421–430 of 583 posts
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> 2) impress him enough that he’s willing to offer you $200 million when you’re 23 I think the answer to that is "Go to Stanford". For literally 99.999% of people that is never possible.
I think you're not giving the meritocracy at MIT enough credit. I went to a state university.
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The reason why is the math changed. The gap between startup and tech giant is much larger now than it was in 2010. Also, unless you have insider access and join a very risky angel stage company, the likelihood of getting a good package that makes sense is low, very low. Also public companies have shown to get +3x gains, which can make the math even worse. Example from personal experience that is very lucky in startup…
> The reason why is the math changed. The gap between startup and tech giant is much larger now than it was in 2010. This is true but also kind of depressing. With the means of software production cheaply available to everybody is that stable job at a tech giant really the pinnacle of the software engineering career? I understand that everybody's got the bills to pay, kids to raise etc. and maybe I'm a bit naive but…
There is a lot of them, and they can be very rewarding to work at. While they'll have less compensation, it's in real money and they're often located in smaller cities with lower cost of living. You get to work directly with clients/customers to provide value to them with your skillset. The pace is steady, and what you work on can have a lot of longevity which is nice. Software can feel somewhat ephemeral at times, written one month, thrown away the next. Working on a long term project means it feels worthwhile to go the extra mile.
TL;DR: He doesn't have that 200M to start with, that is the imaginary money he never earned.
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Over half of them worked for Google within the past two years. This is across New York, San Francisco, and Mountain View. One of them said they had a friend that wanted to become a manager and they were made a manager just like that.
This can't be true. I just went through a 2 day required training as a new manager. This is required training that has to be done within the first 6 months of you becoming a manager. This has been a requirement for many years. Source: I'm a googler Edit: just to add, the same training is required for TLMs. The moment you get a direct report the training becomes mandatory. I suspect there must be some miscommunication…
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Founders should be willing to give a lot more equity to the first employees. I don’t get the logic of not doing this. You want your engineers to feel as if they have ownership in the equity that you’re building. It’s such an easy way to keep engineers engaged and productive that it baffles my mind that it’s not done more widely. I hate working for BigTech. Startups expect too much and compensate very little. The swee…
We usually encourage folks to give at least 10% of the equity to the first 10 employees. That's what Stripe did and it worked well. That number is going up over time, so I can report at least a little bit of improvement, though certainly not fast enough.
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The reason why is the math changed. The gap between startup and tech giant is much larger now than it was in 2010. Also, unless you have insider access and join a very risky angel stage company, the likelihood of getting a good package that makes sense is low, very low. Also public companies have shown to get +3x gains, which can make the math even worse. Example from personal experience that is very lucky in startup…
> The reason why is the math changed. The gap between startup and tech giant is much larger now than it was in 2010. This is true but also kind of depressing. With the means of software production cheaply available to everybody is that stable job at a tech giant really the pinnacle of the software engineering career? I understand that everybody's got the bills to pay, kids to raise etc. and maybe I'm a bit naive but…
Yes, because economies of scale greatly benefit big companies.
Just because software is free to scale, in the sense that a cp command doesn't cost you anything, doesn't mean that making money from software is free to scale.
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I don’t understand... why is the goal to convince a bunch of naive youngsters to work for you at 1/10 their value? You shouldn’t exist unless you can pay competitively for the same people, end of story. Until then, don’t hire
The fact is that there are a bunch of younger programmers willing to work for a startup regardless of the comp. Founders naturally try to exploit this.
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Google and FB were paying less when they were founded than most startups I see today, adjusted for inflation. The difference is that now Google and FB pay way more . More than startups could ever dream of competing with. Everyone I know at FB or Google is making $225k+, with the average/median being around $300k/yr. Absolutely no way new startups can play ball with those salaries, and FB/GOOG certainly weren’t paying…
> The difference is that now Google and FB pay way more. More than startups could ever dream of competing with. Logically speaking, the only way that a company can pay more and still be profitable is if they produce value more efficiently. On a general, macro level. So, if startup founders cannot even dream of providing either cash or equity (adjusted to risk) comparable to the big-techs, does this mean that startups…
sed 's/produce more value/extract more wealth from dominant positions and regulation then control/'
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Absolutely this. A lot of startups these days skimp by hiring sub-FAANG SWEs with less than 5 yoe, and it shows in their products. Lack of product maturity, bad engineering (worst horror story I’ve heard recently is Wayfair), resume driven development / over-engineering / cargo culting, huge teams to work on simple features. All so they can hire two middle-skill 22 year olds instead of a skilled 35 year old. If you’r…
I thought FAANG weren't hiring 35-year-olds?