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In general though from what I read on hn I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups, especially early stage. From what I've rea

In general though from what I read on hn I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups, especially early stage. From what I've read a lot of compensation seems to be in equity and not cash, and unless it takes off like faang, you end up severely ubderpaid relative to what you could be making

notacoward 6y ago
> it sucks to be an early employee at most startups Absolutely. I worked at ten, with employee numbers from single digits up to about fifty. As we all know, most startups fail. Even among those that succeed, few employees avoid all of the traps that founders and VCs create for them (e.g. dilution and special share classes) to get more than a modest payout at the exit. For most, even that "big payout" might not match the year-after-year premium they could have gotten by working and climbing the ladder at one of the already-big tech companies. As one point of evidence, my two semi-successful exits did help me retire earlier and in more comfort than I otherwise might have. I'm grateful for that. OTOH, my three and a half undistinguished years at Facebook helped more.
gumby 6y ago
> I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups, Depends what you want. I had a guy work for us at my first startup: he was employee #6 and once we got to about 13 or 15 he decided it was time to move on. I was surprised, but he felt the business was just too big for him. And indeed I've looked at his career over the ensuing years and he's worked for some amazing companies...always just for a year or so and always when they were very tiny. Sometimes I noticed he'd worked with the same people, so he wasn't leaving because he was a poor performer (we missed him) but simply because that's what he liked.
unishark 6y ago
You're basically saying the equity is too low. Any decent exit would make the founders and investors a lot of money. If they wanted to motivate employees to make that happen, equity needs to be good enough to make the employee a lot too. Instead it tends to be much closer to a token amount to check the box, taking advantage of the fact that you can't easily assess its value.
- twblalock 6y ago
  It doesn't matter how much equity you have if it never ends up being worth anything.

notacoward 6y ago

> it sucks to be an early employee at most startups Absolutely. I worked at ten, with employee numbers from single digits up to about fifty. As we all know, most startups fail. Even among those that succeed, few employees avoid all of the traps that founders and VCs create for them (e.g. dilution and special share classes) to get more than a modest payout at the exit. For most, even that "big payout" might not match the year-after-year premium they could have gotten by working and climbing the ladder at one of the already-big tech companies. As one point of evidence, my two semi-successful exits did help me retire earlier and in more comfort than I otherwise might have. I'm grateful for that. OTOH, my three and a half undistinguished years at Facebook helped more.

gumby 6y ago

> I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups, Depends what you want. I had a guy work for us at my first startup: he was employee #6 and once we got to about 13 or 15 he decided it was time to move on. I was surprised, but he felt the business was just too big for him. And indeed I've looked at his career over the ensuing years and he's worked for some amazing companies...always just for a year or so and always when they were very tiny. Sometimes I noticed he'd worked with the same people, so he wasn't leaving because he was a poor performer (we missed him) but simply because that's what he liked.

unishark 6y ago

You're basically saying the equity is too low. Any decent exit would make the founders and investors a lot of money. If they wanted to motivate employees to make that happen, equity needs to be good enough to make the employee a lot too. Instead it tends to be much closer to a token amount to check the box, taking advantage of the fact that you can't easily assess its value.

twblalock 6y ago
It doesn't matter how much equity you have if it never ends up being worth anything.