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I've made this point before, but since it's a bit relevant here, I'll make it again (sorry to repeat): If you're primarily interested in making money, or if yo
by arbitrage314 11y ago
I've made this point before, but since it's a bit relevant here, I'll make it again (sorry to repeat):
If you're primarily interested in making money, or if you love the startup but not the compensation, you should NOT work at that startup.
If you're a good developer, you can get a better deal by working at an established company and simply investing. This has been true for every startup offer I've ever seen. Ever.
I've considered lots of startup jobs because I believed strongly in the companies. Every single time, however, I was able to get a larger chunk of the company by keeping my current job and simply investing.
To give an example, my current job pays about $250k, and one year, I invested $100k of that into a startup, leaving me with ~$150k of salary. This $150k + startup equity was a better deal than the startup was offering in both salary and equity (BY FAR). Plus, equity bought as an investor is much less tax toxic than equity options received as an employee of a startup.
On the other hand, most people who work at startups aren't interested in money. If that's you, that's totally cool!
- kelukelugames 11y agoHow do you invest 100k into a start up?
- arbitrage314 11y agoIt usually requires a bit of networking, but that's all--most startups are more than happy to take your money! (And they will usually try to hire you as well.)
- kisna72 11y agoOut of curiosity, How much experience do you have, and what kind of work do you do? (eg management, coding, lead engineer?)
- arbitrage314 11y agoI've been out of school 3-4 years, and I work at a large company. I'm about 10% a manager, 10% a resident data scientist, and 80% a coder, and I love my job.
- acconrad 11y agoso are you a valley coder at netflix? seems suspect you already have a 250k salary as a 26 yr old
- logical42 11y agoMy personal observations (at a bigco) suggest that it's not super unusual to have 200k-250k total comp at a bigco after a few years.
- dsacco 11y agoTo provide a counterpoint, I don't think that's suspect at all. I just thought of ten individual people with that salary at that age (or younger). Just sharing anecdote for anecdote.
- herval 11y agoLooking at the salary numbers from H1b applications (http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=netflix&job=&case_no=&state=&year=2015&case_status=&submit=Search http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=netflix&job=&case_no=&...), I wouldn't find that too far fetched. To add to that, I know someone who went there as "senior" with 5 years of work experience
- silverlake 11y agoAFAIK, working at Google et. al. pays well, but for most people your career will cap out at senior engineer. At other big companies (banks, telecom, oil, etc) a good Google dev can climb the tech career ladder quickly and make more money, get more responsibility (if that's your thing). Do you want to be a small fish at Google, or a big fish at Goldman Sachs?
- arbitrage314 11y agoI wouldn't want to stay anywhere long if I was the big fish simply because I enjoy learning new things so much. That being said, at this point in my life/career, I'm not worried about being a big fish at either Google or Goldman Sachs.
- sinatra 11y agoYou may be under-estimating how competitive and difficult becoming a big fish at Goldman Sachs is. And in many places (ex, banks), your technical chops are not appreciated as much.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]