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We've done polls here on HN before of where people work. A significant percentage of the HN community work for companies that are not startups. Sometimes even

We've done polls here on HN before of where people work. A significant percentage of the HN community work for companies that are not startups. Sometimes even just reading on HN about people who are succeeding (or persisting) with their side projects or about successful startup founders or failed startup founders is enough to release the tension (momentarily) - to jump from a certain 9 to 5 reality to very real world of a real start-up. The ability to leave your job at 5pm is very much a benefit, one that 99% of startups will never offer. That being said, you will never become wealthy[1] without ownership of something that produces income. That will almost never happen at a BigCo. My mom had multiple patents - for which she got a nice lucite paperweight [2] [1] My definition of wealthy == How long you can maintain your current, preferred lifestyle without working. This means building a semi-passive/semi-active income from your own products. Binging on consulting income isn't the same. Yes, you can adjust your preferred lifestyle to meet median cash flows. [2] Example from the "Corporate & IP Recognition Company" (LOL) http://aztecawards.com/clear-lucite-silver-plate-sq12.html http://aztecawards.com/clear-lucite-silver-plate-sq12.html

j_baker 16y ago
> The ability to leave your job at 5pm is very much a benefit, one that 99% of startups will never offer. And one can also argue that 99% of startups aren't worth working for. It's incredible how many startups are out there that are doing things wrong. The most important part of working for a startup is choosing the right one (ie, one that won't confuse productivity and butt in seat time).
- quickpost 16y ago
  > The most important part of working for a startup is choosing the right one... Ya I couldn't agree more... It's one topic that I would like to see covered more often is how to identify the right startup from a prospective employee perspective.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    There's a problem with that though. I think one could write a ton about choosing a startup that will be successful from a strictly economic standpoint. But I can't write anything to tell you what kind of startup you want to work for. That's something you're pretty much on your own with. As Carl Jung once said: "The secret to your vision lies in your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens."
- robryan 16y ago
  Even if you do setup work hours that aren't overkill there will still be times when 5pm rolls around and there are bugs which are currently effecting customers. The startup that knuckles down and fixes the bugs asap will easily out do the one the says oh well end of the day, we'll fix it tomorrow.
  - patio11 16y ago
    There's just so much culture to unpack in this statement. Any company -- startup or otherwise -- which treated its employees' personal lives as something other than an expendable resources would treat "a drop-everything-it-needs-fixing-now bug got into production" as an anomalous emergency. There would be investigations after the fact and steps taken to prevent it from ever happening again. The thing about anomalous emergencies? They don't happen every single freaking day if you are competent. A company I previously worked for, which was by no means a paragon of work-life balance, had a fairly simple guideline with regards to bugs that were that severe: if there is an engineer four levels down the org chart in the office at 2 AM because of a bug, there had better be three levels of org chart also in the office at 2 AM preparing for an investigation into how they screwed up to let that bug get into a customer's system.
  - lsc 16y ago
    Eh, I'm a SysAdmin, so generally speaking, my "bugs" are quite a bit more urgent. Yeah, sometimes you need to drop everything and then go deal with it. The difference between a reasonable company that can keep good people and an unreasonable company that cycles through burnt-out husks is seen the day after you had to pull an all nighter. At the company you want to work for, you get a day of flex time, and even if you don't take it, you get thanked (and not berated) when you stumble in around 3pm. My general rule is "If you can't get it done before you sleep, you might as well go to sleep on whatever schedule gives you the most total productivity" This means no sleep deprivation during crunch time, unless you can reasonably stay up long enough to finish. Sleep-deprivation for projects that last more than a day is completely stupid because you trade away all your good hours tomorrow for a few more tired hours tonight. It's harder than that, too, because sleep isn't the only need. Sure you can go longer without seeing your friends/family or doing whatever it is you do to relax, probably, than you can go without sleep, but most people's performance starts to degrade sharply after a week or so of not having personal time, even if they do get enough sleep. So again, if the crunch time is going to last more than a week, having people do overtime is probably going to net you less total productivity than just having them work optimal hours. The thing is, humans have limits. there's only so many hours in a row someone can usefully work. There is no point in paying someone to sit in the seat if they are burnt out. You might as well pay them to be home doing something else, becoming not-burnt-out so they can then get something done for you the next day.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  > one that won't confuse productivity and butt in seat time That's hardly limited to start-ups. There are whole industries built on absurd working hours, and not out of necessity.
meterplech 16y ago
I think you can certainly reach certain levels of wealth only be selling a company you own. But, I am not sure joining a startup you don't own doesn't give you a hugely better chance of wealth. Especially if you are not one of the first 5 employees or some very high position. Let's say you have the skills to be a VP Engineering of a startup or a engineering manager at Google. Let's be generous and say you get there after a series A and make 100k/year startup and get ~.5% ownership subject to dilution. Compared to that Google job making 175k a year plus bonus and stock options. Let's be conservative and say total compensation of 200k. In 5 years you are forgoing $500,000 + any return on asset you made. That startup has to sell for $10 million without taking any more investment for it to be worth it. Obviously this is possible, but it's not clear which one is better off most of the time. Like the article says- do a startup if you want to do one. Not if you want to get rich. If you want to get rich go be a quant at a hedge fund.
- blacksmythe 16y ago
  Not to mention that if you go to work at Google, you will probably get to know multiple engineers with enough Google stock to fund a startup, and perhaps the chance to work with them at a startup they fund for more than 0.5% of the company. (My sense is that engineers that start companies better understand the value of good engineers than VCs do).
- random42 16y ago
  at startup has to sell for $100 million without taking any more investment for it to be worth it, which is considered a very big exit.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  Eric Schmidt has never started a company. He's the 129th richest person in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
  - CapitalistCartr 16y ago
    He doesn't say its impossible, so one example doesn't refute, or even respond to his statement. Not only is the plural of anecdote not data, neither is the singular.
jshen 16y ago
"My mom had multiple patents" At my company we get paid cash for patent filings and paid another cash sum if the patent is accepted. A little less than 5k total, but it's not hard to do 1 a year. It's not getting rich, but there is no risk either. I get paid, period. I get over 5k a year matching in my 401k, and I get a bonus every year over 10k. This is all on top of a large salary by most peoples standards. If I live like I only make 80k (not hard) I will easily have a house paid off and a fair amount of money in the back after 20 years. And it's low stress and fun work. What I'd really like to know is what percentage of engineers that try to succeed at a startup actually end up wealthy. Does anyone have stats on this? Most of the people I've worked with that ended up wealthy weren't engineers. they got good at SEO at the right time and sold some wordpress site or something like that. I used to work with a few people that were at youbet.com and I wouldn't say they got rich. The average engineer seemed to have gotten a payout in the 6 figures range. This is me guessing based on the info they told me in conversations. So they basically get to buy a house in cash in the L.A. area. I feel like my chances of paying off a house in 20ish years is just as good at a big company as it would be trying my hand at a few start ups. Maybe I'm wrong, and clearly I'm not a big risk taker.
- harryh 16y ago
  As long as you realize that every time you take that ~5k for a patent you're selling a piece of your soul. Software patents are evil taking money from your employer when they file for one makes you complicit in the process.
  - jshen 16y ago
    I agree that our system is broken, and I don't do the patents myself. I was just pointing out that at some big companies you get paid real money for patents.
- GrooveStomp 16y ago
  Wow. Sign me up. I make around 55k-65k and live like I earn about 20k. The biggest bonus I've ever received was about 10% of my yearly income. That happened once. I went 8 months without work last year. I'm living a completely comfortable lifestyle. I'm not needing of anything. I want lots of things, but it takes just a tiny modicum of restraint to avoid monstrous debt snowballs. The work I've done has only ever been high stress, and very rarely fun. Is it purely a matter of experience to get to the point where you earn greater than 80k and only do fun, low stress work? I haven't seen anything like that around here. Oh, and this city is expensive too. For a base salary of 62k/year, the average home costs 9.5 years of pre-tax income.
imesh 16y ago
Just think it should be noted: Most people who live happy fulfilled lives still manage to do it with out being wealthy.
GBond 16y ago
Related to this: "(47%) of the world’s wealthy people are entrepreneurs. ... Another 23% of the world’s millionaires got rich through paid work" http://www.economist.com/node/17929057 http://www.economist.com/node/17929057
- jonny_eh 16y ago
  And how many of those "paid millionaires" were engineers? I bet most worked in finance.
lsc 16y ago
>My definition of wealthy == How long you can maintain your current, preferred lifestyle without working. I've heard your definition of wealth before, and it's better than most, but you need to factor in risk. For instance, I could stop work tomorrow... I could continue to not work until my employee got burnt out or until my accountant quit. I wouldn't call this wealthy, personally, just 'cause, well, I think that without my help and supervision the risk of him burning out goes up a whole lot. Well, that and if we don't keep growing, the inexorable downward march of prices would eventually catch up to us. I mean, I could be wrong. I might be holding the guy back. but the point is that I can maintain my current lifestyle without work until a certain event occurs. This is true of nearly all investments. Now, my wealth is certainly more fragile than a stack of T-bills that paid the same small stipend, (and with today's interest rates, you'd need a pretty big stack, even for the small amount of money I live on.) but even in that case, you'd be at the mercy of inflation; you'd have /some/ risk. Unless you used TIPS, in which case, the stack would need to be again larger, and then you are dependent on the government using a cost of living measure that is relevant to your lifestyle.

j_baker 16y ago

> The ability to leave your job at 5pm is very much a benefit, one that 99% of startups will never offer. And one can also argue that 99% of startups aren't worth working for. It's incredible how many startups are out there that are doing things wrong. The most important part of working for a startup is choosing the right one (ie, one that won't confuse productivity and butt in seat time).

quickpost 16y ago
> The most important part of working for a startup is choosing the right one... Ya I couldn't agree more... It's one topic that I would like to see covered more often is how to identify the right startup from a prospective employee perspective.
- j_baker 16y ago
  There's a problem with that though. I think one could write a ton about choosing a startup that will be successful from a strictly economic standpoint. But I can't write anything to tell you what kind of startup you want to work for. That's something you're pretty much on your own with. As Carl Jung once said: "The secret to your vision lies in your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens."
robryan 16y ago
Even if you do setup work hours that aren't overkill there will still be times when 5pm rolls around and there are bugs which are currently effecting customers. The startup that knuckles down and fixes the bugs asap will easily out do the one the says oh well end of the day, we'll fix it tomorrow.
- patio11 16y ago
  There's just so much culture to unpack in this statement. Any company -- startup or otherwise -- which treated its employees' personal lives as something other than an expendable resources would treat "a drop-everything-it-needs-fixing-now bug got into production" as an anomalous emergency. There would be investigations after the fact and steps taken to prevent it from ever happening again. The thing about anomalous emergencies? They don't happen every single freaking day if you are competent. A company I previously worked for, which was by no means a paragon of work-life balance, had a fairly simple guideline with regards to bugs that were that severe: if there is an engineer four levels down the org chart in the office at 2 AM because of a bug, there had better be three levels of org chart also in the office at 2 AM preparing for an investigation into how they screwed up to let that bug get into a customer's system.
- lsc 16y ago
  Eh, I'm a SysAdmin, so generally speaking, my "bugs" are quite a bit more urgent. Yeah, sometimes you need to drop everything and then go deal with it. The difference between a reasonable company that can keep good people and an unreasonable company that cycles through burnt-out husks is seen the day after you had to pull an all nighter. At the company you want to work for, you get a day of flex time, and even if you don't take it, you get thanked (and not berated) when you stumble in around 3pm. My general rule is "If you can't get it done before you sleep, you might as well go to sleep on whatever schedule gives you the most total productivity" This means no sleep deprivation during crunch time, unless you can reasonably stay up long enough to finish. Sleep-deprivation for projects that last more than a day is completely stupid because you trade away all your good hours tomorrow for a few more tired hours tonight. It's harder than that, too, because sleep isn't the only need. Sure you can go longer without seeing your friends/family or doing whatever it is you do to relax, probably, than you can go without sleep, but most people's performance starts to degrade sharply after a week or so of not having personal time, even if they do get enough sleep. So again, if the crunch time is going to last more than a week, having people do overtime is probably going to net you less total productivity than just having them work optimal hours. The thing is, humans have limits. there's only so many hours in a row someone can usefully work. There is no point in paying someone to sit in the seat if they are burnt out. You might as well pay them to be home doing something else, becoming not-burnt-out so they can then get something done for you the next day.
chrisaycock 16y ago
> one that won't confuse productivity and butt in seat time That's hardly limited to start-ups. There are whole industries built on absurd working hours, and not out of necessity.

meterplech 16y ago

I think you can certainly reach certain levels of wealth only be selling a company you own. But, I am not sure joining a startup you don't own doesn't give you a hugely better chance of wealth. Especially if you are not one of the first 5 employees or some very high position. Let's say you have the skills to be a VP Engineering of a startup or a engineering manager at Google. Let's be generous and say you get there after a series A and make 100k/year startup and get ~.5% ownership subject to dilution. Compared to that Google job making 175k a year plus bonus and stock options. Let's be conservative and say total compensation of 200k. In 5 years you are forgoing $500,000 + any return on asset you made. That startup has to sell for $10 million without taking any more investment for it to be worth it. Obviously this is possible, but it's not clear which one is better off most of the time. Like the article says- do a startup if you want to do one. Not if you want to get rich. If you want to get rich go be a quant at a hedge fund.

blacksmythe 16y ago
Not to mention that if you go to work at Google, you will probably get to know multiple engineers with enough Google stock to fund a startup, and perhaps the chance to work with them at a startup they fund for more than 0.5% of the company. (My sense is that engineers that start companies better understand the value of good engineers than VCs do).
random42 16y ago
at startup has to sell for $100 million without taking any more investment for it to be worth it, which is considered a very big exit.
ojbyrne 16y ago
Eric Schmidt has never started a company. He's the 129th richest person in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago
  He doesn't say its impossible, so one example doesn't refute, or even respond to his statement. Not only is the plural of anecdote not data, neither is the singular.

jshen 16y ago

"My mom had multiple patents" At my company we get paid cash for patent filings and paid another cash sum if the patent is accepted. A little less than 5k total, but it's not hard to do 1 a year. It's not getting rich, but there is no risk either. I get paid, period. I get over 5k a year matching in my 401k, and I get a bonus every year over 10k. This is all on top of a large salary by most peoples standards. If I live like I only make 80k (not hard) I will easily have a house paid off and a fair amount of money in the back after 20 years. And it's low stress and fun work. What I'd really like to know is what percentage of engineers that try to succeed at a startup actually end up wealthy. Does anyone have stats on this? Most of the people I've worked with that ended up wealthy weren't engineers. they got good at SEO at the right time and sold some wordpress site or something like that. I used to work with a few people that were at youbet.com and I wouldn't say they got rich. The average engineer seemed to have gotten a payout in the 6 figures range. This is me guessing based on the info they told me in conversations. So they basically get to buy a house in cash in the L.A. area. I feel like my chances of paying off a house in 20ish years is just as good at a big company as it would be trying my hand at a few start ups. Maybe I'm wrong, and clearly I'm not a big risk taker.

harryh 16y ago
As long as you realize that every time you take that ~5k for a patent you're selling a piece of your soul. Software patents are evil taking money from your employer when they file for one makes you complicit in the process.
- jshen 16y ago
  I agree that our system is broken, and I don't do the patents myself. I was just pointing out that at some big companies you get paid real money for patents.
GrooveStomp 16y ago
Wow. Sign me up. I make around 55k-65k and live like I earn about 20k. The biggest bonus I've ever received was about 10% of my yearly income. That happened once. I went 8 months without work last year. I'm living a completely comfortable lifestyle. I'm not needing of anything. I want lots of things, but it takes just a tiny modicum of restraint to avoid monstrous debt snowballs. The work I've done has only ever been high stress, and very rarely fun. Is it purely a matter of experience to get to the point where you earn greater than 80k and only do fun, low stress work? I haven't seen anything like that around here. Oh, and this city is expensive too. For a base salary of 62k/year, the average home costs 9.5 years of pre-tax income.

imesh 16y ago

Just think it should be noted: Most people who live happy fulfilled lives still manage to do it with out being wealthy.

GBond 16y ago

Related to this: "(47%) of the world’s wealthy people are entrepreneurs. ... Another 23% of the world’s millionaires got rich through paid work" http://www.economist.com/node/17929057 http://www.economist.com/node/17929057

jonny_eh 16y ago
And how many of those "paid millionaires" were engineers? I bet most worked in finance.

lsc 16y ago

>My definition of wealthy == How long you can maintain your current, preferred lifestyle without working. I've heard your definition of wealth before, and it's better than most, but you need to factor in risk. For instance, I could stop work tomorrow... I could continue to not work until my employee got burnt out or until my accountant quit. I wouldn't call this wealthy, personally, just 'cause, well, I think that without my help and supervision the risk of him burning out goes up a whole lot. Well, that and if we don't keep growing, the inexorable downward march of prices would eventually catch up to us. I mean, I could be wrong. I might be holding the guy back. but the point is that I can maintain my current lifestyle without work until a certain event occurs. This is true of nearly all investments. Now, my wealth is certainly more fragile than a stack of T-bills that paid the same small stipend, (and with today's interest rates, you'd need a pretty big stack, even for the small amount of money I live on.) but even in that case, you'd be at the mercy of inflation; you'd have /some/ risk. Unless you used TIPS, in which case, the stack would need to be again larger, and then you are dependent on the government using a cost of living measure that is relevant to your lifestyle.