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Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

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Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#321

Post by leonroy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #13
latch wrote: post #4

I've been thinking about low-friction options for getting a sense of the engineering quality. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that technical debt and bad software development practices are a top concern. Being quite senior now, I'd feel comfortable asking: 1 - To see their CI dashboard 2 - To see a sample of their production systems stdout & stderr 3 - Asking to review a recent non-trivial commit (with the person…

In the context of a startup, I would expect almost all of those to be disappointing. But maybe that's what you're hoping to see. In my opinion, if you're a start-up and you've got all those boxes checked, you're possibly doing the right things in the wrong order, and that's a red flag for me. What I hope to hear are responses like, "so this is how we're doing CI. It's awful, almost non-existent. But that's because at…

Dunno...one man band here until very recently. I had Github > CircleCI > Heroku automatic deploys on pass implemented on my own with LogDNA + Sentry.io to catch errors and monitor output.

Using Clubhouse to manage mine and the other dev's work now and it all seamlessly links up.

Took at most 30 mins to a few hours to setup each integration. Only downside is the monthly cost of all of the above but in all honesty if even a small startup doesn't have most of the above I'd consider that worrying.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#322

Post by monksy »

reaperducer wrote: post #162
latch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect most to be disappointing too, and it's a good idea to avoid those. Proper logging doesn't take more time, it just takes more discipline / giving a damn. People and companies that say: we don't have time to do it right Almost always mean: we don't know how to do it right Talent, not time, is the enemy of quality. (at some point that stops being true, but most companies (startups or not) are soooo far fr…

Proper logging doesn't take more time, it just takes more discipline / giving a damn. People and companies that say: we don't have time to do it right Almost always mean: we don't know how to do it right You're not wrong. But we're talking startups here, not established companies. It's publish or perish time. When the company has enough breathing room, circle back around and do it the way the big boys do.

> circle back around and do it the way the big boys do.

Things that never happen.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#323

Post by lazerwalker »

jiveturkey wrote: post #123
lazerwalker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Germany specifically has complicated tax laws that make equity tricky. Namely: if your equity ever increases in value — e.g. if your startup raises a round of funding and gets a higher valuation — you owe capital gains taxes on the increase, even if the equity itself isn't liquid (which it might very well never be). There are workarounds, but they're a hassle. None of this is an issue in the US, where you're on…

> None of this is an issue in the US, where you're only taxed when you sell. Nope. In the US, you may be taxed when you exercise, and will be taxed again (against the new basis) when you sell. Whether or not you are taxed at exercise is a very complicated matter. Keep in mind, when you are granted stock options, you don't actually have any equity. You have an /option/ to acquire equity. The taxable events are the acq…

You’re totally right about options. I was thinking more explicitly about stock itself (e.g. RSUs in the case of employees at companies that issue those instead of options, or founder's stock in my personal case).

Separate from that, things are still more fraught in Germany: whatever your US taxation situation is, I'm not aware of any situation where a valuation change in stock/options/etc you're holding will trigger a taxable event for you, as I understand to be the case with Germany. As I understand equity taxation in the US, you'll only ever be taxed when events happen that you yourself have initiated (e.g. exercising options or selling stock).

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#324

Post by monksy »

nostrademons wrote: post #310
nradov wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of software startups are attempting to solve previously unsolved business problems using mostly the same technology stacks as everyone else. The basic principles of CI/CD are pretty similar regardless of language or tooling, and should now be understood by any competent senior developer regardless of whether they work in gaming or avionics or whatever. Applying those CI/CD principles absolutely help…

Sure. If the technology involved in your software startup basically involves putting a web or mobile app in front of a Rails/Django/Node appserver in front of a RDBMS or equivalent NoSQL database, and the primary business questions are "What data do we need to store, and how do we present it to the user?" then getting your CI up is important. This was a large fraction of viable startups from 2005-2013, so it certainl…

Just because you change the acronyms doesn't mean that you can completely forget about CI/CD. It's still relevant. Even more so with the newer technologies. You'll probably use different build tools and testing tools. But everything else is still the same.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#325

Post by argyleaf »

nikanj wrote: post #320
solomatov wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It usually happens when tests are not fixed.

It usually happens when changing the build means something like "Let's package the installers with WiX instead of NSIS, so we can provide MSIs for enterprise clients". Not everyone's app is a web page.

WiX is a nightmare from which I am feverishly trying to awake...

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#326

Post by untangle »

jasode wrote: post #54
PacifyFish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The most common way to predict payout is to compare to other companies' exit valuations. E.g. "Oh, company X got acquired for $250 million. We do something similar. If I own .025% of the company, I'd make $62,500 if we exited at that valuation. Cool." It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% if you're lucky enough t…

>It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% But you're repeating the same error of prioritizing the wrong thing: dilution. What employees ultimately care about is their wealth calculation: shares_multiplied_by_price . Example of the type of math people actually care about: 0.008% (because dilutions) a $1 billion company is $80k 0…

> For most employees that are minority shareholders, dilution is a side-effect calculation in the realm of academic trivia. Dilution is not a purposeful strategy in this situation.

No, your logic would only hold for a public company with shares priced by a liquid market.

For a startup, percent ownership of fully-diluted shares is the key metric. (Other secondary factors, e.g. liquidation preference are also relevant.)

The strike price of the options is derived from the price that the most recent lead investor paid for the last shares purchased. This is not a market price -- the underlying value of the shares is often less.

But the options are effectively worthless until they are vested and a liquidation event, usually an IPO or acquisition, occurs.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#327

Post by retiredcoder »

rjvs wrote: post #248
t0mbstone wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up CI is basically as simple as adding a small .yml config file to your git repo (if you are using a service like Travis or Circle CI) and clicking a couple of buttons to give the tool access to your github repo.

If you are writing a web app maybe, if you’re writing a VR app, it’s definitely not that easy.

True to that. Software engineering isn’t just web apps.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#328

Post by retiredcoder »

leonroy wrote: post #321
Waterluvian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of a startup, I would expect almost all of those to be disappointing. But maybe that's what you're hoping to see. In my opinion, if you're a start-up and you've got all those boxes checked, you're possibly doing the right things in the wrong order, and that's a red flag for me. What I hope to hear are responses like, "so this is how we're doing CI. It's awful, almost non-existent. But that's because at…

Dunno...one man band here until very recently. I had Github > CircleCI > Heroku automatic deploys on pass implemented on my own with LogDNA + Sentry.io to catch errors and monitor output. Using Clubhouse to manage mine and the other dev's work now and it all seamlessly links up. Took at most 30 mins to a few hours to setup each integration. Only downside is the monthly cost of all of the above but in all honesty if e…

Yeah, that’s pretty easy for a web App. Things aren’t that simple for companies with more complex stack, like embedded systems for example.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#329

Post by mcv »

ryanSrich wrote: post #104
owens99 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. As I always say, "If you are building a startup, over-engineering is a far bigger sin than creating technical debt."

But having CI, proper logging, and code review isn’t over engineering. The time, effort and bugs saved by spending 1-2 days putting these policies and procedures in place is valuable early on. Of course, each of those pieces is at risk of becoming over engineered. But hopefully the team has a leader that knows when to move forward and when to pull back.

Particularly CI. If you want to be able to release fast and often, having that automated is going to save you a lot of time.

And CI doesn't immediately have to include everything you'll eventually want; just having automated build and deploy will make your life a lot easier. Add some automated testing as soon as you can afford to (which hopefully is right away, because it's not that hard to set up), and you're ready to move.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#330

Post by mcv »

JJMcJ wrote: post #89
jasode wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% But you're repeating the same error of prioritizing the wrong thing: dilution. What employees ultimately care about is their wealth calculation: shares_multiplied_by_price . Example of the type of math people actually care about: 0.008% (because dilutions) a $1 billion company is $80k 0…

> $80k Oh, wow! Worked three years of 80 hour weeks and here's 80K.

Yeah, considering what I've heard about startup culture, I'd hope such equity payouts are a bit more than this. Anything less than $100k (note, a future expectation, and far from certain) is not worth accepting lower pay or long working hours for.
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