Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?

Please understand that I intend this as honest and helpful: you are completely, wildly deluding yourself.

It is unlikely that someone with your background really knows even one or two of the tools you mentioned "like the back of your hand" by professional standards. It is completely implausible that even the most gifted and enthusiastic geek on the planet knows all of them to that standard at your stage in your career.

The world is, however, full of people (usually students with little or no professional experience) who think they have these skills. It just comes across to experienced professionals as arrogant, ill-informed, lacking in perspective... amateurish and risky, basically. Would you hire (or even interview) someone you thought was like that?

My advice to you is this: decide which skills you want to highlight at the start of your career, and if you really have no demonstrable experience with those skills, make something. Build a simple game in C++. Write a simple but well presented CRUD application to show your web skills. Write an interactive symbolic calculator in Haskell. Make sure the code is clean and you have some respectable documentation to go with it. You presumably have several years to go at uni, so you have plenty of time to develop your skills. Just keep the example programs you develop along the way.

Actual demos of real projects that you have personally completed are just about the best advert there is for your programming skills. Even if those projects are just small demos, they still beat beautiful but empty CVs any day for getting noticed and attracting the right kind of attention from prospective employers.

After you say you are not allowed to disclose your current salary, they will ask you your intended salary. You should research your market's average salary in advance, and if possible, ask other developers in the company to give you an approximate figure. Aim a bit higher so you have a margin to negotiate. Don't go too high, or they'll think you lost contact with reality.

A couple of thoughts from a bootstrapper:

1) If you were going to get equity you would have it already. It would have been a condition of your employment, in writing. Anything else is empty promise, as I fear you are beginning to discover.

2) Even if you HAD equity, that equity is WORTHLESS until the company is sold or goes public. Equity only has value at exit or if the company is going to pay some sort of dividend. From the sound of things, both are unlikely.

3) I know you feel like you are invested in this company, that you deserve better ... and you do. That loyalty that you feel to the company does not appear to be returned. As an employer, that is a massive failure. One of the true perks of being a bootstrapper is that I am empowered to give people the "breaks" that make my place fun to work at and family friendly.

I think that it is time for you to move on. Follow mmaunder's advice carefully, especially the part about not talking about ANYTHING you're planning with co-workers. At best your co-workers may unintentionally break your confidence, and at worst will do so in an attempt to curry favor.

Sign up for a free account at elance.com and spend a day taking their tests. It's the fastest way I can think of to demonstrate that you know something. Even if you don't take any work through the site, you'll have some evidence of your skillset that you'll be able to show potential employers.

I am confused by this:

"and I am still making around $500/week. Which, in the beginning was great. However over the past year I have moved out, bought a car (out of need, the other died), gotten married, and have had a child. (With a second one on the way.)"

Why would you have 2 children if you are making $500 a week? Does your spouse make a lot of money? Do you live in one of the developed countries, or a 3rd world country?

I'm having a hard time figuring out how it could be rational to have 2 kids while making $500 a week. And why have children at all if you are working at a startup? Most of my friends follow the rule that startups are what you try while you are single, but if you have kids then you should try to find something more stable.