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You can and must ask those questions. If they find it rude or "forward", then that's a good sign that you should not join them. Salary, title, equity, benefits

You can and must ask those questions. If they find it rude or "forward", then that's a good sign that you should not join them. Salary, title, equity, benefits and vacation time are best discussed (and negotiated) after an offer is in place. I wish it were socially acceptable to discuss these earlier (it would save a lot of wasted time) but it's usually not. What the business is doing and how much runway it has, you should ask early. You have a right to know, and if they have a real business they believe in, they'll be excited to tell you.

kabdib 13y ago
At some point, you are interviewing them. I've made a few mistakes in that direction. One memorable one is the startup where (a) I learned the phrase "train wreck", (b) witnessed a fight between VCs wherein various employees had to pick sides, (c) had to talk to a psychologist the company hired to find out "what was wrong in engineering" [ans: managers were morons], (d) had a meeting with Smokey Wallace -- an early Adobe heavy -- one fine Sunday morning to do a technical brief of what the company was about [ans: not much, could have been replaced with 2KSLOC of Perl], and (e) had the president of the company break down crying when I told him I was quitting. Due diligence would have saved me from everything, but at east I got some interesting stories. I'll never get that ten months back, though.
fecak 13y ago
One benefit of working with agency recruiters is that you can find out at least parts of the comp plan (vaca, 401k, bennies) without having to ask directly. If you walk in and start asking 'what's in it for me?' questions before asking the 'good questions' (that poster listed) founders may judge that you are only interested in comp. Having information on the bennies and perks before talking about cash comp is pretty important. If the company pays 100% of healthcare premiums and another pays 50%, that could be a 5-10K adjustment alone. 1 week vacation accounts for 2% of comp. All the little things start to add up, and if you throw out a number early on without knowing these things you may need to backpedal.

kabdib 13y ago

At some point, you are interviewing them. I've made a few mistakes in that direction. One memorable one is the startup where (a) I learned the phrase "train wreck", (b) witnessed a fight between VCs wherein various employees had to pick sides, (c) had to talk to a psychologist the company hired to find out "what was wrong in engineering" [ans: managers were morons], (d) had a meeting with Smokey Wallace -- an early Adobe heavy -- one fine Sunday morning to do a technical brief of what the company was about [ans: not much, could have been replaced with 2KSLOC of Perl], and (e) had the president of the company break down crying when I told him I was quitting. Due diligence would have saved me from everything, but at east I got some interesting stories. I'll never get that ten months back, though.

fecak 13y ago

One benefit of working with agency recruiters is that you can find out at least parts of the comp plan (vaca, 401k, bennies) without having to ask directly. If you walk in and start asking 'what's in it for me?' questions before asking the 'good questions' (that poster listed) founders may judge that you are only interested in comp. Having information on the bennies and perks before talking about cash comp is pretty important. If the company pays 100% of healthcare premiums and another pays 50%, that could be a 5-10K adjustment alone. 1 week vacation accounts for 2% of comp. All the little things start to add up, and if you throw out a number early on without knowing these things you may need to backpedal.