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How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub (2008)
- m4tthumphrey 13y agoLove this post. Always read it every few months.
- pdog 13y agoIt's interesting that his employment offer was a salary plus a $300K bonus over three years, and just a few years later GitHub is valued at around $1B. Not only that, they didn't take any funding in the beginning. (It was bootstrapped completely for many years -- its first ever funding was a $100M round valuing GitHub at $750M.) Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=338286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=338286
- rodrigoavie 13y agoGood to read from time to time. I bet he's got no regrets!
- alcuadrado 13y agoThis post is also included in The passionate programmer, a really great book: http://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer http://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer
- DanielRibeiro 13y agoTom also gave an amazing talk of the founding of GitHub when he first spoke at Startup School a few years ago: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/10/18/optimize-for-happiness.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/10/18/optimize-for-happin...
- textminer 13y agoThis was inspiring in a way many "how I started a company" posts aren't. I also appreciated the transparency re: the retention package offered to him in the Powerset acquisition. As a younger engineer, I've spent a lot of time focusing on salary numbers (going from $70k to $90k to $100k to $122k in a few years, and across a few companies), but I'm starting to see how that's less informative than bonuses/stock grants, where the real long-term incentives and house-buying/lifestyle-company-starting capital comes from. Are there forums where folks openly discuss numbers like these? Glassdoor can be confusing sometimes, where it's unclear if folks are putting down their pre-tax salary number or their [salary + sign-on + annual bonus + RSU] number.
- onedev 13y agoThere are a few numbers on Quora submitted by anonymous people but not a very large set of data points.
- rorrr2 13y ago> $70k to $90k to $100k to $122k in a few years That's practically identical to my first few years after graduation, and it didn't stop going up. It's pretty crazy how much your salary grows by switching jobs. I'm now about to dump my full time contracting and start my own company.
- aespinoza 13y agoThis is an extremely interesting story for me. I just had to make a similar decision. I had always wanted to work with Stuart McClure (https://twitter.com/stuartmcclure https://twitter.com/stuartmcclure), and I was fortunate enough to do so. I joined Cylance (his new company) in September of last year, by February I had to make a choice. Get in love with Cylance full time, or continue to have a love affair with iKnode. I choose to continue with iKnode, and on February I quit my job. It was an extremely though decision because I loved that company, and the team... it was basically a dream come true. I, too, quit my job to go after the Holy Grail. And things have been great. It is true that this kind of stories (like the Github one) is extremely inspiring. You want to go ahead and do it as well. But there are so many implications to it. It sounds so interesting when you read about it, but doing it is an extremely different story. You fill yourself with doubt and uncertainty. Specially when you 2 kids to feed, and still keep your sanity. I can't say that looking back, I feel great about my decision, because I am not out yet. I am still living the consequences of my decision. I know the iKnode team is very happy that I decided to stay. And I know for usre I will definitely write a similar blog post in the following years. I know we will be successful. I know I made the right choice.
- albertoavila 13y agoGoing after your own venture while you also need to support your family is frightening and yet inspiring. I wish the best of luck to you and your team.
- aespinoza 13y agoThanks :D Keep an eye for Structum.... we'll make it big.
- jimmaswell 13y agoGreat that it worked out for him, but I can't see myself risking bankruptcy and all the other things that could go terribly wrong running a startup when I have a 300k job offer at Microsoft.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoYeah. I agree. Now, I also wonder how much I would be worth today if I had jumped ship in 97, 99, 2001, etc when the opportunities were either there or I could carve them out. "non, je ne regrette rien"
- lostlogin 13y agoThis is the same here - but thank goodness there are people who aren't like us out there.
- lttlrck 13y agomany of them won't have very happy stories to tell.
- nilkn 13y agoIt sounds like the salary was not $300k--there was just a sort of $300k bonus which would be paid in installments over the course of several years. At least that's the impression I got.
- chatmasta 13y agoYes, but was he really risking bankruptcy? What was the worst case outcome of his decision? If GitHub eventually failed, I highly doubt he would go bankrupt. He would just have to find a new job, which for someone offered $300k from Microsoft would presumably not be difficult. In fact, he could probably walk right over to Microsoft and ask for a job. A lot of these "life changing" decisions are portrayed as "risking bankruptcy" vs. job security. But for a talented developer, job security is not a fleeting opportunity. He could always choose to find a job later. He only had one chance to go with GitHub. When you think about the decision like that, the choice is obvious.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ellicottvilleny 13y agoAm I the only one who likes Bitbucket 100x more than GitHub. Still. Cool story, bro.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoquite possibly ... Atlassian always had that Adobe feel to it - there was a wobbly mirror between me and the way the code underneath wanted to work. Its hard to explain but it is best put as - github (untill v recently) does not feel as if decisions are made by somone in charge of others where the others get it, but the someone just does not understand it quite right
- acjohnson55 13y agoI like Bitbucket's private repos and more reasonable entry-level plan, but I think its UX is well behind GitHub.
- geophile 13y agoMy story, along similar lines: Microsoft was recruiting me for two years, starting in 1994, while at my first startup. I kept saying no. I left the startup to work, by myself, on an early ORM for Java, (back in JDK 1.0.2 days). Microsoft approached me again, offered to buy my technology for a close to $1M, give me lots of equity (back when that stock was growing quickly), and roll out my product, (this was before Microsoft dumped Java). I would then go to work on what they wanted me for originally. A couple of trips later, I just didn't like Microsoft, and started searching for alternatives. I found a little Boston-based startup who needed my product, and who I liked a lot. (Actually, the guy who put me on the trail of this startup had just gotten his company acquired by Microsoft.) I got drunk, called the VP putting the offer together, and said thanks but no thanks. He said I'd be sorry. I wasn't. I didn't make nearly as much as if I had gone to Microsoft, but I built and shipped my product, stayed on that product, worked with Java (which I liked) instead of the MS platform (which I didn't), learned a lot, had lots of fun with it, and saw the equity turn tangible. Couldn't have asked for a better outcome.
- yuhong 13y agoWhat do you think about the Sun lawsuits on MS Java?
- yuhong 13y agoTrivia: the last MSJVM updates was actually the DST updates released under the infamous $4k/year EHS DST program.
- jimmaswell 13y agoThe thing you were building was worth more than one million dollars to you? It's good that you're pleased with the outcome, but the notion just seems really bizarre to me to give up one million dollars just to keep working on one programming project on my own. Maybe there's something about it I'm just not "getting".
- sxtxixtxcxh 13y agohave you considered money isn't everything?
- eliben 13y agoAn interesting story. One observation: "[...] At 29 years old, I was the oldest of the three GitHubbers, and had accumulated a proportionally larger amount of debt and monthly expenditure. I was used to my six digit lifestyle. [...]" Now, how does it happen that a guy earning six figures "accumulates a large debt" over time?
- ebiester 13y agoIf you still live like you're making six figures when you're making 0, and putting money into the business.
- elemeno 13y agoThe same way anyone else does - you spend more than you make.
- enneff 13y agoBy living beyond ones' means. Most people do it, regardless of their income. The single best piece of advice I've heard is "Live within your means."
- eliben 13y ago> Most people do it, regardless of their income. Really - how does this work? If you consistently live beyond your means, do you just die with a huge debt or do you repay it somewhere along the way?
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoEventually, it catches up with you, and either austerity ensues or you go bankrupt. Happened to me a couple of times as a kid (via my parents, not my spending of course).
- eliben 13y agoWhat does it mean for an individual to go bankrupt? [genuinely curious]
- nchuhoai 13y agoThe interesting part for me was the "I am accustomed to the six-digit lifestyle". For this and other reasons, I consciously try to keep an asset-light/expenditure-light lifestyle (which is easy to do at college-age). It's not that I like to a hip startup guy that is proud of eating Ramen every day (I fucking hate Ramen), but not having to have to face a tough decision because of my lifestyle. You can have a fun and a great life-style for little money. P.S.: Wow, I do sound like an idealistic hippie.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- outericky 13y agoAt 29, I was married with our first child on the way. So 6 digits don't really stretch all that far. Of course, there is a huge difference between 100,000, 500,000 and 800,000. All 6 digits...
- dyno12345 13y agoI have the six figure income and don't really spend much of it on anything. Like what could I possibly spend that much money on? Go out and get the most expensive thing on the menu every night of the week? Fill closets with designer clothes I'll never actually wear? I have no idea. So I just throw a huge cash pile into savings paycheck after paycheck, year after year. I feel like I could develop some alternate career that I could enjoy more, like working on cruise ships or music video shoots or something. Makes me wish I had crappy food service or retail jobs when I was younger so I had some alternate experience to draw from.
- blazespin 13y agoInspiring, but a prime example of Survivorship bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- ahmelsayed 13y agothanks for the link. I always thought this must be some form of bias, but never knew there is a formal name for it.
- acjohnson55 13y agoAbsolutely. And I say this as someone who's turned down many lucrative opportunities to "follow my heart". If you're going to do it, don't do it for the money. Turning down a mid-six-figure offer to start a billion dollar company is most certainly an outlier, on both sides. If you're going to turn down money in hand for something speculative in your own life, do it knowing how much time, money, and opportunity you can afford to lose, and do it because it's something you really believe in. Even if you fail, you can land on your feet with an experience you'll never forget. Just don't do it out of some crazy notion that destiny rewards the reckless, which is where the survivorship bias comes into play.
- CmonNoReg 13y agoYep, he just won a lottery, good for him!
- Sealy 13y agoTom, you have the guts that many of us aspire to having. I'm sure I speak on behalf of the community when saying thanks for deciding to go with GitHub! Making that decision, you have have set a new standard in the world of development. Forever.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoLet me share a similar story. A long time ago, I did my undergraduate thesis at UW on a project called Kimera [1], a bytecode verifier for Java back in the days when such things were still pretty novel. I came across a nice fuzzing technique to test our verifier using Sun's and Microsoft's (all other verifiers being the former) as oracles. After we found all our bugs using this method, we began to notice bugs in the other verifiers, and we were able to turn one of these bugs into a full on security breach in the Netscape browser. So we got Microsoft's attention (not that far from UW), we met a few times, and they offered to buy our test suite/technology for an amount of money where my share would have been a lot for the time. However, the professor in charge decided to spin the tech off into a startup. The startup eventually failed, but I think the decision was reasonable considering this was during the first dotcom boom and everyone else was doing it. I also got some nice consulting income out of it, and the whole Java thing at Microsoft came tumbling down a few years anyways. At the end of the day, I still wound up working for Microsoft after grad school :) [1] http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/kimera/ http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/kimera/
- markthien 13y agoStupid fuck
- orijing 13y ago> I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 I'm curious how this works normally. He was employed full time at PowerSet nine months after he started working "full time" on Github. What did Powerset think of his devoting his time and energy to Github? What is the industry norm? What about the IP issues that complicate the matter? Couldn't Powerset have claimed ownership over Github since he was a salaried employee?
- btilly 13y agoPowerSet is in California. California has fairly strong protection for employee's intellectual property in stuff they do on their own time that is not relevant to their employer's business. This protection is, admittedly, more effective if you're employed by a small company with a focused business than if you're employed by a major corporation that does a bit of everything. But github doesn't sound much like a natural language search engine, so I doubt there were any IP issues to worry about. See http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab... for the relevant statute.
- ajays 13y agoI think this single piece of legislation has done more for California's startup scene than anything else.
- quackerhacker 13y ago>“wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.” Love the ending! Reminds me of a someone from my childhood. Us being the annoying kids would tell him "smoking kills 10 years of your life"...his optimistic response would be "the last 10 years suck anyway."