Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#81

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #8

>It is also important to note that early employees experience more dilution events. An example of a dilution event would be raising another round of funding. This is another reason why joining a company early should offer more equity. I disagree that it's important to note that early employees experience more dilution events. I know you're trying to educate but this type of advice unintentionally misinforms people an…

You are correct in theory. However, as the shares are not publicly traded share_price is very likely a bs number.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#82

Post by onion2k » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

Cursuviam wrote: post #60

onion2k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How do you feel about Friday afternoon deploys?" is a great question for that. Many interviewers assume you want to hear about how they refuse to do them in order to protect your Friday night and weekend time. Really, the answer you want is that they've automated the deploy process and made it robust enough not to break production so it doesn't matter when a deploy happens.

Automated deploys aren't a magic bullet and can still break production, even at a big megacorp with tons of infra and tests to keep prod safe.

Of course not, but the process of automating deploys (or anything really) makes you think through what can go wrong, and ways to mitigate problems, and put tests in place to make sure things worked, and add metrics, and test your rollback procedure, and so on. A company that doesn't have automated deploys is much more likely to have manual processes for more things than just deployment.

It's not a magic bullet, but in my experience it's a very good indicator of how a company approaches an obvious problem, so you can get a really clear signal about whether or not you'd enjoy working there.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#83

Post by zoomablemind » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #4

I've been thinking about low-friction options for getting a sense of the engineering quality. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that technical debt and bad software development practices are a top concern. Being quite senior now, I'd feel comfortable asking: 1 - To see their CI dashboard 2 - To see a sample of their production systems stdout & stderr 3 - Asking to review a recent non-trivial commit (with the person…

This is almost like meeting your future team-mates. After all they too have to cope with this day to day. So this paints some practical context.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#84

Post by ken » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

It's not clear to me if these are intended to be startup-specific questions only.

It asks "How does the company collect feedback from customers?", which sounds like a pretty generic question, but there's nothing at all about working conditions, which I'd consider a top priority at any job.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#85

Post by wfwefwef32 » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

I'm about to agree to join a startup, but reading all the comments made me hesitate.

But I don't see a growth opportunity in a big company, the work is boring as hell and there are engineers, who joined 5 years earlier than I did, are still on same level as mine.

And the key engineering work is hold tightly by early members, unless they retire, I don't see a chance.

And I want to do robotics. Although my current company is investing in the area, they only need people with the right background, i.e. PhDs in robotics. And I have talk with google recruiters, they let me choose a position before the interview, but all my selections are as boring as my current position.

Doing a startup seems to be only way?

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#86

Post by JJMcJ » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #48

seibelj wrote: post #42

The only valid reasons for working at a seed-stage / series A startup: You are a founder. They are working with a technology or in an industry that you specifically want to work with and it is very hard to work on it professionally, and doing side projects are infeasible. You need experience and you have no other option to get experience. You are getting a significant title bump that moves your career forwards. Inval…

I agree with you, though I'd say that this may not apply fully to late-stage startups in Series C or Series D.

> late-stage

At that point, it's just another job. Unless the company is clearly headed for a unicorn IPO, your tiny slice of the company is unlikely to be worth much.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#87

Post by aey » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

With regard to equity, I wouldn’t join a startup unless it’s cheap for me to buy the options. If you get your cliff, and it costs 50k to buy your options, you are sol. You options are to throw away your equity, or be stuck at a shitty job.

Whether it’s worth it “to get rich”, is kind of a bs argument. If the opportunity exists to be a founder go for it, if not take the next best possible option.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#88

Post by ken » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #42

The only valid reasons for working at a seed-stage / series A startup: You are a founder. They are working with a technology or in an industry that you specifically want to work with and it is very hard to work on it professionally, and doing side projects are infeasible. You need experience and you have no other option to get experience. You are getting a significant title bump that moves your career forwards. Inval…

> You need experience and you have no other option to get experience.

I don't know how else to get the kind of experience you get at a startup. A big company will give you depth, but a startup will give you breadth.

Also, if you ever plan to be a founder yourself, working at a big company might not give you any useful experience at all.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#89

Post by JJMcJ » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #54

PacifyFish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The most common way to predict payout is to compare to other companies' exit valuations. E.g. "Oh, company X got acquired for $250 million. We do something similar. If I own .025% of the company, I'd make $62,500 if we exited at that valuation. Cool." It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% if you're lucky enough t…

>It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% But you're repeating the same error of prioritizing the wrong thing: dilution. What employees ultimately care about is their wealth calculation: shares_multiplied_by_price . Example of the type of math people actually care about: 0.008% (because dilutions) a $1 billion company is $80k 0…

> $80k

Oh, wow! Worked three years of 80 hour weeks and here's 80K.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#90

Post by tdumitrescu » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #42

The only valid reasons for working at a seed-stage / series A startup: You are a founder. They are working with a technology or in an industry that you specifically want to work with and it is very hard to work on it professionally, and doing side projects are infeasible. You need experience and you have no other option to get experience. You are getting a significant title bump that moves your career forwards. Inval…

I joined a series A startup years ago for none of your "valid" reasons and have never regretted it. It was a company that I already knew of and admired their product, and they had enough traction at that point to offer at least several years' worth of runway/stability ie I didn't have to worry about my job disappearing unexpectedly (at least not more so than any other California job). Work-life balance was always totally fine. I learned a ton right from the start, was able to make a big impact, and worked in the smaller "get stuff done" environment that I prefer over bureaucratic organizations.