
Ask HN: How to evaluate job offers? - job-dilemma
I&#x27;m a computer programmer and I&#x27;ve found myself in the enviable position of having to choose between 2 nice job offers.  It&#x27;s a classic dilemma of high risk v. high reward or corporate work for higher pay (~15%).<p>I am married with a child and my wife does not work.  If I choose to work for the startup I will essentially be unable to save for the next 4 or 5 yrs (or until we learn to appropriately adjust our lifestyle).  The corporate gig represents a modest pay bump (and the ability to save) and a more traditional path for career advancement (i&#x27;m not 100% sure that matters to me).<p>Everything about this choice is a conflict.<p>If I think about my life goals in terms of non-work life then the higher pay, the slow &amp; steady nature of the corp. job, and an office (with a door!) are appealing.<p>If I think about my life goals in terms of work life then the startup is more appealing - I will have more autonomy, using more exciting tech, solving bigger problems, working with movers &amp; shakers, and generally more of a challenge.<p>How can I convince myself of one or the other?  How can I vet the opportunities of the startup vs. the position of the corp. job?  Any insight is appreciated.
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tptacek
How old is your kid? Probably relevant.

Building up enough savings to cover (surprisingly expensive)
dental/medical/orthodontia and, more importantly, to serviceably help my kids
get to college was supremely stressful for me in my last(=current) startup
job.

The likelihood that employment at any startup will pay out is low. You can
cycle through lots of startup jobs to improve the odds, but if you do the math
across all startups and the amount of time you have, the odds aren't great.

Meanwhile, if you take the corporate job, you can still fulfill your bigger
ambitions; you just have to be determined enough to chase them in your spare
time, clever enough to scope your projects down to something achievable (at
least, until you get dollar-valued traction) in that spare time, and
disciplined enough to keep that tempo up.

Over the long term, the way to make the startup path really pay is to be a
cofounder. Taking a series of jobs at startups isn't necessarily the best way
to cofound a company. Having some degree of financial stability might be more
important.

Also, don't forget to evaluate the benefits packages at both jobs. Your spouse
doesn't work; the quality of your insurance is going to matter.

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job-dilemma
6

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tptacek
Well, you've got ~12 years to build up some kind of war chest. If you're
willing to work for 15% less money at a startup, consider what that 15% saved
every year for 12 years might do for the college problem? On the low end of
software positions, I come up with numbers that more or less pay for college.

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kohanz
_I will have more autonomy, using more exciting tech, solving bigger problems,
working with movers & shakers, and generally more of a challenge._

Do you know or expect this to be true of the startup offering you the job or
is this more your general vision of startup employee life? If it's the latter,
that would worry me.

Overall, I don't know that you've provided enough information to go on. The
fact that one is a startup and the other is corporate work is, IMHO, of a lot
less relevance than most would assume. The devil is in the details. In the
end, it will all be about your fit with the team at work, your boss(es), your
enjoyment with the content of your work, level of responsibility, and
work/life balance. Those can be good or bad in either situation. We've all
read many a post of a disgruntled startup employee on HN.

I don't have a recommendation of which one to go with, but what I try to do in
these scenarios is think of a range of scenarios (e.g. best, worst, and in-
between cases) for each situation and use those as inputs to my decision. It's
easy to romanticize the start-up and think of corporate work as boring, but
the truth often falls somewhere in between.

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eshvk
To add on to what kohanz said, I think it is important to find out concretely
what "more autonomy, using more exciting tech, solving bigger problems,
working with movers & shakers, and generally more of a challenge." mean
exactly in terms of this startup.

Let me explain:

1\. What does more autonomy really mean? Do you have product level decisions?
Do you have decisions governing the architecture of problems? Do you have the
kind of experience that means they will eventually trust you with that?

2\. What does more exciting tech mean? Is that a question of you using a new
technology, new paradigm or new space? If so, have you considered what will
happen in a year's time when the tech is something you get used to? Also, if
more exciting tech means the prospect of working on fancy new tools all the
time, there is a drawback to that too. As a company grows, you have these bits
and pieces which don't fit correctly and don't scale properly.

3\. 'working with movers & shakers': Again, it completely depends on the
company what this means. Being able to sit next to your CEO or grab a beer
with him could mean nothing more than a 1 degree connection on linkedin or
something, it all depends on how they perceive you too.

4.'solving bigger problems': Again this completely depends on the company's
scope. Scaling up a web app to ten thousand users at a startup vs working
fresh out of school in Amazon scaling up to millions and millions of users are
two different sorts of bigger problems.

A few years back I was faced with these two caricatures of companies two: a
startup being a romantic place where a bunch of cool people sip beer and
change the world and big companies filled with engineers who dress in blue
shirts and slacks and are generally "cog" in a wheel. Again, the truth is that
every company is different.

Oh, yeah, I can't agree more with what _kohanz_ said there. Team matters more.
In fact, when I make my decisions, I would care more about the team than
whether the company is considered "prestigious" or "exciting".

Also, lastly, unless you are interviewing with an early stage startup, asking
the startup to be relatively competitive is not out of the realm. I know there
is this perception in industry that working in a startup automatically means
lower pay but that doesn't always have to be the case. There are tradeoffs
always obviously, in that a small startup won't be able to say match Google's
benefits or whatever but having said that, you can surely make sure that your
family is not left high and dry if things blow up.

~~~
job-dilemma
I have no illusions about the startup life, I'm not excited to drink beer with
the ceo.

I'm excited by the prospect of owning a technology platform and running with
it. The existing tech stack is one outside of my comfort zone (i.e. jumping
from windows -> linux), but the architectural & dev principals are very
familiar to me.

Solving bigger problems to me means that the company's mission is a good one -
working towards a societal good as opposed to building intranets or
perosonalizable web portals.

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pg
Which group of people do you want to become like?

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grinich
Incidentally, this is one of the best litmus tests I've found for many life
decisions. (college, hobbies, friends, dating, etc.)

~~~
nostrademons
"If you tell me who your heroes are, I'll tell you how you'll turn out." \--
Warren Buffett

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ratsimihah
Cute.

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zck
Have you negotiated the startup one? Tell them that you'd rather work with
them, but you have another offer on the table for more money. Read Patrick
McKenzie's article about negotiation:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) .

~~~
ratsimihah
Wish I'd read that _before_ accepting my first offer.

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grinich

        I am married with a child and my wife does not work.
    

I bet your wife works a lot. It's just that nobody pays her for it.

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rayj
Take the corporate job.

You have two people that depend on you to provide for them for both income and
insurance (assuming you are in the USA). In a year or two your wife could
return to the workforce, then go for whatever startup is in fashion at the
time. Being as tech startups are, it has a >50% chance of failure anyway. It
would also be possible to start your own side project while working the
corporate job.

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mathattack
IMHO you left out a couple key data points.

1) How senior are you?

2) How much do you respect the folks that will be your boss, and how much time
will they give you?

The more junior you are, the more important #2 is.

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rajacombinator
Since you have a kid the startup should be very compelling to consider it.

