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A note I sent to YCombinator

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#31

Post by harryh »

taocoyote wrote: post #28
harryh wrote: post #24

Who says they don't have programmers? I would wager that almost every YC company has at least 1 and generally more than one programmer on the founding team. I also think you're being far too presumptuous about the comp packages these startups are offering. You seem to imply that they're being too stingy. Do you have any evidence for this?

"Not one company is willing to put forth a salary number, but they all say they offer excellent compensation." The implication being that the salaries offered are low. If they were confident that what they were offering was competitive then maybe they wouldn't be afraid to be up front about it? I've never had to hire someone so I don't know what the reasons are for not stating a salary range are.

You aren't going to get uniform applicants. Different applicants will command different salaries. There's not a reasonable way to put a single number on it. It's not just YC companies that do this, it's basically everyone. Go try to find a salary number on google.com/jobs. You won't find one, and yet Google is known to pay quite well.

When was the last time you saw a salary number for any programming job?

For that matter seeing a salary number in a job add for any high skill professional job is extremely rare.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#32

Post by omgsean »

david_shaw wrote: post #3

These are some great insights, and well worth the read. I think that at a core level, many of us -- especially in the managerial world -- understand that working people to death, especially technical people, never works out well. The adage of "work smarter, not harder" is absolutely correct. Just like it's better to write five lines of algorithmically beautiful code than a hundred lines of obfuscated spaghetti, it's…

>Some of my guys are early risers, and work 7am - 3pm. Some of them sleep later than me, but then go home and work until 3am. As long as their work is getting submitted on time, I don't mind at all: I want people to be comfortable, and not sit in a desk chair for the sake of keeping it warm.

Not that I've ever managed anyone but I think this is the crux of good management for creative/technical teams.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#33

Post by hasenj »

dclapp wrote: post #16
david_shaw wrote: post #3

These are some great insights, and well worth the read. I think that at a core level, many of us -- especially in the managerial world -- understand that working people to death, especially technical people, never works out well. The adage of "work smarter, not harder" is absolutely correct. Just like it's better to write five lines of algorithmically beautiful code than a hundred lines of obfuscated spaghetti, it's…

I love your words "...five lines of algorithmically beautiful code..."; this beautiful functional minimalism is what engineering is really all about; and it solves problems not only in the present but also in the future. And code that isn't there runs really fast and never has any bugs...

> code that isn't there runs really fast and never has any bugs...

love this quote! :D

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#34

Post by jslvk »

david_shaw wrote: post #3

These are some great insights, and well worth the read. I think that at a core level, many of us -- especially in the managerial world -- understand that working people to death, especially technical people, never works out well. The adage of "work smarter, not harder" is absolutely correct. Just like it's better to write five lines of algorithmically beautiful code than a hundred lines of obfuscated spaghetti, it's…

Do developers need to start being even more selective about working for these kinds of companies? Venture capitalists love software because the risk is astronomically low compared to other industries; is it more troubling that there are programmers that are willing to be underpaid, overworked, and screwed out of equity in the long run? Also, anytime someone has made an attempt to over-work me, I shut down and ignore them until I feel productive again (I'm a university student, so I think sometimes employers assume I am "really grateful to be getting paid anything," while ignoring my time preference and investment in education and work experience. I fear that trying to manage my employers expectations will simply be an excuse for them to hire someone else (assuming ability and credentials are the same).

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#35

Post by prtamil »

Your Advise reminds me a Quote from the movie God Father Part-II. "Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone. Death, natural or not, prison, deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left, because he always made money for his partners. ". Anyway good Advice.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#36

Post by vorg »

> A 40 hour week is a good rule. I suspect that a 36 hour week is a better rule.

By saying "36 hour week" instead of "35-hour week is better", you're showing a bias that better working hours means working less days or taking longer weekends (i.e. 9 days every two weeks), rather than less hours per day (i.e. 7 hours a day). Certain types of people (including you I guess) would prefer the extra day as reward, other types prefer the extra hour each day. Don't forget about the latter types of people.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#37

Post by cfn »

harryh wrote: post #31
taocoyote wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not one company is willing to put forth a salary number, but they all say they offer excellent compensation." The implication being that the salaries offered are low. If they were confident that what they were offering was competitive then maybe they wouldn't be afraid to be up front about it? I've never had to hire someone so I don't know what the reasons are for not stating a salary range are.

You aren't going to get uniform applicants. Different applicants will command different salaries. There's not a reasonable way to put a single number on it. It's not just YC companies that do this, it's basically everyone. Go try to find a salary number on google.com/jobs. You won't find one, and yet Google is known to pay quite well. When was the last time you saw a salary number for any programming job? For that ma…

Almost every job add on the IT sido of jobserve.co.uk has a salary number and that includes job offers made directly by companies.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#38

Post by tluyben2 »

ssylee wrote: post #27

Interesting take on how many businesses and startups are being run by the founders these days. Doug, I have one question for you: how do you feel the sales and marketing (or the neglect of them) affect how the founders are able to treat their staff?

I'm interested in that too, but I guess it depends on the type of company probably and the type of sales? I know some commission driven sales in a services companies definitely killing people rapidly by selling insane amounts of work and then throwing it over the fence. You need a very strong account/pm to counteract this if you want to not die and keep clients happy at the same time.

For products I have seen sales guys adding features because the client asks and the doing this with the founder's permission because 'that big client we cannot miss'. Resulting in misery for the rest of the staff.

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#39

Post by tluyben2 »

tokenadult wrote: post #4
Caligula wrote: post #2

I always found job postings by YC companies surreal. The ideology espoused by YC is to be a founder of a startup. If you are a talented engineer, why would you work for 1-2%(if your lucky) equity and less salary than google/facebook/etc.

If you are a talented engineer, why would you work for 1-2%(if your lucky) equity and less salary than google/facebook/etc. If you are a sufficiently young engineer (I am neither young nor an engineer, but I know people who are both), you might want to work at a startup before launching your own because a) the startup might hit it big enough to make you rich enough to have a lot of runway for your own project, and b)…

I've been yelping about this for ages but most here seem to have the same opinion as you. I will say it again; you are gambling here with probably the best years of your life. Don't be crazy thinking 1-2% in a startup will make you rich. It won't. You'll just work yourself into ill health ; something which you will never be able to restore in the rest of your life and you'll not gain much besides the knowledge that you should never do or have done this in the first place.

Please check some statistics of startups; by far most go bankrupt, the rest disappear; might be sold to another company, might just close the doors with some blahblah story of 'it was just an experiment and it failed' => was it just an experiment for you, burning 80+ hours/week for 1-2% + a few $? Even being bought sounds like payday; it's not, especially for funded companies. It's just vultures picking dead bodies.

Then the minuscule (REALLY TINY; like furiouscowbell says below; it's playing the lottery, but at least in the lottery you get to work 0 hours/week) percentage which remains will indeed make you rich for your 1-2%; shame you didn't go work there! You picked another one; even without knowing you, I know this for a fact :) It's a safe bet for me to say this.

Please don't throw years of your life away doing this; start your own or work, for a good salary at a big/solid/hip one (Facebook, Google) and go from there. Make your mark there and then use the money you earned and super team you worked with to start your own.

Edit: if it's your own startup it's (can be) a lot of fun but you know the odds going in and your startup is different! You have to believe that and that's good. But if you are just tricked into working for nothing on someone else's dream it needs to be your dream as well, and who does that for less than a significant stake in the company anyway?

Re: A note I sent to YCombinator

#40

Post by tluyben2 »

dclapp wrote: post #15
dclapp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Michael. I think that Apple in those days is a field that is well-plowed. folklore.org is a particularly fun site. Start-ups? Business is business. it can be as high-stress or as peaceful as you decide to make it. Software development, these days, is often dysfunction practiced as an artform. :-) Give SCRUM a shake, and waterfall drops to the floor, quivering in embarrassment. Add your examples here. My best devel…

Okay, one last thing. Richard Branson, a business genius, said "Praise people and they flower; criticize them and they wilt." So praise and cheerlead and mentor relentlessly. And, like the best baseball managers, put people in positions where they can succeed. I could go on... :>)

My Bangladesh team actually tell me the opposite; they want critique, not praise. If they get praise they will stop working as they feel they over delivered. Guess it depends on where your people are and what culture they are from.
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