10 ms·

I bet the non-profitable, feeding-on-VC startups are getting worried and we'll see more of this. I work at a non-VC-funded, profitable, stable, small place and

I bet the non-profitable, feeding-on-VC startups are getting worried and we'll see more of this. I work at a non-VC-funded, profitable, stable, small place and we're desperately trying to hire. I've never made FAANG/startup income, and I've always felt a little left-out because of that. But we've been stable for nearly 30 years, and have never had the big layoffs or hiring freezes including, dot-com bust, 2008, 2020 COVID lockdowns, and now. We're low variance, so the upside isn't as crazy, but then again the downside has been historically pretty limited too. My advise is to find a smaller, stable, profitable place to interview at. edit: grammar

bob1029 4y ago
> My advise is to find a smaller, stable, profitable place to interview at. This is the answer. Our organization is tiny and works in an extremely boring niche - B2B banking consultants & related software shenanigans. We've been at it since the 90s. If you adjust your expectations just a little bit (i.e. you are now OK using "boring" stuff like .NET/Java), you might be able to get something much more quickly than otherwise. Regardless, the market has spoken and we must all adapt.
- michaelrpeskin 4y ago
  Yes, forgot boring! We're kind of boring. Our customers are boring, our technology is boring (Java 8!), but the problems we solve are actually pretty exciting - we just solve them in a boring way :)
  - technothrasher 4y ago
    Right there with you. Small manufacturing company, been going steady for 51 years, boring as can be (20 year old PCB layout software and straight C on bare metal Arm Cortex), but we've found a good niche solving problems for customers that nobody else will. Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      There are an incredible amount of jobs, niche jobs, that exist at companies like this all over. Small companies, in great niches, that have good industrial customers, that will continue to exist and will not be easily optimized away by some SaaS startup. There's also good existing small companies that are in more exciting tech spaces, that are hiring, that are not startups. Shout out to Fastmail, my former employer, as they are one of those nice small companies, seem to get lots of love here, and they're lovely people. And last I checked, they're hiring as well. Even in the 'SaaS' space there are boring but profitable small comapnies that fulfill automation for niche use cases. I just picked up on that we are using for our CDN that cloudfront doesn't being to cover. The pricing is good, the company is small, stable, and I'll continue to use them as long as I can. So... they're out there, but they certainly aren't FAANG and a lot of times, they aren't wild startups either. Part of this leads to less "popularity" for potential employees. You've never heard of ABC Bearings & Co, and they haven't manufactured Bearings in 100 years, but they fulfill important roles in the roller industry. Not Boeing, but just as important. I think this is because startups spend incredible amounts of time trying to grow and to find customers, so naturally they advertise, are in the news, on HN, etc. In a more boring economic sphere (IE: no exponential growth, a few solid players that often times are more cordial than cutthroat competitive) you may never hear of these places.
    - PainfullyNormal 4y ago
      > Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can. Maybe visibility is an issue, too? I like boring work for a decent (not excessive, stable) wage. But finding these companies is difficult. Most of the ones I come across are rarely ever hiring because their turnover is low.
twblalock 4y ago
FAANGs are slowing down and freezing hiring too. It's not just startups that are worried.
- xxr 4y ago
  I imagine that FAANGs are sensitive to offering higher and higher proportions of equity pools to keep up with total comp expectations.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I imagine FAANGs will mostly let RSU compensation drift downward as the stock market does.
    - lupire 4y ago
      It will for unvested past grants. New future grants are named in $ not shares, so have to be explicit.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        My grants were named in shares.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      You don’t have to imagine it. Amazon publicly said as much and I believe Microsoft made a similar announcement.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  I hope the 3-5 emails a week from recruiters hiring for Amazon will stop then.
  - vmception 4y ago
    In 2008, Goldman Sachs had their M&A department come in as usual, working on deals all day. They didn't close a single deal in over a year. (This is hearsay, btw) So with that being the only anecdotal data point I have, the emails won't stop until the recruiters become fewer.
no_wizard 4y ago
I’m sure you’ll get some interests folks if you post where you work here on HN!
- michaelrpeskin 4y ago
  I’d like to. I’m always caught off guard when the Who’s hiring comes around and most of our HR dept isn’t on HN to make a post. I need to make a throwaway some time and post an ad here (not looking to tie my account to real life right now)
  - dgfitz 4y ago
    I am slightly amused your account name appears to be your real name =)
    - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
      It’s not :). Its from when I was a poor grad student. I filled out a survey to get free stuff and purposely wrote very sloppy so they wouldn’t be able to send me follow up mail (back when people would send you real mail). They were able to decipher my mailing address but they got the name really mangled and sent it to Michael R. Peskin. So I use that as my pseudonym now.
      - dgfitz 4y ago
        Well played, didn’t see that one coming. =p
TimTheTinker 4y ago
I'm a dev at a VC-funded SaaS startup in California. We're still in a growth trajectory (doubled headcount last year, on track to do so again this year, just hit a headcount of 500). Our industry is such that we're not too worried about the recession -- people tend to buy our product because it's significantly cheaper than paying one more employee and it tends to make teams in a particular corporate department far more efficient. When COVID hit, we had a surge in sales. My last company (larger & much older) also tended to get increased sales when the market slumped. Their product is key to helping governments, utilities, and other companies operate more efficiently. So there are still great startups (and larger companies) that are hiring. I'd suggest looking for ones that have a recession-tolerant market or business model.
- datalopers 4y ago
  The fact that you cite VC funded and then headcount as your only metric of success is hilarious.
  - google234123 4y ago
    The fact he cited that they have a successful product didn't register with you?
    - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
      You mean that product that had the same temporary surge in demand as everyone else?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And if it were “successful” they would be “profitable” and not “VC funded”.
  - TimTheTinker 4y ago
    I wasn't trying to communicate level of success, just economic context and the fact that jobs are available there. But since you ask: $57M ARR, 117% NRR, 97% YoY growth, 51 NPS, named a best place to work in [insert regional business journal] for the last 4 years in a row, customers really love us, and employees really love working here. I don't know how reliable Glassdoor is considered to be these days, but we're rated 4.8 stars by employees, 97% recommend to a friend, and 92% approve of the CEO. Your comment seems rather cynical, but I hope to at least demonstrate that there do exist good VC-backed startups. Oh, and we're hiring! If anyone wants to know where this is, my email is in my profile.
grink71 4y ago
I work at one of these companies and we're hiring https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-engineer-remote/ https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-engineer-remote/
rmbyrro 4y ago
> we're desperately trying to hire Perhaps this is a good place to leave a link to your hiring page...
- michaelrpeskin 4y ago
  We’re small enough that it would tie my account to me. Not wanting to do that. Maybe the next Who’s Hiring I’ll have a throwaway ready and do that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    You'd be surprised by (probably) how easy would be to tie your account to you. But I respect the care to your own privacy.
    - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
      If I _really_ cared, I'd never post publicly at all. Just trying to not be obvious who I am in real life. Every night when I plug in my phone and go to bed, I always say "good night NSA" because I assume I'm always being tracked :)
      - rmbyrro 4y ago
        Yeah, totally agree you don't need to make it obvious. But any smart, motivated actor can probably derive who you are from your posts. You probably give away little hints about yourself, interests, tech you use, etc. Cross referencing with data leaks, public Github commits, LinkedIn profile, the time you usually post here (tells your TZ), etc, it's not far fetched to determine who you are...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bradlys 4y ago
> I've never made FAANG/startup income > we're desperately trying to hire Do you wonder why people aren’t joining?
- h-w 4y ago
  The extremely high paid FANG income is a thing of the past, already down 50% ytd. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.
  - ghostly_s 4y ago
    Salaries at FANG have been cut 50% in the past 12 months? I have to give that a massive Citations Needed.
    - dghlsakjg 4y ago
      Total comp has likely come down, not salaries. If a significant part of your comp is in stock, then yeah, that portion of your pay is down potentially 70% or more in six months (Netflix). There’s probably some employees at FAANG that are negative on their equity.
      - smugma 4y ago
        AAPL still up 10%+ YoY. Msft not technically FANG (MAGA?) and also up YoY.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Netflix historically paid in all cash. Recently, they started letting their employees choose.
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        > Recently, they started letting their employees choose. lol didn't want to be the last ones holding the bag. What a scumbag move.
        4y ago
NDizzle 4y ago
What are the pay ranges for the roles you have open?
- michaelrpeskin 4y ago
  It’s a pretty wide range. For juniors just out of college, I think we’re near 80-100, I’m at a principal level and am close to 200. We’re looking mostly for junior to mid. We’re a bit top heavy right now. It’s not SV levels plus equity like they get, but we don’t have unlimited budgets like the FAANGs. The owners just take a normal salary and all of the profits go to the employees as year end bonuses. So it’s pretty fair, I think.
  - deathanatos 4y ago
    My entry-level base salary, admittedly at a FAANG, ignoring equity/bonus, was $127k real. So on the one hand, that you say you're doing $80-100k sounds low, to me. But $200k for a principal eng. sounds not too bad¹. So IDK. ¹it sounds "inline with what I'm making now, adjusted for experience / title differences. But it's crap compared to the current housing market.
elamje 4y ago
I wrote about this just a couple of days ago! Our investors have been warning of a looming bear market for many months and now financing another round anytime soon looks rough. If you want personal advice check this out: https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-for-tech-work/ https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-fo...
pc86 4y ago
100% accurate. If you want to work at companies that don't make anything people buy, aren't profitable, and where the CEO's singular focus is raising another 18 months of runway, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. But, if you work for employers like mine (we're hiring for multiple senior positions, by the way) all this is going to do in the short term is make hiring a bit easier. Honestly, I'm looking forward to the market getting a little more sanity in it. Bootstrapped or reasonably invested (e.g. non-VC) companies haven't been able to compete on comp in years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
scarface74 4y ago
There are hundreds if not thousands of positions at boring old big profitable enterprise shops like banks and government jobs that are humming along fine. I barely knew there was a dot com bust in 2000. I was working for a bill payment printing company.

bob1029 4y ago

> My advise is to find a smaller, stable, profitable place to interview at. This is the answer. Our organization is tiny and works in an extremely boring niche - B2B banking consultants & related software shenanigans. We've been at it since the 90s. If you adjust your expectations just a little bit (i.e. you are now OK using "boring" stuff like .NET/Java), you might be able to get something much more quickly than otherwise. Regardless, the market has spoken and we must all adapt.

michaelrpeskin 4y ago
Yes, forgot boring! We're kind of boring. Our customers are boring, our technology is boring (Java 8!), but the problems we solve are actually pretty exciting - we just solve them in a boring way :)
- technothrasher 4y ago
  Right there with you. Small manufacturing company, been going steady for 51 years, boring as can be (20 year old PCB layout software and straight C on bare metal Arm Cortex), but we've found a good niche solving problems for customers that nobody else will. Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    There are an incredible amount of jobs, niche jobs, that exist at companies like this all over. Small companies, in great niches, that have good industrial customers, that will continue to exist and will not be easily optimized away by some SaaS startup. There's also good existing small companies that are in more exciting tech spaces, that are hiring, that are not startups. Shout out to Fastmail, my former employer, as they are one of those nice small companies, seem to get lots of love here, and they're lovely people. And last I checked, they're hiring as well. Even in the 'SaaS' space there are boring but profitable small comapnies that fulfill automation for niche use cases. I just picked up on that we are using for our CDN that cloudfront doesn't being to cover. The pricing is good, the company is small, stable, and I'll continue to use them as long as I can. So... they're out there, but they certainly aren't FAANG and a lot of times, they aren't wild startups either. Part of this leads to less "popularity" for potential employees. You've never heard of ABC Bearings & Co, and they haven't manufactured Bearings in 100 years, but they fulfill important roles in the roller industry. Not Boeing, but just as important. I think this is because startups spend incredible amounts of time trying to grow and to find customers, so naturally they advertise, are in the news, on HN, etc. In a more boring economic sphere (IE: no exponential growth, a few solid players that often times are more cordial than cutthroat competitive) you may never hear of these places.
  - PainfullyNormal 4y ago
    > Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can. Maybe visibility is an issue, too? I like boring work for a decent (not excessive, stable) wage. But finding these companies is difficult. Most of the ones I come across are rarely ever hiring because their turnover is low.

twblalock 4y ago

FAANGs are slowing down and freezing hiring too. It's not just startups that are worried.

xxr 4y ago
I imagine that FAANGs are sensitive to offering higher and higher proportions of equity pools to keep up with total comp expectations.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I imagine FAANGs will mostly let RSU compensation drift downward as the stock market does.
  - lupire 4y ago
    It will for unvested past grants. New future grants are named in $ not shares, so have to be explicit.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      My grants were named in shares.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    You don’t have to imagine it. Amazon publicly said as much and I believe Microsoft made a similar announcement.
barbazoo 4y ago
I hope the 3-5 emails a week from recruiters hiring for Amazon will stop then.
- vmception 4y ago
  In 2008, Goldman Sachs had their M&A department come in as usual, working on deals all day. They didn't close a single deal in over a year. (This is hearsay, btw) So with that being the only anecdotal data point I have, the emails won't stop until the recruiters become fewer.

no_wizard 4y ago

I’m sure you’ll get some interests folks if you post where you work here on HN!

michaelrpeskin 4y ago
I’d like to. I’m always caught off guard when the Who’s hiring comes around and most of our HR dept isn’t on HN to make a post. I need to make a throwaway some time and post an ad here (not looking to tie my account to real life right now)
- dgfitz 4y ago
  I am slightly amused your account name appears to be your real name =)
  - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
    It’s not :). Its from when I was a poor grad student. I filled out a survey to get free stuff and purposely wrote very sloppy so they wouldn’t be able to send me follow up mail (back when people would send you real mail). They were able to decipher my mailing address but they got the name really mangled and sent it to Michael R. Peskin. So I use that as my pseudonym now.
    - dgfitz 4y ago
      Well played, didn’t see that one coming. =p

TimTheTinker 4y ago

I'm a dev at a VC-funded SaaS startup in California. We're still in a growth trajectory (doubled headcount last year, on track to do so again this year, just hit a headcount of 500). Our industry is such that we're not too worried about the recession -- people tend to buy our product because it's significantly cheaper than paying one more employee and it tends to make teams in a particular corporate department far more efficient. When COVID hit, we had a surge in sales. My last company (larger & much older) also tended to get increased sales when the market slumped. Their product is key to helping governments, utilities, and other companies operate more efficiently. So there are still great startups (and larger companies) that are hiring. I'd suggest looking for ones that have a recession-tolerant market or business model.

datalopers 4y ago
The fact that you cite VC funded and then headcount as your only metric of success is hilarious.
- google234123 4y ago
  The fact he cited that they have a successful product didn't register with you?
  - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
    You mean that product that had the same temporary surge in demand as everyone else?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And if it were “successful” they would be “profitable” and not “VC funded”.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  I wasn't trying to communicate level of success, just economic context and the fact that jobs are available there. But since you ask: $57M ARR, 117% NRR, 97% YoY growth, 51 NPS, named a best place to work in [insert regional business journal] for the last 4 years in a row, customers really love us, and employees really love working here. I don't know how reliable Glassdoor is considered to be these days, but we're rated 4.8 stars by employees, 97% recommend to a friend, and 92% approve of the CEO. Your comment seems rather cynical, but I hope to at least demonstrate that there do exist good VC-backed startups. Oh, and we're hiring! If anyone wants to know where this is, my email is in my profile.

grink71 4y ago

I work at one of these companies and we're hiring https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-engineer-remote/ https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-engineer-remote/

rmbyrro 4y ago

> we're desperately trying to hire Perhaps this is a good place to leave a link to your hiring page...

michaelrpeskin 4y ago
We’re small enough that it would tie my account to me. Not wanting to do that. Maybe the next Who’s Hiring I’ll have a throwaway ready and do that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  You'd be surprised by (probably) how easy would be to tie your account to you. But I respect the care to your own privacy.
  - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
    If I _really_ cared, I'd never post publicly at all. Just trying to not be obvious who I am in real life. Every night when I plug in my phone and go to bed, I always say "good night NSA" because I assume I'm always being tracked :)
    - rmbyrro 4y ago
      Yeah, totally agree you don't need to make it obvious. But any smart, motivated actor can probably derive who you are from your posts. You probably give away little hints about yourself, interests, tech you use, etc. Cross referencing with data leaks, public Github commits, LinkedIn profile, the time you usually post here (tells your TZ), etc, it's not far fetched to determine who you are...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bradlys 4y ago

> I've never made FAANG/startup income > we're desperately trying to hire Do you wonder why people aren’t joining?

h-w 4y ago
The extremely high paid FANG income is a thing of the past, already down 50% ytd. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  Salaries at FANG have been cut 50% in the past 12 months? I have to give that a massive Citations Needed.
  - dghlsakjg 4y ago
    Total comp has likely come down, not salaries. If a significant part of your comp is in stock, then yeah, that portion of your pay is down potentially 70% or more in six months (Netflix). There’s probably some employees at FAANG that are negative on their equity.
    - smugma 4y ago
      AAPL still up 10%+ YoY. Msft not technically FANG (MAGA?) and also up YoY.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Netflix historically paid in all cash. Recently, they started letting their employees choose.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        > Recently, they started letting their employees choose. lol didn't want to be the last ones holding the bag. What a scumbag move.
      - 4y ago

NDizzle 4y ago

What are the pay ranges for the roles you have open?

michaelrpeskin 4y ago
It’s a pretty wide range. For juniors just out of college, I think we’re near 80-100, I’m at a principal level and am close to 200. We’re looking mostly for junior to mid. We’re a bit top heavy right now. It’s not SV levels plus equity like they get, but we don’t have unlimited budgets like the FAANGs. The owners just take a normal salary and all of the profits go to the employees as year end bonuses. So it’s pretty fair, I think.
- deathanatos 4y ago
  My entry-level base salary, admittedly at a FAANG, ignoring equity/bonus, was $127k real. So on the one hand, that you say you're doing $80-100k sounds low, to me. But $200k for a principal eng. sounds not too bad¹. So IDK. ¹it sounds "inline with what I'm making now, adjusted for experience / title differences. But it's crap compared to the current housing market.

elamje 4y ago

I wrote about this just a couple of days ago! Our investors have been warning of a looming bear market for many months and now financing another round anytime soon looks rough. If you want personal advice check this out: https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-for-tech-work/ https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-fo...

pc86 4y ago

100% accurate. If you want to work at companies that don't make anything people buy, aren't profitable, and where the CEO's singular focus is raising another 18 months of runway, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. But, if you work for employers like mine (we're hiring for multiple senior positions, by the way) all this is going to do in the short term is make hiring a bit easier. Honestly, I'm looking forward to the market getting a little more sanity in it. Bootstrapped or reasonably invested (e.g. non-VC) companies haven't been able to compete on comp in years.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

scarface74 4y ago

There are hundreds if not thousands of positions at boring old big profitable enterprise shops like banks and government jobs that are humming along fine. I barely knew there was a dot com bust in 2000. I was working for a bill payment printing company.