4 ms·

I'm going to ask maybe a silly question. Maybe not many people making $220 take these offers? There has to be a fair number of start ups that really don't "ne

by duxup 2y ago

I'm going to ask maybe a silly question. Maybe not many people making $220 take these offers? There has to be a fair number of start ups that really don't "need" a $220k engineer if their business is "uber...but for cleaning your windows". It would be interesting to see the breakdown of who does take these roles. Granted "founding engineer" implys a lot so I'm not disagreeing with the premise or article, but sometimes on HN the idea that an engineer costs $200k+ is just assumed where often I think that isn't the case.

ghaff 2y ago
By and large, don't do something that you just hate unless that's your only option. But if you can find something you mostly like (and that's a pretty reasonable bar) for pretty good money, that's not a bad target.
nfriedly 2y ago
That's a good point. When I joined a startup as the 6th person, I was a college student working part-time freelance gigs and making maybe $30k. The startup was initially a freelance client, they offered to take me on as an employee for $40k part-time / $80k when I could work full time. They gave me some tiny amount of equity, probably less than 1%; it turned out to be worthless. But everything else was a significant improvement: I no longer had to juggle multiple clients and haggle to get paid, I got health insurance, and I had more money in my pocket.
ErikAugust 2y ago
Not many people are going to totally ignore their opportunity costs to join as a "founder-ish" engineer at a startup. I have taken a role like this before, but when I did so, I was making a lateral move from a compensation standpoint. This is without factoring in any expected value of equity (because there was none).
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  100% agree. I'm happy to trade hypothetical equity in one startup for same salary and hypothetical equity in a brand new startup, if the new startup has just plain a cooler founder, or tech, or broader opportunity. As an early founding engineer, my impact is much much higher as well.
- duxup 2y ago
  I'm willing to concede the highest paid engineers are almost by definition doing their opportunity costs math. I'm willing to also bet that most people do not do a lot of opportunity costs math. But as your example points out, like mine, maybe this whole idea of top paid engineers not getting paid, or even taking those jobs isn't a thing as much as we might imagine. "Uber ... but for walking your cat" might offer far less than 220k, but they also don't need that guy might be offering more lateral move type people / money.
switchbak 2y ago
So you want to scale up a new venture with (potentially) risky, low wage talent? That sounds like a bad bargain. I would wage that there's not that many interesting "uber for windows" companies, versus those with at least a modicum of challenging problems. And one of the biggest challenges is managing software complexity at scale, which is almost inevitable in a software startup. I get that the typical $220k dev probably has a different mindset than the one you'd look to when building a new company. That said, I've focused most of my career on being the 2-5th employee and helping guide startups to viability. I've been able to do that while still pulling in reasonable $$ and hours to make my lifestyle work. Maybe this alternate model is gone now with the credit crunch, but it does seem like we're missing out on a workable yet oddly unpopular approach here.
- duxup 2y ago
  I think the actual "scale up" is when customer demand picks up right? Not the engineer.
  - switchbak 2y ago
    Ok, yes that is a particular term that describes a later process. I meant it in the literal sense of writing code and making a business, not the capitalized version.
closeparen 2y ago
I think this is right. There's no way to make it rational for a successful FAANG or FAANG-adjacent engineer to be an early-stage startup employee, but there are other kinds of people who want software engineering jobs. Unfortunately a lot of founders look to their personal networks which only contain people for whom the role doesn't make sense.

by duxup 2y ago

ghaff 2y ago

By and large, don't do something that you just hate unless that's your only option. But if you can find something you mostly like (and that's a pretty reasonable bar) for pretty good money, that's not a bad target.

nfriedly 2y ago

That's a good point. When I joined a startup as the 6th person, I was a college student working part-time freelance gigs and making maybe $30k. The startup was initially a freelance client, they offered to take me on as an employee for $40k part-time / $80k when I could work full time. They gave me some tiny amount of equity, probably less than 1%; it turned out to be worthless. But everything else was a significant improvement: I no longer had to juggle multiple clients and haggle to get paid, I got health insurance, and I had more money in my pocket.

ErikAugust 2y ago

Not many people are going to totally ignore their opportunity costs to join as a "founder-ish" engineer at a startup. I have taken a role like this before, but when I did so, I was making a lateral move from a compensation standpoint. This is without factoring in any expected value of equity (because there was none).

jvanderbot 2y ago
100% agree. I'm happy to trade hypothetical equity in one startup for same salary and hypothetical equity in a brand new startup, if the new startup has just plain a cooler founder, or tech, or broader opportunity. As an early founding engineer, my impact is much much higher as well.
duxup 2y ago
I'm willing to concede the highest paid engineers are almost by definition doing their opportunity costs math. I'm willing to also bet that most people do not do a lot of opportunity costs math. But as your example points out, like mine, maybe this whole idea of top paid engineers not getting paid, or even taking those jobs isn't a thing as much as we might imagine. "Uber ... but for walking your cat" might offer far less than 220k, but they also don't need that guy might be offering more lateral move type people / money.

switchbak 2y ago

So you want to scale up a new venture with (potentially) risky, low wage talent? That sounds like a bad bargain. I would wage that there's not that many interesting "uber for windows" companies, versus those with at least a modicum of challenging problems. And one of the biggest challenges is managing software complexity at scale, which is almost inevitable in a software startup. I get that the typical $220k dev probably has a different mindset than the one you'd look to when building a new company. That said, I've focused most of my career on being the 2-5th employee and helping guide startups to viability. I've been able to do that while still pulling in reasonable $$ and hours to make my lifestyle work. Maybe this alternate model is gone now with the credit crunch, but it does seem like we're missing out on a workable yet oddly unpopular approach here.

duxup 2y ago
I think the actual "scale up" is when customer demand picks up right? Not the engineer.
- switchbak 2y ago
  Ok, yes that is a particular term that describes a later process. I meant it in the literal sense of writing code and making a business, not the capitalized version.

closeparen 2y ago

I think this is right. There's no way to make it rational for a successful FAANG or FAANG-adjacent engineer to be an early-stage startup employee, but there are other kinds of people who want software engineering jobs. Unfortunately a lot of founders look to their personal networks which only contain people for whom the role doesn't make sense.