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Working for a startup makes less sense

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#61

Post by harimau777 »

neltnerb wrote: post #39
yoz-y wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference is whether you see learning to do meaningful things on a shoestring budget to be itself a useful skill. Boeing won't care if you save the project $5k by spending a week of your time coming up with a clever workaround. The week was more important than the $5k. Same for a high level role generally. But not getting work done for a week because your boss won't approve a $500 purchase... that would be frust…

On the other hand, it seems like a savvy engineer could work that into a story to tell a Boeing interviewer about how they took the initiative to think outside the box and develop a solution that saved the day when the team was under a time constraint.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#62

Post by m463 »

wonjohnchoi wrote: post #32
aeternum wrote: post #19

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.

1 month vs 3 years might be inflated a bit for learning, but then again it might fit.

At a startup you might get core technologies going in a month, while at a big tech company the timescale might be closer to years.

I worked at a startup and the focus was on the work. I got to make decisions on what to work with, what technologies to adopt, and then I had to get them running. I worked on core technologies.

At a large company you rarely get to do this. You usually have large systems in production, have very large teams, and get to work on an established code base adding a feature or fixing something.

An interesting exercise at a large company might be to look at the version control checkins from the beginnging. The features at the beginning of the log probably went in a lot faster from fewer contributors.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#63

Post by rmah »

Answerawake wrote: post #58

"To make the situation worse, the very good engineers, the ones who could truly help build a tech company from the ground up from day 1, were getting offers so exorbitant they could not possibly fathom to turn them down." 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. E…

First, be smart. Very very smart. And be able to demonstrate your smartness at the drop of a hat under stressful conditions.

Second, attend a top tier "name" university like MIT, Stanford or Carnegie Mellon and major in a related discipline.

Third, do some side work in your chosen field that can be shown off to prospective employers.

Fourth, learn how to present yourself well (for interviews and such).

That's generally speaking, of course. Exceptions exist.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#64

Post by avl999 »

It has always been mindboggling to me that startups are still so all in on the Bay Area. Most problems mentioned in the article go away if/when you are willing to staff developers in an area that is not as ridiculous in terms of cost of living as the Bay area. According to StackExchange data, the 50th percentile pay for a Full Stack Developer with a Bachelors degree and 3 years experience (a profile that would seem reasonable for a startup hire) in the Bay area is $140k, whereas in the St Louis and Minneapolis it is $89k. Not sure why for many startups Bay area seems to be the only option. If they staffed their developers in a place like St Louis they'd be able to avoid the SF salaries and still pay in the 75th percentile for the market and the developers would have more purchasing power making $115k in the midwest or Raleigh than they do in the bay area making $145k.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#65

Post by senordevnyc »

Strongly agree with this. I just did about seven weeks of interviewing in NYC for senior iOS roles, at both startups and big tech companies.

To be frank, it was a total shitshow. Especially on the startup side.

Here’s some of the bullshit I faced interviewing at early stage companies before accepting an offer literally 2.5x as high as the (multiple) offers that startups made.

1. Shitty equity: one startup wanted me to be engineer #7 and completely own the mobile app and strategy, which is the single point of interaction for their customers. They offered me 0.1% and spun some story about how much it would be worth when they were worth $800mm. Their last valuation was about $35mm. Even if their numbers were real, I’d still make more at a big tech company in equity alone. They also made it clear they wouldn’t budge.

2. Bad work/life balance: the big tech company where I accepted apparently has no issue with people taking off whatever time they need (avg is about 25 days per year), working normal 40 hour weeks, and working from home if needed. By contrast, the startups felt way more restrictive here.

3. Terrible interview process: almost all these startups had pretty disorganized process. Worse: they did the standard whiteboard algorithms interviews, whereas multiple bigger tech companies had more iOS-specific interview loops. Even worse, the startups tended to have a higher bar for hiring than the bigger tech companies. This one is subjective and could be random or misperception on my part too.

4. Most infuriating of all, all of these startups (except coinbase) had a 60-90 day option exercise window for employees who left before a liquidity window. Let me be clear: fuck you if you think this is fair. IPO might be 7-10 years out and if I stay and add value for anything short of that, you’re going to ask me to take a huge risk to exercise my options (and pay the taxes) on your probably worthless stock, otherwise you’ll just keep it? Fuck you.

The entire thing left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s pretty clear that these founders and investors don’t give much of a fuck about their talent, and watching them get squeezed by big tech companies offering sky high comp fills me with glee.

Be a founder, investor, or big co employee. Fuck being an employee for a startup so they can bleed you dry.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#66

Post by Myrmornis »

It seems to me that most companies start to gain a tedious/conventional/corporate atmosphere once they get to more than, I don't know exactly, somewhere in 100-400 employees. At that point the company has acquired, in addition to those who care purely about building companies and building software and building hardware and physical processes, a middle layer of conventional auxiliary staff, and nice though everybody may be, the company just becomes a standard corporate office environment. Many people (especially those who have enjoyed academic environments) strongly don't like such atmospheres, and for those many people this is a pretty strong incentive to work at small companies.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#68

Post by senordevnyc »

scarmig wrote: post #47

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…

It’s even worse, because when you leave after 3 years, you have to pay to exercise those options and then pay the taxes on them. And then hope they end up worth something someday.

Fuck that.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#69

Post by harimau777 »

scarmig wrote: post #59
harimau777 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rough numbers, but I'm thinking roughly $200k, $230k, $260k. It's an order of magnitude estimate, take that for what it's worth. If the new grad is instead investing $300k, the calculus remains about the same.

I think it's fair to say that someone who can get that sort of job right out of college probably should. However, I'm not sure that the vast majority of engineers can do that.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#70

Post by robsinatra »

Dunning and Kruger explained how people drastically overestimate their value. The author won't be earning what he thinks he deserves, isn't working on projects he thinks he deserves, and doesn't get the promotions he thinks he deserves wherever he goes. His reality may never change for him and that's his cross to carry.
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