5 ms·

I (the person working on dashboard) respond to HN et al

31 points by auston 18y ago

abstractbill 18y ago
I ... earn only slightly more than "market" I am 22 years old ... I have no options and no equity in the company. So, you're getting an awful deal, but at least you have time to learn from your mistake.
- mst 18y ago
  If he's 22 and is earning slightly -more- than market value ... why is a lack of equity an awful deal? I could have made more per hour delivering pizza than I did in my first technical job as a fresh grad, but it was fun, it paid my rent, I learned stuff and it put the experience on my CV to get a better job when I got bored of it - and management there well knew that that was my plan, and had no problem at all with that. There's no employee equity at Shadowcat (the company I co-founded) either. Myself and the other founder hold one share each, which pay no dividends, and which we never intend to sell - they exist to give us the authority to build the company we want to work for for the forseeable future, the way we think it should be built. There's more than one way to do things; not all of them are wrong.
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    It's not a bad deal compared to delivering pizza. It is a crappy deal compared to most developer positions though. Putting "I worked at a startup you've never heard of" on your resume isn't a good thing, unless you can say you were a founder. He should either be getting paid a lot more than market, or he should have equity, to compensate for this.
    - cstejerean 18y ago
      Depends on where you want to work next. Generally having a wide range of interesting things you've done that you can discuss during an interview for every position on your resume is far more important than the companies you worked for.
  - prospero 18y ago
    As the company's only technical hire, there's an expectation that he would be exceptional regardless of his age. There's also a question of how much he has to offer to the founders, and how much the founders have to offer him. If these two biz dev guys can make the company successful no matter what the quality of the product, then he's not very valuable. If that's not true, though, then his work has a very direct impact on the value of the company, which generally means that he would have equity. The former case seems unlikely, so it seems like he's getting a raw deal.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    The reason equity grants are so popular at startups is because they work. When employees own a physical piece of the work they are creating, and when they have a definite vested interest in making things to the best of their ability, you (as the founder) get a good culture and hardworking people. That ends up increasing the value your own equity in the company. Without equity grants, you have to give employees monetary incentives. Those are usually capped and generally don't have much upside. They're also almost impossible to calculate on a single-person basis. Equity has essentially an unlimited upside and its worth is easily measured. Why don't you give your employees equity?
    - mst 18y ago
      No dividend. Not intended to be sold. The company is held only by the founders so we can control its progress and ensure it becomes the company we envisaged. Our employees believe in that dream. Since there's no monetary value to having equity, they don't care that they don't have any. They do, however, make more than I do. As for "well give it out anyway, they could always sell it" I refer to the point of "becomes the company we envisaged" and what happened to craigslist. I never said our model was common. I never said it was wise for the majority of companies, or even viable. But it -does- work for us.
- blader 18y ago
  Wow, so they're selecting for people who don't mind a shit deal, and the crazy thing is that it look like it's working.
- webwright 18y ago
  Wait... WHAT?! 22, earning slightly more than market is a "awful" deal how? Do you think a 22 year old deserves more than market and a mess of equity to boot?
  - axod 18y ago
    As the first tech/hacker hell yes.
    - webwright 18y ago
      Why, exactly? Equity ain't free (I actually have a blog post on this: http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup-compensation-or-stock-options-will-make-me-rich/ http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup-co... ). You "buy" equity with risk and lower/no compensation. What is this guy risking? They are funded, so really the only risk is that the owners lose interest or run out of money (a risk you have working ANY small business-- or any business at all in this economy). Here's some guidelines on what you can expect if you're getting paid roughly market rates: http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle#market http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle#market
      - axod 18y ago
        If you are the main technical force behind making a product, you should be properly reimbursed for that. It's like a record label "employing" a solo artist singer for an average wage, and then pocketing all the profits from their music and passing none of it on. It's just a pretty raw deal.
      - strlen 18y ago
        If he's taking market compensation, shouldn't he at least receive a lower equity stake vs. no equity whatsoever? Start-ups will ask you 'do you prefer more shares, or more equity". You can take "market rate, little equity" as an option. "They're funded" is also mis-leading, as they're still in the process of getting an angel round. The guidelines and the post you've written (which are excellent, by the way) are more for "post series A, pre series B" stage rather "angel round, forming the core team by signing on the first technical person" stage.
13ren 18y ago
This episode reminds me of "target fixation". When I was learning to hang glide, my instructor said that when you want to avoid a tree or power lines, it's important to not fixate on it, because the craft tends to follow the direction you lean towards. People have died that way. Auston wanted to avoid an employee who was only in it for the money - but by fixating on the thing that he doesn't want to be an issue (i.e. money), it has become the dominate issue. If you don't want a fire, don't fan it. If you want to avoid something, the best strategy is sometimes to focus on something else that you do want. It's a kind of positive thinking, but one that has saved lives.
- brianlash 18y ago
  I've heard the same principle as it relates to physical wellbeing I think it's 100% true. Diets fail because they're all about food. Better to lose unhealthy weight by exploring other passions... even things that aren't physical such as playing an instrument (or coding). Then over the long term you can start to consume less and less as you have food on the brain less and less.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    Unfortunately hunger is a biological urge, and it's not exactly something you can choose not to fixate on. Anything else makes sense, but I really don't think it applies to dieting all that much on an extended basis (for a short period of time, though, maybe).
    - unalone 18y ago
      To some extent, you can ignore it. I mean, most people eat far more than they have to. As a result, they become accustomed to it, and get hungry faster than they biologically have to.
    - ejs 18y ago
      Man times people are really just thirsty but cannot differentiate the difference.
tptacek 18y ago
Can we stop giving these people the attention they're obviously angling for now?
- dcurtis 18y ago
  Don't you think they've deserved it? They've sacrificed a lot of credibility for a ton of exposure.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Nobody deserves exposure. It's not a right. You can't exchange things for it. We choose to give it to people. And while I like a good bashing as much as anybody, I'd rather we stop focusing on these people and start focusing on lengthy, well-written blog posts. We haven't had many of those recently. Though I honestly don't think they're doing this for gluttonous publicity. I think that their first one was, and that these successive ones have just been attempts to undo their drop in credibility before. I don't think it's helping, but I doubt there's some clever exposure scheme going on at this point.
    - abstractbill 18y ago
      I think dcurtis was joking.
- deleted 18y ago
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axod 18y ago
"Disclosure: I have no options and no equity in the company." jaw drops
- ivank 18y ago
  It's not like it was going to be worth anything anyway.
smoody 18y ago
"We could pay anyone $75k to start cranking out lines of code and come in at 9 or 10 and leave at 5. But that’s not what we want,..." The poster keeps assuming that there's an inverse correlation between how much you pay someone and how many hours/how hard that person works. It is entirely possible that you can find someone who gets paid $75K that does the work of two or three people who get paid $40K and perhaps even do it in fewer hours. Or perhaps someone who gets paid $100K is such a great architect that their architecture saves every employee an hour per day for years. By your logic, the heads of hedge funds that get paid millions (if not billions) of dollars per year only show up for work for three seconds each day. Okay, perhaps that's not the best example.
alaskamiller 18y ago
If the guy being paid $75k gets work done from 10 til 5, why do you want him around more?
unalone 18y ago
The problem - which people pointed out in the other post, and which you're only fueling with this - is that you have no leverage here. You're a company that nobody knows about. You haven't released a project. Your web site looks terrible. You have "dashboard" in red but it isn't a link. You use three fonts, all of which are ugly, and your layout doesn't support my increasing font sizes. You post something mocking a guy that applied for your job, and submitted it like it was a humorous story. Now you're defending yourself by saying that not only are you not elitist, but you're not making much money, your job is a bad one, and you're basically an "average programmer." You are in an incredibly bad position here. Now, rather than admitting that you messed up, you're trying to hold that you've got a defensible position. You absolutely don't. And this was the first time a lot of us heard of your company, which means that your first impression was an awful one. Until you have a product, you'd do well to apologize, clam up, and wait until you blow us all away. And for the love of God, get a better designer: your blog hurts my eyes.
- auston 18y ago
  I don't remember distinctly saying or acting like an elitist. Salary is subjective to where you are living which in my case market is 40-60 (as validated by webwright) and i'm earning above market. I never said my job was bad? It's enjoyable and I'm happy working here. I am average web dev in the sense that me, you and other people on HN probably share the same interests... Lastly I plainly stated it was a mistake... You've never made a mistake?
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    You've never made a mistake? Of course we all have auston. But you're making it worse by being defensive, as unalone says.
  - unalone 18y ago
    When somebody applies for a job and you post his application publicly, you're assuming that you're in a position important enough to be able to treat his resume flippantly and get away with it. You're not. The assumption that you are is elitist in that you've decided you can get away with public disrespect for somebody else. Subjective salaries I understand. However, you're not making a ridiculous amount of money. To mock somebody for inquiring primarily about money, when you're an unknown company with no reputation whatsoever, and when you're not, in fact, making a particularly grand amount of money, is wrong on a few levels. You're a code monkey with no equity. You might be happy working where you are, but your original post implied that you were somebody with power and that you were being a jerk about it. Now it seems that you don't have any power, and that you were being a jerk without any qualification. There is no average web dev, as I've come to realize here. There are some people here who are huge into open source, who run completely open software and write for it and modify it. There are others who run Windows or OS X and pay excesses of money for things which they might not exactly need. Your "I am like most people reading this post" remark set me off, partly because I'm not like you whatsoever. My interests? Aestheticism, high-quality writing, and typography. Furthermore, I'm younger than you and have less professional experience. The fact that your original post seemed immature even to me is a bad sign. I wouldn't call it atrocious, because - as you say - everybody makes mistakes. I didn't comment on the original thread bashing you. However, it irritates me that your follow-up wasn't "Sorry, guys, I've done something terribly stupid, we've removed the original post and we'll maintain radio silence until we at least start talking about our idea," but rather an attempt to justify yourselves, followed by another appeal for job applications. Considering you've got three people, you ought to easily be able to at least launch a beta of your product. Other people have criticized you for hiring too soon; I'm not qualified enough to talk about that without sounding like a hypocrite. It seems to me, though, that if you're going to hire you ought to hold off until you've announced yourselves, so that you get applicants that might actually be interested in whatever Dashboard is.
ideamonk 18y ago
beta registration can be made littl more friendly. when I give my phone number as +9198800345, it clears everything I typed and leaves me with an error message tht occured due to '+' sign in the number. Naturally i will be less motivated to type out the form again for this small error even if it has 4 text boxes. psst: thats not my number
t0pj 18y ago
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. --Abraham Lincoln Edit: One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it. --Oogway, Kung Fu Panda
- deleted 18y ago
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- jaycee 18y ago
  The Kung Fu Panda quote there may be one of the best I've heard for situations like this. I'm not sure if that's fantastic or horrible.
deleted 18y ago
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icey 18y ago
So after considering all of the above information, please feel free to apply! We really do need good people. Are you serious? Good luck with that, buddy.
matt1 18y ago
How on earth does this company even plan to pay somebody market salary? Four people... three w/o salary with no outside investment. Doh.
krschultz 18y ago
At this point a Google search for getrealordie brings up these threads first and foremost. Considering that you haven't actually launched, you might want to ditch getrealordie.com because these responses are going to sway anyone looking into funding your company.
paraschopra 18y ago
Oh my gosh, I can't imagine we all are wasting so much time discussing this. Don't we have anything more useful than being obviously self-righteous?

31 points by auston 18y ago

I ... earn only slightly more than "market" I am 22 years old ... I have no options and no equity in the company. So, you're getting an awful deal, but at least you have time to learn from your mistake.

mst 18y ago
If he's 22 and is earning slightly -more- than market value ... why is a lack of equity an awful deal? I could have made more per hour delivering pizza than I did in my first technical job as a fresh grad, but it was fun, it paid my rent, I learned stuff and it put the experience on my CV to get a better job when I got bored of it - and management there well knew that that was my plan, and had no problem at all with that. There's no employee equity at Shadowcat (the company I co-founded) either. Myself and the other founder hold one share each, which pay no dividends, and which we never intend to sell - they exist to give us the authority to build the company we want to work for for the forseeable future, the way we think it should be built. There's more than one way to do things; not all of them are wrong.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  It's not a bad deal compared to delivering pizza. It is a crappy deal compared to most developer positions though. Putting "I worked at a startup you've never heard of" on your resume isn't a good thing, unless you can say you were a founder. He should either be getting paid a lot more than market, or he should have equity, to compensate for this.
  - cstejerean 18y ago
    Depends on where you want to work next. Generally having a wide range of interesting things you've done that you can discuss during an interview for every position on your resume is far more important than the companies you worked for.
- prospero 18y ago
  As the company's only technical hire, there's an expectation that he would be exceptional regardless of his age. There's also a question of how much he has to offer to the founders, and how much the founders have to offer him. If these two biz dev guys can make the company successful no matter what the quality of the product, then he's not very valuable. If that's not true, though, then his work has a very direct impact on the value of the company, which generally means that he would have equity. The former case seems unlikely, so it seems like he's getting a raw deal.
- dcurtis 18y ago
  The reason equity grants are so popular at startups is because they work. When employees own a physical piece of the work they are creating, and when they have a definite vested interest in making things to the best of their ability, you (as the founder) get a good culture and hardworking people. That ends up increasing the value your own equity in the company. Without equity grants, you have to give employees monetary incentives. Those are usually capped and generally don't have much upside. They're also almost impossible to calculate on a single-person basis. Equity has essentially an unlimited upside and its worth is easily measured. Why don't you give your employees equity?
  - mst 18y ago
    No dividend. Not intended to be sold. The company is held only by the founders so we can control its progress and ensure it becomes the company we envisaged. Our employees believe in that dream. Since there's no monetary value to having equity, they don't care that they don't have any. They do, however, make more than I do. As for "well give it out anyway, they could always sell it" I refer to the point of "becomes the company we envisaged" and what happened to craigslist. I never said our model was common. I never said it was wise for the majority of companies, or even viable. But it -does- work for us.
blader 18y ago
Wow, so they're selecting for people who don't mind a shit deal, and the crazy thing is that it look like it's working.
webwright 18y ago
Wait... WHAT?! 22, earning slightly more than market is a "awful" deal how? Do you think a 22 year old deserves more than market and a mess of equity to boot?
- axod 18y ago
  As the first tech/hacker hell yes.
  - webwright 18y ago
    Why, exactly? Equity ain't free (I actually have a blog post on this: http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup-compensation-or-stock-options-will-make-me-rich/ http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup-co... ). You "buy" equity with risk and lower/no compensation. What is this guy risking? They are funded, so really the only risk is that the owners lose interest or run out of money (a risk you have working ANY small business-- or any business at all in this economy). Here's some guidelines on what you can expect if you're getting paid roughly market rates: http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle#market http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle#market
    - axod 18y ago
      If you are the main technical force behind making a product, you should be properly reimbursed for that. It's like a record label "employing" a solo artist singer for an average wage, and then pocketing all the profits from their music and passing none of it on. It's just a pretty raw deal.
    - strlen 18y ago
      If he's taking market compensation, shouldn't he at least receive a lower equity stake vs. no equity whatsoever? Start-ups will ask you 'do you prefer more shares, or more equity". You can take "market rate, little equity" as an option. "They're funded" is also mis-leading, as they're still in the process of getting an angel round. The guidelines and the post you've written (which are excellent, by the way) are more for "post series A, pre series B" stage rather "angel round, forming the core team by signing on the first technical person" stage.

13ren 18y ago

This episode reminds me of "target fixation". When I was learning to hang glide, my instructor said that when you want to avoid a tree or power lines, it's important to not fixate on it, because the craft tends to follow the direction you lean towards. People have died that way. Auston wanted to avoid an employee who was only in it for the money - but by fixating on the thing that he doesn't want to be an issue (i.e. money), it has become the dominate issue. If you don't want a fire, don't fan it. If you want to avoid something, the best strategy is sometimes to focus on something else that you do want. It's a kind of positive thinking, but one that has saved lives.

brianlash 18y ago
I've heard the same principle as it relates to physical wellbeing I think it's 100% true. Diets fail because they're all about food. Better to lose unhealthy weight by exploring other passions... even things that aren't physical such as playing an instrument (or coding). Then over the long term you can start to consume less and less as you have food on the brain less and less.
- dcurtis 18y ago
  Unfortunately hunger is a biological urge, and it's not exactly something you can choose not to fixate on. Anything else makes sense, but I really don't think it applies to dieting all that much on an extended basis (for a short period of time, though, maybe).
  - unalone 18y ago
    To some extent, you can ignore it. I mean, most people eat far more than they have to. As a result, they become accustomed to it, and get hungry faster than they biologically have to.
  - ejs 18y ago
    Man times people are really just thirsty but cannot differentiate the difference.

tptacek 18y ago

Can we stop giving these people the attention they're obviously angling for now?

dcurtis 18y ago
Don't you think they've deserved it? They've sacrificed a lot of credibility for a ton of exposure.
- unalone 18y ago
  Nobody deserves exposure. It's not a right. You can't exchange things for it. We choose to give it to people. And while I like a good bashing as much as anybody, I'd rather we stop focusing on these people and start focusing on lengthy, well-written blog posts. We haven't had many of those recently. Though I honestly don't think they're doing this for gluttonous publicity. I think that their first one was, and that these successive ones have just been attempts to undo their drop in credibility before. I don't think it's helping, but I doubt there's some clever exposure scheme going on at this point.
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    I think dcurtis was joking.
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axod 18y ago

"Disclosure: I have no options and no equity in the company." jaw drops

ivank 18y ago
It's not like it was going to be worth anything anyway.

smoody 18y ago

"We could pay anyone $75k to start cranking out lines of code and come in at 9 or 10 and leave at 5. But that’s not what we want,..." The poster keeps assuming that there's an inverse correlation between how much you pay someone and how many hours/how hard that person works. It is entirely possible that you can find someone who gets paid $75K that does the work of two or three people who get paid $40K and perhaps even do it in fewer hours. Or perhaps someone who gets paid $100K is such a great architect that their architecture saves every employee an hour per day for years. By your logic, the heads of hedge funds that get paid millions (if not billions) of dollars per year only show up for work for three seconds each day. Okay, perhaps that's not the best example.

alaskamiller 18y ago

If the guy being paid $75k gets work done from 10 til 5, why do you want him around more?

unalone 18y ago

The problem - which people pointed out in the other post, and which you're only fueling with this - is that you have no leverage here. You're a company that nobody knows about. You haven't released a project. Your web site looks terrible. You have "dashboard" in red but it isn't a link. You use three fonts, all of which are ugly, and your layout doesn't support my increasing font sizes. You post something mocking a guy that applied for your job, and submitted it like it was a humorous story. Now you're defending yourself by saying that not only are you not elitist, but you're not making much money, your job is a bad one, and you're basically an "average programmer." You are in an incredibly bad position here. Now, rather than admitting that you messed up, you're trying to hold that you've got a defensible position. You absolutely don't. And this was the first time a lot of us heard of your company, which means that your first impression was an awful one. Until you have a product, you'd do well to apologize, clam up, and wait until you blow us all away. And for the love of God, get a better designer: your blog hurts my eyes.

auston 18y ago
I don't remember distinctly saying or acting like an elitist. Salary is subjective to where you are living which in my case market is 40-60 (as validated by webwright) and i'm earning above market. I never said my job was bad? It's enjoyable and I'm happy working here. I am average web dev in the sense that me, you and other people on HN probably share the same interests... Lastly I plainly stated it was a mistake... You've never made a mistake?
- abstractbill 18y ago
  You've never made a mistake? Of course we all have auston. But you're making it worse by being defensive, as unalone says.
- unalone 18y ago
  When somebody applies for a job and you post his application publicly, you're assuming that you're in a position important enough to be able to treat his resume flippantly and get away with it. You're not. The assumption that you are is elitist in that you've decided you can get away with public disrespect for somebody else. Subjective salaries I understand. However, you're not making a ridiculous amount of money. To mock somebody for inquiring primarily about money, when you're an unknown company with no reputation whatsoever, and when you're not, in fact, making a particularly grand amount of money, is wrong on a few levels. You're a code monkey with no equity. You might be happy working where you are, but your original post implied that you were somebody with power and that you were being a jerk about it. Now it seems that you don't have any power, and that you were being a jerk without any qualification. There is no average web dev, as I've come to realize here. There are some people here who are huge into open source, who run completely open software and write for it and modify it. There are others who run Windows or OS X and pay excesses of money for things which they might not exactly need. Your "I am like most people reading this post" remark set me off, partly because I'm not like you whatsoever. My interests? Aestheticism, high-quality writing, and typography. Furthermore, I'm younger than you and have less professional experience. The fact that your original post seemed immature even to me is a bad sign. I wouldn't call it atrocious, because - as you say - everybody makes mistakes. I didn't comment on the original thread bashing you. However, it irritates me that your follow-up wasn't "Sorry, guys, I've done something terribly stupid, we've removed the original post and we'll maintain radio silence until we at least start talking about our idea," but rather an attempt to justify yourselves, followed by another appeal for job applications. Considering you've got three people, you ought to easily be able to at least launch a beta of your product. Other people have criticized you for hiring too soon; I'm not qualified enough to talk about that without sounding like a hypocrite. It seems to me, though, that if you're going to hire you ought to hold off until you've announced yourselves, so that you get applicants that might actually be interested in whatever Dashboard is.

ideamonk 18y ago

beta registration can be made littl more friendly. when I give my phone number as +9198800345, it clears everything I typed and leaves me with an error message tht occured due to '+' sign in the number. Naturally i will be less motivated to type out the form again for this small error even if it has 4 text boxes. psst: thats not my number

t0pj 18y ago

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. --Abraham Lincoln Edit: One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it. --Oogway, Kung Fu Panda

deleted 18y ago
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jaycee 18y ago
The Kung Fu Panda quote there may be one of the best I've heard for situations like this. I'm not sure if that's fantastic or horrible.

deleted 18y ago

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deleted 18y ago

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icey 18y ago

So after considering all of the above information, please feel free to apply! We really do need good people. Are you serious? Good luck with that, buddy.

matt1 18y ago

How on earth does this company even plan to pay somebody market salary? Four people... three w/o salary with no outside investment. Doh.

krschultz 18y ago

At this point a Google search for getrealordie brings up these threads first and foremost. Considering that you haven't actually launched, you might want to ditch getrealordie.com because these responses are going to sway anyone looking into funding your company.

paraschopra 18y ago

Oh my gosh, I can't imagine we all are wasting so much time discussing this. Don't we have anything more useful than being obviously self-righteous?