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My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup
- iuguy 16y agoWow, having read that I'm genuinely horrified. You work 6 days a week. Why? You're an employee. Seriously even if you weren't theres more important things in life. I can understand where you're coming from but believe me, it's not that the founders are abusing you, it's that you're abusing yourself. Seriously, go out, enjoy yourself. Live.
- jacquesm 16y agoIf it takes you weeks to recover from a burn-out you haven't burned out - yet. Burn out is a serious issue and some people never fully recover from it. If you're working hard and you need a break after a few months of hard labour that's normal, but it's not the same as being burned out. Otherwise a great piece and nice to get some insight in to what goes on behind the scenes of backtype.
- Psyonic 16y agoCan you provide more info on burn-out? What it's like at its worst?
- rdl 16y agoReal burnout is something like losing confidence in your own ability, or the overall system or world. It doesn't go away with time, per se, but requires a real change of your life....like getting a manual labor type job for a few years, going back to school, etc.
- thaumaturgy 16y agoAbsolutely. I burned out at a tech job in 2000, and spent several subsequent years working as a climbing instructor, outdoor gear retail clerk, cable technician, etc. ... anything that didn't require the use of a computer. There's a difference between simply needing a vacation, and being completely and absolutely disgusted with your field and everyone in it.
- rdl 16y agoWhat got you back into tech? I think that i am fortunate in that I direct all my wrath and loathing outward.
- studer 16y agoInamorata? Did you mean to write that, or did your phone just teach me a new word? :-)
- thaumaturgy 16y agoAs totally cheezy as it sounds, I "gradually woke up one morning" and realized what it was that I wanted to accomplish with my life. My newfound goal was going to require more resources than I could ever accumulate by selling backpacking gear, so at that moment I decided it was time to get back into the tech industry. (I still have fond memories of my time away from it though.) I haven't felt anything close to the same burnout since. Although I'm often stressed out over one thing or another, for the most part I'm pretty happy with the way everything is now.
- jashmenn 16y agoexhibit a: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/ http://viewsourcecode.org/why/
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Psyonic 16y agoGood point. If I may wager a guess on why _why left, it's because of the worship-like behavior that people are still directing at him.
- SMrF 16y agoYears ago I suffered what I would now call "burn out" although at the time I didn't know what was happening. I found this essay to be an accurate description of my experience, but I think a doctor would be a better source of information on this topic: http://www.stressdoc.com/four_stages_burnbout.htm http://www.stressdoc.com/four_stages_burnbout.htm At the worst point I was experiencing anxiety, paranoia and depression. My only strategy for coping with stress and difficult situations at the time was to put my head down and work through it. I thought if I was having problems getting the job done, I would just put in more hours. This turned out to be a terrible idea. I worked 80 hour weeks for months at a time in highly stressful situations. Initially this work ethic bought me promotions and raises, but you can't work these kinds of hours under a huge load of stress for years and not suffer consequences. In two years I gained 40 pounds and became a pack a day smoker. When you never put a limit on how much you work you eventually break down. I nearly ended up quitting and going to seminary. Instead I just got a new job with less hours and responsibility on the other side of the country. After a few years I'm finally getting to the point where I can handle stress like I used to: until now any moderate level of stress has caused me to spiral into anxiety and paranoia again. I was worried I was permanently damaged, but thankfully I'm getting better. EDIT: I haven't smoked for two years. I've lost over 40 pounds and I'm running my first 5K on Thursday. I got better but I had to drastically change my life.
- grinich 16y agoI've found exercise to be one of the best ways to help prevent burnout. Especially exercises that put one into a meditative state. (Running, rowing, swimming, yoga, etc.) Good luck on the 5K. :-)
- rdl 16y agoI definitely agree re exercise. A good relationship, kids, and general family life also seems to help people survive high stress, but high stress often leads to a bad home life which can make it worse yet.
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's quite a story. Good to see you come out on the other end in one piece and much good luck on your run.
- bhellman1 16y agoawesome post. I love your customer focus and liked the part out burning out. Good luck!
- karl11 16y agoJust wanted to comment that this is a great post and I enjoyed reading it.
- levesque 16y agoWhat salary can one expect while working for a YC startup? Is it comparable with the industry's average?
- aditya 16y agohttp://rethinkdb.com/jobs/ http://rethinkdb.com/jobs/ has one data point When comparing salaries, http://indeed.com/salary http://indeed.com/salary has been somewhat useful as well.
- dpritchett 16y agoThe general feeling I get from reading HN is that early stage employees take lower salaries in exchange for higher stock options. As the company matures and expands its perceived risk drops so later hires tend to be more experienced, higher paid, and with less in the way of stock options. Seeing as BackType has only three people right now I think we can guess it's on the low salary, high stock side of the curve.
- abstractbill 16y agoI took an almost 50% salary cut when I first started working at justin.tv. I don't think you can generally expect the industry average in an early-stage startup. My salary is nearly back up to what it used to be now though.
- jacquesm 16y ago> My salary is nearly back up to what it used to be now though. How much do you figure is your overall loss because of joining (in $) ? Does your equity make up for that ?
- abstractbill 16y agoIf you assume the company's most-recent valuation accurately reflects its worth, then yeah, my equity more-than makes up for my loss. Until there's an exit though of course, the equity is essentially worthless (I find I stay more sane if I just act like it has no more value than a random lottery ticket has).
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- dpritchett 16y agoInteresting read but the details are a bit scary from my comfy chair here in enterprise software land: - Six years at Stanford, two CS degrees - Works up to 90 hours a week from home, has burned out multiple times in only six months with the company - Founders work even more - All three appear to be single white 20something males - Job and tech (Clojure!) sound cool. Edit: All that said he seems like a nice guy and I hope he gets rich off of Backtype. I love the service. I just can't quite project myself into the profile above.
- theoneill 16y agoWhy is it bad that they're white?
- dpritchett 16y agoObviously it's not bad in and of itself, it's just an additional layer of homogeneity that a prospective teammate will consider before applying. The 90+ hour workweeks are already a big red flag to anyone with a spouse and/or children. It's hard to get along at work when everyone else is comfortable contributing in ways that you can't match directly. No one wants to be the odd man out in a high pressure work environment. Edit: Fwiw I am also a white 20something male! I have always worked in relatively diverse environments and I have enjoyed it and would look for the same in my next employer.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI have always worked in relatively diverse environments and I have enjoyed it and would look for the same in my next employer. My current company had no diversity until I joined (the founder and employee #1 even went to the same school), but it never struck me as being worth thinking about. I'm honestly curious, what benefits do you get from a company with ethnic diversity?
- rdl 16y agoRacial and ethnic diversity really seem like non issues...they are pretty superficial differences within a work environment. Age, children, and sex are a little more relevant, and even those are pretty minor and only loosely correlated with traits relevant in a work environment. Bringing a windows guy into a unix shop, or hiring a sales guy too early at a product development stage startup, or hiring a stupid or lazy person would be real diversity of a bad kind. Good diversity is bringing in people with domain expertise outside your core specialty, like having a font and calligraphy aficionado on your os team. Superficial diversity is really overvalued.
- mattrepl 16y agoEmployee compensation from startups depends on many factors including how much they value employees, but it's really important for prospective startup employees to understand that you'll probably work longer hours, have more responsibility, and earn less than if you keep your day job. Someone with experience in a great "normal" job may be surprised that the compensation, including equity, of a first employee is usually significantly less than what they're already earning. A first employee is taking a risk in opportunity cost by accepting a lower salary, but the risk should have an associated reward, namely equity. However, if a company has to do well just for the employee to break even with the opportunity cost, joining a startup doesn't seem like a sound choice. And not just in terms of money, but also general wealth and quality of life. Further, the hours conserved by remaining at the day job can be used to build your own product. When the risk-level is acceptable, leave the day job for your own startup where you can maintain control and keep a meaningful equity percentage. There are benefits to being a startup employee, such as the exposure to growing a company and the opportunity to join a support network and work with good people. Those things have value, but not always enough to offset the opportunity cost of either keeping the day job or founding your own startup. Personally, I'd still consider joining a startup as an employee if it was a great match. As a side note, RethinkDB has done a great job with posting a mapping of position/experience to compensation. They set compensation expectations before a prospective employee has even applied.
- dpritchett 16y agoI love the layout on http://www.backtype.com/about http://www.backtype.com/about Seeing the two open positions in line with the current team really drives home the point that you'll be taking on key people and not just filling out an org chart.
- wfjackson3 16y agoNice post. I think I would have a hard time pulling the trigger so quickly after meeting someone, but it sounds like serendipity.
- rdl 16y agoI personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher risk of losing one's job vs. founders, and vastly less respect when he later goes to try to do his own startup. Assuming the same caliber of individual, it makes a lot more sense to either found your own startup, or join after real financing (where you get a market salary, and have a lot less risk, plus a lot of startups with problems have been shaken out.). Obviously being am early employee at a great startup like google or Facebook makes sense, but for companies more likely going for 10 to 50m base hits, I don't think early employee is a financially rational decision. (note to future people I want to hire: I only do high risk potentially high value exit startups, so your initial equity actually is worth it!)
- sofuture 16y agoThat's probably true, but there's a lot more that goes into employment decisions beyond compensation. As an early startup employee, I'm working for (all things considered) less money than I was when I was working in the defense industry. But I also don't loathe my job or lay awake at night, stressed about the idiocy and bureaucracy that made my days hellish, Kafkaesque, comedic nightmares. That's worth more a LOT more than ~$10k/year and a guaranteed 'career'.
- drewcrawford 16y agoFalse dilemma: there are plenty of jobs that pay fair market rates that don't involve hellish idiocy and bureaucracy. It's not somehow automatic in companies that are a different age than post-founder pre-funding. There's nothing about a pre-funded startup that magically banishes the "kafkaesque". Conversely, there's nothing about being well-funded that keeps you from sleeping at night (quite the opposite, actually).
- sofuture 16y ago
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 16y agoMy experience as being employee 8 million at a Large Corporation is nearly identical. I can choose my own tools, work from home when I want to, take breaks, etc. We've already taken care of the cash flow thing, so it ends up being much more relaxing than working for a small company. We aren't going to go out of business if our software isn't released tomorrow, so we have lots of time to write quality solutions. We can build stuff that's really nice to work on, instead of stuff that will give us one more checkbox in a TechCrunch comparison article. (I worked at a small company for a long time. It was less flexible, and every year, we "don't have enough money" for a raise. Eventually it was very stressful, my input didn't matter at all, and I got paid nothing. All for what most people consider "the ideal job". "Going corporate" was the best thing I ever did!)
- umjames 16y agoI assume you don't want to tell us which Large Corporation you work for, but I think your experience is not the typical BigCo employee experience.
- StavrosK 16y agoIt's better if you actually own the small company, though...
- dschobel 16y agoMaybe for having an impact, but for stress? I doubt it.
- jrockway 16y agoSo that I can spend 99% of my time doing something I'm bad at, and 1% of my time doing something I'm good at? No thanks. As an employee, I spend at least 80% of my time doing my best work -- no billing, no taxes, no finding new clients. I wake up, do some programming, chat with coworkers, eat lunch, do some more programming, then go home. And oh yeah, I get paid even if the company has a slow month or year. Don't get me wrong; in many ways, I would love to have my own company. But I am pretty sure I will make more money, be less stressed, and have more free time not doing that. (Anyone want to pay me to implement whatever random useless ideas interest me? Exactly.)