3 ms·

I'd suggest asking for 90% of a first-year salary for CS majors in the area (I'm guessing $55k or so?), plus 5% equity. Take it from there. You might get beat

I'd suggest asking for 90% of a first-year salary for CS majors in the area (I'm guessing $55k or so?), plus 5% equity. Take it from there. You might get beat up on the 5% but if you're employee #1 it sounds reasonable. Think hard though about leaving school. Not saying it's a bad idea, just think it through.

cwilbur 20y ago
It would have to be one heck of a sweet deal to justify quitting school for, especially if you're getting parental support. Startups base their decisions on your demonstrable talent; everyone else looks at credentials. If the startup fails (80% chance, on average), not having the credential will be a liability. I wouldn't take an employee position at a company (startup or no) in the bay area for under $100,000, and it would have to be pretty sweet to get me to accept that. For a startup, it would have to be people I really liked on top of that, because I don't put in 80-hour weeks for money alone. And if you have parental support, quitting to take a job may well mean that that support never comes back in quite the same way, and finishing school, if you ever do, will be on your dime. And college is a lot more fun when you're 19 and carefree than when you're 30something and wondering if it justifies the tuition. It's your call, though; this is one of those decisions that has the possibility of being something you later regret no matter which way you decide. Think long and hard.
- jmtame 20y ago
  There's very little parental support on this ;) My parents are the "get a degree, work for the rest of your life" type. If it were up to them, I'd live 5 minutes away from home for the rest of their lives. School isn't very exciting, honestly. Most of the stuff they teach you early on is useful, but after that, they just drill down into very specific applications of certain things, in regards to programming and business. That stuff isn't too relevant to what I'd want to do, I'm finding, and it makes the coursework much less engaging and interesting.
  - cwilbur 20y ago
    Do not make the mistake of confusing school with classes. (Or the education with the degree, another common mistake.) You have more free time now than you probably ever will again. You have incredible resources all around you -- libraries, books, computers, professors, other students. The cost of living is low, and you can easily get student loans and grants to cover it, and you have few to no other financial commitments. As soon as you leave the school bubble, all of that changes. Classes are just the excuse to be there, and if you play your cards right they won't take up more than a quarter of your time.
    - nostrademons 20y ago
      "You have more free time now than you probably ever will again." I haven't found that to be the case. I have much more time available to work on my own projects than I did in college. Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in terms of usable get-code-out-there blocks. In college, I found that homework always got Parkinson's-Lawed so it took up all my available time. Either I was actively doing homework, or I was procrastinating on homework and couldn't justify working on other productive projects instead. Plus, available time in college tends to get broken up into 1-2 hour blocks between classes, after activities, before dinner, while waiting for friends to go out to a party, etc. Now that I'm working, I have significantly less actual free time, but everything I have is mine. There's no work to take home, nothing hanging over my head when I'm not at work. And it's generally in large chunks, too. It does kinda suck not having a social life, but it does leave decent-sized blocks available for a startup.
      - rotich 20y ago
        Try adding a wife and some kids and report back!
        nostrademons 20y ago
        Lack of a social life takes care of that one. ;-)
nostrademons 20y ago
5% seems high for an employee, even the first. Usually the entire options pool is only about 20%, so if you give 5% for employee #1, there isn't much left over for anyone else. I'd read that about 1.5% is typical for employee #1, and it decreases exponentially from there. I was offered 0.1% at the first startup I worked at (high school grad, there only for a year, employee #13) and 0.01% at one startup I interviewed at after college (college degree, good credentials, employee #22). I ended up taking a job at a startup with no equity but a much larger salary - as in, $15K larger. I'd recommend this route. $15K is yCombinator funding in a year, any given startup is likely to fail anyways (my employer might actually succeed, but it's the slow-growing type), and if you don't have equity you're less likely to feel responsible for the success of the company, which means you have no compunction against leaving work at work and using your home time to work on your own startup.

cwilbur 20y ago

It would have to be one heck of a sweet deal to justify quitting school for, especially if you're getting parental support. Startups base their decisions on your demonstrable talent; everyone else looks at credentials. If the startup fails (80% chance, on average), not having the credential will be a liability. I wouldn't take an employee position at a company (startup or no) in the bay area for under $100,000, and it would have to be pretty sweet to get me to accept that. For a startup, it would have to be people I really liked on top of that, because I don't put in 80-hour weeks for money alone. And if you have parental support, quitting to take a job may well mean that that support never comes back in quite the same way, and finishing school, if you ever do, will be on your dime. And college is a lot more fun when you're 19 and carefree than when you're 30something and wondering if it justifies the tuition. It's your call, though; this is one of those decisions that has the possibility of being something you later regret no matter which way you decide. Think long and hard.

jmtame 20y ago
There's very little parental support on this ;) My parents are the "get a degree, work for the rest of your life" type. If it were up to them, I'd live 5 minutes away from home for the rest of their lives. School isn't very exciting, honestly. Most of the stuff they teach you early on is useful, but after that, they just drill down into very specific applications of certain things, in regards to programming and business. That stuff isn't too relevant to what I'd want to do, I'm finding, and it makes the coursework much less engaging and interesting.
- cwilbur 20y ago
  Do not make the mistake of confusing school with classes. (Or the education with the degree, another common mistake.) You have more free time now than you probably ever will again. You have incredible resources all around you -- libraries, books, computers, professors, other students. The cost of living is low, and you can easily get student loans and grants to cover it, and you have few to no other financial commitments. As soon as you leave the school bubble, all of that changes. Classes are just the excuse to be there, and if you play your cards right they won't take up more than a quarter of your time.
  - nostrademons 20y ago
    "You have more free time now than you probably ever will again." I haven't found that to be the case. I have much more time available to work on my own projects than I did in college. Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in terms of usable get-code-out-there blocks. In college, I found that homework always got Parkinson's-Lawed so it took up all my available time. Either I was actively doing homework, or I was procrastinating on homework and couldn't justify working on other productive projects instead. Plus, available time in college tends to get broken up into 1-2 hour blocks between classes, after activities, before dinner, while waiting for friends to go out to a party, etc. Now that I'm working, I have significantly less actual free time, but everything I have is mine. There's no work to take home, nothing hanging over my head when I'm not at work. And it's generally in large chunks, too. It does kinda suck not having a social life, but it does leave decent-sized blocks available for a startup.
    - rotich 20y ago
      Try adding a wife and some kids and report back!
      - nostrademons 20y ago
        Lack of a social life takes care of that one. ;-)

nostrademons 20y ago

5% seems high for an employee, even the first. Usually the entire options pool is only about 20%, so if you give 5% for employee #1, there isn't much left over for anyone else. I'd read that about 1.5% is typical for employee #1, and it decreases exponentially from there. I was offered 0.1% at the first startup I worked at (high school grad, there only for a year, employee #13) and 0.01% at one startup I interviewed at after college (college degree, good credentials, employee #22). I ended up taking a job at a startup with no equity but a much larger salary - as in, $15K larger. I'd recommend this route. $15K is yCombinator funding in a year, any given startup is likely to fail anyways (my employer might actually succeed, but it's the slow-growing type), and if you don't have equity you're less likely to feel responsible for the success of the company, which means you have no compunction against leaving work at work and using your home time to work on your own startup.