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Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

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Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#31

Post by 18pfsmt »

ColinWright wrote: post #18
forgotmypasswd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RAGEQUIT

Yup. I've taken the opportunity to review my HN usage, and I get significantly less out of it now than I used to, and it just sucks my time to nearly no benefit. I may keep posting links - the bookmarklet makes it easy - but the discussions here now seem to add very little, so I'm not bothering any more.

If it makes any difference, I appreciated your efforts. I hope veterans of HN don't become discouraged because they were the most influential in causing me to finally create an HN acct (oddly enough, I don't take that action lightly), and try to contribute to a group I've learned so much from.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#33

Post by ColinWright »

18pfsmt wrote: post #31
ColinWright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I've taken the opportunity to review my HN usage, and I get significantly less out of it now than I used to, and it just sucks my time to nearly no benefit. I may keep posting links - the bookmarklet makes it easy - but the discussions here now seem to add very little, so I'm not bothering any more.

If it makes any difference, I appreciated your efforts. I hope veterans of HN don't become discouraged because they were the most influential in causing me to finally create an HN acct (oddly enough, I don't take that action lightly), and try to contribute to a group I've learned so much from.

Thank you. I appreciate that, but it doesn't make much difference. For me, HN is now more of a sink than a source. On balance as many people hate the dup detection as like it, and the comment threads no longer seem to shed the light they once did. I guess I've changed, and my interests no longer really align with HN.

So I'm moving on. I still have the bookmarklet, so I may still remember to submit things, but I doubt I'll do much more than glance at the Front Page occasionally.

Cheers.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#34

Post by nostrademons »

pg wrote: post #28
nadam wrote: post #16

Funny how the startup scene changes. Years ago, Paul Graham wrote essays like 'You weren't meant to have a boss'. Nowadays talent aquisitions are seen as huge successes while (money aside) we are celebrating that some former founders found jobs at big companies. (I am also more pragmatic in this question than years ago, so I am not criticizing anyone.)

(money aside) That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, the plain old employee will have made about $1M in the time that the startup founder made maybe $2.5M. Startup founder is still ahead, but they took on all the risk of their startup failing and them getting nothing, and the difference is only about a factor of 2 instead of an order of magnitude.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#35

Post by nostrademons »

rdl wrote: post #27
nadam wrote: post #16

Funny how the startup scene changes. Years ago, Paul Graham wrote essays like 'You weren't meant to have a boss'. Nowadays talent aquisitions are seen as huge successes while (money aside) we are celebrating that some former founders found jobs at big companies. (I am also more pragmatic in this question than years ago, so I am not criticizing anyone.)

I'd draw a distinction between talent acquisitions to go join the general pool of people at a big company, and talent acquisitions to work on the big new focus of a "sleeping giant", in something similar to what you were doing before.

Wasn't Etherpad the latter, and then they found out that big new focus had been canceled and quit? Same with Dodgeball, Aardvark, Jaiku, Jotspot, and any number of other acquisitions.

You shouldn't assume anything about what your job duties will be in a big company, even if it's written into your contract. Big companies have an internal logic that often makes no sense to the outside world, and usually depends upon what the decision makers are paying attention to at the moment. Priorities change.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#36

Post by akkartik »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(money aside) That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, th…

I tend to think of offers in terms of how long I can live on the savings from a single year. If you make 100k and save 20k, you make 200k and save 120k[1]. It's not 2x but 6x.

[1] I'm not considering taxes and so on, but the basic idea of leverage still applies.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#37

Post by brandnewlow »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(money aside) That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, th…

Startup founder will also have no shortage of people willing to back her next company and a network of interesting people she can draw on for advice for life. Might that be even more valuable than the money?

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#38

Post by onewland »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(money aside) That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, th…

$250k easily? I think that's a level of skill that is not at all common.

I'm not saying nobody gets paid that all, but developer compensation needs to be more realistically looked at on this forum. I'd say the majority make less than $100k, and $150k or more puts you in the top 5 percentile.

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#39

Post by pg »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(money aside) That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, th…

Yes, talent acquisitions tend to be 1-2m per founder. The founders make more after tax though because they pay long term capital gains tax rather than income tax.

A talent acquisition is not usually the founders' first choice. What they get in return for the risk of the startup failing is the chance of a really big success. A talent acquisition is usually a backup plan. As a backup plan it's a pretty good deal.

(A talent acquisition is sometimes the founders' first choice if it happens early enough. Then it's a better deal because the money is divided by less time.)

Re: Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

#40

Post by nostrademons »

onewland wrote: post #38
nostrademons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions have been for Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for another year while they vest, th…

$250k easily? I think that's a level of skill that is not at all common. I'm not saying nobody gets paid that all, but developer compensation needs to be more realistically looked at on this forum. I'd say the majority make less than $100k, and $150k or more puts you in the top 5 percentile.

The level of skill needed to build a company from scratch and have it bought by Google is also not all that common. Apples-to-apples here: if you're going to compare a startup founder to an employee, you should compare them to someone of equal skill.
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