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To work in a start up some times can be good, if you are a self starter and they appreciate that. Just never do it for "equity" unless you have enough money on the side. But to spend the vast majority of the career in a startup without being one of the founders is not recommendable I think.
What is success? The article assumes for the most part that success is mainly monetary, and further it makes the classic mistake of comparing success monetarily to companies like Facebook. Success is different depending on many factors. For example, if a person needs or likes guidance and structure, a startup is likely not a good fit, especially when they are inexperienced. There are some good points about the strong…
> The author likely comes from a structured, religious background How on God's green Earth did you jump to that conclusion? Can't it just be a matter of personal preference, as you said it yourself?
I wouldn’t trade my years at a startup for anything but they can be run by tyrants in a fiefdom just as much as a VP runs an org, sometimes more so as they have no one they report to.
What is success? The article assumes for the most part that success is mainly monetary, and further it makes the classic mistake of comparing success monetarily to companies like Facebook. Success is different depending on many factors. For example, if a person needs or likes guidance and structure, a startup is likely not a good fit, especially when they are inexperienced. There are some good points about the strong…
> The author likely comes from a structured, religious background How on God's green Earth did you jump to that conclusion? Can't it just be a matter of personal preference, as you said it yourself?
>How on God's green Earth did you jump to that conclusion?
The author wrote: "From the ages of 19-21, I spent my time as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon church. I worked 12 hours a day for two years straight with only Christmas and Mother’s Day off. [...] For this job, I was paid a total of 0 dollars."
It seems reasonable to assume that non-religious people wouldn't do that for $0 pay.
To expand on this: Venture capitalists are incentivized, by the nature of how they invest, to drive companies towards becoming unicorns and attempting the extreme-risk-extreme-reward scenario. If you put $10M towards a company, and it says "Great, we're stable and our employees are happy and productive and we're building the cool thing we wanted to build and we're about to get enough sales to break even" and it doesn't hire or grow, the investors won't see the $10M back for a very long time. That scenario is only slightly financially better than the company shutting down, and in practice, given that the investor needs to keep thinking about the company, being on its board, etc., it's not worth having that distraction.
So even if your company would be successful, if it's VC-funded, it's going to get pushed to be either hyper-successful or to fail.
And even if it's hyper-successful, it will probably experience mission drift. Early employees at Tiny Speck who wanted to build a neat MMORPG are probably very financially happy with Salesforce's acquisition of Slack, but all that remains of Glitch is a 404 page. (Read their shutdown announcement: https://www.glitchthegame.com/closing/) So if you're going into the startup because you're mission-driven instead of profit-driven, remember that the people who decide your mission are ultimately profit-driven.
I mean, in my experience at startups, founders typically own around 40% of the equity. The option pool for all other employees is around 10-20%.
Now, I certainly believe startup founders deserve far more equity than anyone else, but this highlights that the risk/reward trade-off really only makes sense for founders. I mean, what founders risk in terms of opportunity costs and lower wages is usually only slightly more than very early stage employees, but their reward is ~10-30x. The reward, in rare cases, may also make sense for C level hires at proven startups that are already growing like gangbusters, because they'll get a ton of equity. For rank-and-file, though, the issue is that even if the startup hits it usually becomes more like a nice bonus than life defining wealth.
To work in a start up some times can be good, if you are a self starter and they appreciate that. Just never do it for "equity" unless you have enough money on the side. But to spend the vast majority of the career in a startup without being one of the founders is not recommendable I think.
Yes, it’s hard to explain that some people just want to “run fast”, and can’t operate in any other workplace environment.
I simply alternative the environments when I get a decent proposal. I have seen successful startups turning into Byzantine corporations pretty fast. Bad things start to not be fixed anymore, instead more manpower with less quality is thrown at the issue, this is one of the tell tale signs that it is time to go if you want to learn something else.
I have found that learning useful things on a job is more important than whether you are in a startup or in an established corporation.
The moment you stop learning and no promotion is in sight, promote yourself, by changing companies if need be.
On the other hand i think working corporate jobs is also still way overrated (even if it is maybe already rated low). Whenever I think this will be different i want to shoot myself after 1 or 2 months latest, working for a startup just is the lesser evil.
Money's nice, but not hating your life is nicer. I'd make a rubbish Sisyphus.
I joined several startups in SF throughout my journey.
Took me forever to realize that not all levels of hard are the same:
- Working harder than most for 1% was not worth it. Small team comradery dissolved as soon as the company started going under. Sometimes founders screwed you over at the end. Nowadays I sometimes wonder why I worked so hard for other people's companies.
- Working for FAANG pays well, but golden handcuffs are not for everyone.
- Doing your own startup is super hard. Emotional roller coaster. It sucks all the time, until it doesn't.
All of these are hard, but the last one forces you to learn skills you wouldn't have cared for otherwise. Again, not for everyone, but if I had to pick my "level of hard", that would be it.
But FAANG big as they are are a small fraction of the action.