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Working for a startup makes less sense

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#291

Post by marvin »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #260
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.

And the remaining 30 years of life you have low ability to earn income, but face higher taxes and healthcare spend. To me, FU money is passive investments which yield a couple hundred thousand a year from businesses that can keep up with inflation.

1 million is 40.000 dollars per year indefinitely, by the 4% rule, with a small risk of ruin that you'll most likely see coming years in advance.

It should be possible to live in the Bay Area on that, given that the place still has cashiers, cleaning personnel and maintenance workers. It won't be a middle-class lifestyle, but you'd have to make _some_ sacrifices in order to indefinitely work at whatever you want in the most expensive place in the world.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#292

Post by marvin »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #163
cj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your post, it sounds like you value: 1) Safety and predictability in compensation 2) Ownership over your company’s strategy (e.g. mobile) only if you’re paid highly for doing it (not a bad thing, but many other people exist who would willingly take a pay cut for the ability to have an actual impact on company strategy) 3) A highly organized and logical hiring process and qualification evaluation 4) Custom negoti…

I think the point is more that startups are really overestimating what they're offering, or hoping their employees are too stupid to realize the disparity. So far as I can tell the only thing most startups offer anymore is ownership, lack of large company culture/bureaucracy, and more opportunities to switch roles. Equity is basically always monopoly, you generally can't even evaluate its value because no one will sh…

I've always thought that the shitty startup practices when it comes to equity is due to insufficient competition for talent. Looks like this is about to change, since startups now obviously struggle to get the best people.

Not showing the relevant details of the cap table is ridiculous, companies that do this are banking on a pool of candidates that are either morons or don't care what they're paid.

Imagine the following situation: You're in a foreign market, and a vendor tries to sell you a fancy-looking machine. You know he's legally bound not to lie, so you ask what the machine is worth. He says "it's worth 2 billion Magic Moneys!!" but refuses to give you any information that would help you suss out whether that's 20 cents or 20 million dollars.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#293

Post by ratww »

Animats wrote: post #283
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.

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 array…

> The HTML->CSS->JS->Webasm line of development really is crap on top of crap.

I completely get the hate for modern web, but in this case I think it's unrelated. The whole Kubernetes/microservice world exists basically to serve JSON and similar protocols. Maybe rarely some static HTML.

For HTML->CSS->JS->Webasm stuff it is more fashionable to compile at build time and service as static assets. That's the polar opposite of Kubernetes/microservices.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#294

Post by cryptica »

I agree that the game is clearly rigged in favor of corporations at this stage.

If money is what you're after then joining a big company is by far the most rational choice. Eventually, big tech companies will realize this and start significantly lowering wages until new engineers are paid the same as blue collar workers.

The reality is that new startups do not disrupt corporations; they feed them.

The only way I can see to end corporate dominance is with blockchain tech because it can disrupt the incentive structures that feed corporarions. The new generation of developers can build a new financial system using cryptocurrency as the decentralized foundation in which to store value.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#295

Post by rhlsthrm »

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…

But not all engineers want to work at FAANG, there are some that are entrepreneurial at heart and would love to work on their own idea as a founder/co-founder.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#296

Post by cerberusss »

Animats wrote: post #283
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.

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 array…

> Well, arguably that's true in the webcrap space. (...) crap on top of crap

Not that you're wrong per say, but personally, I think you should take a look at the HN guidelines. Like don't be snarky, and don't post shallow dismissals.

Just categorizing the arguably most popular way of building software as "crap" doesn't seem like thoughtful or curious conversation.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#297

Post by boring_twenties »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #267
boring_twenties wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why not? If you have a partner, you would be able to cover half a mortgage, and if not you can get a roommate. I know tons of people who aren't in tech that make ~50K. It makes sense because 50K is pretty close to the median per capita income in SF [1] and a starting teachers salary [2]. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran... [2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-sch…

I mean, I don't live in SF so maybe I'm off base. But my impression is that even with a roommate you're looking at $1500-2000/mo. That's oppressive on $50k/yr.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#298

Post by boring_twenties »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #286
boring_twenties wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For sure. Not in SF though, or so I thought anyway

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#299

Post by ghostwriter »

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…

> 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.

but usually not in the way they see it. There's enormous value in having freedom to do things the way you want, without being restricted by corporate culture and/or engineering conventions of a Big Co.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#300

Post by smallcharleston »

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.

“ AI is linear algebra that costs x1000 because of the brand name.”

This doesn’t even make sense because it can be said about anything involving numerical work on a computer and it’s still roughly true. Also because all of the libraries are free anyway.

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