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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#351

Post by KaiserPro »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #320
bluGill wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait so you got an offer at a FAANG for one level, and you negotiated to go up a level in pay, but not actually go up a level?

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#352

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

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…

I started hanging out more here after Reddit cracked down on anonymity.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#353

Post by fragmede »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #91
NoboruWataya wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups This is certainly me. Generally interested in tech (and many of the other things that HNers seem to be interested in these days), but no real interest in startups. Hope I am not ruining HN for the old timers. I started using this place a lot more in…

Relative out-timer here. I came here because of smart people having smart discussions about life, universe, and everything (tech or otherwise). HN both got me to drink the startup kool-aid early on, and then cured me from it later on, ultimately making me a startup-skeptic (and infecting me with an unhealthy dose of cynicism). I guess this is how growing up looks like :). Ultimately, I still hang around HN because of…

Relatively :)

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#354

Post by Nifty3929 »

cushychicken wrote: post #144
clumsysmurf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years > That never was sustainable, I think Another aspect with this being (un)sustainable is lack of affordable healthcare. I bet many people would take more risks if they didn't have to worry about this aspect of their lives.

The Swedes sure seem to think so. Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone, and they’re convinced that it’s that aspect of the social safety net that help prop up that high level of personal risk taking.

I wonder what the Norwegians think?

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#355

Post by dirtybird04 »

swat535 wrote: post #168
nick__m wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian in a low COL area working somewhere with almost absolute job security, a pension plan and plenty of opportunities for learning (I have a few 3 hours sessions on quantum computer starting next week :D ) I don't care much for the SV startup ... I am here for the selection of interesting articles and the high quality comments when it's not a political thread (those threads have less rational lower quality…

If I were to make an off topic comment and by no means I am picking on you personally, however as another Canadian, I find this general attitude of Canadians towards innovation unsettling and dare I say it's the reason why we are always playing catch up with US. It's also the number one reason why we are bleeding top talent to Americans which results our nation great economy loss. I suppose you can argue that we have…

As another Canadian (who is living in the US and working in tech), this is just naive on so many levels.

Firstly, unicorn valuations does not necessarily mean innovation. There is nothing innovative about the Salesforces and Zendesks of the world, they're great market fits in a very profitable corporate world.

Secondly, the whole world is playing catchup to US which it comes to money, not just Canada.

Lastly, the valuations & money in US are a result of an insane ethos (working hard, breaking shit), very corporate-friendly government policies, and a very capitalist society.

Canada isn't perfect, our housing is way too expensive and we'll always play second fiddle to USD. But Canadian society is miles better than anything you'll see in US, and for that I'm forever grateful. Giving up that peace and security is just not worth it for any amount of money.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#356

Post by hackitup7 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #271
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also everyone: FAANG employees are better than everyone else! Rather: FAANG employees are pushed into startups by VCs.

How so? They get paraded around as tokens of competence by VCs?

No, the VCs tell the founder/CEO to hire people who've done it before to help pay down the risks of unknown unknowns (which are real – this advice is overly simplistic but isn't conceptually wrong). This translates into them hiring from FAANGs if they take the advice semi-literally.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#357

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

nostradumbasp wrote: post #172
ludwigvan wrote: post #36

Most engineers figured out that the options/stocks of startups are worthless.

9 times out of 10 the company sells, performs a reduction in force, or goes under before they vest. 1 time out of 1000 the company is worth something and remains operable over a 5 year period. Rules of thumb for the green engineers: - Take salary/health insurance over stock in almost all cases. - At some companies employees who are greener and greedier will fight/sabotage all their peers to get rid of them, is this t…

> If a company "offers you the chance to buy their stock" after X months/years don't do it

This generalizes to a rule of thumb, "Don't accept any deal you didn't go looking for." Same as a trapdoor firewall doesn't accept any incoming connections.

Someone on the street offers to sell you a bridge, say no. You get brightly-colored letters from your credit union selling you car insurance, recycle them. Your friend wants you to buy a bowling alley with him, refuse.

It almost always works.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#358

Post by fragmede »

Analemma_ wrote: post #311
dsugarman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

"Jack squat" is still in the millions of dollars for holders of a golden ticket, but it is fundamentally a gamble.

> it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value to the economy in the last fifteen years

"basically" is what Wikipedia calls a weasel word. If you're determined to look at the world through a particular lense, by discarding any points to the contrary, you're basically right. That's not the same as actually being right, but it comes down to attitude and world view. If you believe the world is shit, you can find countless examples of it being shit. Because sometimes it is. If you want to have hope and believe in better, you can find those examples too. Because they're also there. Life isn't a math problem though, so you can't take 100 misery points and combine them with 200 hope points and end up feeling happy.

As far as the people at the "top" being amoral psychopaths. It's the amoral psychopaths who make the most noise. A humble quiet person funding soup kitchens and not talking about it isn't going to ping on anybody's radar. Yeah the psychopaths exist, but so do the helpers.

no one wants to believe they're the grump ruining everyone's fun, but would you take all that emotional effort to go challenge the grumps, who are just going to argue, aren't going to appreciate anything you do, and are just a bunch of cynical unhappy assholes, or would you just go find a different digital lawn? (which may just be one thread over, having fun with the idea of an electrostatic wall)

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#359

Post by greenie_beans »

greenie_beans wrote: post #204

buncha cookie cutter folks on here who feel safe with their high compensation while they sit at their standing desk and drink their hot green tea. then they pick up their child from private school and kiss their wife who secretly finds them incredibly boring.

sorry this was snarky, still reeling from some guy telling me i'm wrong for trying to be an entrepreneur and instead i should just collect a big tech paycheck. both options are valid, only one is valid for me.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#360

Post by hackitup7 »

pjc50 wrote: post #86
diggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory I wouldn't say I'm an old-timer by any metrics, but even back in 2012 when I first discovered and joined HN, I remember it was pretty clear in the community (and people I spoke to around me) you shouldn't go to work at a startup if you were looking for "a lot + safe" money. Sure, you could belong to the 0.001% and work on the n…

Here's a question: what's the list of startups fitting the criteria of - after 2008 Great Financial Crisis - actual startup, not spinoff from larger company - financially successful exit - early non-founder employees made a substantial amount of money?

If you look at the companies that went public from 2018-2021 (boom/tail end of the latest "bubble"), you should assume that all of those generated somewhere in the range of 25-500+ non-founders who cleared $1m+ worth of stock pre-tax (a small-mid cap SaaS will be on the lower end, Uber/AirBnB will be at the higher end).

It's harder to know from acquisitions, but I'd guess that most of those with sale prices >$1b generated ~10-250 non-founders with $1m+ share packages. I think that the Qualtrics founders said that they minted 250 millionaires from their initial sale to SAP.

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