4 ms·

This is exactly it, recruiting and retention. As far as retention goes, especially for early employees: technically, you're going to be dealing with all of the

This is exactly it, recruiting and retention. As far as retention goes, especially for early employees: technically, you're going to be dealing with all of the bullshit the founders built into the system, and probably handling growing the team and installing processes. If you don't have some actual real stake in the value that you're creating, you are going to get jaded as the inevitable annoyances of being a startup take their toll. Part of the reason that it's particularly annoying is that it is trivial to see the value you are adding to the company. You've added some kind of project planning and management. You've added CI/CD practices. You've added a testing culture. You've imposed interfaces and documentation to onboard new developers and isolate implementation changes from the rest of the system. So, unlike a founder or a later hire, you see exactly how much better things are going to be from that dark age. And so, you're going to be pissed off when you only get like 0.5% in pre-dilutive shares. At least we should be thinking about something like an engineering commission or profit share or something for early engineers. EDIT: This is also especially important because you want your senior engineers to be encouraging a culture of "work smarter, not harder", and they'll naturally be disadvantaged if judged in terms of the bright-eyed youths that'll work all weekend correcting the mistakes of that week, and be praised for their effectiveness.

amyjess 12y ago
> As far as retention goes, especially for early employees: technically, you're going to be dealing with all of the bullshit the founders built into the system, and probably handling growing the team and installing processes. If you don't have some actual real stake in the value that you're creating, you are going to get jaded as the inevitable annoyances of being a startup take their toll. Yeah, I worked at a young startup for almost 3 years, and one of the reasons I quit was because they would neither pay me market value nor give me equity. I made about 3/4 of what everyone told me an engineer of my experience in my location should be making. Hell, I didn't even get health insurance, and the company made a point of hiring most new people as contractors, so they got around Obamacare's 15-employee rule. The company was a year old when I was hired, so I was too new to be considered one of the founding members, but I was still one of the early employees, and I got to create a whole bunch of systems that were integral to the company's operation. Over time, I got more and more bitter and jaded, and it was affecting my work. I wrote the software platform, and I was our DevOps infrastructure, but all I could think about was that not only did I get paid like shit, but they didn't value what I did enough to offer me equity. It upset me deeply that they would value me so little when I built huge parts of the company from the ground up, and I lost a lot of sleep over it. I already had a huge amount of stress in my life (this was all while I was transitioning from male to female, and I've struggled with depression for decades), and this made it all worse. By the time I quit, I had lost all motivation, and my boss was threatening to fire me because I hadn't been coming up with enough new software to write (he had stopped giving me assignments weeks before that, mind you: I think he was looking for a reason to get rid of me). There were other reasons I was bitter, too. For example, management treated my transition horribly, and they stood by and did nothing while I was subjected to humiliation for months by building management. It ended when I got the city involved, and I had to do 100% of the work on that myself (and, even then, our CEO almost sabotaged the city's case, because he ran his mouth off on some things where he didn't know what he was talking about). Another was one senior architect making godawful design decisions and being a manipulative, condescending, immature manchild when interacting with others. My boss gave him 100% free reign and treated him as an equal (this despite my boss being the Director of Software and a founding member) and dismissed any and every criticism about him just because the guy was an old friend of his for years. That drove one of my co-workers, who was one of my best friends at the company, to quit, and then my boss proceeded to slander him behind his back just because he had the gall to criticize my boss's friend. In fact, I suspect that the reason he suddenly stopped giving me new assignments and then began threatening to fire me for not doing enough work was because I finally had enough and told him my complaints about his friend. It is entirely within his personality to go out of his way to railroad people who have offended him. Oh, and then there was the total lack of planning or release engineering, despite my best efforts to come up with written proposals on what to do... I stayed as long as I did because a) my immediate co-workers were wonderful people I'm glad to call "friend", and b) I had come to believe that I was worthless and that I deserved to work at a company that treated me like shit. [Edit: to be fair to them, I'll add c) I actually enjoy doing this kind of work (platform/DevOps), and I really believe in their product. They make the kind of product that, if it takes off, will change a lot of people's lives for the better, and I wanted to be part of it.] Ultimately, I started looking for a new job, and I took the first offer I got, just to get out of there. Since the new year, I now work at a 20-year-old company, I get paid what I'm worth, I'm insured, and I'm pretty happy here. Still, even after being gone for a few months, the bitterness came back last month when I found out I owed an extra $400 on taxes because I was uninsured thanks to that company. They really did a number on my mental state.
- angersock 12y ago
  I'm really sorry to hear that. :( It's funny because if they hire you early it's because (presumably) you have skills they need to grow, but at the same time most are oblivious to the fact that they're still learning business. Such is the plight of the startup NCO.

amyjess 12y ago

> As far as retention goes, especially for early employees: technically, you're going to be dealing with all of the bullshit the founders built into the system, and probably handling growing the team and installing processes. If you don't have some actual real stake in the value that you're creating, you are going to get jaded as the inevitable annoyances of being a startup take their toll. Yeah, I worked at a young startup for almost 3 years, and one of the reasons I quit was because they would neither pay me market value nor give me equity. I made about 3/4 of what everyone told me an engineer of my experience in my location should be making. Hell, I didn't even get health insurance, and the company made a point of hiring most new people as contractors, so they got around Obamacare's 15-employee rule. The company was a year old when I was hired, so I was too new to be considered one of the founding members, but I was still one of the early employees, and I got to create a whole bunch of systems that were integral to the company's operation. Over time, I got more and more bitter and jaded, and it was affecting my work. I wrote the software platform, and I was our DevOps infrastructure, but all I could think about was that not only did I get paid like shit, but they didn't value what I did enough to offer me equity. It upset me deeply that they would value me so little when I built huge parts of the company from the ground up, and I lost a lot of sleep over it. I already had a huge amount of stress in my life (this was all while I was transitioning from male to female, and I've struggled with depression for decades), and this made it all worse. By the time I quit, I had lost all motivation, and my boss was threatening to fire me because I hadn't been coming up with enough new software to write (he had stopped giving me assignments weeks before that, mind you: I think he was looking for a reason to get rid of me). There were other reasons I was bitter, too. For example, management treated my transition horribly, and they stood by and did nothing while I was subjected to humiliation for months by building management. It ended when I got the city involved, and I had to do 100% of the work on that myself (and, even then, our CEO almost sabotaged the city's case, because he ran his mouth off on some things where he didn't know what he was talking about). Another was one senior architect making godawful design decisions and being a manipulative, condescending, immature manchild when interacting with others. My boss gave him 100% free reign and treated him as an equal (this despite my boss being the Director of Software and a founding member) and dismissed any and every criticism about him just because the guy was an old friend of his for years. That drove one of my co-workers, who was one of my best friends at the company, to quit, and then my boss proceeded to slander him behind his back just because he had the gall to criticize my boss's friend. In fact, I suspect that the reason he suddenly stopped giving me new assignments and then began threatening to fire me for not doing enough work was because I finally had enough and told him my complaints about his friend. It is entirely within his personality to go out of his way to railroad people who have offended him. Oh, and then there was the total lack of planning or release engineering, despite my best efforts to come up with written proposals on what to do... I stayed as long as I did because a) my immediate co-workers were wonderful people I'm glad to call "friend", and b) I had come to believe that I was worthless and that I deserved to work at a company that treated me like shit. [Edit: to be fair to them, I'll add c) I actually enjoy doing this kind of work (platform/DevOps), and I really believe in their product. They make the kind of product that, if it takes off, will change a lot of people's lives for the better, and I wanted to be part of it.] Ultimately, I started looking for a new job, and I took the first offer I got, just to get out of there. Since the new year, I now work at a 20-year-old company, I get paid what I'm worth, I'm insured, and I'm pretty happy here. Still, even after being gone for a few months, the bitterness came back last month when I found out I owed an extra $400 on taxes because I was uninsured thanks to that company. They really did a number on my mental state.

angersock 12y ago
I'm really sorry to hear that. :( It's funny because if they hire you early it's because (presumably) you have skills they need to grow, but at the same time most are oblivious to the fact that they're still learning business. Such is the plight of the startup NCO.