Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#41

Post by hadeharian » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

facetube wrote: post #15

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

This should really be "8 reasons to turn down that startup job as your first job" as most of the bullet points are really only geared towards someone in or leaving college. This should be obvious from the website's name but without context it took me a minute before I realized. That being said the #7 point of "The world needs fixing, not disrupting" seems to lose sight of what disruption really is and conflates it wi…

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time…

" Wart removal is a really common one" Have you tried duct tape? It's offers higher chances of success.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#42

Post by facetube » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #36

facetube wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time…

> have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? I'm confused. Is this a hypothetical where the employee doesn't have short- and long-term disability insurance? The practical answer is to have insurance to cover risks.

This is the realistic scenario, where non-W2 service industry jobs provide few if any benefits, and individual policies are expensive, complicate and often require individual underwriting. Individual underwriting can require proof of a stable income (they pay a percentage of this in benefits if you get sick), and many have exclusions that can be difficult for people to fully understand, let alone compare against their own risk factors (if they're even understood). Other factors: affordability, exclusion due to medical history.

Take a look at the "service" lines in this 2014 BLS report: http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-4/pdf/disability-insuranc.... 76 percent of the service industry jobs they surveyed provided no access to short-term or long-term disability benefits whatsoever. And this is probably optimistic, it includes lots of non-contract W-2 employees. Where employer-facilitated plans are available, most employers provide them at zero or near-zero net cost to the employee (take a look at access vs. participation).

SSDI exists, but has a five-month waiting period and (IIRC) pretty substantial past-income restrictions.

I'd love to see employers get out of the health care arena altogether, but I'm also not convinced private and/or for-profit insurance plans can completely solve the problem.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#43

Post by facetube » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

jrk_ wrote: post #38

j-pb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, you could come to Europe, found your startup here and get free healthcare. I would guess immigration isn't that hard for a highly skilled computer scientist. My meds cost 100€ per day (MS) and I have to worry about my disease but not about paying for treatment.

Not sure which part of Europe you are speaking of, but I have to pay around 15% of my income for the (mandatory) insurance, which then provides me with (almost) unlimited health care. If you are unemployed it is a lot harder to get health benefits, especially if you are a foreigner and haven't worked (==payed for the insurance) before. Just saying, that it's not like "come here, we have free health care and everythin…

One of our (US) employers pays about 10% - 15% of our combined total compensation (read: salary plus "other personnel expenses") for a $250 deductible health insurance plan. And that's just the insurance premium. Dental is extra. 20% co-pay. Bills are always a surprise and full of errors. Sometimes the same service is coded in radically different ways, leading to claim denials and hundreds of dollars of variation in what's billed. It can take six months for a provider to get paid. People here routinely finance life-preserving medical treatment using credit cards. The per-practice administrative overhead for dealing with private insurance claims is estimated by quite a few (peer-reviewed) papers at between 15% and 30%.

If the wrong one of us changes jobs, all of this comes crashing down and I'm back to reading 200-page policies, figuring out what network I'm now in, and trying to determine if I can still see my normal doctor.

15% of after-tax income for no-questions-asked health care, sans any form of billing, sounds like a utopia to me.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#44

Post by facetube » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

hadeharian wrote: post #41

facetube wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time…

" Wart removal is a really common one" Have you tried duct tape? It's offers higher chances of success.

I've heard that. I haven't ever had them and can't speak personal from experience, but I've heard from a couple docs that cantharidin works really well, and cryotherapy ranges from might-work to total-garbage. Only downside is the whole "high potential for toxicity and misuse" thing; apparently people have taken cantharidin internally as a supposed aphrodisiac, which is clearly a terrible thing to do with a blistering agent.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#45

Post by spamizbad » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

Boy do I disagree with these.

You're probably going to see more senior Agency people grumbling about startups for two reasons:

1) Agencies are getting priced-out of the market for talented designers. Go on glassdoor and compare how much mid-level designers at agencies make compared to tech companies. It's close to double. As an aside, #7 is really rich. There are tons of design firms out there who utilize of 1099 designers (some with masters degrees!) who gross less than 38K a year for full-time work. Mike's Mule isn't one of those companies, but the design industry isn't without it's own 1099 abuses.

2) The startup world requires "product designers" who have a specific set of design skills that agencies aren't well equipped to provide. Namely- ongoing data-driven product development (as opposed to "Just enough research"), systemized/componentized view of design (as opposed to "The customer is always right/Take what I have created for you or I'll walk like Saul Bass"), and a more collaborative "agile" workflow (As opposed to waterfall). Based on my experience as an engineer working with agencies, they are reluctant to allow their designers to directly interact with engineering teams -- we always had a PM or an senior designer (who wasn't on our project) act as this mediator, putting us in a time-boxed meeting when in reality we just needed to sit down with 1 designer and just work through a few issues over Because of this, agencies aren't just losing talent: They're also losing potential clients. Startups tend to prefer tight-knit product teams, where the designer is (or at the very least SHOULD BE!) a major component.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#46

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

nerdwaller wrote: post #39

sown wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. But guess who gets the glory? :(

Frankly that's a potentially dangerous state of mind. Impulse you rather accomplish something little and get the glory or be on the team that got man on the moon? In my opinion, it's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit. You're stronger with others than on your own.

> Impulse you rather

Not sure I understand.

Anyways, I've been around engineering teams for a while now and here's what I mean: there's always some principal engineer or fellow (in the terms of a title) that is greatly esteemed and admired because of decades of progressively larger and larger feature creation and system architecture/leadership.

If all I ever do is fix bugs -- forever in my career -- it means I'm not going to build anything and I don't get to be on the team that gets the people to the stars because that team is reserved for aforementioned team of people who have built a lot.

I probably shouldn't be a programmer anymore since all I'm good for is fixing bugs.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#47

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #24

sown wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. But guess who gets the glory? :(

If you want the glory, you're either in the wrong position or the wrong industry.

I've been around engineering teams for a while now and here's what I mean: there's always some principal engineer or fellow (in the terms of a title) that is greatly esteemed and admired because of decades of progressively larger and larger feature creation and system architecture/leadership.

If all I ever do is fix bugs -- forever in my career -- it means I'm not going to build anything and I don't get to be on the team that gets the people to the stars because that team is reserved for aforementioned team of people who have built a lot.

I probably shouldn't be a programmer any more since all I'm good for is fixing bugs.

In the end you're probably right: I'm too dumb to get any better and maybe I should have just joined the Navy.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#48

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 2:11 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #22

sown wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. But guess who gets the glory? :(

Not you, but it's not you regardless of where you work if you're an employee. Glory comes from public recognition of your work. If that's what you're looking for, start something yourself. Or contribute to an open source project. Or write a book. Do something that will have your name put on it. If you're working for someone else, and it's their name on the product, ignore glory and insist on money.

> ... start something yourself. Or contribute to an open source project. Or write a book. Do something that will have your name put on it.

You say this like I've not thought about it or tried it myself. :)

It's difficult since I don't know what I don't know. I stumble around trying to figure out what I need to figure out and come to realize that I don't know what goes where.

It's also difficult because of sheer time. I spend 13-14 hours going to work, being at work, or coming home from work. Whatever suggestion you have I've probably thought about or tried, so do be considerate if you decide to reply. ;)