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Friend was the founding engineer at startup that did quite well. Eventually sold for 100s of millions, and yeah, he didn't see a dime. Always discount those op
by twistedpair 5y ago
Friend was the founding engineer at startup that did quite well. Eventually sold for 100s of millions, and yeah, he didn't see a dime.
Always discount those options to 0, and make sure you're getting a good salary.
- jeffwass 5y agoI’ve seen this term around lately. What exactly is a “founding engineer”? Is it a euphemism to give early non-founder employees a title that sounds like founder but with minimal corresponding equity?
- ithrow 5y agoexactly
- whymauri 5y agoIt is completely arbitrary. Arguably, all roles at seed stage or earlier are arbitrary.
- dudul 5y agoYes, and usually pretty bad salary. I haven't seen any comment mentioning it, but it's another way to get screwed when joining a very early stage startup. The 1st engineers join pre-series A, get pretty low salary with the promise of making it big when the company goes public or is bought. Then more engineers come on board when the company has more resources after a few other rounds of funding and they get a salary much closer to the market.
- nrook 5y agoA neat thing about the job is you probably get to exercise early and save taxes on your equity if it actually pays off. But yes, it's not worth that much more than joining a startup later, and it'd be foolish to evaluate it differently. It's fun, but if you don't have real founder equity don't trick yourself into working longer hours than you would at a regular job.
- twistedpair 5y agoTo clarify: first engineer.
- rkk3 5y agoIt varies. Co-founder's are "supposed" (according to YC) to have a 10% or larger original stake in the company but people will throw the title around anyway. Likewise founding engineer could be an IC there from the begging with several % in stock or it could be a meaningless puff title.