51–60 of 392 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Written by a VC trying to get engineers to join the startups he's invested in.
For a VC, scraping off net innovation minus startup-wages is a win. It's a lose for the employees, of course.
Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…
I've had kind of the opposite experience. At the startup we were really sluggish it was hard to learn anything because we were jumping into any possible business opportunity before even thinking about ROI because money was always tight. 80% of the time was wasted supporting clients and fixing bugs that were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early. I think the biggest difference is money. A well funded…
Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. I worked at a large tech company for 3 years before joining a startup, and learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company. I was able to design and implement a service in a matter of days, whereas at the large tech company those 3 days would easily spent c…
Yes, I think it's possible that you learn faster at startup. But it is ridiculous to say that you "learned more in the first month at the startup than the full 3 years at the large tech company." This just makes me think that either you are exaggerating a lot, or you were highly unproductive at the big company than most people. In either cases, I end up not being able to take your comment seriously.
At a big company you are given a slice and you really have to push to get anything more. I've had the experience where no work is assigned because approving anything takes time and once the work comes it is extremely easy to finish immediately because you have sat through weeks of meetings reexplaining everything to different groups get approval to change a form.
At one startup by the end of the day I was already learning four different languages/tools.
Now I imagine places like fangs would be amazing places to learn. If you ever work in healthcare most of your day will be explaining why this is a small change / very safe and you learn very little.
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…
I love how the article ranked right above this one is titled "Downsides to working at a tech giant".
Written by a VC trying to get engineers to join the startups he's invested in.
Actually for most of the piece he was pretty straightforward about making sure you get equity if you want to get paid upon company success.
What has changed is that genuine equity in startups isn't being offered as readily as it was ~15 years ago (and it is notable that the missed opportunity he describes is that far in the past).
They are, given the exorbitant salaries, financially set enough to afford the startup risk, and there's a good chance they'd like to see some more agility again.
But 1) you'll need to stop lowballing equity for hires, and 2) you need to get used to the idea that it's not going to be an extension of university life - these people have all better things in their spare time than playing beer pong.
Bonus points: Offer an office instead of cubicle mania. Bonus bonus points: Make sure you hire a diverse workforce from the get-go.
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…
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. Everybody seems to have their own opinion.
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.
The tricks that companies have used to dilute engineers' equity and to have different classes of stock are coming back to bite those companies.
To be fair it’s mostly been the VCs learning how to extract more value and forcing that on the companies. The VCs have naturally gotten better at what they do, which is bring returns to their LPs. The consequence is that they get more value from exits than they used to which comes at the expense of the employees and founders.