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Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#531

Post by oceanman888 »

nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

I find it quite amusing that it is normal to find non-junior engineers getting paid 40K / year here in japan.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#532

Post by dunpeal »

toephu2 wrote: post #522
dunpeal wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is that the difference isn't between companies - MSFT vs FB - but between areas : Seattle vs Bay. I'm mostly aware of pay in the Bay and a few similar areas, and it is largely equivalent at the levels posted here.

I'm not sure why you are trying to dispute my facts when it's clear you have never worked at any of the above companies based on your comments. Even in Seattle it's well known that FB pays more than MSFT. So your theory about top tech needing to pay top dollar etc, doesn't hold.

You made the following claim:

> There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them

This claim is false.

There are a lot more than "a handful" of companies paying $400k for senior engineers. MSFT will also pay you this amount in the Bay.

Overall, top tech pay about the same. You say FB pays better than MS in Seattle, and perhaps that is the case (as I stated above, I'm mostly familiar with the Bay, not so much with Seattle). In the Bay, the pay is very similar. There could be many reasons why FB would pay more than MSFT in the Seattle: for example, MSFT has a huge office there, and FB probably only a small one. So it's a pretty wise strategy for FB to offer larger pay for the small amount of positions they have there, and in this manner poach some of the best talent in Seattle, while for MSFT it would be prohibitively expensive to raise salaries across the board at Redmond.

That still doesn't change the big picture, which is that top tech pay is largely equivalent, outside of a few anomalies here and there.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#533

Post by tlb »

inimino wrote: post #345
shamino wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, when your company gets sold, and your founder worked on the company for 1-2 years before you did, but they walk away with millions and you walk away with the equivalent of a Camry - I question whether equity is not the solution. In terms of market rate salary, the startup will never match FAANG. Seriously. I'm talking about Sign-on bonus, annual bonus, re-ups, benefits (like a heart-transplant…

> "In terms of market rate salary, the startup will never match FAANG." > "if enough people were educated on how much a bad deal being an early employee was, we could tip the scale a bit." Yes. The reason why startup compensation is much lower are because of perception (people aren't rational) and only a shift in perception will shift the balance. The reason why equity is not the solution is that the default outcome…

You're assuming that VCs can evaluate the prospects of a company better than potential employees. The reverse is often true, especially for startups where the main risks are technical.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#534

Post by kilroy123 »

john_moscow wrote: post #92
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

I think the open secret is that in 2018 most people who go work for startups are those who simply couldn't get a better offer from one of the big players.

I don't know about that. I refuse to live in the Bay area and have no desire to live and work for one of the "big players".

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#535

Post by qaq »

dunpeal wrote: post #365
inimino wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In terms of market rate salary, the startup will never match FAANG." > "if enough people were educated on how much a bad deal being an early employee was, we could tip the scale a bit." Yes. The reason why startup compensation is much lower are because of perception (people aren't rational) and only a shift in perception will shift the balance. The reason why equity is not the solution is that the default outcome…

> If a funded company (series A, say) is offering you equity as a large part of comp, you have to ask yourself why the VCs don't buy back that equity for the cost of paying market rates for talent. Because the company wants to align your incentives with its own success, of course. That's the original reason why equity was offered to employees in SV, back in the good old chip-making days. According to your argument, e…

It makes 0 economic sense for developers the alignment thing is marketing BS. Go to the best VC in the field and offer him/her to bet all of the funds money on a single deal see how hard he/she laughs at you. If you exclude top 5 VC firms the whole VC field is net losers and that people who's full time job is to pick winners

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#536

Post by brendonjohn »

saryant wrote: post #461
jzl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400 is starting to push into standard deviation territory but 300 (total comp) is absolutely right in the center of the bell curve for a mid-level engineer (not a rock star), from everything I've seen and heard both first and second hand. In the valley, anyway.

That's where I am. I'm pushing $300k total comp at Twitter as a senior SWE out in Colorado. Before this I was first employee of a startup that eventually sold to Google. Even if I'd stuck around for the acquisition I'd have gotten $0 from my stock options—employee options were wiped out completely. Why put up with that bullshit when a big publicly-traded company will reliably deposit large sums of money into my bank…

Speaking as someone that has stock options... how did your employee options get wiped out?

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#537

Post by nautilus12 »

kwindla wrote: post #146
shamino wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that since we are drawn to startups, we tend to read material about startup by startups. And startups would never say joining one is bad, since they need employees. And they would never make it easily known that founders get most of the benefits here. They throw things around like "great culture" and "office perks" but at the end of the day, they walk away with millions and you walk away wiser. Saying…

I'm a startup founder and will happily say that if you are an engineer, in Silicon Valley, in 2018, and you are maximizing for income, then you should not work at an early-stage startup. I did some hand-wavy math, here: https://medium.com/@kwindla/what-kind-of-silicon-valley-comp... Dan Luu did some, too, here: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

Unfortunately Im in the midwest and Im interested in something very niche (operationalizing data science using hadoop, spark, etc) so i would have to move to SV to work at a non startup company and honestly I just dont want to.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#538

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

eismcc wrote: post #415
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #25

Open plan offices and general lack of a quiet, contemplative, professional working environment is the hugest con to me, even huger than the compensation issues pointed out by other commentors. I would look to start-ups to be leading the effort to improve industry practices for software development ergonomy and human-centric working spaces (i.e. focus on privacy, quiet and individual customizability). But instead, sta…

Private offices are great, sort of. I haven’t had one in the last 15yrs in both big and small companies. I find it surprising that you have had access to this “benefit.”

Between 2008 and 2012 I worked in 3 different places where all developers and researchers had their own offices (interns were paired usually). It wasn’t even a second thought, it was just baked into the culture that obviously the work requires huge blocks of hours spent alone, privately engaged in contemplative work.

One was a defense research lab, one was a boutique company that makes computational fluid dynamics software, and one was an education technology company.

The ed tech company went through a huge remodeling effort to rebrand as more of a straight up tech company, spending bonkers amounts of money to tear down offices in favor of open plan designs, despite outrage, protests and resignations from longterm staff, especially in some of the offices where there was no planned headcount increase and no engineering presence (like the Columbus, Ohio, office).

I ended up leaving the final place to take a more lucrative job in finance in a company with high-walled cubicles, and couldn’t believe how distracting and frustrating the ambient noise and discomfort from headphones was. These days I would give my left arm to have even just high-walled cubicles.

Since then I took jobs in two places with fully open-plan shared desk areas and I flat out will never do it again. It’s just too unhealthy and too counterproductive to even bother with it at all.

Whatever my next job is, it has to give private offices, end of story.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#539

Post by dunpeal »

toephu2 wrote: post #523
dunpeal wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm obviously including RSU in the "bonus" portion, in addition to cash. There are also companies who pay these kind of total bonus figures in cash, but in big tech it's typically paid in stocks. I'm pulling these numbers from direct contact with recruiters in these companies, and in some cases job offers. Incidentally, there's an anonymous reply from a Facebook engineer under one of my other comments in this thread.…

So? That's one engineer. I said top 20%. You act like the median engineer is pulling 400k at FB. They aren't.

The median employee at FB is making $240k. We can safely assume the median engineer is making more than that.

I never claimed that median engineer is making $400k. This entire thread is about the senior engineers and their payout after 4-5 of working at a company like FB vs at a startup.

If you could do good work as an engineer at a startup for 4-5 years, pulling $400k at FB is very realistic for you. With the median being $240k, it's not going to be a whole lot less.

I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup.

Bottom line: if you can stick it out as a senior engineer at a startup for the 4-5 years it takes your options to vest, then you can realistically pull $400k/yr at FB. Except at the startup, you'd make maybe $180k base, and your "bonus" would be your bottom-preference 0.01% equity that would almost certainly be worth 0.

Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?

#540

Post by majormajor »

aphextron wrote: post #6
nieksand wrote: post #2

Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…

>The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. I can second this. But it's not just the m…

I've had unlimited PTO at a place with double digit employees, and one with four-figure employees.

These issues around having vacation days "approved" seems like a function of your bosses, not your PTO plan. If you have to get your time approved, it doesn't matter the size of the bucket you're pulling from.

My experience is much more "hey I've got a couple weeks off coming up, by the way, I'm thinking of [x, y, z] for making sure everyone's up to speed while i'm out" and no pushback.

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