Finding Time to Invest in Yourself • Hacker News Board

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#61

Post by paulgb » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

brenden2 wrote: post #59

paulgb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. So they became worth $1mm/year, that wasn't the fair market value when they were granted?

I was granted 36,000 shares (or options to buy shares), vesting over 4 years, with a strike price near $4. IIRC, preferred share price was ~$120 in 2015, but I don't recall the precise details. AFAIK there were no refreshers of any kind while I was there. I think the amount I got was pretty standard for an engineer, but I also know some engineers received 4 or 5 times as much, and others got half that. I think the re…

Gotcha. I appreciate the transparency, I'm always curious about how these early-hire packages work!

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#62

Post by balfirevic » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #16

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

I've been wondering about this for a long time. On average, what equity level would you say counts as "pathetically low" and what range would you say counts as fair? It seems to me that early employees are underpriced these days, the way that founders used to be, so a correction is probably inevitable. At the same time, there's no way seed-stage startups can match FB levels of compensation—the math just doesn't work.…

Not necessarily a correction, but find a way to make startup game work with remote engineering teams. Either fully remote, or remote-from-headquarters but collocated team.

There are going to be challenges, no doubt. Depending on where the team is, there will be legal stuff to figure out, time zone difference will be an issue and it will require some work to maintain the same "all-in-this-together" team atmosphere.

On the other hand, you are not competing with FAANG on compensation. For example, in Eastern Europe, even low-level Bay Area salaries are higher than most offers people will get locally. And equity grants are basically unheard of. English levels are very high, culture is pretty compatible with the US. And the level of accessible engineering talent is also very high, since you can outbid the local market easily.

There is a pretty well-developed remote contracting ecosystem where I live, but hiring people to be a part of the core team (by US startups) is comparatively rare.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#63

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

It's incredibly depressing that "finding time to invest in yourself" is about furthering your career. Sure that's part of it, but it's just one piece.

I'm so lucky that I've almost forgotten how lucky I am to have an employer who lets me work on myself in job related aspects at work. They give me time to get better at my job at treat me well enough for me to stay. It sure as hell pays dividends to them as I get better at making stuff for them.

Meanwhile, that means that outside of work, finding time to invest in myself doesn't have anything to do with career. I've got that covered at work. Now it's about finding time to make myself feel fulfilled. This is what I'm happiest to be able to invest time into, and it's not even mentioned in a post about finding time to invest in yourself? It feels like another symptom of the broken work-life balance culture I see in the early stage startup community. More like work=life balance.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#64

Post by Reedx » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

Yeah, they usually fall short on equity and terms. With salary startups can't compete vs established companies, fundamentally.

As for learning, obviously it depends on the specific companies and what you're interested in. But what Naval is talking about here is becoming a founder. At startups you're wearing more hats, can have a bigger impact and are closer to how things work. You'll probably learn a lot more about being a founder than at a big company where your role is more defined and sandwiched between layers of abstractions, many levels away from the CEO and decisions being made.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#65

Post by coldfire » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #64

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

Yeah, they usually fall short on equity and terms. With salary startups can't compete vs established companies, fundamentally. As for learning, obviously it depends on the specific companies and what you're interested in. But what Naval is talking about here is becoming a founder. At startups you're wearing more hats, can have a bigger impact and are closer to how things work. You'll probably learn a lot more about b…

Everyone will have different experiences, but I had the same observation as you, and that's why I choose start-ups over big companies for my first two jobs.

But then I had to get into the "big" companies for visa reasons, and honestly I don't miss start-up world anymore. The learning has been pretty steep, yes in a start-up you wear more hats.

But in my experience, the attention to detail and investment on engineering is higher in bigger companies, simply because they can afford to. Whereas an early stage start-up works more or less on a thin deadline, and if the founders are not engineers themselves, usually engineering gets compromised over velocity. Also, scale. The bigger the company the more challenges they will have (whether in vertical or horizontal scaling). And IMO working at scale, teaches you a lot more than people think.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#66

Post by munk-a » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #40

sethammons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I land on the idea that the percent is not as important as the raw value if the company hits the targets. 1%? 5%? Of what? If the company plans to get to a $1B valuation, that is different than a company that wants to exit at ~$10M. And since we all know that equity is usually worthless anyway, I think the real way that smaller companies should compete for talent is with other perks. More time off, less days per week…

Of those, it seems to me that more time off and less days per week are mostly out-of-scope for seed-stage startups—it's just too hard for them to survive even when people are working full time and focusing hard. More control over the product's direction (relative to BigCos and large teams) seems already to be part of the startup deal, no? As for better perks, I don't know what you have in mind, but the ones that come…

It also seems fair to relate the discussion of the appeal of a lack of share dilution mentioned earlier - If the view is that you're actually building this product with others then it can be assumed you're constantly contributing to the immediate and long term value - given that stance upward creeping granted value (as direct ownership or options to buy) is similarly logical, the proportional contribution you're making to a company will vary over the length of the company, initially the founder that's brought the actual business proposal to the table will be the main driver - but as you realize that proposal and put forth infrastructure (technical or best practices) the value being brought out of that proposal is shifting toward the engineering side - it's only late in the game once explosive growth has begun (maybe near the 50 employee mark?) that the power of your voice and the weight of your decisions will start appreciably shrinking... I think for the early growth period most additional employees are more further reducing the founder's share in the value created rather than other employees...

This is all intensely vague and general but it's an interesting line you started down with the balance of investment vs. employee contributions, risk and compensation.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#67

Post by AznHisoka » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

ccthr wrote: post #13

I feel like this is promoting wantrepeneur lifestyle and taking low paid long hour start up jobs to get on the ladder. Whilst innovation is important, and earning your stripes too, I get sick of this unspoken attitude that anyone who doesn't work for a "cool" startup must be unambitious and lack talent. Big tech are dominating most of the interesting problems. Startups likely can not compete with google - if they cho…

More likely is that the addressable market is too small for them. There are still lots of profitable niches you can build a business in.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#68

Post by oliverx0 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

genbit wrote: post #60

dang wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering about this for a long time. On average, what equity level would you say counts as "pathetically low" and what range would you say counts as fair? It seems to me that early employees are underpriced these days, the way that founders used to be, so a correction is probably inevitable. At the same time, there's no way seed-stage startups can match FB levels of compensation—the math just doesn't work.…

i think vc/founders need to innovate on this topic to: provide better effort/reward incentives, and reduce risk for employees, giving that they have less voting control over equity. Could be something like: - companies keep lower number of employees, higher grants, but demand founder-like effort for early years - early employees get substantial equity grants 5-10%, that must be sold to VCs on secondary offering at ne…

I really like your second idea!

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#69

Post by matz1 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #30

matz1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain, i think the idea make sense. The menial job id done to show that no job is beneath you and to open up greater opportunity.

Sounds like a great way to get taken advantage of.

Sure, of you have be careful to not be taken advantage off, focus on the prize, if you truly do not see any opportunity then yes bail out but keep your options open.

Re: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

#70

Post by soup10 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

ditonal wrote: post #3

Founders want employees to have the founder mentality without giving them founder equity. AngelList (which this author is shilling) salaries and equity grants are pathetically low. So they write fluff pieces about how you’ll learn so much doing a founders laundry. I learned a lot more, faster, as an employee at big tech than at early stage startups. Startup VCs and company need to get out of the business of writing f…

Just anecdotally I've dabbled with giving employees more equity and it hasn't particularly energized or made them more productive. I think it depends a lot on the person, wether they have that business mentality to be patient and work hard for revenue growth down the road or they are more comfortable with weekly paychecks. Also the person needs to a be good fit for the business as well. You could give a person 5% of AMZN and they'd still never extra-ordinarily productive unless the challenges, skillset and interest were a match.