Working for a startup makes less sense • Hacker News Board

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#341

Post by 324908nh » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #112

senordevnyc wrote: post #65

Strongly agree with this. I just did about seven weeks of interviewing in NYC for senior iOS roles, at both startups and big tech companies. To be frank, it was a total shitshow. Especially on the startup side. Here’s some of the bullshit I faced interviewing at early stage companies before accepting an offer literally 2.5x as high as the (multiple) offers that startups made. 1. Shitty equity: one startup wanted me t…

From your post, it sounds like you value: 1) Safety and predictability in compensation 2) Ownership over your company’s strategy (e.g. mobile) only if you’re paid highly for doing it (not a bad thing, but many other people exist who would willingly take a pay cut for the ability to have an actual impact on company strategy) 3) A highly organized and logical hiring process and qualification evaluation 4) Custom negoti…

So your startup's hiring pool is people who hate safety, vacation, favorable contract terms, and logical processes, but love taking on extra responsibility for no pay? Seems like a small pool, and explains why hiring is so hard these days.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#342

Post by whiskyant » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #57

scarmig wrote: post #47

1) People say you learn a lot more in a startup than in a BigTechCo. I don't think this is true: I've gotten far more skills during BigTechCo stints than at startups. YMMV. 2) A new grad at a startup gets, what, $100k in salary and some equity? If we're talking a three year stint at a startup, you're effectively asking a worker to invest ~$500k in exchange for that hypothetical equity. In the broadest strokes (obviou…

How do you come to $500k? Wouldn't that require that the new grad would be able to get a $266k job at a larger company? That doesn't seem particularly realistic.

Yeah $300k is probably more accurate for 3 years.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#343

Post by whiskyant » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

funded12345 wrote: post #151

> I think startups’ best bet is to make the most of the variables they can control outside of money and perks (if you lack the appropriate resources). This means being transparent and honest with candidates about all risks involved when joining a startup and factoring all this into the amount of equity they offer which should be something considerable. Even if the original founders have the best intentions, large equ…

Ouch. Being an senior engineer at a FAANG would give you 800k in RSUs over 4 years (initial grant + refreshers), a staff engineer position 1.5M... considering almost 8 years of work, that's probably at least 1.5-3M in RSUs (without considering stock appreciation, which can easily be quite significant).

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#344

Post by redis_mlc » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #267

boring_twenties wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bay area on $50k/yr? Is that some kind of joke or did you mean to type 2 years?

Why not? If you have a partner, you would be able to cover half a mortgage, and if not you can get a roommate. I know tons of people who aren't in tech that make ~50K. It makes sense because 50K is pretty close to the median per capita income in SF [1] and a starting teachers salary [2]. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran... [2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-sch…

> you would be able to cover half a mortgage

Not in the Bay Area.

Looking at an excel for a million-dollar+ home is truly frightening. So many zeroes!

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#345

Post by whiskyant » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

Answerawake wrote: post #58

"To make the situation worse, the very good engineers, the ones who could truly help build a tech company from the ground up from day 1, were getting offers so exorbitant they could not possibly fathom to turn them down." Ok I have seen this written every now and then. What does this person look like and how do I become one given a willing to sacrifice everything else? I can not find a good answer to this question. E…

The people I've seen that fit the bill, tend to have a really strong knowledge base and are quickly able to understand the relevant code base/systems.

They're then able to easily debug/optimize the system and know how to implement features in the best/simplest/most scalable way almost immediately.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#346

Post by amznthrowaway5 » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

etrk wrote: post #232

jefftk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started at Google my first three full years were $213k, $233k, $287k ( https://www.jefftk.com/money ). Some of this was stock growth (which is not guaranteed and I was lucky there) but I think this sort of pay is reasonably typical for people who are considering a FAANG offer.

You didn't join straight out of school.

He had 3.5 years of experience and those salaries are from 2012-2015. Skilled new grads can pull more than that nowadays.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#347

Post by sp527 » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #237

Alex3917 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do 4 - 6 months of consulting per year then it's very doable, assuming you're a developer.

That means you are spending even less time on your startup. I've been there and done that. And despite eventually raising $20+M in VC (I was extremely lucky), it was a horrible idea that I've never repeated since (raising subsequent VC). The failure modes associated with this are well understood and nearly impossible to avoid. Short version: you can either generate project revenue or product revenue. You build a fund…

Have you written about this phenomenon more extensively elsewhere? Would to love to read about it in detail.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#348

Post by lanstein » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

boring_twenties wrote: post #334

2sk21 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I think $130k might go a lot further in Salt Lake City than $500k elsewhere

If your savings rate is 0, maybe

Suggestion: put your email in your ‘about’ field so someone can remedy that :)

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#349

Post by neltnerb » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #332

neltnerb wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but a week of delays costs the company like Boeing a lot more than just your salary, and they have deadlines to meet and other teams that need your project done. I agree, most startups would view spending a week to avoid a one time $5k expense to be worth it for several years at least. That's why I'm saying the experiences are different. If you're reading a judgment into my comment, there is none, I think doing…

> I agree, most startups would view spending a week to avoid a one time $5k expense to be worth it for several years at least Sorry, what I'm saying above is that I don't agree with that.

Ah, sorry, I misread you. Fair enough, raise to the level you feel is reasonable for your field. I just picked a number that I think is about right for people like me that don't code much.

I am also thinking more "angel+bootstrap+grant" funded startups rather than people already past a Series A; if there's 10 employees with a decent runway the calculation changes a lot versus 3 people getting something off the ground. I think the latter is more typical of a startup for the first several years.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#350

Post by EdwardDiego » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

throwawaybbb wrote: post #276

EdwardDiego wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several terabytes a day, but it varies, hence why I love the auto-scaling.

That's 10tb = 10000gb = 10000/24/60/60 = .11gb/s. My 2015 desktop could handle that. Where do you work? I'd like to pitch my radical idea of edge consolidated cloud computing.

The inevitable comment lol. I'm sure it could. To clarify, when the app scales, it's pods (container instances) that are scaled, not necessarily machines,that is managed separately by k8s. Depending on how much of the cluster is currently being used.

Yep, we could handle it easily on one machine, if we gave it unfettered access to all the resource, but our throughput varies during the time of day, so dedicating a machine to it to handle the peak throughput wouldn't make financial sense at 3am at night. So it's far simpler to scale pods with known resource usage as needed.

It also helps prevent issues when throughput suddenly doubles because of a business decision that you're left out of the loop on.

So autoscaling pods is ideal for our use case.