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Working for a startup makes less sense

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Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#91

Post by Alex3917 »

garry wrote: post #29
eanzenberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a VC, scraping off net innovation minus startup-wages is a win. It's a lose for the employees, of course.

I was a software engineer who learned to start a company right off the pages of the site you're looking at right now, Hacker News. It was here where I learned to start a startup. I later worked for Y Combinator as a partner helping founders make products and services. The best ones made something that touches millions of people now. While there is a lot of zero sum thinking in startupland and finance/capitalism in ge…

> I was a software engineer who learned to start a company right off the pages of the site you're looking at right now, Hacker News. It was here where I learned to start a startup.

Keep in mind that if you look back on the things that made you excited to go into startups into 2006 or whenever, probably none of them are true anymore. E.g. the main reason people were excited back then is that there was a huge arbitrage opportunity to take every business that already existed as either brick-and-mortar or web 1.0, and reimagine it using AJAX and web 2.0 design language. In retrospect there were a bunch of other favorable macro trends coalescing at the same time also, but regardless none of these arbitrage opportunities exist any longer.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#92

Post by munk-a »

sokoloff wrote: post #86
munk-a wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Briefly to begin, I'm going to read the above extremely uncharitably, not in an effort to besmirch aeternum but instead to try and tear down some terrible guidelines about life choices that I've seen going around. Here follows my translation of the advice above: > Yes you will probably make more at an established company, but your rate of growth can be much higher at a startup. You'd personally benefit more from work…

It sounds like you shouldn’t go to a startup. I’ve done a mix of both (from #1 hire out of 2 total engineers all the way to a Fortune 25). Across the board, I’ve found the smaller the better (more enjoyable, more learning, more energy, more urgency, better colleagues). Yeah, there’s no formal time laid out to do step X in the course of development. There’s the chance that you won’t make payroll someday. It’s definite…

I'd rather educate the population on the pitfalls of startups so that people going into them are less naive and so that the experience of working there can be more enjoyable and fairly compensated.

I have really enjoyed working at small companies as well - not two person startups working on hopes and dreams, but companies under a year old that are struggling to stablize their offering of a product that they know there is a market for. Startups can be lots of fun, they can also be a grind trying to keep up with shifting customer requests - especially if you find yourself with a single dominant customer that knows they can push you around. Start ups can buy you an island or you could make 60k a year for three years and then be let go immediately prior to an IPO. There is an immense amount of risk there and I'd like to see some shifts in startup culture to provide a bit more assurances since the experience can vary wildly.

Maybe employees at small companies need to be guaranteed (i.e. by the government) a portion of that company for their work, maybe work days need to have a hard limit on them - maybe there just needs to be more VC funding sloshing around and given away in small doses - 200k to twenty companies will produce a lot more success than 4m to a single company.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#93

Post by neltnerb »

harimau777 wrote: post #61
neltnerb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they solved a time constraint by being clever and working hard then clearly Boeing would care about that, I agree.

Saving $$ per unit and saving $$ total are so different. If all you're doing is saving $500 total, I wouldn't even care in most cases... but if you managed to use clever techniques to save $0.30 off the manufacturing cost for a toy that gets sold in the millions...

I most strongly agree with the ethical part of the article, in any event. I'm sick of companies trying to take advantage of their employees, it's just sad and gross to see it done by startups that could be better than big companies in at least this one way. But instead they take it even further somehow because their finances are far more opaque. I don't think it should be up to noblesse oblige to determine whether distribution of profits and salaries are fair, it should be assumed to be the rule even if there may be exceptions.

It's a sad day when you look at employment agreements from Intel and a shiny startup and find that Intel is more up front and transparent about how things will work and what you'll get paid.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#94

Post by EGreg »

My main question is how do you attract developers to join your open source project? Wordpress and RoR and all those other projects?

Instead of startups I want to attract people to a project to change the world just like the OP is saying. But where to find the first few developers who would do it not for the money?

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#95

Post by mdtusz »

irjustin wrote: post #83
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…

> were due to the fact that the product was shipped too early. Can you explain more about this? The mantra is generally ship early and iterate fast. How come the tech team was spending 80% in a bugs rat race? The earlier statement of "80% of the time was wasted supporting clients" seems perfect? i.e. what else should you be doing other than supporting clients who are willing to pay with features and bug fixes? Feel l…

Could be a hardware product. Shipping hardware early is a nightmare.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#96

Post by ken »

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.

Depends on the company. "Big company" isn't one company, or one position. I absolutely believe it. At the big company I worked for, it took weeks just to get all your accounts enabled. Releases were planned months in advance. At every startup I worked at, I personally deployed our software more in the first week than the big company's ops team deployed our software in all the years I was there. You learn a lot from that. Not so much from waiting for the ops team to find time in their schedule for you.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#97

Post by opportune »

avl999 wrote: post #64

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 r…

Well, this assumes that the x %ile in smaller markets is interchangeable with the x %ile in the more expensive ones like SF, Seattle, NYC, Boston. But I know lots of people from cities like St. Louis who live in these much bigger tech cities because if you’re in the higher range in comp. for your years of experience, it’s just a much better deal being in the more expensive city. So I would guess that in these smaller cities, you will miss a lot of the top 10-20% developers

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#98

Post by hinkley »

seattle_spring wrote: post #4

> Equity agreements should not be intentionally confusing or designed to screw over employees. Totally agree with this. Unfortunately I think there might be about 5 startups left if this idea were widely implemented.

There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity.

I can say as someone older than they were at the time that there was an element of wishful thinking about many of the founders I worked with, and even more so for some that I met in passing.

Charismatic people who are deluding themselves just bring others along for the ride. They may not even know they’re being dishonest. People who have a way with words can be sucked in by their own words just as much as others can.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#99

Post by TrackerFF »

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…

Ignoring all the indicators that's been mentioned (acing all interviews, right pedigree, etc.)

- Solid results too show - Fantastic references

I know a lot of younger guys have these pipe dreams of sacrificing their youth, going to the best university, studying years for interviews, and looking / being the "perfect" candidate come interview time, without actually having built anything of substance.

Sure - you will probably land some sweet positions, but there's no way in hell you'll get hired as a CTO without anything real to show - unless it's a 3-piece student startup.

Yes, there are exceptions. There are young people that land very nice positions, but they're almost always both smart and experienced.

I think the roadmap look pretty boring, but it's what it is. Read, build, analyze, and understand. Have vision, and get good. If someones gonna hire you to design / build / develop their product, then you need to be able to lead and deliver. Hard work, experience, and good networking skills.

Re: Working for a startup makes less sense

#100

Post by sayrer »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #38
sayrer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought this problem to be overstated. It doesn't make financial sense to work for a startup, but the upside is that you get to work on something you care about (and even the startup salaries aren't that bad in the grand scheme).

> the upside is that you get to work on something you care about As a counter example, I found this is far more true at big companies, where you can switch teams until you find one that fits your interest, then at a startup where you are expected to work on basic infra that the company doesn't handle. For the data/ML related jobs that I was looking for and the industry is moving towards, big companies have tons of va…

I like the Elad Gil take on this issue: at big companies, you can have more /impact/, for the reasons you state.

At small companies, you have more control. That's in the high-growth handbook. :)

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