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Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission

• systematical 8y ago
  Agreed. If my company ever exits and thats a big if. I doubt I get much. 100k would be amazing, but I am likely sacrificing 20k per year to work here at this point. The reason I stick around here is I can work full remote and have been able to travel the world much more. But after four years, I'd trade that in for a really nice pension or matching 401k in a heart beat.
• TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  Early stage hires at startups have the worst of both worlds: they face the downsides (lower wages, tons of risk, expectation to work long hours) but have muted upsides (small equity grant relative to founders, not even guaranteed to be hired in an acquihire situation). It is arguably even riskier than being a founder.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • brianwawok 8y ago
    > It is arguably even riskier than being a founder. Depends what the founder put in. Founder put in 100k? Or founder put in 12 months of unpaid work to build a MVP? He has a fair bit to lose on a splat. Engineer #7? I suspect most developers can find a new job in 1-2 weeks, so the only thing "lost" is potential equity.
    • sidlls 8y ago
      Why do you suspect that about developers? I've yet to have a hiring process be faster than a month, and that was unusual. The last time I went looking the turnaround time from recruiter pre-screen to an offer was six weeks. My job hunt lasted three months and I ended up not taking any of the middling offers I got. These were mostly series A and B "startups." I've shifted my focus to bigger, FAANG-like companies.
  • pinewurst 8y ago
    I totally agree with this. I've been in two early stage startups like the OP, both high reputation. The first gained me ~US$12,000 on IPO (I put it towards a Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo :) and the second, US$0 (ironically having that car was part of why they hired me :). Definitely a loss if one counts emotional wear. I still have dreams about being back at the 1st place and they're not good ones.
• kartan 8y ago
  > Get rich quick in case of success. This is just betting. The probability of success is extremely low. Would be as wise as betting part of your salary each week in the lottery.
  • strken 8y ago
    It's not quite the same. It might be closer to investing part of your salary in the same penny stock each week.
    • toomuchtodo 8y ago
      I’m confident one could do better with short duration out of the money options on SPX while working a comfy BigCo job than anyone here could with their ISO options. And you’re not wasting years of your life grinding to do it. No startups unless you’re the founder and you can iterate as a side project while collecting a check from someone else.
      • jerf 8y ago
        "I’m confident one could do better with short duration out of the money options on SPX while working a comfy BigCo job than anyone here could with their options." Yeah... if you bound your losses by giving up at a certain point, that's true. And if you take your BigCo salary and subtract the startup salary, the result is a pretty big stake to put into the short-term options gambling game. I'm not endorsing this plan... I'm observing that if this is a more financially sensible thing to do than work at a startup (in 2019), working at a startup must be a terrible idea...(!)
• CryoLogic 8y ago
  The comp packages at big tech companies are becoming insane. In Seattle it's not unreasonable for a senior software engineer with some good connections to be making 200-250k. With that comes life insurance, health insurance for your whole family, disability insurance, etc. That's more in cash AND benefits than a doctor.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    >That's more in cash AND benefits than a doctor. Does the company make wildly more money than a doctor's practice?
    • gaogao 8y ago
      For my dad, a psychiatrist, running a private practice netted him around $400,000 yearly.
      • ataturk 8y ago
        Net? Or Gross?
      • jerf 8y ago
        Psychiatry scales "poorly", being "merely" linear in input. I scare quote those words because they're only poor by software standards. That's why software companies make the big bucks; they're just about the only businesses around that can reliably scale superlinearly in inputs. People who can help you scale superlinearly in inputs are pretty darned valuable.
      • lordnacho 8y ago
        Don't doctors in the US have massive malpractice insurance to pay? I heard it was 6 figures. Got family who are docs there.
        • dragonwriter 8y ago
          > Don't doctors in the US have massive malpractice insurance to pay? Depends a lot on specialty, but apparently within some specialties there's almost a 10× range of annual costs. > I heard it was 6 figures. For the highest cost specialty (OB/GYN), near or into the six figures range is right by the first source I find, and surgery specialities seem potentially to be in that range. Others much lower, down as low as four figures. https://www.capson.com/medical-malpractice-insurance-by-specialty/ https://www.capson.com/medical-malpractice-insurance-by-spec...
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• bargl 8y ago
  > In my experience, the deadline-driven culture crushes any scope for creativity and experimentation. This is true anywhere. It's amplified in a startup because you can't switch teams or move around to get on an innovation driven team, it will also have a much bigger affect. If you only focus on deadlines, developers (by necessity) start taking short cuts and laying code that pushes boundaries less. If they get punished for taking a risk, then they won't take a risk. Taking smart risks are the bread and butter of innovation. I've seen what it means to be punished for taking risks and it changes the entire atmosphere and dampens innovation.
  • auggierose 8y ago
    I think it is in the nature of risk that you get punished if you end up on the losing side of it, no?
    • bargl 8y ago
      That's a cultural thing. Losing a risk doesn't require punishment, unless you consider not getting the reward a punishment. You can just reward winners and otherwise not punish the others.
• duxup 8y ago
  Did it ever make sense financially? The idea that you'd get rich was always a gamble / not likely. I knew some folks who went to startups telling me how great it would be if the company took off, but none of them I felt were capable of predicting how likely that was. Outside of enjoying a start up like environment and the environment you get from an early stage company / like the people .... I don't see any obvious advantages that were ever true enough to count on.
• WhyKill 8y ago
  tl;dr working for assholes gets you treated poorly. BigCo will always treat you more consistently, but they won't necessarily treat you better or worse than a small or new company. This headline could have been one of those questions where the answer is no.
  • simmers 8y ago
    Every(3) startup from my experience said that they're working on providing a 401k, but never delivered. It would be hard to find a BigCo that didn't provide a 401k for engineers (or pension). On that fact alone, I'd say BigCo has treated me better.
• rubicon33 8y ago
  > That startup sold for 200 million dollars and, as the 10th engineer, I made ... 15000 dollars from that exit. Why so low?
  • srehnborg 8y ago
    Insanely low. Strangest part of the article. Potentially it wasn't a successful exit? Dirty term sheet or multiple down rounds and $200m wasn't a successful exit?
    • LAMike 8y ago
      He's from India, they probably thought 15k would set him up for life.
  • crazygringo 8y ago
    Yeah, that's 0.0075%. Versus a ballpark of a 10th engineer getting, say, 0.5%. Even a few rounds of dilution can't explain a drop of two orders of magnitude. I'm thinking the author either didn't pay attention or care or trusted too much in the initial offer, didn't stay long enough to vest most of it, didn't buy most of their options in the end, or all of the above?
    • kolbe 8y ago
      If the Lyft founders are entering the IPO with about 3.5% each, then I don't think it's crazy for 10th engineers these days to have less than a basis point.
      • askafriend 8y ago
        That doesn't tell the whole story. There's a dual class share structure and even with the 7.5%, they retain majority control of the company.
        • kolbe 8y ago
          When you're talking about valuing their shares, yes, it does tell the whole story. They cannot transfer their extra voting rights, so if they're ever interested in monetizing their investment, they have to convert to limited voting shares to sell. And all we're talking about here is the monetary payout of working at a startup.
• aggronn 8y ago
  This is knitpicky, because OP's point may still stand, but as a founder, this is what comes to mind after reading this: When I hear "work for a startup", I don't assume that means "be the 10th engineer at a company". You might make some money at that point, but you're not going to get financial independence unless there's a billion dollar IPO. By BigCo standards, 10 engineers is a tiny startup. By venture/founder standards, I think 10 engineers is when you've already made it past the riskiest parts. You probably already have significant revenue traction, or you're past a Series A. You should be able to pay market, and equity is about alignment not risk compensation. I think you can still get rich at a startup, but you need to take actual risk to be compensated for it. Join a 5 person company. Be the second or third engineer, and be able to become the CTO if the two technical people ahead of you leave.
  • lambdasquirrel 8y ago
    Okay, and as someone who has hitherto largely worked at startups (2/3rd of my career), let me tell you the counterpoint. There is not a lot of risk from your perspective, but there is a large amount of risk for us. At a startup, you push all you can towards steering the ship in the right technical direction. For example, unlike at a BigCo, you are likely to be that person who will write the technical debt that later-joining younger engineers will call you stupid for, but you did it while producting your startup to scale. But you only get the pay-out if you actually manage to last until the exit. If you leave before then, because of politics or some failed product push or what-have-you, then you will have to exercise your options, which puts you in a bind in terms of financial risk. If you do exercise, you will be subject to dilution. If you'd stayed at the company, it's often the case that they continue to grant options to employees they want to keep. So to "make it," you effectively have to grow into a BigCo employee anyway. At that point, what is really the point to working at a startup? Especially since your pay will be like half that of a BigCo? Especially since it's A LOT more stressful? Especially since you actually need your critical thinking skills to compensate for your founding team's shortcomings? Now at a BigCo, you drink the kool-aid, you jump through the hoops (working at BigCo is more about jumping through hoops because that's how they "scale" things), but if you do all that, you're more or less set. You may have to "work" hard, but your life is on autopilot. I've had this conversation with lots of folks who've been there, and I myself have helped build one company from the pre-10 engineers phase (more like 3 engineers phase) to something that had a real shot. To be quite frank, the financial incentives are certainly not there, and for most companies I see, I'm no longer sure about the growth/learning incentives either. It's just a bad deal, and you should care because by and large, the smart engineers who can make your boat float aren't going to work for a startup.
• acconrad 8y ago
  As someone who was a 1st engineer of a startup that successfully exited I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years I worked there. It was a net-neutral outcome to be the 1st engineer at a startup that actually exited for a substantial (8-figure deal) outcome which already puts me in the minority. So no, its not worth it and hasn't been worth it for some time (I was there nearly a decade ago)... ...financially. However, what was worth it was the experience I gained. Being the 1st non-founder engineer means you own a whole stack or specialty and you have no one to lean on. You have to figure everything out. Doing so propelled my career immeasurably. Without that experience I'd still likely be a very mediocre engineer. As much as it wasn't a good financial decision it was a great decision in terms of upping my skills, becoming a harder worker, and building a network with VCs and the local engineering community. I had already worked at the Big 4 prior to switching and I didn't thrive in that environment. The startup ecosystem provided me the opportunity to work hard, network, build skills, and give me the tools & learnings on how to start my own business. Not everything is about money.
  • zapita 8y ago
    There is still a financial aspect though: that rapid increase in responsibility and experience most probably translated to higher income at your next jobs. And there is a compounding effect each time you change jobs, so the earlier you were in your career when you worked at a startup, the more you gain from it financially over the course of your career. I think we have selection bias on Hacker News because many of the prominent voices here tend to have high-paying jobs at prestigious tech companies, or at least know that they could get such a job at the snap of a finger. So from that perspective, joining a startup as an early employee is less attractive. For industry insiders who want to work at a startup, it often makes more sense to just raise money and start one yourself. They can do that relatively easily because their insider status vastly increases their chances of raising seed money. For everyone else however... that cushy Google job is not at all guaranteed, and neither is the 500k angel investor check to be a co-founder. So, although being an early employee at a startup is definitely not for everyone... From an outsider’s perspective it can be pretty damn tempting.
• halfway 8y ago
  Aside from enthusiasm for the mission, or the chance to strike it rich, there is another important consideration: self-actualization. That is, how much do you need it? In a way, self-actualization is like having your own personal mission. If things like impact, influence, autonomy, innovation, speed, and big challenges are important to you, than you'll probably be miserable at a well-established company, regardless of the compensation, WLB, T-shirts, pep rallies, etc.
  • wry_discontent 8y ago
    This is what does it for me. Working for large companies kills me. Being totally alienated and disconnected makes going to work feel like torture. But working on my own projects is a delight. Working somewhere where you're one of 2 or 3 engineers is fun. It's exciting. You can do things.
• abhinai 8y ago
  One point OP may have missed is learning opportunity. The opportunity to learn in a big company, any big company is simply not the same as that in a startup. You are always one of 50 people working on a feature that has already been spec'd out in great detail by some one else. Early in your career investing in learning and becoming a better engineer makes a lot of sense.
  • anyfoo 8y ago
    That is definitely not "always" the case, and in fact I highly doubt that "50 people working on the feature, spec'd by someone else entirely" is often true at all. Even as an intern at Google many many years ago, I was one of just a handful of engineers working on a feature, and even though my internship lasted only a few months, I not only had a considerable part in the feature's implementation, I was also given plenty of opportunity to give my own input. Now, many years later at a different large company, that has not changed. The total amount of people working on a significant feature may be large, but that's mostly when the feature is very cross-functional, and well, just generally large. Most teams we interact with still have the size of a handful of people, and they very much have the authority and responsibility over their components. Obviously there are a lot of factors in play, and I don't at all doubt that jobs like you describe exist (though 50 people with no spec input still seems like a vast exaggeration to me), but I highly resist the claim that working in a big corp means that you're bound to be a small cog in engineering. Quite the opposite: It can be a large lever giving you the opportunity to work on things of amazing scale and effect, that a startup simply does not have the resources for.
• sealthedeal 8y ago
  I think the idea of "getting rich" is your first mistake. That seems like a terrible reason to do anything. When I left Citi, I went to a startup so I could work at a small company and get away from politics. Ya the paycheck was ok, and stock was fine, but that company went under and I moved onto the next. The idea of "getting rich" was never in my head. Also, when you start a company, if your goal is to "get rich" than you have already once again failed. You should have a completely separate sub set of goals that are pushing you forward. I.e. lifestyle, financial independence, changing an industry, doing what you love, etc.
• sealthedeal 8y ago
  Also, you got paid out $15,000 on a $200mm exit. Sounds like you didnt do a good job negotiating your worth from the start. I would chalk that up to YOUR failure, not the startups failure.
• payne92 8y ago
  The blog post desperately needs "...for some people" appended. We are all solving for different things. Some want a shot at changing the world, some want to get rich, some want a job that (mostly) "doesn't come home with them", and many want to trade off between stress+anxiety and income+convenience. Others want to be always learning. Some have families and non-work commitments, others don't. For example: >>In my experience, it’s harder to have any visible growth in a >>startup because well first, what do you grow to? There is no >>clear hierarchy, no promotion paths. In startups, there's often a better chance to learn general skills outside of (say) just development (dealing with users, writing content, devops, QA, teamwork, etc.) for those that have initiative. Larger companies can be more structured but may have a chance for a more defined impact, with an existing customer base and market. Which makes more/less sense? Depends entirely on what YOU care about.
  • jatins 8y ago
    > there's often a better chance to learn general skills outside of (say) just development (dealing with users, writing content, devops, QA, teamwork, etc.) I think this point of "multiple hats" is true only on paper. I can imagine a founder wearing multiple hats. First few engineers - still likely. But if you are like 30th engineer at a startup, you really are not wearing many hats. "dealing with users" there are dedicated people in most companies who deal with users/customers. They are either PMs or Customer Success Engineers. Occasionally, you do interact with customers but I wouldn't say it's monumental. "writing content" Again, there are dedicated technical writers who do that. same for other roles.
    • ankit219 8y ago
      If the company already has specialist people for all the roles, then it has already moved on from the traditional early stage startup where the rewards are higher and learning exponential.
• smallgovt 8y ago
  Looking at any individual employee's outcome from a startup's exit is wildly unproductive because there is so much variance in startup outcomes. What you really want to know, as an employee, is what the expected value of your shares/options are. As a general rule of thumb, I'd recommend taking the valuation of the company's last financing round and halve it. Then, multiple this valuation by your projected ownership percentage after vesting (and subtract any impact from exercise price). The biggest reasons you want to discount the company's last private valuation are liquid preference and risk intolerance. Then, treat it as a high variance investment, which it is. I.e. don't count on the money.
  • scarmig 8y ago
    High variance investments are typically supposed to be a minority of your portfolio. Startups force you into investing an outsized amount into them. That's not even touching on how the actual value and variance is unknown, and how startups prey on what amount to unsophisticated investors (the workers taking equity).
    • smallgovt 8y ago
      I agree with all your points, especially that many startups 'prey' on employees who don't really understand how startup economics work. This is why I think it's important to distill general rules of thumb like the one I suggested. This will give employees a realistic perspective when evaluating startup offers. For example, let's say your typical pre-series A 1st engineer hire gets $150K + 1% vested over 4 years. Instead of thinking about what your shares would be worth in the case of an IPO, just take the last company's valuation, halve it and multiply it by your ownership. So, if your startup's last raise was at $10M, your 1% stake is worth $50K. If people start thinking in these terms, the level of disappointment will go way down because you start realizing that the expected value of employee equity is almost never that much to begin with.
      • pbecotte 8y ago
        Halving it for dilution is not actually enough. Remember that the valuation that an investor is paying is what the investment is worth _to them_. Any investment is worth more as part of a well diversified portfolio. As an employee, you lack that diversification. Even worse, the investors get significant protections built into their investment... preferred shares, board seats, dilution protections. I would be surprised if the true value (if that were possible to calculate) weren't closer to 1/10th the valuation that investors bought in at.
• ctulek 8y ago
  Example dialogs in this article are without context. However, the responses that engineer got from founders or other teammates do not sound terrible to me in most contexts. Most of the time, you shouldn't spend time on new shiny tech, like a new programming language. And you should really try hard to not urge adding more stuff to your stack, like a job queue server. >> Founder's goals and your goals, as an engineer, will not be aligned most of the times. This happens a lot and to be honest, I believe most engineers don't get it. Your goals should be aligned with the founders. If this is not the case, you shouldn't be in that startup. You don't do any good to yourself or to your team. Find another job.
• tabtab 8y ago
  Working for a startup is a rare opportunity that can be exhilarating and educational from a business and personal perspective. However, be aware you are taking a gamble with your career and time. If you have a family to support, taking that gamble can be a sticky decision. Discuss it with family first. Working overseas is kind of the same thing: it diversifies your outlook on life and people. But, does carry more career and family-time risk. If you are single and unattached, go for it!
• ineedasername 8y ago
  a lot of things have to align for your startup experience, as an engineer, to be worthwhile This definitely resonated. We talk here about the Swiss cheese model of failure, but I think it's important to apply it to success as well.
• misthop 8y ago
  I look at it another way - there are plenty of startups (series A, B) that pay fair industry wages along with equity. If the exit is worth nothing - no huge loss, I made what I should have. If there is a good/great exit - awesome, I pocket 1-10 years worth of salary on top of a fair salary. Could I make more with salary+rsu at a FAANG? possibly, maybe even probably - but then I would have to work at a FAANG
  • umeshunni 8y ago
    Effectively, you're saying you'll take a 50% paycut (including RSUs) to avoid working at a FAANG? Most people wouldn't do that.
    • misthop 8y ago
      But it isn't a paycut - at best I am declining to look for a pay increase. And that is ok. I think plenty of people would do it - at a certain point we make more than enough to fund our interests and lifestyle. I am always happy to make more, but I don't _need_ to, so my decision matrix on where to work extends beyond the question of dollars into consideration of people, mission, industry, possibility of making an individual impact, openess to remote work (I will not be going back to an office, at least while my kids are young) etc.
  • kelnos 8y ago
    I would never work at a FAANG, but there are plenty of post-IPO tech companies out there that pay near-comparable levels when you look at salary and equity comp combined. And in many cases the mix will be more like 30-40% salary, 60-70% RSUs, which reliably show up ready to sell every quarter. At a startup, even if you're making a market-rate salary, you're giving up the equity, or, at best, hoping that the equity will be liquid and worth something in 5-10 years. If it's not, you're looking at a huge pay cut (over 50%, often), and even if it is, equity payouts post-IPO or post-acquisition are often less than what you'd get at a non-startup, when you average it out over the years you had to wait to sell it.
  • pbecotte 8y ago
    Fair industry wages INCLUDE the RSU's / Bonuses at larger companies... and is often more then your base salary. You can't say that it is a fair salary PLUS equity unless the fair salary is comparable to BigCo Total Comp.
• birken 8y ago
  One thing that gets glossed over a lot with startups is that often times the technical skill level is really low. If you are a young engineer and you are hoping to learn technical skills, be very very careful about which startup you join because you might end up at one where nobody actually has any idea what they are doing. And if you yourself are in the learning phase of your career, you might not have the experience to figure out if the startup's technical situation is great or terrible. At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is that the technical skill level will be good, the career coaching will be good and they probably will even have some sort of education pipeline set up for younger engineers to learn. I always shudder when thinking about all of the new-grads who are seduced to join startups and then spend years learning terrible habits and churning out crap and get spit out no better than they began. At minimum if you spent a couple years at a larger, reputable company you'll always have a benchmark to compare with other opportunities.
  • WalterSear 8y ago
    > At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is that the technical skill level will be good, the career coaching will be good and they probably will even have some sort of education pipeline set up for younger engineers to learn. This hasn't been my experience, at all. The worst code I have work on has been at the biggest, most prestigious tech company that has employed me. And the best learning environment was at a startup that could only afford bootcamp grads.
  • save_ferris 8y ago
    > At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is that the technical skill level will be good I don't believe this is a universal truth, especially since your experience at a large company is largely dictated by the specific team you work on. I've definitely worked for small startups that were far more talented than some of the technical teams I've worked on at big companies.
    • vkou 8y ago
      The friction for finding a new job in a big company is often lower then quitting your startup. If you're not growing the way you want to, transfer internally. You don't lose your unvested equity, you don't have to spend 6 months re-onboarding (3 would be sufficient), you can have a much better idea of what the working environment in your new team is going to be, then going across the street to a competitor.
• legitster 8y ago
  Completely missing are stable mid-size companies. They can be great! Lots of flexibility to do your own thing, with less corporate politics. Unfortunately, market forces seem to be driving them out of the economy. Companies have to grow insanely big to justify their investments. And consumers increasingly don't want to shop at a 3rd or 4th player in a market.
• citizen1493 8y ago
  Whats with the attack on Snapchat? Creating a social network that respects privacy, doesn't allow Russian trolls to influence our election and provides an alternative to the Instagram popularity content doesn't sound like a terrible mission to me.
• cdoxsey 8y ago
  Working for a startup absolutely makes sense. The unstated assumption here is that you have a pile of offers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc along with some from startups and you have to make a decision about which to go with. I suppose my experience might be unusual, but I don't think that's typical. You've got an offer on the table, and your choice is to go with it, or reject it and hope you're given an offer by some other company. I've seen it go both ways. Maybe the next week you do see the better offer. Or maybe 3 months later and a few dozen rejections later you've got nothing to show for it. So you take what you're given.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • crazygringo 8y ago
    Likewise, there's nothing preventing you from taking an offer at a startup, continuing to interview and taking a job at a big company whenever, even if it's only 2 or 3 months later. I mean, try not to make a habit of it, and give the first place a chance to fully match the salary/RSU's. But I've seen it happen before, and while the first startup won't be happy with you, it's not going to have any long-term consequences. Just don't bother even putting them on your resume. I've also seen companies do the same -- hire someone in the spring of their senior year to start in the fall, and then rescind the offer late summer because some internal financial projection didn't pan out. (And even have the guts to ask for a signing bonus back. "Sorry, already spent it.")
    • toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Good advice. Always Be Interviewing. The business is going to be constantly interviewing new talent, you do a disservice to yourself to not be doing the same of other companies.
• USNetizen 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what the real dilemma is here of working for a startup. Being employee #15 is not the same as being in the first 5 hired. You don't take the same risks (or even do the same type of work), so there is obviously less reward when it's time to exit. If you want to get rich, the best way to do it is to start a company yourself - but it sounds like the author didn't want to go that route after trying it. That's OK though, it's not for everyone. But I think the author needs to understand the risk-reward thing here a little better - you need to take more risks to earn more reward, and being the 15th hire at a company that has most likely already raised money is significantly less risk then being like employee #3. A lot of companies compensate their first handful of employees in equity a lot more than others because they took risks (and pay cuts) plus made contributions to the growth of the company that that employees #10 and after most likely didn't. It still makes perfect sense to work at, or start, a startup - you just have to have the right appetite for risk and the right mindset for the varying types of work you'll be doing (compared to latter employees who can specialize more). You simply won't get "rich" without taking the risk and accepting that you have to broaden your capabilities beyond core technical skills to grow at a startup and earn your way to a nice exit package.
  • dman 8y ago
    Everything you said makes sense. Now pick up the phone and talk to a recruiter who is trying to hire employee #15 - the tales and projections you will get will be off the charts. My take is that there are people out there who will thrive for every risk/reward ratio. The misgivings usually arrive when employers misrepresent the risk/reward ratio during the hiring process. One of my favorite questions to ask startups during interviewing is - "In a semi plausible best case scenario how much money do you want me to make?". Answers are usually all over the place.
  • NateDad 8y ago
    I think the author understands exactly what they're talking about, and they're not talking about being employee #1-3. Most people, when they hear "work at a startup", they're talking about being employee #10-30. Not 1-3. There are, clearly, 1/10th as many of the latter, and they're almost all looking for much more skilled people than employees #10-30. I figure this advice is for people who are newer in their careers. People with 10+ years experience probably already know what the article says, and they're likely the only ones who might get hired as employee #1-3.
• deleted 8y ago
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• kenneth 8y ago
  It seems like a lot of the OP's experience is clouded by bitterness over having such a lousy payout in what looks like a good acquisition. I think this mostly goes to illustrate how important it is to understand the ownership structure of the company (common vs. preferred stock) and understanding what your grant actually means. Most people just accept whatever they're given without really understanding it. It can be a costly mistake.
• SergeAx 8y ago
  Trying Kotlin just for kicks or introducing a half-baked but hyped queue server is not a good idea for BigCo too, unless that BigCo is a developer of tech in question. What is a better idea is to spin up a pet project, particpate in hackathon or contribute to FOSS with this tech under the hood.
• eaenki 8y ago
  Nowdays a seed round is $1.5M. That could buy a startup 3 engineers at $200k/y in SF/LA/NY/Seattle for 16 months + $300k on distribution and misc. or 3 engineers at $150k/y in Switzerland and $600k in distribution and misc. as a founder I don't subscribe to giving 30-40% less than the top firms pay plus some basis points of equity worth something in the instance the company becomes a $10B company. and it makes little sense. Any great engineer can work at FAANG for $230k and still work on interesting problems even tho its riddled with politics. Paying 30%-40% less means you're not hiring the best, but mediocre people who have been rejected at FAANG or drank the startup kool aid.
• recursive 8y ago
  Ok, this is definitely a low-content comment, but I feel compelled. "Increasingly less sense" is just "decreasing sense". Or maybe "decreasingly more sense" if you're feeling fancy.
• ux4 8y ago
  I'd say working for an employer is making less sense in general, especially if you're a developer. It's becoming way easier to make money through other means, and you can devote your time to pursuits that are actually meaningful to you.
• CalChris 8y ago
  If you are going to look a startup as an investment, then you have to evaluate a startup as would a VC. If you are going to look at a startup as a place to learn skills and develop a network, that's another matter. Rarely will these two views coincide. I still have friends from my first startup. I had lunch with a couple of them last week. I took that job on slightly more than a whim. I learned a ton and got to know some good people. I did some interesting work. In fact, at the time, I didn't even know how to evaluate a startup as VC might. So add that to the skills you might learn from a first startup. As for the article, I disagree. I think there are a lot of crap startups, lifestyle startups, that you should avoid. However, I personally still believe but you have to be brutal in your selection, as a VC would be.
• angryasian 8y ago
  I've worked everywhere from small startups, to big FAANG companies and big enterprise companies. I am in the very same opinion as op. 1. Financially the exits weren't worth it. The amount you actually learn is incredibly questionable. 2. Working at bigger companies I learned a hell of a lot more, from the mere fact that there are a bigger pool of resources with a lot of experience to go get help from. This is just not technology, but even from improving management and soft skills. You'll learn a hell of a lot more on your career path moving up to Director and VP level from a big company than the equivalent title at a startup. 3. Everything else is really dependent on you as an individual. I personally thrived at a big company. As the writer suggested at a startup its all about shipping and things are pretty much laid out for you. At a big company, it really gives you time to take advantage of resources and people .. you just have to be very aggressive and pro active in your pursuits.
  • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    Just adding to your point: in all of the start-ups I worked for, the main selling points were (a) more responsibility sooner and (b) chance to drive decision-making about tech stack and/or work with the best tools (new or old) without red tape. I’ve never seen (or heard of) any start-up actually fulfill these selling points any better than medium-to-large companies. More responsibility sooner typically just translates into the usual crap about “wearing many hats” — which is to say your “responsibility” means doing whatever whimsical thing that other people say you have to do, with no regard for your career goals. In start-ups, I’ve only ever witnessed people getting less autonomy and much less freedom to learn. At the same time, the earliest engineers might have made very poor commitments to certain extreme philosophies about programming and engineers who come later have to clean up these messes while experiencing a lot of dogma from the early stage people. I’ve personally seen this happen several times with ex-Google employees who join as the earliest engineers and insist on setting up copies of what they recall from Google, mostly insisting on a monorepo regardless of any use case details, insisting on using Bazel or a similar homebrewed build file system, insisting on the same style of canary deployments. You have to be really careful to avoid these places unless you’re perfectly happy to be a cog implementing these patterns based on someone else’s authority-from-big-company-X. You might even have a super senior job title, yet still just be shuffling code according to someone else’s dogma, while being told the company doesn’t want “dogmatic” engineers. All this is just to say: be careful. Taking a start-up job because you think you’ll get more responsibility or be given autonomy or discretion in project architecture or tooling decisions is often a big mistake. By this point, I believe candidates simply need to reject start-up jobs categorically. Unless the job is paying full market total compensation (excluding non-liquid equity), top of the line benefits, and provides full transparency, just say no. Investors looking to back start-ups simply have to accept that the up-front costs from day one include ensuring employees earn fair market compensation exclusive of the risks associated with start-up equity. That’s just table stakes of hiring a team, period. It does not matter what optimistic outcomes you’d like for candidates to believe about you in exchange for dramatically less compensation.
• prepend 8y ago
  Has it ever? I’ve worked for a bunch of unsuccessful startups and it never “made sense” to work for them. I loved it and learned a lot and still was able to meet Maslow’s hierarchy. But it seems like an odd message since working for startups is pretty much never the sensible thing to do.
• pdimitar 8y ago
  > In my experience, the deadline-driven culture crushes any scope for creativity and experimentation. This is very well compressed criticism of our modern breed of capitalism. Creativity is very rarely given a true chance.
  • thefujin 8y ago
    The example which author provides does not strike me as a great illustration for this point though. > “Hey, I think we should experiment with Kotlin. It has lots of traction, Google officially supports it on Android and seems might help us write better code. Here is a PR showing how it’ll fit into our project.” > “Umm, engineers will need to learn a new language. We have other priorities right now. Let’s consider it later.” Without knowing too much of details, this looks like it can be a very valid point against introducing new language or technology when you truly have higher priorities and current choice of languages is good enough.
    • pdimitar 8y ago
      I agree. The part I quoted just got me thinking about a much bigger picture and things I have been witnessing my entire life. I realize that my previous comment is broad and vague.
• kelnos 8y ago
  I joined a startup 7.5 years ago and, from a money perspective, it's vastly exceeded expectations. But I wouldn't join another startup for the money; it's just not reliable, and I recognize that I was very lucky to have accidentally picked a winner. Yes, you can do interesting work at a BigCo. Sometimes you even get to work on greenfield projects, which is often even better than working on a greenfield project at a startup, because usually the BigCo has a lot of infra and resources that you can lean on that allow you to make fewer compromises. But you're just never going to have an outsized influence on the trajectory or success of the company as a whole. You're never going to have the authority or ownership to make big decisions for more than your (relatively small) area of the BigCo. If you want that, the best way to get that is to join a smaller startup.
• scottlegrand2 8y ago
  There's definitely a model for selling MVPs for fifty to a hundred million dollars, especially in AI right now. If you can stay small and take away 5 to 25% of that you win. The best way to approach this is to work at a bigco and then leave to build something they need but for which they lack the will to build themselves. But the minute you're talking less than 1% equity, unless it's the next Facebook, you belong at the bigco of your choice. All IMO of course...
• docker_up 8y ago
  I was employee 40, and approximately 15th engineer of a YC startup where the founders made roughly $50M each, and I made just under $80,000. During this time, had I gone to work at a FANG, I would have probably made a few million dollars just from being a senior software engineer. I have another friend who has been at 3 startups during this time and deeply regrets leaving his FANG job because he also missed out on millions. I think the way things are structured, you have to negotiate hard with startups otherwise it's better to stay in FANG. It didn't used to pay this well to be at a big company but the industry has changed. Not sure if things will work its way back, but having a TC of 400k+ as a senior engineer at a tech company is easily achievable these days, so the startups need to give bigger comp packages.
  • krschultz 8y ago
    This is 100% accurate and not how things were even 10 years ago. The market today is basically bi-modal. When I first started out in startups (2008) that didn't seem to be the case. The result is obviously worse for you financially if you join the startup, but it has also weakened the teams at startups. Many top engineers are just staying at the big public tech companies. Meanwhile large startups that would have IPOed years ago stay private in the current funding environment, dragging out the lockdown period for engineers. It just doesn't make sense to work at a startup like it used to. I truly don't think most people that argue to work for a startup have internalized the compensation at the big tech companies. $400k+ really is total comp for senior engineers. Not $200k + some lottery tickets for later, it's $400k on your W2 each year, with some of that fluctuating based on stock price and delivered in quarterly increments.
    • dcosson 8y ago
      > I truly don't think most people that argue to work for a startup have internalized the compensation at the big tech companies. Completely agree. For instance I don't think anyone who throws around the term "market rate salary" has updated their definition of it to include these dramatically higher numbers. Not to mention, housing costs in the bay area have followed (or been driven by, depending on your perspective) these rising big co salaries. Meaning that startup salaries not only haven't kept up, they may have even gone down in terms of how much money you take home after paying for housing.
• CzarnyZiutek 8y ago
  dotcom era startups were fun... these days they ain't no different from corporations - greedy, boring, technocratic, stressful, delusional, etc...
• jedberg 8y ago
  In my career, I've made all my money from working for public companies, and I've gained a lot of experience from both. The experience I got at the big co's was more around how to manage, how to manage up, how to drive big technical project to completion, and also some very niche, specific technologies. At the startups I got very broad technical knowledge, got to build full app stacks on my own, and also got to create and run a hiring process. Overall I'd say the startup experience was more fun and more valuable, but the experience at the big co's was still worthwhile and more than made up for by the compensation. However, I wouldn't have given either one up. Having both made me a well rounded engineering and employee.
• candybar 8y ago
  Over the past few years, I've talked to numerous early-stage startups of various kinds and all of them were making offers where the valuation would have to be 10-20 times their seed round valuation - which is already inflated, due to liquidity preference if you're merely taking RSU/options - for me to break even. And rarely was there significant sweat equity, nor were the founders' background substantially better than mine in any of those cases. If the potential for those startups was so great as to make their offers for early employees fair, they were essentially paying themselves millions a year, assuming most of the founders' equity was also being vested. And looking back, none of them found any kind of success where I would've come even close to breaking even. I'm at a point where doing my own startup is beginning to look attractive and this is a concern - would my investors force me to make these types of offers to early employees? What kind of employees would I be able to attract with that? Is this just entirely about attracting anti-big company people, delusional true believers or those who have no shot at getting a decent offer elsewhere? Btw, I've worked at startups, small companies and big companies and I don't buy that the rate of learning is higher at a small startup. At a big tech company, junior engineers already work on very large, complex problems and have tons of great people to learn from. As an engineer, there's no shortage of opportunities to learn. What can be potentially higher at a smaller company is the rate of career growth - if you're at a company that is growing at a crazy rate, you can become a somebody and have large managerial responsibilities quicker because being an early employee and having those relationships and foundational knowledge give you an advantage even over outsiders who would otherwise be more qualified. But even this is probably overstated at this point if you're not a founder, since tech culture is much more fungible than they used to be and nowadays everyone feels much more comfortable hiring experienced external managers over promoting internally those that aren't quite ready.
• badatshipping 8y ago
  Work for a good startup. Having job hopped a half dozen times in the Bay Area (to play the salary game) my experience has been that most startups are not doing anything new, have no sense of innovation, care more about quickly shitting out a crappy product than ever following up on the “iterate to something good” part, and are for the most part run by either clueless business types, or by programmers who think programming is just a tool, it’s impossible to be 10x better than average, etc. Craftsmanship and excellence are rare. Go work for a company that’s actually going to be worth lots of money someday. I like the quote about how burnout comes not from working too hard but from losing too much over and over.
• JesseAldridge 8y ago
  The problem is there is very, very little equity given to early employees. I went to one of YC's "work at a startup" events and Sam Altman himself got on stage and called out basically every company there for this very issue (assuming I interpreted him correctly). I looked into joining several startups as employee #1, both at this event, on AngelList, and by talking to random people who cold emailed me -- and it seems like an offer of 1% equity would be considered generous. I thought that seemed totally crazy and when I asked founders why they didn't offer more, they always said the same thing: "We have one slice for the founders, one slice for the investors, and one slice for every employee we are going to hire going forward, so we can't offer more than 1%." If you're friends with the founders and they know you have the skills, and they trust you to work hard, you could get something like 5-10% as employee #1. That's really the only sort of deal you should consider. But if you're just some random dude with a decent resume, you're way better off taking a more traditional job at an established company where your compensation is relatively predictable.
  • 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Heh. I have had a similar experience with AngelList except the offer was 0.5% and no salary — "it's standard". That didn't last long.
• luminati 8y ago
  Honest question: Why does every blog post that talks about working with a startup, always pick Facebook and Google for the comparison? Both these companies are extreme outliers (probably in the history of business!). Their outsized pay comes from their outsized profits, which comes from selling your data. I find it very ironic, that these very same people who diss startups love dissing Google and FB as being evil, but somehow when it comes salary packages they're viewed as holy institutions. Google and FB hire very selectively, and even if you're truly qualified they may not actually have a position open for you. And most critically 99+% of engineers (including the ones in HN) probably won't make the cut for whatever reason. Why not compare with traditional megacorps (of which there are literally (fortune) 500s of them (every company is a tech company now ;) ) like IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc? This group is far more representative of where most engineers would actually end up and hence a better comparison against startups. Then you'd realize that startup packages don't seem that bad - or rather you're making a tradeoff between not having to deal with corporate bullshit or an extra 30K in stock grants. Also on another note - startups are a wide spectrum (more so than megacorps). You have 3-5 person starting up startups to series D unicorn startups. Broad sweeping blanket statements comparing startups as if they're a single entity don't help too much.
  • sidlls 8y ago
    Those places (IBM, Oracle, etc.) also tend to pay much better than startups, have better equity packages, and more room to learn things. Just look at angel.co. It's common to see everything from "no salary" to "$90k", plus equity, in the listings for Bay Area startups. It's much more rare to see salaries above about $150k. These days working for a startup doesn't make any sense at all, for any reason, unless you're literally a founder (with double-digit equity).
  • jorblumesea 8y ago
    Even "B tier" tech companies such as finance firms, travel firms (booking.com, expedia) pay significantly better. Their stock is also worth something and will continue to be worth something.
  • luminati 8y ago
    ^Thanks for the comments. As I said there is a spectrum of startups. You have to make your own judgement - especially if you're joining 3-5 person startups without any funding. But that said the median Valley-based Series A/B/C startup would probably offer a competitive package or atleast they'll be upfront about it and not waste your time. On a side note - any tom, dick and harry can create a angel.co profile. I would discount 90% of them there. Basic due diligence - crunchable, SEC filings (on funding), any press articles, digging into founders' linkedin profiles should help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
• alealeale 8y ago
  The 'actual conversations' section bugs me, he wrote about having his request to use Kotlin rejected, and even though I'm a coder that loves trying new tech, I think it is usually both a very bad decision and investment to either mix languages just for cool points or rewrite your codebase because there's a new hype language. The queue problem sounds more sensible, but it could also be a case of over engineering. Overall I get the impression that the author was thinking on a purely technical level, and that's not something you can afford to do in a startup where budget and time are limited.
  • jamesfisher 8y ago
    This attitude comes through in other posts, too, e.g. [1] where he says "AMAZON DOES NOT EXPERIMENT ... Facebook contributed React; Google gave us TensorFlow, Kubernetes, and lot more ... But Amazon doesn't give a fuck". But at the PRODUCT level, Amazon seems extremely experimental. E.g. they kind of invented the "cloud computing" space. [1]: https://jatins.gitlab.io/me/amazon-internal-tools/ https://jatins.gitlab.io/me/amazon-internal-tools/
• alphagrep12345 8y ago
  What if we are actually interested in starting up something on our own in the future? Does the startup experience help? Or is it still beneficial to work at Big4 (or) Fast paced big firms like Uber, Slack, etc?
• notacoward 8y ago
  I've worked for ten startups. Financially, not a great idea. Like the lottery, a few win big and the vast majority lose. I had one decent exit, which is about par for the course, and really it just brought me up to parity with my BigCo colleagues. I'll make more in four years at a FAANG company than I did in four years even at that one successful startup. As far as learning, it's also a mixed bag. Sure, you get to learn a lot of different things, but a lot of it is the digital equivalent of cleaning toilets. You might have some influence over which technologies get used, but only a small number will get used company-wide vs. the wide variety that might exist at a larger company. I was still probably able to learn more about storage and networking and HPC and other general areas at some of those startups than now, but it's not clear it was any better for my market value. Even though much of what I'm learning now is totally specific to this employer and should barely even count in any future job search, there's a lot of cargo-culting in this industry so it's likely to make more than impression than even the most innovative startup nobody ever heard of. There are a lot of reasons to choose working at a startup, but they're mostly about personal preference and fulfillment rather than doing your career or finances any good. In some ways, startups would be a better choice late in someone's career, not early.
• meuk 8y ago
  > I made ... 15000 dollars from that exit. Let me put that figure in perspective. That is the same amount a recent college grad would make at Facebook in 2 months. Excuse, but it is really hard to empathize with the author for me after reading this. Complaining about 15k that's being tossed into your lap is not going to make you look good.
• sys_64738 8y ago
  Start ups are a lottery. A few hit it big while most don't. Even then, the owners make the real gains while employees are typically rounding errors. The best advice I have for startups is to try it early in your career to see if it's for you. The number of older folks I've seen who jumped to a startup and lived to regret it is almost 100%
• opportune 8y ago
  If the OP liked startups so much I think they should have just tried to be a founder. It doesn't take a lot of math to realize non-founders usually get a pretty bad deal. Unless someone is particularly enamored with startups or can't get a job at a well-paying bigco (which there's no shame in, but let's call a spade a spade) it's pretty clear your 10% chance at realizing <1% of a company's valuation will pay out less money than the guaranteed increase you would make at bigco. But since bigcos have so greatly outstripped startups in terms of the compensation packages they can offer, that's why I think all but the most technically challenging startups should GTFO of the bay area. Your compensation package probably won't be able to compete so you probably won't end up with very good talent, on average. So just go somewhere in the interior of the country and pay above-market there for engineers who maybe could have got hired by bigcos but wanted to stay in their area.
  • umeshunni 8y ago
    OP had two years of experience before joining the startup. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt of not knowing things like "doing the math". When you are a relatively new grad working an entry level job at a big Co and what you hear are mostly stories of all your friends of friends who became millionaires being an early employee of Uber/Snap/Twitter/whatever, it's tempting to make the jump.
• non_sequitur 8y ago
  As a former startup and FANG employee, I absolutely agree that working at a startup AS AN EMPLOYEE is not financially beneficial. The only ways to really make money as a non-founder employee at a startup is by being lucky enough to be at a Google/FB/Uber type exit for billions (not millions), or coming in as senior leadership (VP/CxO type role) AFTER the startup has gone through its growing pains, determined product market fit, and is seeing good traction. This is honestly as it should be - as an employee you are taking far less risk than founders (and to be fair, than most investors as well), so you shouldn't expect a massive windfall. As some people have commented, reason the cost benefit is out of whack is mainly due to recently inflated salaries (over the last few years) that came about as the result of FB/Google poaching wars, so this is a relatively recent development, and who knows how long it may last.
• tresante 8y ago
  This is something I'm pondering a lot these days. I am the co-founder of a startup that I'm in the process of winding down. We had some success but ultimately never gained sustainable market traction in a very hard to penetrate market. Having bootstrapped the company to revenue and kept things very lean and with costs and employee salaries funded initially through personal savings and a little bit of debt, I didn't take a dime of salary for myself in over 3 years. I always told myself the experience would be incredibly valuable regardless of what ultimately happened, knowing the chances of success were slim but opting to go for it anyway, because how else was real change effected? Yes, I've definitely learned a lot, would do things very differently a second time round and have gotten some experiences (good and bad) that I wouldn't otherwise have had, but I'm finding it hard to see much upside in the past 3 years right now. I see my colleagues doing well in their careers and seemingly every other startup founder I've met, crushing it, although I have also seen a few failures over time. I've tried to sell what's left of the company but have had little interest. I've applied to jobs in the Bay Area but it's clear hiring managers don't know quite what box to put me in and would rather go with the brand name and "safer" candidates. Yes I'm being a little selective in where I want to work, but it's hard not to stick to your ideals after standing by them for the past 3 years. Hopefully it'll all be part of a glorious master plan that becomes apparent in decades to come but at this point who knows! It's definitely given me a better appreciation for the risks that entrepreneurs (including early employees) take and a greater respect for those who do go out and grow something that truly makes the world a better place.
  • pbecotte 8y ago
    Having been one yourself very recently, you must be aware that every founder is "crushing it" right up until the put up that blog post about how it didn't work out, right?
• blueyes 8y ago
  Two additional pieces of information would be necessary to know if the author got a good deal: 1) How long was he there before he cashed out? (The amount of equity isn't just about the grant, it's about whether you stay for the vesting...) 2) What stage was the startup at when he joined? Yes, I know he was engineer no. 10 and employee no. 15. Many startups in the Bay Area are post-Series A by the time they have 15 employees. A lot of the risk is already gone by then, so the equity grants are less.
• pk455 8y ago
  >In my experience, it’s harder to have any visible growth in a startup because well first, what do you grow to? There is no clear hierarchy, no promotion paths. The “no titles” thing is great in theory but unless you have a naturally dominating personality, it likely won't work for you. That's because you're basing growth on titles instead of actual capability.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• sarthakjain 8y ago
  15k at a $200M outcome (ignoring liquidation preferences) means he had 0.0075% assuming 70% dilution from the time he joined to exit. He joined at 0.025%. assuming everyone before him got on average got 5x what he got that's still 1.5% to all the first 15 employees combined. Which is beyond attrocious. My guess as to what happened here is op got bored with job at big co. Startup offered 10% higher or same salary. Told him he is getting some stock, he didn't bother to find out how much. What you should get as employee 15 at a startup if your 2+ years of experience (according to ops resume on his website) is at least 0.1% which would have translated to $70k (assuming 70% dilution). In India a big co employee at 2+ years probably makes $40-50k at best including stock. That's close to 1.5 years salary at least at exit having worked for 2 years at the company. Assuming 25% of salary was in stock at big co he lost 20k in stock over 2 years. 70/20 is 3.5x and gives an annual rate of return of 80% which is roughly similar growth to big co. in it's best years. Moral of story count your stock when joining a startup.
• lkrubner 8y ago
  From 2002 to 2008 I was the technical co-founder of a startup, and I had amazing fun. I worked 70 hours a week for 6 years, mostly because we were having so much fun. In 2015 I was the lead engineer at a small startup that had a self-destructive and abusive top leadership. The technology was very exciting but the context was not. What I learned from the two experiences is that startups can be intense fun if you are one of the owners, but if you are not an owner, startups can be absolutely miserable. More details are available in the book that I wrote: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
• dhab 8y ago
  I agree that there is some learning experience, but I am not sure how valuable that is. My experience working at a startup has been a learning experience on how not to do things (tech) and how wrong management feels - but I actually find that a universal experience within all companies - only in a startup it's more amplified. Theoretically, it might be valuable to know how not to do things, but that's only a small slice in an infinity of options. For the how to actually do things, I think anyone involved in trying to figure that out too - and feel like luck plays a big part. My thought on this is, life-style business rather funded startup might be better in coming close to big company pay and independence - although myself, I haven't tried that.
• mharroun 8y ago
  I feel the need to defend the startup life... so here goes: I have spent 12 years in the startup space, with an origin in software engineering... so far I have learned: - how to be an amazing engineer - how to be a above average IT/Ops/Devops Engineer - how to build/manage/run QA teams - how to be a successful project manager - how to me a successful product manager - how to manage and work with designers - how to deal with managing culture within a company - how to lead and grow product and engineering department from the ground up - you can get paid VERY well if your skilled - once your prove yourself you can effect the direction and culture of the entire company (i pull 250+k in cash on top of equity) My latest position is a CTO of a startup that went from seed to series A in less then a year and triple their valuation, while turning down other CTO offer's from billion dollar valuation startups, and other "head of engineering" like roles from well knows startups... plus manager/director level roles at some of the FAANG companies. I would of never have learn what I have learned or have grown as quickly as I did if I took a job at a standard "stay in your lane" corporation. I also get to work on a social mission I truly believe in, and help define, build, and grow the next generation of startup engineers.
• dawhizkid 8y ago
  Speaking from experience, it's not worth it even if you are on a mission. We're in a world where the incumbents have more resources and the talent to execute on big ideas. There's no reason why you need to choose between mission-driven and 1/3 the salary anymore. You can probably achieve bigger things at a big company these days.
• let_var 8y ago
  Little late to the party. I am going second the sentiment that is presented here. Startup makes sense for founding members with double digit equity. For everything else go join a BigCo, any BigMediumCo.
• ryankicks 8y ago
  Justin Kan has a great post that is equally critical of startup compensation and management. He also makes positive points in favor of startups: as opportunities for non-FAANG candidates, for learning faster and (to some people) as a gateway to starting your own company. https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/ https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/ In line with Justin's post, learning has been a key motivating factor throughout my career. In particular, working at startups has given me better insight to the business that drives the company. I've sat on calls with sales people to understand customer asks vs. needs, and I've developed strategy alongside BD teams for driving adoption of technical platforms. For engineers who are interested in learning more about other functions/roles at a company (product, business development, sales), startups are sometimes flatter and can offer more exposure. (That said, you can also get non-eng exposure/experience in larger companies. You may have to take a non-traditional eng role, such as sales engineering, partner engineering or developer advocacy. There are some perceived downsides of that path -- sometimes around compensation or building your core "engineering skill set" -- but it's a viable option.)