5 ms·
8 years of weekends, late nights, holidays and vacation for a net of $200K after taxes? That's ~25K/year so if you would've worked a regular 40 hour week, 20 h
by pinewurst 10y ago
8 years of weekends, late nights, holidays and vacation for a net of $200K after taxes?
That's ~25K/year so if you would've worked a regular 40 hour week, 20 hours of contract work at anything more than $35/hour would have put you ahead. And you would've still had weekends, nights and vacation.
- superqd 10y agoYeah, that's the calculation that bums me out too. It's one of the reasons I am somewhat loathe to ever put in too much "extra" time anymore. I enjoy being a part of a startup for more than just the lottery ticket aspect, I enjoy creating things from scratch, etc. But the days of burning the candle at midnight are gone.
- pinewurst 10y agoIn startups, man exploits man. At other employers, it's the other way around.
- superqd 10y agoTrue words.
- asanwal 10y agoIsn't the other way around still man exploits man?
- pinewurst 10y agoThat's the point. :)
- e12e 10y agoTo expand, it's a play on: "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." which seems to be attributed (without any sources) to John Kenneth Galbraith: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/810.html http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/810.html I've also seen it as "Under capitalism, man exploits man - under communism it's the other way around." I always assumed it was a translated Russian proverb, along the lines of: "No truth in the news and no news in the truth" (Major Soviet papers were "Pravda" (the truth) and "Izvestia" (the news).
- conjectures 10y agoEnjoyed the sovietology fact :)
- foo101 10y agoCan you explain the calculation to me? I am interested to understand the calculation so that I can perform similar calculations when I have two opportunities to choose from. superqd mentioned he would have made $300K more (i.e. in addition to the fixed salary he was earning) if he had bought the options. I assume that after paying for taxes, he would have still made $200K. Since he worked for 8 years, this is indeed $25K of additional income for every year. If he worked for $35/hour for 40 hours/week for say 50 weeks in a year, his total income would have been 35 * 40 * 50 = 70K. How is this better than his original job which was probably paying him say $80K or greater than $80K as fixed salary every month? It sounds like it would have put him behind by at least $10K. What am I missing?
- pinewurst 10y agoThe >$35/hour number is incremental pretax income on top of his base salary, not a replacement for it.
- katzgrau 10y agoHe just said that. Way to rub it in, bud.
- gejjaxxita 10y agoA very similar calculation is why I left a startup recently and went into contracting. In many cases the realistic best case scenario from working at a startup isn't as good (financially speaking) as the non-startup alternatives. This leads many people to extremely optimistic assessments of what the future worth of the startup may be (worth > $1billion) There are many good reasons to join a startup but if the financial motivation is the main one then it's probably not the best route.
- pinewurst 10y agoI've worked for three startups, each fairly well-known at least at some weird level. Two early stage and one immediately pre-IPO. One of the early ones netted me nothing(1), while the other gained me ~$10K when they went public(2). The third was quite lucrative, and was the least demanding - by far - of life tradeoffs. (1)Other than a feeling that I'd joined the Witness Protection Program when I fled after an engineering walkout. (2)Offset by literally years of damaged self-esteem. Pedigree is heavily overrated - with one exception, all the famous people were pretty awful.