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Go talk to Dropbox, and ask them if they give below market salaries, options that will likely never pay off, and an expectation that you work 80 hours a week.

Go talk to Dropbox, and ask them if they give below market salaries, options that will likely never pay off, and an expectation that you work 80 hours a week. But you're right that that's the danger of joining a startup coming out of college -- you have no idea which ones are great and which ones are not. If some intermediating third party vetted the startups for the students we wouldn't have that problem. Such an idea has worked in all kinds of problem domains, but in startups founded by college grads YC is the standard. Having the PG stamp of approval is so valuable.

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
Go talk to Dropbox... Yeah, I agree that not all startups are this way. But the other thing is that so many of these startups are founded by college grads. Do they really know that much that our recent grad doesn't? Probably not. I really think that some of the hiring difficulty for startups is that they're genuinely not offering that great a deal for employees.
ratpandemonium 16y ago
> Go talk to Dropbox Hey, your selection bias is showing. You can't choose one outlier that is already PROVEN and use that as an example of a typical startup, which is what the GP posted about. That's like someone saying the lottery is a bad investment, and you telling them to go ask the latest Powerball winner if they thought it was a bad investment. The truth is that the MAJORITY of startups under-compensate. That's why so many are desperate for talent. If they don't have the money to pay for the talent they need, they need to raise the money; and if the CEO can't raise the money, what does that say about the company's prospects? You live or die based on the quality of people working on the problem. Startups can't realistically expect to attract top-flight talent paying what the average Yahoo! developer makes. I read about how it takes 6 months or a year for some of these Internet start-ups to find someone for an IMPORTANT position, and the question is, how can you ever make it BIG when you need to move in Internet time but you're hiring in geological time? Asked and answered: They don't. Here's the key line from Jeff Bezos's original 1994 Amazon job posting: "Well-capitalized start-up seeks" ...
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ryanwaggoner 16y ago

Go talk to Dropbox... Yeah, I agree that not all startups are this way. But the other thing is that so many of these startups are founded by college grads. Do they really know that much that our recent grad doesn't? Probably not. I really think that some of the hiring difficulty for startups is that they're genuinely not offering that great a deal for employees.

ratpandemonium 16y ago

> Go talk to Dropbox Hey, your selection bias is showing. You can't choose one outlier that is already PROVEN and use that as an example of a typical startup, which is what the GP posted about. That's like someone saying the lottery is a bad investment, and you telling them to go ask the latest Powerball winner if they thought it was a bad investment. The truth is that the MAJORITY of startups under-compensate. That's why so many are desperate for talent. If they don't have the money to pay for the talent they need, they need to raise the money; and if the CEO can't raise the money, what does that say about the company's prospects? You live or die based on the quality of people working on the problem. Startups can't realistically expect to attract top-flight talent paying what the average Yahoo! developer makes. I read about how it takes 6 months or a year for some of these Internet start-ups to find someone for an IMPORTANT position, and the question is, how can you ever make it BIG when you need to move in Internet time but you're hiring in geological time? Asked and answered: They don't. Here's the key line from Jeff Bezos's original 1994 Amazon job posting: "Well-capitalized start-up seeks" ...

deleted 16y ago
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