Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Working for a startup makes less sense

zainamro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 392 posts

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#361

Post by mghfreud »

chris_t_98 wrote: post #337
mghfreud wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just made a move to a small (~1000 people company) from Google and I feel you. The code quality is terrible, they do not write maintainable/modular code and worse, they do not do design. They suffer from this(there is always another corner case that they did not take into account because they did not communicate well with the customer) but they still do not take any steps towards the right direction.

What sector is the small company? Why did you decide to move there from google?

It's in finance/trading. I only worked for 2 of the FANG where I focused on tiny optimizations of an infrastructure software (where a couple percent improvement would directly result in a promo). I wanted to build something from scratch but did not want to move to a startup (because of the issued mentioned in the post). Now I am designing a new system for this company and I will lead the implementation of the project as well. This is like working for a startup (with all the good and bad sides) except I still make FANG level (even higher) income.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#362

Post by throwawaybbb »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #350
throwawaybbb wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mac…

Were talking about $5k of hardware to meet your needs 20 times over with the new threadrippers.

Is your aws bill really under $500 a month?

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#363

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

goatinaboat wrote: post #318
DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same thing in biotech startups. Some people are meant to be part of smaller, bootstrapping companies and others are meant to be part of more established, good business corporations. The most interesting people are the ones who get in early and stick with it, growing along with the company.

The most interesting people are the ones who get in early and stick with it, growing along with the company It’s pretty rare for this to actually happen in my experience. Generally an early engineer will grow and be ready to take up the role of VP Engineering or even CTO and instead the VC’s will parachute in one of their cronies once the hard work has already been done.

Completely agree. The issue I see is that at that higher levels, opex is more important for success than familiarity with the specific science. So the people who "grew-up" with the company, who would have detailed understanding of the science, would not necessarily have opex skills commensurate with the requirements the larger organization now requires.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#364

Post by s1artibartfast »

boring_twenties wrote: post #356
s1artibartfast wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? 3k a month is a lot of fun money.

Even assuming 0 tax we're talking more likw 2200-2600 and there are gonna be some taxes, especially in CA. Assuming this is investment income of course, and not just spending down the principal, which obviously wouldn't work. So probably under 2k, and it's not fun money, it's everything but housing starting with food and transportation. Doable? I guess. Fun? Eye of the beholder, I'd say. And that's assuming kids don'…

I wholeheartedly agree 50K is a miserable salary in the Bay, but the original premise was $1M in the bank:

>I feel like it is hard for people to say what they truly love before they have at least $1M in their bank account. If you have FU money, your view on working at a FAANG vs building a startup can change. You will find it easier to know what you truly LOVE

The question wasn't if you can retire, or live of the investment income, but one of perceived finical security. If someone is too afraid to try working at a startup with $1M cash in the bank, it is unlikely they ever will.

Even if someone has kids and family, $1M provides a huge buffer to find a new job if the startup doesn't work out. Maybe 20 years is a stretch, but I am utterly baffled that other posters think this would only cover 2 years of spending...

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#365

Post by notSupplied »

sokoloff wrote: post #162
bb88 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose I have a company idea, maybe an early prototype and manage to raise $2MM at $10MM post-money valuation. The investors have a 20% stake for their investment. The rich technically have less personal risk -- that's because, well, they're rich. GP arguably took more personal risk, took less pay, and created the machinery that made the company profitable. If you want to say that the original $2M is paid out befo…

Do you read any of the latter in my argument above as to why liquidation preferences exist? It seems to me that you built and eviscerated a strawman right in front of us.

Imagine if you had a very deal-term savvy crew of engineer hires. They then proceed claim that "the compensation cut we have taken by working here directly offsets cash you would otherwise have to spend/raise. This should count as a capital investment and should therefore entitle us to 1x preference just like for the other investors have."

Would you think this is a legitimate claim?

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#366

Post by tomp »

sokoloff wrote: post #146
throwaway7951 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fuck being an employee for a startup so they can bleed you dry. Could not agree more, and this is my stance which I will happily share with anyone who cares to listen. I was first employee (and only engineer) at a startup which dangled 'equity' in front of me but didn't deliver. Contract was so full of gotchas that the path to me seeing some sort of actual payoff was astronomically unlikely. 90 day exercise windows…

Liquidation preferences for investors putting actual cash into a business exist for a reason. Suppose I have a company idea, maybe an early prototype and manage to raise $2MM at $10MM post-money valuation. The investors have a 20% stake for their investment. If I decide the next day, “Nah, it’s not going to work; let’s close the company and distribute the assets to the shareholders,” it would be manifestly unfair for…

As an employee (who’s also investing actual money, i.e. the higher salary I’m not making elsewhere, as well as labour & time) I also want “liquidation preferences” - 500k per year of working, vested monthly, senior to investor’s preferences - and it’s only fair, as I’m both investing and risking much more!

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#367

Post by tomp »

golergka wrote: post #229
bb88 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose I have a company idea, maybe an early prototype and manage to raise $2MM at $10MM post-money valuation. The investors have a 20% stake for their investment. The rich technically have less personal risk -- that's because, well, they're rich. GP arguably took more personal risk, took less pay, and created the machinery that made the company profitable. If you want to say that the original $2M is paid out befo…

> The rich technically have less personal risk It's silly to automatically assume that "investor" or "capitalist" is someone rich. Chances are, the VC get their money from banks and pension funds who, in the end, invest money of people who earn much less than an average startup employee.

The point is that they’re (or at least should be) diversifying their investments, in contrast to most employees, who only have a single job.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#368

Post by fulafel »

throwawaybbb wrote: post #362
EdwardDiego wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mac…

Were talking about $5k of hardware to meet your needs 20 times over with the new threadrippers. Is your aws bill really under $500 a month?

On AWS you would be paying for many other things besides elastic CPU power. CPU and bandwidth is infamously expensive there. (But I don't think AWS was mentioned anywhere in this thread...)

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#369

Post by abacadaba »

redis_mlc wrote: post #340
abacadaba wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never having visited myself, this is what I don't get about the bay area. How is it still a functioning city? How far out do you have to live to be able to afford rent on a non-tech bro salary?

You posed some simple-sounding questions, but the Bay Area is a very complex real estate market to understand. So I'll just give you some simple answers. If you don't already own a house, it's not a functioning area for families, or those wanting to own a house, aka "priced out forever." Commuting farther is an option in other parts of the USA, but not the Bay Area, since it's constrained by hills and the Bay. The no…

but why would anyone do this not making a stupid salary? i don't get the appeal why anyone would put up with that just to have the privilege of serving coffee to techies in a formerly cool city. (not to imply that techies aren't cool)

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#370

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

echelon wrote: post #333
ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Kubernetes is a solution worse than the problem. > Not if you're a 1,000+ engineer org with an SOA. The fact that most FAANGs (Amazon especially) developed their own systems that are not Kubernetes, and often much simpler, should make you think. Many don't even use containers - by design. (Source: direct experience)

They didn't adopt Kubernetes because it didn't exist at the time. The original paper came out, what, four years ago? These companies had deployment needs that weren't at the time met by off the shelf open source software.

> They didn't adopt Kubernetes because it didn't exist at the time. The original paper came out, what, four years ago?

That's not what I wrote.

I wrote that the systems they came up with are much, much less bloated and provide very comparable features - if not better.

Post reply on HN