6 ms·

This article is a cheap shot, though my friends' anecdotal experiences suggest that this kind of thing is unfortunately grounded in reality. The three biggest

by jmduke 13y ago

This article is a cheap shot, though my friends' anecdotal experiences suggest that this kind of thing is unfortunately grounded in reality. The three biggest takeaways, I think, when seeking employment at a startup: 1. Money v. Experience is a false dichotomy. 2. It is worth your time and effort to quantify the actual value of things like free lunches and insurance. 3. Follow patio11's advice on evaluating equity: Roll d100. (Not the right kind of geek? Sorry. rand(100) then.) 0~70: Your equity grant is worth nothing. 71~94: Your equity grant is worth a lump sum of money which makes you about as much money as you gave up working for the startup, instead of working for a megacorp at a higher salary with better benefits. 95~99: Your equity grant is a lifechanging amount of money. You won’t feel rich — you’re not the richest person you know, because many of the people you spent the last several years with are now richer than you by definition — but your family will never again give you grief for not having gone into $FAVORED_FIELD like a proper $YOUR_INGROUP. 100: You worked at the next Google, and are rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Congratulations.

davidcuddeback 13y ago
The funny thing about that table is that rand(100) never returns 100. I wonder if that was on purpose.
- jmduke 13y ago
  From the source (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...): Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 or rand(100). (Read the whole article, it's wonderful.)
  - davidcuddeback 13y ago
    Thanks. I must not be that perceptive of a reader, because I've actually read that article before, but don't remember that part of it. I agree that it's a great article. Probably time for me to give it another read.
  - TillE 13y ago
    > Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 This is simply incorrect. For example, a d6 goes from 1 to 6, a d8 from 1 to 8, etc. The bounds are implicit in the notation of dX. A d100 roll is meant to be 1-100; you roll two d10s and each die represents one digit. 00 is taken to be 100. Now, if you're rolling a percentile, you follow the same procedure except 00 might represent 0%. In that case, 100% is excluded. However this is never called a d100.
    - James_Duval 13y ago
      I think it's a joke.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
eshvk 13y ago
It is pretty damn well grounded in reality. Another familiar talking point: working at our startup will be a massive learning opportunity; your twenties and thirties should really be spent learning as much as possible. You can start earning money in your forties. ( I wonder if this is designed to attract that demographic who went to school primarily to take hard courses because they literally feel like they are not learning unless an external factor challenges them. )
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Another familiar talking point: working at our startup will be a massive learning opportunity; your twenties and thirties should really be spent learning as much as possible. You can start earning money in your forties. I think it's best to be earning and learning. You shouldn't have to choose between one or the other. There's no reason to stop learning at 40; many people alive will make it to 90, which means they're less than a third of the way through adult life. Also, compensation is important. Most people think professional achievement and status beget compensation, but the reverse can happen. You tend to get better projects if you're highly paid, because it's expensive to waste your time on low-end work.
  - jwatte 13y ago
    The time between college and kids is when you need to both build up a house down payment AND your 401k base. It gets a lot harder after 30.
    - seiji 13y ago
      I'm not going to go into completely crazy pants MoC land here (just one-leg crazy pants), but your comment kinda hurts (completely unintentionally on your part—this is just to talk through my personal brokenness). I've worked mainly at startup organizations since I got out of school. I turned 30 last week. None of the startups I worked at panned out, all but the last has folded (try getting references when every company you've worked at no longer exists), and all the equity I ever vested is worth less than the papers I had to sign to get it. So, I'm 30, still job hopping, have no meaningful financial assets to speak of, and I sit around and listen to people say your 20s are for building up a massive hoard of cash and investments so you can live the rest of your life. Ouch. Failureland. Yes, it's my fault. I didn't recalibrate my salary when insanity struck and fresh bumbling BSCS graduates started making more than me with eight years of relevant experience. I could have gone to a Big Corp and had a Soul Crushing Job with Better Pay for the past eight years. I could be a millionaire by now with careful saving. But, no. Move fast and ruin your life. Let the 20-something founders "take money off the table" while watching the rest of the company honestly believe they are amazing, almost touched-by-god people. Work for sub-market wages with free lunches, work-on-whatever-you-want policies, and unlimited vacation days. Shoot for the stars. Enable the dreams of the founders and first five employees who were hired five years ago to cash out. Just keep moving diagonally. (pretend I made an elaborate chess joke at the end there) Perhaps we just need better transportation so I can commute to jobs in SF and NYC while living in Iowa.
drusenko 13y ago
To be fair, there are good and bad apples in any general population. Startups are no different, and the posted conversation is a complete trainwreck. In defense of good startups: 1- Some of us pay equal to or more than BigCo, so you're not always making a salary trade-off. 2- Options are a lottery, but with better odds than most people give them credit for: 13% of VC-backed startups exit for over $10M, 5% exit for over $50M, and 2% exit for over $100M, which is what I'd call a meaningful exit for all parties involved [1]. Everybody's experience is different, but many of our early employees can attest that options sure can be worth quite a lot. 3- You get to have real impact at a startup. Try doing that at BigCo. 4- The culture isn't soul-sucking. If you find the right startup, I think you are "optimizing for happiness". Get paid market, be in an environment where you can have autonomy and impact, get stuff done and shipped, and focus on what you enjoy doing. You don't have to worry about the millions of ups and downs of starting your own or freelancing. And you have a 1/50 lottery ticket of making it big, and a pretty decent chance of picking up some sizable savings. Obviously, I am biased :) [1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-startups-fail http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-st...
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  1- Some of us pay equal to or more than BigCo, so you're not always making a salary trade-off. True, but BigCo's also have consistent (if meager) raise policies. 2- Options are a lottery, but with better odds than most people give them credit for: 13% of VC-backed startups exit for over $10M, 5% exit for over $50M, and 2% exit for over $100M, which is what I'd call a meaningful exit for all parties involved [1]. Everybody's experience is different, but many of our early employees can attest that options sure can be worth quite a lot. With a typical engineer slice, a $10m or even $100m exit isn't meaningful. You might get $10-20k per year of vesting. Even in bad years, bankers get better bonuses (without the tax problems.) 3- You get to have real impact at a startup. Try doing that at BigCo. Startups win that comparison, no question. A startup doesn't guarantee an impact, but the odds are a lot better. 4- The culture isn't soul-sucking. There are soul-sucking startups and non-soul-sucking big companies. Cultures tend to regress to the mean with size, so the really amazing and really horrible companies tend to be startups, while all the big companies tend to be somewhere in the middle.
jwatte 13y ago
Your table is perfect: you can't roll 100 on a d100 or rand(100) call. My observation: 0-89 is nothing, 90-98 is consolation prize, and 99 may be meaningful if you're an early enough employee. 90+ is meaningful if you're a founder.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Maybe it is intended by the author?... :)
drivingmenuts 13y ago
How can it be a cheap shot without a signed NDA, if it's grounded in reality?

by jmduke 13y ago

davidcuddeback 13y ago

The funny thing about that table is that rand(100) never returns 100. I wonder if that was on purpose.

jmduke 13y ago
From the source (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...): Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 or rand(100). (Read the whole article, it's wonderful.)
- davidcuddeback 13y ago
  Thanks. I must not be that perceptive of a reader, because I've actually read that article before, but don't remember that part of it. I agree that it's a great article. Probably time for me to give it another read.
- TillE 13y ago
  > Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 This is simply incorrect. For example, a d6 goes from 1 to 6, a d8 from 1 to 8, etc. The bounds are implicit in the notation of dX. A d100 roll is meant to be 1-100; you roll two d10s and each die represents one digit. 00 is taken to be 100. Now, if you're rolling a percentile, you follow the same procedure except 00 might represent 0%. In that case, 100% is excluded. However this is never called a d100.
  - James_Duval 13y ago
    I think it's a joke.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

eshvk 13y ago

It is pretty damn well grounded in reality. Another familiar talking point: working at our startup will be a massive learning opportunity; your twenties and thirties should really be spent learning as much as possible. You can start earning money in your forties. ( I wonder if this is designed to attract that demographic who went to school primarily to take hard courses because they literally feel like they are not learning unless an external factor challenges them. )

michaelochurch 13y ago
Another familiar talking point: working at our startup will be a massive learning opportunity; your twenties and thirties should really be spent learning as much as possible. You can start earning money in your forties. I think it's best to be earning and learning. You shouldn't have to choose between one or the other. There's no reason to stop learning at 40; many people alive will make it to 90, which means they're less than a third of the way through adult life. Also, compensation is important. Most people think professional achievement and status beget compensation, but the reverse can happen. You tend to get better projects if you're highly paid, because it's expensive to waste your time on low-end work.
- jwatte 13y ago
  The time between college and kids is when you need to both build up a house down payment AND your 401k base. It gets a lot harder after 30.
  - seiji 13y ago
    I'm not going to go into completely crazy pants MoC land here (just one-leg crazy pants), but your comment kinda hurts (completely unintentionally on your part—this is just to talk through my personal brokenness). I've worked mainly at startup organizations since I got out of school. I turned 30 last week. None of the startups I worked at panned out, all but the last has folded (try getting references when every company you've worked at no longer exists), and all the equity I ever vested is worth less than the papers I had to sign to get it. So, I'm 30, still job hopping, have no meaningful financial assets to speak of, and I sit around and listen to people say your 20s are for building up a massive hoard of cash and investments so you can live the rest of your life. Ouch. Failureland. Yes, it's my fault. I didn't recalibrate my salary when insanity struck and fresh bumbling BSCS graduates started making more than me with eight years of relevant experience. I could have gone to a Big Corp and had a Soul Crushing Job with Better Pay for the past eight years. I could be a millionaire by now with careful saving. But, no. Move fast and ruin your life. Let the 20-something founders "take money off the table" while watching the rest of the company honestly believe they are amazing, almost touched-by-god people. Work for sub-market wages with free lunches, work-on-whatever-you-want policies, and unlimited vacation days. Shoot for the stars. Enable the dreams of the founders and first five employees who were hired five years ago to cash out. Just keep moving diagonally. (pretend I made an elaborate chess joke at the end there) Perhaps we just need better transportation so I can commute to jobs in SF and NYC while living in Iowa.

drusenko 13y ago

To be fair, there are good and bad apples in any general population. Startups are no different, and the posted conversation is a complete trainwreck. In defense of good startups: 1- Some of us pay equal to or more than BigCo, so you're not always making a salary trade-off. 2- Options are a lottery, but with better odds than most people give them credit for: 13% of VC-backed startups exit for over $10M, 5% exit for over $50M, and 2% exit for over $100M, which is what I'd call a meaningful exit for all parties involved [1]. Everybody's experience is different, but many of our early employees can attest that options sure can be worth quite a lot. 3- You get to have real impact at a startup. Try doing that at BigCo. 4- The culture isn't soul-sucking. If you find the right startup, I think you are "optimizing for happiness". Get paid market, be in an environment where you can have autonomy and impact, get stuff done and shipped, and focus on what you enjoy doing. You don't have to worry about the millions of ups and downs of starting your own or freelancing. And you have a 1/50 lottery ticket of making it big, and a pretty decent chance of picking up some sizable savings. Obviously, I am biased :) [1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-startups-fail http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-st...

michaelochurch 13y ago
1- Some of us pay equal to or more than BigCo, so you're not always making a salary trade-off. True, but BigCo's also have consistent (if meager) raise policies. 2- Options are a lottery, but with better odds than most people give them credit for: 13% of VC-backed startups exit for over $10M, 5% exit for over $50M, and 2% exit for over $100M, which is what I'd call a meaningful exit for all parties involved [1]. Everybody's experience is different, but many of our early employees can attest that options sure can be worth quite a lot. With a typical engineer slice, a $10m or even $100m exit isn't meaningful. You might get $10-20k per year of vesting. Even in bad years, bankers get better bonuses (without the tax problems.) 3- You get to have real impact at a startup. Try doing that at BigCo. Startups win that comparison, no question. A startup doesn't guarantee an impact, but the odds are a lot better. 4- The culture isn't soul-sucking. There are soul-sucking startups and non-soul-sucking big companies. Cultures tend to regress to the mean with size, so the really amazing and really horrible companies tend to be startups, while all the big companies tend to be somewhere in the middle.

jwatte 13y ago

Your table is perfect: you can't roll 100 on a d100 or rand(100) call. My observation: 0-89 is nothing, 90-98 is consolation prize, and 99 may be meaningful if you're an early enough employee. 90+ is meaningful if you're a founder.

GuiA 13y ago
Maybe it is intended by the author?... :)

drivingmenuts 13y ago

How can it be a cheap shot without a signed NDA, if it's grounded in reality?