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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#311

Post by Analemma_ »

dsugarman wrote: post #218
dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.

I can understand complaining about cynicism, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not coming from a real place. All the complaints people are voicing elsewhere in this thread are true:

- it's true that you will get jack squat if you're employee #4 or later (and in the process you'll work more hours with less job security than at a FAANG)

- it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value to the economy in the last fifteen years: it has all been regulatory arbitrage, intrusive ad-tech, financial engineering, and, of course, shitcoins

- it's true that the people at the top turned out to be amoral psychopaths who practically tripped over themselves to kiss the ring when authoritarianism arrived and their talk about improving the world was hot air

If you're going to complain about the cynicism, you should at least respond to the above instead of pretending it's just grumps wanting to ruin everyone's fun.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#312

Post by slashdev »

bluGill wrote: post #280
slashdev wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. FAANG and adjacent pays so well, it's a better and more guaranteed outcome than startups - for people that have that option. Dan Luu wrote about it over a decade ago: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ The math is not in favor of working at a startup, if you do it, don't do it for the money. People finally wised up to this. Even as the founder, working at a FAANG usually works out better financially and is m…

To add, VC is for when you have a market that is large enough to pay off their investment with something left over. There are a lot a business opportunities out there that only can return a million per year and they won't scale. This isn't worth VC time, but if you can find one, a million - overhead is still a nice income for you the private business owner. Just remember that as a business owner you need to watch the…

Yes, this is a great point

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#313

Post by kridsdale1 »

meritage31 wrote: post #171
itake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tracks. I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Early engineers often have first dibs on higher level roles, like CTO or director over people that join late. Your initial grant might not be great, but being director at such a company is huge

>> I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Startups hire those people when they are risky and the future is unclear. Once there is traction, the VCs and insiders bring in friends for cush Director/VC posts. Quite often the people who took the real risks get left out.

And that seems like safe capital preserving thing to do. A director role isn’t a prize for loyalty, it’s a job with a skill set. Your second programmer isn’t going to be as good at is as some guy who has been a director 6 years else where

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#314

Post by kridsdale1 »

mattlutze wrote: post #270
ragnot wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find that outside the startup, the director/vp/cto title doesn't translate. Larger companies will often write you off as being "not experienced" enough which is often code for "you don't look old enough for this position". Unlike engineering and the startup world, big companies want you to look the part not just know the part.

> Larger companies will often write you off as being "not experienced" enough which is often code for "you don't look old enough for this position". It's not about age, it's about what you actually had to do. Company size, company age and political complexity are strongly correlated. A successful large company engineering director spends their day mostly doing politics across the org, while a successful small company…

That latter person sounds like a normal L6 at FAANG. Director is 8. They truly haven’t had the exposure to build the required skills for that lateral transfer.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#316

Post by bityard »

zcw100 wrote: post #276
aqme28 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the second engineer (series A) at a company that IPO’d at a unicorn valuation. By all rights that’s a great outcome. I made about as much in that exit as I would have if I were just at a FAANG instead

I've learned not to expect anything from being an early employee. It's right in the name, you're an employee. Expecting some sort of consideration for being early is naive. Every time you receive a paycheck you and your employer are even and you shouldn't expect anything more.

This is true, except in the usual case where early employees are made offers that include some presumption of partial ownership of the company through stock grants or options, often with a corresponding decrease in salary that scales inversely with the strength of the founder's reality distortion field.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#318

Post by gnkyfrg »

KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory Unless you're a founder, you're unlikely to make any money, and predatory VC/backers using convertibles/senior debt to turn your equity into Zimbabwean dollars. Thats before any stats are calculated for lasting long enough to either IPO, make money or get bought out. As someone who did successfully exit, the stories of multiple-m…

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#319

Post by gnkyfrg »

nico wrote: post #273
blindriver wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the ~15th engineer at a YC startup that had a very big exit. Over 4 years I made less than $80k total (20k/yr) from my options while the founders made high 8 figures. Had I joined BigTech I would have made over $1 M just from stock and I would have worked less. Back during the dot com days, everyone from the secretaries to the chefs to the founders were getting rich but nowadays YC teaches their founders to kee…

We were rejected from YC because we wouldn’t dilute to 0 some of the early people at the company They first told us we were in, but that we would need to adjust our cap table so that only 2 founders would have equity. They gave us a phone call, we pushed back, and later they sent us a rejection email

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#320

Post by kridsdale1 »

bluGill wrote: post #274
kccqzy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage negotiation means getting to the top of the band sooner. Other people might have to perform well at the level to get to the band, but a wage negotiator might just get there on their first day.

Most of the time the wage is not up for negotiation. Forget about it, you can't change it. HR and your future boss are tied up with company policy which says you start at X and you can't change that. Spend your time instead on getting more vacation from the start. If instead you ask for 25 days of vacation per year instead of the default 10 you have a deal (or maybe they bring you down to 20 days). You can't get 50 d…

I haven’t experienced what you claim. I’ve succeeded to the 99th percentile with wage negotiation the last 2 times I job hopped (both FAANG). The trick is you really do need to do the work to collect a poker-hand of competing offers with which to have leverage. You can then say “I won’t take your offer unless you make it (top of band, L+1, remote)” etc.

This has not backfired on me. It just takes 8 times more effort than getting hired at one place. I figured the benefit would compound.

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