6 ms·

"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more

by kayoone 13y ago

"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people." That quote drips so much of elitism its disgusting. MS still has many brilliant engineers and is building alot of really complex stuff, probably more than your average startup ever will. This is the kind of talk i find really off putting about the whole startup-scene...

notaddicted 13y ago
Only people with money say "Don't worry about money".
- sama 13y ago
  I still said that when I had a negative checking account balance while starting my company. I think you should worry about money, but that you should take a long-term view of it.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    Only people with a nice fallback cushion can afford to say "take a long-term view of money" when their checking account is in the negatives. Let's face it: if you are having trouble feeding yourself, your view on money will be extremely short-term. As it should be.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      To be fair, most decent development jobs will pay you enough to feed and shelter yourself especially if you are a healthy 19 year old with no dependents. So the difference the extra money makes is likely to just mean lifestyle changes like taking the bus instead of driving a new car and less ambitious holidays. If you can put up with that for a few years then it makes sense to take a lower paying job if you believe it will have better long term prospects.
      - beat 13y ago
        When I hired my 18 year old designer, we talked salary come funding time (she's not getting a salary now, just token $$ I toss her way to keep her from getting a grocery store job). Even underpaying her relative to the entry level designer market, she'll be making more than her mother does.
        shazow 13y ago
        This worries me. I've met all too many designers and engineers who started out exactly like this, and years later come to realize that they've been underpaid by more than 50% below market rate for half a decade, and have little more to show for it than one entry on their resume and a case of Stockholm syndrome. That's a home they could have bought if they knew their real value and weren't being exploited by a greedy employer. It's years of bitterness and job dissatisfaction they could have avoided by better knowing their value and having the right kind of ambition-inspiring peer pressure. Let's assume you're not such a person, but at the same time I hope you would help educate your young designer about what exactly she's sacrificing by working with you at a salary of "making more than her mother." Please help her understand what she could be earning if she's willing to possibly relocate and hustle a bit, and allow her to make an informed decision.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        I'm sure she would be capable of researching this for herself. An employer doesn't have an obligation to point out that the guy over the road is paying more. Besides there are other factors that come into play besides salary.
        ruswick 13y ago
        While this sort of exploitation is egregious, I think that part of the responsibility lies with the employee. At the end of the day, the company is simply using the employee's labor to further its own ends and enrich its shareholders. In the same way that one would hire an accountant to minimize their tax burden or clip coupons to save money at the grocery store, a company will go out of their way to pay as little as possible for labor. The idea of trying to maximize value is certainly nothing new. What more do you expect? Ultimately, one can only expect companies to do what is in their best interest, which is often antithetical to the employee's interests. One has to take responsibility and ensure that they get paid fairly. The employers certainly won't.
  - jtbigwoo 13y ago
    I think it depends on your background. I'm guessing that you had a bigger net beneath you had a bigger net beneath you than most people (student at Stanford, probably from an upper-middle class family that would support you if things got bad). For somebody whose parents said GTFO at 18, going the boring route at first makes perfect sense.
  - bdcravens 13y ago
    Having money is more than your checking account balance. If you ran out of money, did that mean foreclosure? repossession? homelessness? starvation? If not, then you weren't broke. Obviously I can't speak to your situation, and if you're a true bootstrapper, then kudos. However, I think you can agree there's a ton of 19 years old running around driving the cars mommy and/or daddy bought, with the iPhone and MBP also purchased by their parents. They can totally go for gold and fail, and still have somewhere to live and try again.
    - sama 13y ago
      It's true--I absolutely had a safety net from my parents. I really didn't want to ask them for it, but it undoubtedly affected my decision making.
sama 13y ago
I agree with that--for example, I think Microsoft Research has some of the smartest hackers I've met. However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met. Plenty of startups have worse people than the worst of Microsoft. Some of them have people who couldn't get a job at one of those stodgy, blue-chip companies if their lives depended on it. The range is very wide at most of the startups. I worked at one where there were some seriously good engineers, but a really bad one ended up becoming the lead architect and things went to hell quickly.
- nobodysfool 13y ago
  >people I've met That's a pretty small sampling to make such big claims about a company.
  - pseut 13y ago
    >>(and where this person was going) he apparently wasn't making the claim about the entire company
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  Microsoft has 100,000 employees (42k in WA).. of course SOME of them are bad. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx
  - argonaut 13y ago
    This is overly nitpicky. Of course some people are bad in any company. Clearly the blog author means to say that there tends to be more "bad" engineers at MSFT than you would expect from its outward reputation. The problem with that is that if every blog author hedges in exacting detail their every argument, discussions would devolve into technicalities.
minikites 13y ago
And if you're 19 or 20 and you put that extra $30k into an index fund, the magic of compound interest will give you much more money than if you start shoveling three times the amount in when you're in your mid-30s.
- sama 13y ago
  Depends what you believe will happen with the markets and inflation over the next 15 years. I believe a better approach in today's world is to put yourself in a position where you're less dependent on historical market performance.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    You are free to believe that. Historically, the stock market has returned 7% on average. That is after inflation and takes into account the several terrible crashes that have occurred.
    - freyr 13y ago
      Do you know why the stock market has returned 7% on average? Or do you just think that, since it returned 7% on average in the past, it must do so in the future? The U.S. has held a very privileged position in the world economy over the past century, which has fueled tremendous growth. You're basically betting that the U.S. continue to be a "growth" stock over the next 25 or 50 years, and continue to see huge gains in productivity and global competitiveness. It's not a completely crazy idea, but it's not the sure bet you make it out to be, either.
      - j_rogers 13y ago
        Regardless, it is surely better to bet on the stock market continuing to rise, even if more slowly than in the past, than it is to bet that the startup you're working for is going to be successful.
      - meowface 13y ago
enraged_camel 13y ago
I agree. $30,000 more per year is nothing to balk at. It is a serious amount of money. In addition, working for Microsoft is fantastic for a resume. The person in question probably improved his future career prospects by an order of magnitude by taking the job. And let's not even forget the fantastic benefits that Microsoft offers its employees that most startups cannot afford to.
- beat 13y ago
  "Future career prospects"... well, that depends. What does he want that future career to be? More work as a peon in other giant corporations, climbing the ladder to middle management? That sort of thing can lead to looking back twenty years, thinking, "Why on Earth did I waste all that time?" Believe me, I know. I often quote Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, asking "What do you want?" Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    You aren't cast into one thing for life unless you choose to be. I'm sure startups would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft experience. Out of people I know working for startup type companies, one cut his teeth building enterprise Java stuff at a bank and the other spent time in the military.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      >>I'm sure startups would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft experience. More importantly, a lot of them would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft connections.
  - eshvk 13y ago
    > That sort of thing can lead to looking back twenty years, thinking, "Why on Earth did I waste all that time? "waste" is subjective. Twenty years of your life working 100 hours a week in startups? Twenty years of your life traveling the world with a low paying job? A particular path being appealing to you doesn't necessarily make other paths bad. > Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye. Sure. Imagine the man who doesn't accept that all he wants is a stable job which will let him spend more time with his family. Instead, he works at a tiny company day in and day out, dreaming of the big payoff (with paid dinners).
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Couldn't agree more. And when you're 19 $30K is a lot. You don't have much expenditure and can put most of your salary in savings. That could really impact your life in 10 years time. It's also important to remember some of the really cool research projects companies like MS are working on and then think about the pretty basic low tech consumer facing products a lot of startups are working on.
- sama 13y ago
  The problem is most 19 year olds will spend that money instead of saving it. MS research is pretty awesome.
rgbrenner 13y ago
What you said... plus: "I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies ... that was a terrible decision" What is this company? How does he know that it's a breakout company? Is he able to tell the future? Because there's an EXCELLENT chance it's not a breakout company. There's an excellent chance it WILL go bankrupt. Microsoft + 30k more.. or a startup that has a fantastic chance of failing. Anyone who chooses Microsoft over a startup, I completely understand.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  "What is this company?" is a very good question. I speculate whether the writer left this information out on purpose, to mitigate the risk of looking silly if the company goes bust next week.
  - argonaut 13y ago
    Please stop wildly ascribing negative intentions. Even if you think Sam is talking out of his ass, matching him does not improve your situation.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Right there with ya. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people. Oh, because working at a startup guarantees he will work with smart people? Sheesh.
makmanalp 13y ago
To be fair, your average new-grad / entry level job at MS is probably not going to be one of those positions building complex stuff, it's going to be "cog in the system" type of work. It's dubious whether you'll even get to interact with engineers that you might learn something from. There was a story recently about this, and is also corroborated by pretty much all of my friends who ended up there. Basically, if you're at the point where you think you can do some architectural work and real decision making, you're likelier to be allowed to do that at a startup than at a large company.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  new grads probably shouldn't be making 'architectural work' decisions, at least not on their own, and doing it 'on their own' is more likely in a 'breakout startup' situation.
bksenior 13y ago
This is a faux contrarian opinion. If someone is asking Sam Altman what to do, it is far more likely than not, they define ambition as starting their own thing. If thats the case, learning start-up stuff is likely not going to happen at a place like Microsoft. So he says go somewhere that can educate you in building from scratch. It's pretty clear he isnt knocking the old guard, but answering the question in the the way the person asking it was likely anticipating.
ruswick 13y ago
Besides merely being an offhanded dismissal of Microsoft employees, it operates under the presumption 1) salary is a factor that can be disregarded by people and 2) high salary is negatively correlated with exposure to smart people. In the case of the former, the author is clearly myopic. One needs money to live, and the majority of technology companies reside in cities in which the cost of living is substantially higher than the mean. I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. If anything, one should take a job at an established company, pay off their debt, then take on risk. In the case of the latter, the author is simply being needlessly dismissive and arrogant. Large companies host hundreds of great engineers and do incredibly meaningful work. Frankly, Microsoft is one of the strongest innovators in the market at the moment. Even if one isn't constructing the most alluring product, one can at least take pride in the fact that they are working on a product with a scope many orders of magnitude larger than most startups. Working on Windows might not be the captivating notion, but it is still meaningful to tens of millions of users.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. What kind of plebeian can't afford to exit school with $500/mo student loans and $2,000/mo rental payments? ;) More importantly, according to Hacker News, the average salary for a software developer who is at least capable of coding himself out of a wet paper bag, is $150k, so below-average means an "acceptable" $120k, at least. Right?

by kayoone 13y ago

notaddicted 13y ago

Only people with money say "Don't worry about money".

sama 13y ago
I still said that when I had a negative checking account balance while starting my company. I think you should worry about money, but that you should take a long-term view of it.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  Only people with a nice fallback cushion can afford to say "take a long-term view of money" when their checking account is in the negatives. Let's face it: if you are having trouble feeding yourself, your view on money will be extremely short-term. As it should be.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    To be fair, most decent development jobs will pay you enough to feed and shelter yourself especially if you are a healthy 19 year old with no dependents. So the difference the extra money makes is likely to just mean lifestyle changes like taking the bus instead of driving a new car and less ambitious holidays. If you can put up with that for a few years then it makes sense to take a lower paying job if you believe it will have better long term prospects.
    - beat 13y ago
      When I hired my 18 year old designer, we talked salary come funding time (she's not getting a salary now, just token $$ I toss her way to keep her from getting a grocery store job). Even underpaying her relative to the entry level designer market, she'll be making more than her mother does.
      - shazow 13y ago
        This worries me. I've met all too many designers and engineers who started out exactly like this, and years later come to realize that they've been underpaid by more than 50% below market rate for half a decade, and have little more to show for it than one entry on their resume and a case of Stockholm syndrome. That's a home they could have bought if they knew their real value and weren't being exploited by a greedy employer. It's years of bitterness and job dissatisfaction they could have avoided by better knowing their value and having the right kind of ambition-inspiring peer pressure. Let's assume you're not such a person, but at the same time I hope you would help educate your young designer about what exactly she's sacrificing by working with you at a salary of "making more than her mother." Please help her understand what she could be earning if she's willing to possibly relocate and hustle a bit, and allow her to make an informed decision.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        I'm sure she would be capable of researching this for herself. An employer doesn't have an obligation to point out that the guy over the road is paying more. Besides there are other factors that come into play besides salary.
        ruswick 13y ago
        While this sort of exploitation is egregious, I think that part of the responsibility lies with the employee. At the end of the day, the company is simply using the employee's labor to further its own ends and enrich its shareholders. In the same way that one would hire an accountant to minimize their tax burden or clip coupons to save money at the grocery store, a company will go out of their way to pay as little as possible for labor. The idea of trying to maximize value is certainly nothing new. What more do you expect? Ultimately, one can only expect companies to do what is in their best interest, which is often antithetical to the employee's interests. One has to take responsibility and ensure that they get paid fairly. The employers certainly won't.
- jtbigwoo 13y ago
  I think it depends on your background. I'm guessing that you had a bigger net beneath you had a bigger net beneath you than most people (student at Stanford, probably from an upper-middle class family that would support you if things got bad). For somebody whose parents said GTFO at 18, going the boring route at first makes perfect sense.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  Having money is more than your checking account balance. If you ran out of money, did that mean foreclosure? repossession? homelessness? starvation? If not, then you weren't broke. Obviously I can't speak to your situation, and if you're a true bootstrapper, then kudos. However, I think you can agree there's a ton of 19 years old running around driving the cars mommy and/or daddy bought, with the iPhone and MBP also purchased by their parents. They can totally go for gold and fail, and still have somewhere to live and try again.
  - sama 13y ago
    It's true--I absolutely had a safety net from my parents. I really didn't want to ask them for it, but it undoubtedly affected my decision making.

sama 13y ago

I agree with that--for example, I think Microsoft Research has some of the smartest hackers I've met. However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met.

michaelochurch 13y ago
However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met. Plenty of startups have worse people than the worst of Microsoft. Some of them have people who couldn't get a job at one of those stodgy, blue-chip companies if their lives depended on it. The range is very wide at most of the startups. I worked at one where there were some seriously good engineers, but a really bad one ended up becoming the lead architect and things went to hell quickly.
nobodysfool 13y ago
>people I've met That's a pretty small sampling to make such big claims about a company.
- pseut 13y ago
  >>(and where this person was going) he apparently wasn't making the claim about the entire company
rgbrenner 13y ago
Microsoft has 100,000 employees (42k in WA).. of course SOME of them are bad. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx
- argonaut 13y ago
  This is overly nitpicky. Of course some people are bad in any company. Clearly the blog author means to say that there tends to be more "bad" engineers at MSFT than you would expect from its outward reputation. The problem with that is that if every blog author hedges in exacting detail their every argument, discussions would devolve into technicalities.

minikites 13y ago

And if you're 19 or 20 and you put that extra $30k into an index fund, the magic of compound interest will give you much more money than if you start shoveling three times the amount in when you're in your mid-30s.

sama 13y ago
Depends what you believe will happen with the markets and inflation over the next 15 years. I believe a better approach in today's world is to put yourself in a position where you're less dependent on historical market performance.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  You are free to believe that. Historically, the stock market has returned 7% on average. That is after inflation and takes into account the several terrible crashes that have occurred.
  - freyr 13y ago
    Do you know why the stock market has returned 7% on average? Or do you just think that, since it returned 7% on average in the past, it must do so in the future? The U.S. has held a very privileged position in the world economy over the past century, which has fueled tremendous growth. You're basically betting that the U.S. continue to be a "growth" stock over the next 25 or 50 years, and continue to see huge gains in productivity and global competitiveness. It's not a completely crazy idea, but it's not the sure bet you make it out to be, either.
    - j_rogers 13y ago
      Regardless, it is surely better to bet on the stock market continuing to rise, even if more slowly than in the past, than it is to bet that the startup you're working for is going to be successful.
    - meowface 13y ago

enraged_camel 13y ago

I agree. $30,000 more per year is nothing to balk at. It is a serious amount of money. In addition, working for Microsoft is fantastic for a resume. The person in question probably improved his future career prospects by an order of magnitude by taking the job. And let's not even forget the fantastic benefits that Microsoft offers its employees that most startups cannot afford to.

beat 13y ago
"Future career prospects"... well, that depends. What does he want that future career to be? More work as a peon in other giant corporations, climbing the ladder to middle management? That sort of thing can lead to looking back twenty years, thinking, "Why on Earth did I waste all that time?" Believe me, I know. I often quote Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, asking "What do you want?" Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  You aren't cast into one thing for life unless you choose to be. I'm sure startups would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft experience. Out of people I know working for startup type companies, one cut his teeth building enterprise Java stuff at a bank and the other spent time in the military.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>I'm sure startups would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft experience. More importantly, a lot of them would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft connections.
- eshvk 13y ago
  > That sort of thing can lead to looking back twenty years, thinking, "Why on Earth did I waste all that time? "waste" is subjective. Twenty years of your life working 100 hours a week in startups? Twenty years of your life traveling the world with a low paying job? A particular path being appealing to you doesn't necessarily make other paths bad. > Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye. Sure. Imagine the man who doesn't accept that all he wants is a stable job which will let him spend more time with his family. Instead, he works at a tiny company day in and day out, dreaming of the big payoff (with paid dinners).

k-mcgrady 13y ago

Couldn't agree more. And when you're 19 $30K is a lot. You don't have much expenditure and can put most of your salary in savings. That could really impact your life in 10 years time. It's also important to remember some of the really cool research projects companies like MS are working on and then think about the pretty basic low tech consumer facing products a lot of startups are working on.

sama 13y ago
The problem is most 19 year olds will spend that money instead of saving it. MS research is pretty awesome.

rgbrenner 13y ago

What you said... plus: "I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies ... that was a terrible decision" What is this company? How does he know that it's a breakout company? Is he able to tell the future? Because there's an EXCELLENT chance it's not a breakout company. There's an excellent chance it WILL go bankrupt. Microsoft + 30k more.. or a startup that has a fantastic chance of failing. Anyone who chooses Microsoft over a startup, I completely understand.

emiliobumachar 13y ago
"What is this company?" is a very good question. I speculate whether the writer left this information out on purpose, to mitigate the risk of looking silly if the company goes bust next week.
- argonaut 13y ago
  Please stop wildly ascribing negative intentions. Even if you think Sam is talking out of his ass, matching him does not improve your situation.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Right there with ya. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people. Oh, because working at a startup guarantees he will work with smart people? Sheesh.

makmanalp 13y ago

To be fair, your average new-grad / entry level job at MS is probably not going to be one of those positions building complex stuff, it's going to be "cog in the system" type of work. It's dubious whether you'll even get to interact with engineers that you might learn something from. There was a story recently about this, and is also corroborated by pretty much all of my friends who ended up there. Basically, if you're at the point where you think you can do some architectural work and real decision making, you're likelier to be allowed to do that at a startup than at a large company.

mgkimsal 13y ago
new grads probably shouldn't be making 'architectural work' decisions, at least not on their own, and doing it 'on their own' is more likely in a 'breakout startup' situation.

bksenior 13y ago

This is a faux contrarian opinion. If someone is asking Sam Altman what to do, it is far more likely than not, they define ambition as starting their own thing. If thats the case, learning start-up stuff is likely not going to happen at a place like Microsoft. So he says go somewhere that can educate you in building from scratch. It's pretty clear he isnt knocking the old guard, but answering the question in the the way the person asking it was likely anticipating.

ruswick 13y ago

Besides merely being an offhanded dismissal of Microsoft employees, it operates under the presumption 1) salary is a factor that can be disregarded by people and 2) high salary is negatively correlated with exposure to smart people. In the case of the former, the author is clearly myopic. One needs money to live, and the majority of technology companies reside in cities in which the cost of living is substantially higher than the mean. I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. If anything, one should take a job at an established company, pay off their debt, then take on risk. In the case of the latter, the author is simply being needlessly dismissive and arrogant. Large companies host hundreds of great engineers and do incredibly meaningful work. Frankly, Microsoft is one of the strongest innovators in the market at the moment. Even if one isn't constructing the most alluring product, one can at least take pride in the fact that they are working on a product with a scope many orders of magnitude larger than most startups. Working on Windows might not be the captivating notion, but it is still meaningful to tens of millions of users.

sliverstorm 13y ago
I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. What kind of plebeian can't afford to exit school with $500/mo student loans and $2,000/mo rental payments? ;) More importantly, according to Hacker News, the average salary for a software developer who is at least capable of coding himself out of a wet paper bag, is $150k, so below-average means an "acceptable" $120k, at least. Right?