> Not if you're a 1,000+ engineer org with an SOA.

The fact that most FAANGs (Amazon especially) developed their own systems that are not Kubernetes, and often much simpler, should make you think. Many don't even use containers - by design.

(Source: direct experience)

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#286

Post by AllegedAlec »

boring_twenties wrote: post #261
s1artibartfast wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone doesn't hit FU at $1M in the bank, you probably never will, which is ok. $1M is about 20 years of coast on a modest bay area mortgage + family healthcare.

Bay area on $50k/yr? Is that some kind of joke or did you mean to type 2 years?

If you can live on 4% interest, you can live off of it indefinitely.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#287

Post by CuriouslyC »

alasdair_ wrote: post #176
siquick wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad all the great artists, musicians, writers, theorists, scientists, teachers, and inventors throughout history didn't read this post.

A remarkably large number of the most notable of those people came from wealthy families - that’s what allowed them the single-minded focus, instead of worrying about food and healthcare.

And a lot of them suffered in poverty to pursue what they loved. Is there survivorship bias there? Sure. You don't become great without taking some chances though.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#288

Post by CuriouslyC »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #240
colordrops wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1M is not FU money for someone in a major metropolitan US city with kids.

If someone doesn't hit FU at $1M in the bank, you probably never will, which is ok. $1M is about 20 years of coast on a modest bay area mortgage + family healthcare.

Or a lifetime of opulent living somewhere sane with low out of pocket health care costs.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#289

Post by mooreds »

swiftcoder wrote: post #203
divbzero wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some types of software startups can't be built without a team of engineers where the market-clearing wages are typically more like $500k-1M. What types of software startups have these constraints? And, as suggested in sibling comments, could building a highly technical founding team ( e.g. bootstrapping) be a viable alternative to hiring with high wages? There ought to be a sizable subset of highly skilled engineer…

> There ought to be a sizable subset of highly skilled engineers who have achieved financial independence and would enjoy tackling a challenging problem in a startup. The flip side of this equation is that those same engineers can tackle pretty much any challenging problem they choose, while continuing to take home those massive paycheques from a big tech firm. Big tech operates in almost every part of industry simul…

> at will

Is it that easy to switch departments/focus? I thought internal transfers, while easier than interviews, were not trivial.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#290

Post by ignoramous »

halbritt wrote: post #262
jandrewrogers wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong, and FWIW I am a force for sanity on the boards I am on. I am a comp realist and I will always pay for quality, I am strong advocate for that. The behavior of startups is not intrinsic, it is the product of incentives. If I created a startup tomorrow, I am confident that I could pull world-class engineers out of FAANG. But to your point, I would not play games with compensation. I hire the people I…

> If I created a startup tomorrow, I am confident that I could pull world-class engineers out of FAANG. This is easy. Offer relatively competitive TC with a real potential upside to the equity package and a work environment that's attractive. BigCorp is mired in politics and decision-making that's grounded in risk mitigation. Do something legitimately interesting and folks will come. Give them some agency and the abi…

A blog post I read on why hard-tech startups are counter-intuitively easier (especially, in terms of attracting talent): https://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back
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