
Working for a startup makes less sense, unless you are into the mission - jatins
https://jatins.gitlab.io/me/why-startup/
======
acconrad
As someone who was a 1st engineer of a startup that successfully exited I had
what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course of my
career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for the years
I worked there. It was a net-neutral outcome to be the 1st engineer at a
startup that actually exited for a substantial (8-figure deal) outcome which
already puts me in the minority.

So no, its not worth it and hasn't been worth it for some time (I was there
nearly a decade ago)...

...financially.

However, what was worth it was the experience I gained. Being the 1st non-
founder engineer means you own a whole stack or specialty and you have no one
to lean on. You have to figure _everything_ out. Doing so propelled my career
immeasurably. Without that experience I'd still likely be a very mediocre
engineer. As much as it wasn't a good financial decision it was a great
decision in terms of upping my skills, becoming a harder worker, and building
a network with VCs and the local engineering community.

I had already worked at the Big 4 prior to switching and I didn't thrive in
that environment. The startup ecosystem provided me the opportunity to work
hard, network, build skills, and give me the tools & learnings on how to start
my own business.

Not everything is about money.

~~~
everdev
> I had what would be considered a good payout. When looking over the course
> of my career, however, it simply made up for the reduced salary I took for
> the years I worked there.

This is such an important point for people to know when they're joining
startups. You're basically investing in the startup.

If you're going to be an investor it's good to know what your alternative
investments are.

If you put $50k in the stock market every year for 5 years @ avg. 8% return,
your have ~$400k. Over 10 years it's ~$900k.

At 1% equity (after dilution) you'll need a ~40-90M exit to reach those goals.
Given that your taxable event will be bigger, it's probably more like a
$60-120M exit to break even if you're considering a $50k/year pay cut in
return for equity.

Both the market and startups have risks. But if the upside of investing in a
startup won't reasonably beat the market then you're essentially taking a pay
cut.

~~~
kenneth
An exit would usually be considered long-term capital gains under the tax
code, which luckily tops out at 20% (+ state income tax)

~~~
ojn
Only if you joined early enough that doing early exercise of stock options is
financially viable.

------
birken
One thing that gets glossed over a lot with startups is that often times the
technical skill level is really low. If you are a young engineer and you are
hoping to learn technical skills, be very very careful about which startup you
join because you might end up at one where nobody actually has any idea what
they are doing. And if you yourself are in the learning phase of your career,
you might not have the experience to figure out if the startup's technical
situation is great or terrible.

At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is
that the technical skill level will be good, the career coaching will be good
and they probably will even have some sort of education pipeline set up for
younger engineers to learn.

I always shudder when thinking about all of the new-grads who are seduced to
join startups and then spend years learning terrible habits and churning out
crap and get spit out no better than they began. At minimum if you spent a
couple years at a larger, reputable company you'll always have a benchmark to
compare with other opportunities.

~~~
save_ferris
> At least one very important benefit of joining a big, reputable company is
> that the technical skill level will be good

I don't believe this is a universal truth, especially since your experience at
a large company is largely dictated by the specific team you work on. I've
definitely worked for small startups that were far more talented than some of
the technical teams I've worked on at big companies.

~~~
birken
Well nothing is a universal truth, but I think my point is generally accurate.

IMO a bad team at a good company is way way better than a "good" team at a bad
startup where nobody knows what they are doing. At the very least the company
will have lots of resources outside of your team to learn from (company-wide
infrastructure and processes, tech talks, etc).

I also am not saying all startups are bad, and in fact I know that many
startups are full of very talented people who are certainly more talented than
the average person at a big company. And it is possible, and maybe even
likely, that a good team at a good startup is better learning environment than
a good team at a big company.

But I think the median team at a big company has a pretty good technical
level, and the median team at a small startup (for example one that is just
graduating from YC) is fairly bad. If you are young engineer who doesn't know
any better, you are much much safer taking a job at a big company if _learning
about good engineering_ is your chief priority.

~~~
xiphias2
I agree with you with most things, but bad team is bad team everywhere, and it
can ruin your life and career.

It's important to recognize it and switch teams inside the company after 1-2
years if it's needed.

------
luminati
Honest question: Why does every blog post that talks about working with a
startup, always pick Facebook and Google for the comparison?

Both these companies are extreme outliers (probably in the history of
business!). Their outsized pay comes from their outsized profits, which comes
from selling your data. I find it very ironic, that these very same people who
diss startups love dissing Google and FB as being evil, but somehow when it
comes salary packages they're viewed as holy institutions.

Google and FB hire very selectively, and even if you're truly qualified they
may not actually have a position open for you. And most critically 99+% of
engineers (including the ones in HN) probably won't make the cut for whatever
reason.

Why not compare with traditional megacorps (of which there are literally
(fortune) 500s of them (every company is a tech company now ;) ) like IBM,
Oracle, SAP, etc? This group is far more representative of where most
engineers would actually end up and hence a better comparison against
startups.

Then you'd realize that startup packages don't seem that bad - or rather
you're making a tradeoff between not having to deal with corporate bullshit or
an extra 30K in stock grants.

Also on another note - startups are a wide spectrum (more so than megacorps).
You have 3-5 person starting up startups to series D unicorn startups. Broad
sweeping blanket statements comparing startups as if they're a single entity
don't help too much.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
Facebook and Google are so big they pretty much set the standard for what
people talk about. You might prefer to say, I dunno, AirBnB, but that detracts
from the point people are trying to make, which is that a bigger de-risked
company is better on financial terms.

~~~
alexanderdmitri
Isn't Airbnb still technically considered a startup (albeit a profitable one
as of 2016)?

------
angryasian
I've worked everywhere from small startups, to big FAANG companies and big
enterprise companies. I am in the very same opinion as op.

1\. Financially the exits weren't worth it. The amount you actually learn is
incredibly questionable.

2\. Working at bigger companies I learned a hell of a lot more, from the mere
fact that there are a bigger pool of resources with a lot of experience to go
get help from. This is just not technology, but even from improving management
and soft skills. You'll learn a hell of a lot more on your career path moving
up to Director and VP level from a big company than the equivalent title at a
startup.

3\. Everything else is really dependent on you as an individual. I personally
thrived at a big company. As the writer suggested at a startup its all about
shipping and things are pretty much laid out for you. At a big company, it
really gives you time to take advantage of resources and people .. you just
have to be very aggressive and pro active in your pursuits.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Just adding to your point: in all of the start-ups I worked for, the main
selling points were (a) more responsibility sooner and (b) chance to drive
decision-making about tech stack and/or work with the best tools (new or old)
without red tape.

I’ve never seen (or heard of) any start-up actually fulfill these selling
points any better than medium-to-large companies.

More responsibility sooner typically just translates into the usual crap about
“wearing many hats” — which is to say your “responsibility” means doing
whatever whimsical thing that other people say you have to do, with no regard
for your career goals.

In start-ups, I’ve only ever witnessed people getting _less_ autonomy and much
less freedom to learn. At the same time, the earliest engineers might have
made very poor commitments to certain extreme philosophies about programming
and engineers who come later have to clean up these messes while experiencing
a lot of dogma from the early stage people.

I’ve personally seen this happen several times with ex-Google employees who
join as the earliest engineers and insist on setting up copies of what they
recall from Google, mostly insisting on a monorepo regardless of any use case
details, insisting on using Bazel or a similar homebrewed build file system,
insisting on the same style of canary deployments.

You have to be really careful to avoid these places unless you’re perfectly
happy to be a cog implementing these patterns based on someone else’s
authority-from-big-company-X. You might even have a super senior job title,
yet still just be shuffling code according to someone else’s dogma, while
being told the company doesn’t want “dogmatic” engineers.

All this is just to say: be careful. Taking a start-up job because you think
you’ll get more responsibility or be given autonomy or discretion in project
architecture or tooling decisions is often a big mistake.

By this point, I believe candidates simply need to reject start-up jobs
categorically.

Unless the job is paying full market total compensation (excluding non-liquid
equity), top of the line benefits, and provides full transparency, just say
no. Investors looking to back start-ups simply have to accept that the up-
front costs from day one include ensuring employees earn fair market
compensation exclusive of the risks associated with start-up equity. That’s
just table stakes of hiring a team, period. It does not matter what optimistic
outcomes you’d like for candidates to believe about you in exchange for
dramatically less compensation.

~~~
bluquark
> I’ve personally seen this happen several times with ex-Google employees who
> join as the earliest engineers and insist on setting up copies of what they
> recall from Google, mostly insisting on a monorepo regardless of any use
> case details, insisting on using Bazel or a similar homebrewed build file
> system, insisting on the same style of canary deployments.

I'd be interested to hear more details of what winds up going wrong with these
practices in a startup environment?

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Many things go wrong. Monorepos + bazel is an approach that’s well-suited for
some use cases but poorly suited for other use cases. The problems usually
happen when some early engineer “knows it all” because they saw these tools in
action in a different use case (such as inside Google) and incorrectly assert
they will be good solutions in some other use case (e.g. a start-up with very
different reality than Google).

If the company is healthy, there will be a give and take, people will
acknowledge that e.g. monorepos are not universally always a good or workable
choice, and compromises or trade-offs will be analyzed in earnest.

If the company is not healthy, which happens often in start-ups that are
forced to adopt a monoculture or extreme philosophy of the founder or early
engineers (and enforcing dogma may even be a main reason why those people left
other jobs to be early employees in a start-up), then usually by some argument
from authority or poorly conducted confirmation bias blog post competition,
the dogmatic choices about monorepos or bazel tooling (just as common examples
I’ve seem turn out poorly) will just be mandated and all intellectual
integrity about it will be shut down.

------
aggronn
This is knitpicky, because OP's point may still stand, but as a founder, this
is what comes to mind after reading this: When I hear "work for a startup", I
don't assume that means "be the 10th engineer at a company". You might make
some money at that point, but you're not going to get financial independence
unless there's a billion dollar IPO.

By BigCo standards, 10 engineers is a tiny startup. By venture/founder
standards, I think 10 engineers is when you've already made it past the
riskiest parts. You probably already have significant revenue traction, or
you're past a Series A. You should be able to pay market, and equity is about
alignment not risk compensation.

I think you can still get rich at a startup, but you need to take actual risk
to be compensated for it. Join a 5 person company. Be the second or third
engineer, and be able to become the CTO if the two technical people ahead of
you leave.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
Okay, and as someone who has hitherto largely worked at startups (2/3rd of my
career), let me tell you the counterpoint.

There is not a lot of risk from your perspective, but there is a large amount
of risk for _us_.

At a startup, you push all you can towards steering the ship in the right
technical direction. For example, unlike at a BigCo, you are likely to be that
person who will write the technical debt that later-joining younger engineers
will call you stupid for, but you did it while producting your startup to
scale.

 _But you only get the pay-out if you actually manage to last until the exit._
If you leave before then, because of politics or some failed product push or
what-have-you, then you will have to exercise your options, which puts you in
a bind in terms of financial risk. If you do exercise, you will be subject to
dilution. If you'd stayed at the company, it's often the case that they
continue to grant options to employees they want to keep.

So to "make it," you effectively have to grow into a BigCo employee anyway. At
that point, what is really the point to working at a startup? Especially since
your pay will be like half that of a BigCo? Especially since it's A LOT more
stressful? Especially since you actually need your critical thinking skills to
compensate for your founding team's shortcomings?

Now at a BigCo, you drink the kool-aid, you jump through the hoops (working at
BigCo is more about jumping through hoops because that's how they "scale"
things), but if you do all that, you're more or less set. You may have to
"work" hard, but your life is on autopilot.

I've had this conversation with lots of folks who've been there, and I myself
have helped build one company from the pre-10 engineers phase (more like 3
engineers phase) to something that had a real shot. To be quite frank, the
_financial_ incentives are certainly not there, and for most companies I see,
I'm no longer sure about the growth/learning incentives either. It's just a
bad deal, and you should care because by and large, the smart engineers who
can make your boat float aren't going to work for a startup.

~~~
throwaway93289
> But you only get the pay-out if you actually manage to last until the exit.
> If you leave before then, because of politics or some failed product push or
> what-have-you, then you will have to exercise your options, which puts you
> in a bind in terms of financial risk.

Employee #1 of a startup that sold for 9 figures chiming in. I loved the
people I worked with (until we got to around 70+ and bureaucracy/meetings
grew), the company had an amazing life/work balance (it was one of their core
principles and it was real), I learned a bunch of things (a lot of dead
knowledge now though), and it seemed like my best shot for $$ because I knew
the product was good. It took a decade to sell. Around year 7 the company
started changing and I grew to like working there less, but the possibility of
the payout was still my best bet for a pile of cash. It was then that I really
felt the golden handcuffs and grew anxious. I couldn't leave and keep my
options because of the exercise tax. We finally sold and the amount I got was
so embarrassing that they offered me a second pot of cash that was more
reasonable, but still a far cry from what the founders got.

I probably could have made the amount over 10 years working for one of the
bigs. I will never put on golden handcuffs again.

~~~
eanzenberg
Not sure how to reconcile the fact that a) you had golden handcuffs because of
the exercise tax and b) the amount u got was embarrassingly low. Was your
strike price too large or something? Obviously you made a lot of money if you
couldn't afford the taxes up front.

~~~
mi100hael
Typically exercising options gets taxed as regular income on the difference
between option strike price & fair market value.

If OP had something like $300k of options, that'd be about a $100k tax bill
assuming the strike price was appropriately low. Not a very big payout on a
9-figure exit, but also not pocket change for the taxes.

~~~
deanmoriarty
Well, if the "9 figure" was 100M, then 300k seems fair, since after 10 years
of fundraisings and even minor dilutions, it's very easy and expected to go
from 1% to 0.3%.

On the other hand, if the amount was 500M, 300k seems very low, hinting to a
final ownership of ~0.06%. If that was true, even after considering all
dilutions, that makes me think that OP didn't negotiate a fair equity package
to begin with, since as employee #1 you should definitely have at least 1%.

------
docker_up
I was employee 40, and approximately 15th engineer of a YC startup where the
founders made roughly $50M each, and I made just under $80,000. During this
time, had I gone to work at a FANG, I would have probably made a few million
dollars just from being a senior software engineer.

I have another friend who has been at 3 startups during this time and deeply
regrets leaving his FANG job because he also missed out on millions.

I think the way things are structured, you have to negotiate hard with
startups otherwise it's better to stay in FANG. It didn't used to pay this
well to be at a big company but the industry has changed. Not sure if things
will work its way back, but having a TC of 400k+ as a senior engineer at a
tech company is easily achievable these days, so the startups need to give
bigger comp packages.

~~~
krschultz
This is 100% accurate and _not how things were even 10 years ago_. The market
today is basically bi-modal. When I first started out in startups (2008) that
didn't seem to be the case. The result is obviously worse for you financially
if you join the startup, but it has also weakened the teams at startups. Many
top engineers are just staying at the big public tech companies. Meanwhile
large startups that would have IPOed years ago stay private in the current
funding environment, dragging out the lockdown period for engineers. It just
doesn't make sense to work at a startup like it used to.

I truly don't think most people that argue to work for a startup have
internalized the compensation at the big tech companies. $400k+ really is
total comp for senior engineers. Not $200k + some lottery tickets for later,
it's $400k on your W2 each year, with some of that fluctuating based on stock
price and delivered in quarterly increments.

~~~
dcosson
> I truly don't think most people that argue to work for a startup have
> internalized the compensation at the big tech companies.

Completely agree. For instance I don't think anyone who throws around the term
"market rate salary" has updated their definition of it to include these
dramatically higher numbers.

Not to mention, housing costs in the bay area have followed (or been driven
by, depending on your perspective) these rising big co salaries. Meaning that
startup salaries not only haven't kept up, they may have even gone down in
terms of how much money you take home after paying for housing.

------
cdoxsey
Working for a startup absolutely makes sense.

The unstated assumption here is that you have a pile of offers from Amazon,
Google, Microsoft, etc along with some from startups and you have to make a
decision about which to go with.

I suppose my experience might be unusual, but I don't think that's typical.
You've got an offer on the table, and your choice is to go with it, or reject
it and hope you're given an offer by some other company.

I've seen it go both ways. Maybe the next week you do see the better offer. Or
maybe 3 months later and a few dozen rejections later you've got nothing to
show for it.

So you take what you're given.

~~~
crazygringo
Likewise, there's nothing preventing you from taking an offer at a startup,
continuing to interview and taking a job at a big company whenever, even if
it's only 2 or 3 months later.

I mean, try not to make a habit of it, and give the first place a chance to
fully match the salary/RSU's.

But I've seen it happen before, and while the first startup won't be happy
with you, it's not going to have any long-term consequences. Just don't bother
even putting them on your resume.

I've also seen companies do the same -- hire someone in the spring of their
senior year to start in the fall, and then rescind the offer late summer
because some internal financial projection didn't pan out. (And even have the
guts to ask for a signing bonus back. "Sorry, already spent it.")

~~~
toomuchtodo
Good advice. Always Be Interviewing. The business is going to be constantly
interviewing new talent, you do a disservice to yourself to not be doing the
same of other companies.

------
legitster
Completely missing are stable mid-size companies. They can be great! Lots of
flexibility to do your own thing, with less corporate politics.

Unfortunately, market forces seem to be driving them out of the economy.
Companies have to grow insanely big to justify their investments. And
consumers increasingly don't want to shop at a 3rd or 4th player in a market.

------
misthop
I look at it another way - there are plenty of startups (series A, B) that pay
fair industry wages along with equity. If the exit is worth nothing - no huge
loss, I made what I should have. If there is a good/great exit - awesome, I
pocket 1-10 years worth of salary on top of a fair salary.

Could I make more with salary+rsu at a FAANG? possibly, maybe even probably -
but then I would have to work at a FAANG

~~~
umeshunni
Effectively, you're saying you'll take a 50% paycut (including RSUs) to avoid
working at a FAANG? Most people wouldn't do that.

~~~
misthop
But it isn't a paycut - at best I am declining to look for a pay increase. And
that is ok. I think plenty of people would do it - at a certain point we make
more than enough to fund our interests and lifestyle.

I am always happy to make more, but I don't _need_ to, so my decision matrix
on where to work extends beyond the question of dollars into consideration of
people, mission, industry, possibility of making an individual impact, openess
to remote work (I will not be going back to an office, at least while my kids
are young) etc.

------
bargl
> In my experience, the deadline-driven culture crushes any scope for
> creativity and experimentation.

This is true anywhere. It's amplified in a startup because you can't switch
teams or move around to get on an innovation driven team, it will also have a
much bigger affect. If you only focus on deadlines, developers (by necessity)
start taking short cuts and laying code that pushes boundaries less. If they
get punished for taking a risk, then they won't take a risk.

Taking smart risks are the bread and butter of innovation. I've seen what it
means to be punished for taking risks and it changes the entire atmosphere and
dampens innovation.

~~~
auggierose
I think it is in the nature of risk that you get punished if you end up on the
losing side of it, no?

~~~
bargl
That's a cultural thing. Losing a risk doesn't require punishment, unless you
consider not getting the reward a punishment. You can just reward winners and
otherwise not punish the others.

------
CryoLogic
The comp packages at big tech companies are becoming insane.

In Seattle it's not unreasonable for a senior software engineer with some good
connections to be making 200-250k.

With that comes life insurance, health insurance for your whole family,
disability insurance, etc.

That's more in cash AND benefits than a doctor.

~~~
seem_2211
I think the question needs to be asked: will this last for the next 25-30
years? I really hope so, but unlike being a doctor, it's a lot more uncertain
than we'd like it to be.

~~~
hobofan
Unless there are extreme breakthroughs in making software engineering
approachable for currently not quite as qualified people, I don't see it
changing. Breaking the social stigma of "nah that is extremely complicated, I
can't learn that" would also be a big one.

BIG SIMPLIFICATIONS AHEAD

There are a lot of new software engineers popping up all the time, but very
few ever reach a "senior" change, and a lot of them end up producing
unmaintainable systems at companies, that sooner or later crumble. All at the
same time, demand for good software engineers is growing and growing.

There are also an interesting effect I'm starting to see more often (in
Berlin), that due to combination of high salaries and moderate living costs,
which make saving up money possible, qualified engineers are (partially)
leaving the workforce quite early, either by dropping to part-time or retiring
early. This then further lowers the available supply, making salaries even
higher, and it even easier to save up money. More of a hunch than a big
observable effect right now, but I'm very interested in seeing how that plays
out over the coming years.

~~~
mgkimsal
> There are a lot of new software engineers popping up all the time, but very
> few ever reach a "senior" change

And yet many of them still get the 'senior' title and role, and still end up
producing unmaintainable systems. I've had to clean up after quite a few.

~~~
hobofan
Yep. I think this might even be a symptom of the shortage of engineers. A
"senior" title might often be the only way for the CTO (or equivalent) to
justify what is perceived by the rest of the company as high salaries.

------
payne92
The blog post desperately needs "...for some people" appended.

We are all solving for different things.

Some want a shot at changing the world, some want to get rich, some want a job
that (mostly) "doesn't come home with them", and many want to trade off
between stress+anxiety and income+convenience. Others want to be always
learning. Some have families and non-work commitments, others don't.

For example:

>>In my experience, it’s harder to have any visible growth in a

>>startup because well first, what do you grow to? There is no

>>clear hierarchy, no promotion paths.

In startups, there's often a better chance to learn general skills outside of
(say) just development (dealing with users, writing content, devops, QA,
teamwork, etc.) for those that have initiative.

Larger companies can be more structured but may have a chance for a more
defined impact, with an existing customer base and market.

Which makes more/less sense? Depends entirely on what YOU care about.

~~~
jatins
> there's often a better chance to learn general skills outside of (say) just
> development (dealing with users, writing content, devops, QA, teamwork,
> etc.)

I think this point of "multiple hats" is true only on paper. I can imagine a
founder wearing multiple hats. First few engineers - still likely. But if you
are like 30th engineer at a startup, you really are not wearing many hats.

"dealing with users" there are dedicated people in most companies who deal
with users/customers. They are either PMs or Customer Success Engineers.
Occasionally, you do interact with customers but I wouldn't say it's
monumental.

"writing content" Again, there are dedicated technical writers who do that.

same for other roles.

~~~
ankit219
If the company already has specialist people for all the roles, then it has
already moved on from the traditional early stage startup where the rewards
are higher and learning exponential.

------
alealeale
The 'actual conversations' section bugs me, he wrote about having his request
to use Kotlin rejected, and even though I'm a coder that loves trying new
tech, I think it is usually both a very bad decision and investment to either
mix languages just for cool points or rewrite your codebase because there's a
new hype language.

The queue problem sounds more sensible, but it could also be a case of over
engineering.

Overall I get the impression that the author was thinking on a purely
technical level, and that's not something you can afford to do in a startup
where budget and time are limited.

~~~
jamesfisher
This attitude comes through in other posts, too, e.g. [1] where he says
"AMAZON DOES NOT EXPERIMENT ... Facebook contributed React; Google gave us
TensorFlow, Kubernetes, and lot more ... But Amazon doesn't give a fuck". But
at the PRODUCT level, Amazon seems extremely experimental. E.g. they kind of
invented the "cloud computing" space.

[1]: [https://jatins.gitlab.io/me/amazon-internal-
tools/](https://jatins.gitlab.io/me/amazon-internal-tools/)

------
smallgovt
Looking at any individual employee's outcome from a startup's exit is wildly
unproductive because there is so much variance in startup outcomes.

What you really want to know, as an employee, is what the expected value of
your shares/options are. As a general rule of thumb, I'd recommend taking the
valuation of the company's last financing round and halve it. Then, multiple
this valuation by your projected ownership percentage after vesting (and
subtract any impact from exercise price).

The biggest reasons you want to discount the company's last private valuation
are liquid preference and risk intolerance.

Then, treat it as a high variance investment, which it is. I.e. don't count on
the money.

~~~
scarmig
High variance investments are typically supposed to be a minority of your
portfolio. Startups force you into investing an outsized amount into them.

That's not even touching on how the actual value and variance is unknown, and
how startups prey on what amount to unsophisticated investors (the workers
taking equity).

~~~
smallgovt
I agree with all your points, especially that many startups 'prey' on
employees who don't really understand how startup economics work.

This is why I think it's important to distill general rules of thumb like the
one I suggested. This will give employees a realistic perspective when
evaluating startup offers.

For example, let's say your typical pre-series A 1st engineer hire gets $150K
+ 1% vested over 4 years. Instead of thinking about what your shares would be
worth in the case of an IPO, just take the last company's valuation, halve it
and multiply it by your ownership. So, if your startup's last raise was at
$10M, your 1% stake is worth $50K.

If people start thinking in these terms, the level of disappointment will go
way down because you start realizing that the expected value of employee
equity is almost never that much to begin with.

~~~
pbecotte
Halving it for dilution is not actually enough. Remember that the valuation
that an investor is paying is what the investment is worth _to them_. Any
investment is worth more as part of a well diversified portfolio. As an
employee, you lack that diversification. Even worse, the investors get
significant protections built into their investment... preferred shares, board
seats, dilution protections.

I would be surprised if the true value (if that were possible to calculate)
weren't closer to 1/10th the valuation that investors bought in at.

------
sarthakjain
15k at a $200M outcome (ignoring liquidation preferences) means he had 0.0075%
assuming 70% dilution from the time he joined to exit. He joined at 0.025%.
assuming everyone before him got on average got 5x what he got that's still
1.5% to all the first 15 employees combined. Which is beyond attrocious.

My guess as to what happened here is op got bored with job at big co. Startup
offered 10% higher or same salary. Told him he is getting some stock, he
didn't bother to find out how much.

What you should get as employee 15 at a startup if your 2+ years of experience
(according to ops resume on his website) is at least 0.1% which would have
translated to $70k (assuming 70% dilution). In India a big co employee at 2+
years probably makes $40-50k at best including stock. That's close to 1.5
years salary at least at exit having worked for 2 years at the company.
Assuming 25% of salary was in stock at big co he lost 20k in stock over 2
years. 70/20 is 3.5x and gives an annual rate of return of 80% which is
roughly similar growth to big co. in it's best years.

Moral of story count your stock when joining a startup.

------
jedberg
In my career, I've made all my money from working for public companies, and
I've gained a lot of experience from both. The experience I got at the big
co's was more around how to manage, how to manage up, how to drive big
technical project to completion, and also some very niche, specific
technologies. At the startups I got very broad technical knowledge, got to
build full app stacks on my own, and also got to create and run a hiring
process.

Overall I'd say the startup experience was more fun and more valuable, but the
experience at the big co's was still worthwhile and more than made up for by
the compensation.

However, I wouldn't have given either one up. Having both made me a well
rounded engineering and employee.

------
rubicon33
> That startup sold for 200 million dollars and, as the 10th engineer, I made
> ... 15000 dollars from that exit.

Why so low?

~~~
crazygringo
Yeah, that's 0.0075%.

Versus a ballpark of a 10th engineer getting, say, 0.5%.

Even a few rounds of dilution can't explain a drop of two orders of magnitude.

I'm thinking the author either didn't pay attention or care or trusted too
much in the initial offer, didn't stay long enough to vest most of it, didn't
buy most of their options in the end, or all of the above?

~~~
cik
This number makes complete sense. I was a 'key employee' once upon a time - in
a startup that had just raised f&f, and I received a FULL 2% (unheard of for
Canada).

Fast forward through the (usual) reality of 6 rounds of dilution, and my 2%
was worth less than 0.02%. If the startup went from a $2M valuation to $200M
(as it did) then my take would have been $40K.

Do with that what you will.

~~~
smallgovt
It sounds like your startup was unfortunately an outlier with respect to the
level of dilution experienced. 99% dilution over 6 rounds is far from 'usual
reality'. More common is 20% dilution per round.

~~~
eanzenberg
6 rounds of 20% dilution will get you to 74% total dilution from the initial
grant.

~~~
Zephyr314
Which in this case nets you >$1M [0] vs the 80k quoted above. This also
assumes no retention grants over 6 rounds.

    
    
      [0]: 0.02*0.8^6*$200,000,000 = $1,048,576

------
ctulek
Example dialogs in this article are without context. However, the responses
that engineer got from founders or other teammates do not sound terrible to me
in most contexts.

Most of the time, you shouldn't spend time on new shiny tech, like a new
programming language. And you should really try hard to not urge adding more
stuff to your stack, like a job queue server.

>> Founder's goals and your goals, as an engineer, will not be aligned most of
the times.

This happens a lot and to be honest, I believe most engineers don't get it.
Your goals should be aligned with the founders. If this is not the case, you
shouldn't be in that startup. You don't do any good to yourself or to your
team. Find another job.

------
JesseAldridge
The problem is there is very, very little equity given to early employees. I
went to one of YC's "work at a startup" events and Sam Altman himself got on
stage and called out basically every company there for this very issue
(assuming I interpreted him correctly).

I looked into joining several startups as employee #1, both at this event, on
AngelList, and by talking to random people who cold emailed me -- and it seems
like an offer of 1% equity would be considered generous. I thought that seemed
totally crazy and when I asked founders why they didn't offer more, they
always said the same thing: "We have one slice for the founders, one slice for
the investors, and one slice for every employee we are going to hire going
forward, so we can't offer more than 1%."

If you're friends with the founders and they know you have the skills, and
they trust you to work hard, you could get something like 5-10% as employee
#1. That's really the only sort of deal you should consider. But if you're
just some random dude with a decent resume, you're way better off taking a
more traditional job at an established company where your compensation is
relatively predictable.

~~~
52-6F-62
Heh. I have had a similar experience with AngelList except the offer was 0.5%
and no salary — "it's standard".

That didn't last long.

------
opportune
If the OP liked startups so much I think they should have just tried to be a
founder. It doesn't take a lot of math to realize non-founders usually get a
pretty bad deal. Unless someone is particularly enamored with startups or
can't get a job at a well-paying bigco (which there's no shame in, but let's
call a spade a spade) it's pretty clear your 10% chance at realizing <1% of a
company's valuation will pay out less money than the guaranteed increase you
would make at bigco.

But since bigcos have so greatly outstripped startups in terms of the
compensation packages they can offer, that's why I think all but the most
technically challenging startups should GTFO of the bay area. Your
compensation package probably won't be able to compete so you probably won't
end up with very good talent, on average. So just go somewhere in the interior
of the country and pay above-market there for engineers who maybe could have
got hired by bigcos but wanted to stay in their area.

~~~
umeshunni
OP had two years of experience before joining the startup. I'll give them the
benefit of the doubt of not knowing things like "doing the math". When you are
a relatively new grad working an entry level job at a big Co and what you hear
are mostly stories of all your friends of friends who became millionaires
being an early employee of Uber/Snap/Twitter/whatever, it's tempting to make
the jump.

------
tresante
This is something I'm pondering a lot these days. I am the co-founder of a
startup that I'm in the process of winding down. We had some success but
ultimately never gained sustainable market traction in a very hard to
penetrate market.

Having bootstrapped the company to revenue and kept things very lean and with
costs and employee salaries funded initially through personal savings and a
little bit of debt, I didn't take a dime of salary for myself in over 3 years.

I always told myself the experience would be incredibly valuable regardless of
what ultimately happened, knowing the chances of success were slim but opting
to go for it anyway, because how else was real change effected? Yes, I've
definitely learned a lot, would do things very differently a second time round
and have gotten some experiences (good and bad) that I wouldn't otherwise have
had, but I'm finding it hard to see much upside in the past 3 years right now.
I see my colleagues doing well in their careers and seemingly every other
startup founder I've met, crushing it, although I have also seen a few
failures over time.

I've tried to sell what's left of the company but have had little interest.
I've applied to jobs in the Bay Area but it's clear hiring managers don't know
quite what box to put me in and would rather go with the brand name and
"safer" candidates. Yes I'm being a little selective in where I want to work,
but it's hard not to stick to your ideals after standing by them for the past
3 years.

Hopefully it'll all be part of a glorious master plan that becomes apparent in
decades to come but at this point who knows! It's definitely given me a better
appreciation for the risks that entrepreneurs (including early employees) take
and a greater respect for those who do go out and grow something that truly
makes the world a better place.

~~~
pbecotte
Having been one yourself very recently, you must be aware that every founder
is "crushing it" right up until the put up that blog post about how it didn't
work out, right?

------
non_sequitur
As a former startup and FANG employee, I absolutely agree that working at a
startup AS AN EMPLOYEE is not financially beneficial. The only ways to really
make money as a non-founder employee at a startup is by being lucky enough to
be at a Google/FB/Uber type exit for billions (not millions), or coming in as
senior leadership (VP/CxO type role) AFTER the startup has gone through its
growing pains, determined product market fit, and is seeing good traction.
This is honestly as it should be - as an employee you are taking far less risk
than founders (and to be fair, than most investors as well), so you shouldn't
expect a massive windfall. As some people have commented, reason the cost
benefit is out of whack is mainly due to recently inflated salaries (over the
last few years) that came about as the result of FB/Google poaching wars, so
this is a relatively recent development, and who knows how long it may last.

------
duxup
Did it ever make sense financially?

The idea that you'd get rich was always a gamble / not likely. I knew some
folks who went to startups telling me how great it would be if the company
took off, but none of them I felt were capable of predicting how likely that
was.

Outside of enjoying a start up like environment and the environment you get
from an early stage company / like the people .... I don't see any obvious
advantages that were ever true enough to count on.

------
scottlegrand2
There's definitely a model for selling MVPs for fifty to a hundred million
dollars, especially in AI right now. If you can stay small and take away 5 to
25% of that you win. The best way to approach this is to work at a bigco and
then leave to build something they need but for which they lack the will to
build themselves.

But the minute you're talking less than 1% equity, unless it's the next
Facebook, you belong at the bigco of your choice.

All IMO of course...

------
TAForObvReasons
Early stage hires at startups have the worst of both worlds: they face the
downsides (lower wages, tons of risk, expectation to work long hours) but have
muted upsides (small equity grant relative to founders, not even guaranteed to
be hired in an acquihire situation). It is arguably even riskier than being a
founder.

~~~
brianwawok
> It is arguably even riskier than being a founder.

Depends what the founder put in. Founder put in 100k? Or founder put in 12
months of unpaid work to build a MVP? He has a fair bit to lose on a splat.

Engineer #7? I suspect most developers can find a new job in 1-2 weeks, so the
only thing "lost" is potential equity.

~~~
sidlls
Why do you suspect that about developers? I've yet to have a hiring process be
faster than a month, and that was unusual. The last time I went looking the
turnaround time from recruiter pre-screen to an offer was six weeks. My job
hunt lasted three months and I ended up not taking any of the middling offers
I got. These were mostly series A and B "startups." I've shifted my focus to
bigger, FAANG-like companies.

------
notacoward
I've worked for ten startups. Financially, not a great idea. Like the lottery,
a few win big and the vast majority lose. I had one decent exit, which is
about par for the course, and really it just brought me up to parity with my
BigCo colleagues. I'll make more in four years at a FAANG company than I did
in four years even at that one successful startup.

As far as learning, it's also a mixed bag. Sure, you get to learn a lot of
different things, but a lot of it is the digital equivalent of cleaning
toilets. You might have some influence over which technologies get used, but
only a small number will get used company-wide vs. the wide variety that might
exist at a larger company. I was still probably able to learn more about
storage and networking and HPC and other general areas at some of those
startups than now, but it's not clear it was any better for my market value.
Even though much of what I'm learning now is totally specific to this employer
and should barely even count in any future job search, there's a lot of cargo-
culting in this industry so it's likely to make more than impression than even
the most innovative startup nobody ever heard of.

There are a lot of reasons to choose working at a startup, but they're mostly
about personal preference and fulfillment rather than doing your career or
finances any good. In some ways, startups would be a better choice _late_ in
someone's career, not early.

------
USNetizen
I'm not sure I understand what the real dilemma is here of working for a
startup. Being employee #15 is not the same as being in the first 5 hired. You
don't take the same risks (or even do the same type of work), so there is
obviously less reward when it's time to exit.

If you want to get rich, the best way to do it is to start a company yourself
- but it sounds like the author didn't want to go that route after trying it.
That's OK though, it's not for everyone. But I think the author needs to
understand the risk-reward thing here a little better - you need to take more
risks to earn more reward, and being the 15th hire at a company that has most
likely already raised money is significantly less risk then being like
employee #3. A lot of companies compensate their first handful of employees in
equity a lot more than others because they took risks (and pay cuts) plus made
contributions to the growth of the company that that employees #10 and after
most likely didn't.

It still makes perfect sense to work at, or start, a startup - you just have
to have the right appetite for risk and the right mindset for the varying
types of work you'll be doing (compared to latter employees who can specialize
more). You simply won't get "rich" without taking the risk and accepting that
you have to broaden your capabilities beyond core technical skills to grow at
a startup and earn your way to a nice exit package.

~~~
NateDad
I think the author understands exactly what they're talking about, and they're
not talking about being employee #1-3.

Most people, when they hear "work at a startup", they're talking about being
employee #10-30. Not 1-3. There are, clearly, 1/10th as many of the latter,
and they're almost all looking for much more skilled people than employees
#10-30. I figure this advice is for people who are newer in their careers.
People with 10+ years experience probably already know what the article says,
and they're likely the only ones who might get hired as employee #1-3.

~~~
USNetizen
Then why does he says it's not worth it? You don't get rich being a later
employee - I thought that was common knowledge. He's not getting rich, so he
thinks working at startups aren't worth it. That's what I get out of this. He
didn't take the same risks, so, yeah, he wouldn't get rich - that's my point.

------
SergeAx
Trying Kotlin just for kicks or introducing a half-baked but hyped queue
server is not a good idea for BigCo too, unless that BigCo is a developer of
tech in question. What is a better idea is to spin up a pet project,
particpate in hackathon or contribute to FOSS with this tech under the hood.

------
ryankicks
Justin Kan has a great post that is equally critical of startup compensation
and management. He also makes positive points in favor of startups: as
opportunities for non-FAANG candidates, for learning faster and (to some
people) as a gateway to starting your own company.

[https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-
startup/](https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/)

In line with Justin's post, learning has been a key motivating factor
throughout my career. In particular, working at startups has given me better
insight to the _business_ that drives the company. I've sat on calls with
sales people to understand customer asks vs. needs, and I've developed
strategy alongside BD teams for driving adoption of technical platforms. For
engineers who are interested in learning more about other functions/roles at a
company (product, business development, sales), startups are sometimes flatter
and can offer more exposure.

(That said, you can also get non-eng exposure/experience in larger companies.
You may have to take a non-traditional eng role, such as sales engineering,
partner engineering or developer advocacy. There are some perceived downsides
of that path -- sometimes around compensation or building your core
"engineering skill set" \-- but it's a viable option.)

------
mharroun
I feel the need to defend the startup life... so here goes:

I have spent 12 years in the startup space, with an origin in software
engineering... so far I have learned:

\- how to be an amazing engineer

\- how to be a above average IT/Ops/Devops Engineer

\- how to build/manage/run QA teams

\- how to be a successful project manager

\- how to me a successful product manager

\- how to manage and work with designers

\- how to deal with managing culture within a company

\- how to lead and grow product and engineering department from the ground up

\- you can get paid VERY well if your skilled

\- once your prove yourself you can effect the direction and culture of the
entire company (i pull 250+k in cash on top of equity)

My latest position is a CTO of a startup that went from seed to series A in
less then a year and triple their valuation, while turning down other CTO
offer's from billion dollar valuation startups, and other "head of
engineering" like roles from well knows startups... plus manager/director
level roles at some of the FAANG companies.

I would of never have learn what I have learned or have grown as quickly as I
did if I took a job at a standard "stay in your lane" corporation.

I also get to work on a social mission I truly believe in, and help define,
build, and grow the next generation of startup engineers.

------
sys_64738
Start ups are a lottery. A few hit it big while most don't. Even then, the
owners make the real gains while employees are typically rounding errors.

The best advice I have for startups is to try it early in your career to see
if it's for you. The number of older folks I've seen who jumped to a startup
and lived to regret it is almost 100%

------
kelnos
I joined a startup 7.5 years ago and, from a money perspective, it's vastly
exceeded expectations. But I wouldn't join another startup for the money; it's
just not reliable, and I recognize that I was very lucky to have accidentally
picked a winner.

Yes, you can do interesting work at a BigCo. Sometimes you even get to work on
greenfield projects, which is often even better than working on a greenfield
project at a startup, because usually the BigCo has a lot of infra and
resources that you can lean on that allow you to make fewer compromises.

But you're just never going to have an outsized influence on the trajectory or
success of the company as a whole. You're never going to have the authority or
ownership to make big decisions for more than your (relatively small) area of
the BigCo. If you want that, the best way to get that is to join a smaller
startup.

------
CalChris
If you are going to look a startup as an investment, then you have to evaluate
a startup as would a VC. If you are going to look at a startup as a place to
learn skills and develop a network, that's another matter. Rarely will these
two views coincide.

I still have friends from my first startup. I had lunch with a couple of them
last week. I took that job on slightly more than a whim. I learned a ton and
got to know some good people. I did some interesting work. In fact, at the
time, I didn't even know how to evaluate a startup as VC might. So add that to
the skills you might learn from a first startup.

As for the article, I disagree. I think there are a lot of crap startups,
lifestyle startups, that you should avoid. However, I personally still believe
but you have to be brutal in your selection, as a VC would be.

------
badatshipping
Work for a good startup. Having job hopped a half dozen times in the Bay Area
(to play the salary game) my experience has been that most startups are not
doing anything new, have no sense of innovation, care more about quickly
shitting out a crappy product than ever following up on the “iterate to
something good” part, and are for the most part run by either clueless
business types, or by programmers who think programming is just a tool, it’s
impossible to be 10x better than average, etc. Craftsmanship and excellence
are rare.

Go work for a company that’s actually going to be worth lots of money someday.
I like the quote about how burnout comes not from working too hard but from
losing too much over and over.

------
eaenki
Nowdays a seed round is $1.5M. That could buy a startup 3 engineers at $200k/y
in SF/LA/NY/Seattle for 16 months + $300k on distribution and misc. or 3
engineers at $150k/y in Switzerland and $600k in distribution and misc.

as a founder I don't subscribe to giving 30-40% less than the top firms pay
plus some basis points of equity worth something in the instance the company
becomes a $10B company. and it makes little sense.

Any great engineer can work at FAANG for $230k and still work on interesting
problems even tho its riddled with politics. Paying 30%-40% less means you're
not hiring the best, but mediocre people who have been rejected at FAANG or
drank the startup kool aid.

------
ineedasername
_a lot of things have to align for your startup experience, as an engineer, to
be worthwhile_

This definitely resonated. We talk here about the Swiss cheese model of
failure, but I think it's important to apply it to success as well.

------
kartan
> Get rich quick in case of success.

This is just betting. The probability of success is extremely low. Would be as
wise as betting part of your salary each week in the lottery.

~~~
strken
It's not quite the same. It might be closer to investing part of your salary
in the same penny stock each week.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I’m confident one could do better with short duration out of the money options
on SPX while working a comfy BigCo job than anyone here could with their ISO
options. And you’re not wasting years of your life grinding to do it.

No startups unless you’re the founder and you can iterate as a side project
while collecting a check from someone else.

~~~
jerf
"I’m confident one could do better with short duration out of the money
options on SPX while working a comfy BigCo job than anyone here could with
their options."

Yeah... if you bound your losses by giving up at a certain point, that's true.
And if you take your BigCo salary and subtract the startup salary, the result
is a pretty big stake to put into the short-term options gambling game.

I'm not endorsing this plan... I'm observing that if this is a more
financially sensible thing to do than work at a startup (in 2019), working at
a startup must be a terrible idea...(!)

------
abhinai
One point OP may have missed is learning opportunity. The opportunity to learn
in a big company, any big company is simply not the same as that in a startup.
You are always one of 50 people working on a feature that has already been
spec'd out in great detail by some one else. Early in your career investing in
learning and becoming a better engineer makes a lot of sense.

~~~
anyfoo
That is definitely not "always" the case, and in fact I highly doubt that "50
people working on the feature, spec'd by someone else entirely" is often true
at all.

Even as an intern at Google many many years ago, I was one of just a handful
of engineers working on a feature, and even though my internship lasted only a
few months, I not only had a considerable part in the feature's
implementation, I was also given plenty of opportunity to give my own input.

Now, many years later at a different large company, that has not changed. The
total amount of people working on a significant feature may be large, but
that's mostly when the feature is very cross-functional, and well, just
generally large. Most teams we interact with still have the size of a handful
of people, and they very much have the authority and responsibility over their
components.

Obviously there are a lot of factors in play, and I don't at all doubt that
jobs like you describe exist (though 50 people with no spec input still seems
like a vast exaggeration to me), but I highly resist the claim that working in
a big corp means that you're bound to be a small cog in engineering. Quite the
opposite: It can be a large lever giving you the opportunity to work on things
of amazing scale and effect, that a startup simply does not have the resources
for.

------
dhab
I agree that there is some learning experience, but I am not sure how valuable
that is. My experience working at a startup has been a learning experience on
how not to do things (tech) and how wrong management feels - but I actually
find that a universal experience within all companies - only in a startup it's
more amplified. Theoretically, it might be valuable to know how not to do
things, but that's only a small slice in an infinity of options. For the how
to actually do things, I think anyone involved in trying to figure that out
too - and feel like luck plays a big part.

My thought on this is, life-style business rather funded startup _might_ be
better in coming close to big company pay and independence - although myself,
I haven't tried that.

------
lkrubner
From 2002 to 2008 I was the technical co-founder of a startup, and I had
amazing fun. I worked 70 hours a week for 6 years, mostly because we were
having so much fun.

In 2015 I was the lead engineer at a small startup that had a self-destructive
and abusive top leadership. The technology was very exciting but the context
was not.

What I learned from the two experiences is that startups can be intense fun if
you are one of the owners, but if you are not an owner, startups can be
absolutely miserable. More details are available in the book that I wrote:

[https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/0998997617/)

------
candybar
Over the past few years, I've talked to numerous early-stage startups of
various kinds and all of them were making offers where the valuation would
have to be 10-20 times their seed round valuation - which is already inflated,
due to liquidity preference if you're merely taking RSU/options - for me to
break even. And rarely was there significant sweat equity, nor were the
founders' background substantially better than mine in any of those cases. If
the potential for those startups was so great as to make their offers for
early employees fair, they were essentially paying themselves millions a year,
assuming most of the founders' equity was also being vested. And looking back,
none of them found any kind of success where I would've come even close to
breaking even.

I'm at a point where doing my own startup is beginning to look attractive and
this is a concern - would my investors force me to make these types of offers
to early employees? What kind of employees would I be able to attract with
that? Is this just entirely about attracting anti-big company people,
delusional true believers or those who have no shot at getting a decent offer
elsewhere?

Btw, I've worked at startups, small companies and big companies and I don't
buy that the rate of learning is higher at a small startup. At a big tech
company, junior engineers already work on very large, complex problems and
have tons of great people to learn from. As an engineer, there's no shortage
of opportunities to learn. What can be potentially higher at a smaller company
is the rate of career growth - if you're at a company that is growing at a
crazy rate, you can become a somebody and have large managerial
responsibilities quicker because being an early employee and having those
relationships and foundational knowledge give you an advantage even over
outsiders who would otherwise be more qualified. But even this is probably
overstated at this point if you're not a founder, since tech culture is much
more fungible than they used to be and nowadays everyone feels much more
comfortable hiring experienced external managers over promoting internally
those that aren't quite ready.

------
ux4
I'd say working for an _employer_ is making less sense in general, especially
if you're a developer. It's becoming way easier to make money through other
means, and you can devote your time to pursuits that are actually meaningful
_to you._

------
sealthedeal
I think the idea of "getting rich" is your first mistake. That seems like a
terrible reason to do anything.

When I left Citi, I went to a startup so I could work at a small company and
get away from politics. Ya the paycheck was ok, and stock was fine, but that
company went under and I moved onto the next. The idea of "getting rich" was
never in my head.

Also, when you start a company, if your goal is to "get rich" than you have
already once again failed. You should have a completely separate sub set of
goals that are pushing you forward. I.e. lifestyle, financial independence,
changing an industry, doing what you love, etc.

------
blueyes
Two additional pieces of information would be necessary to know if the author
got a good deal:

1) How long was he there before he cashed out? (The amount of equity isn't
just about the grant, it's about whether you stay for the vesting...) 2) What
stage was the startup at when he joined? Yes, I know he was engineer no. 10
and employee no. 15. Many startups in the Bay Area are post-Series A by the
time they have 15 employees. A lot of the risk is already gone by then, so the
equity grants are less.

------
halfway
Aside from enthusiasm for the mission, or the chance to strike it rich, there
is another important consideration: self-actualization. That is, how much do
you need it?

In a way, self-actualization is like having your own personal mission. If
things like impact, influence, autonomy, innovation, speed, and big challenges
are important to you, than you'll probably be miserable at a well-established
company, regardless of the compensation, WLB, T-shirts, pep rallies, etc.

~~~
wry_discontent
This is what does it for me. Working for large companies kills me. Being
totally alienated and disconnected makes going to work feel like torture. But
working on my own projects is a delight. Working somewhere where you're one of
2 or 3 engineers is fun. It's exciting. You can do things.

------
tabtab
Working for a startup is a rare opportunity that can be exhilarating and
educational from a business and personal perspective. However, be aware you
are taking a gamble with your career and time. If you have a family to
support, taking that gamble can be a sticky decision. Discuss it with family
first.

Working overseas is kind of the same thing: it diversifies your outlook on
life and people. But, does carry more career and family-time risk.

If you are single and unattached, go for it!

------
kenneth
It seems like a lot of the OP's experience is clouded by bitterness over
having such a lousy payout in what looks like a good acquisition.

I think this mostly goes to illustrate how important it is to understand the
ownership structure of the company (common vs. preferred stock) and
understanding what your grant actually means. Most people just accept whatever
they're given without really understanding it. It can be a costly mistake.

------
CzarnyZiutek
dotcom era startups were fun... these days they ain't no different from
corporations - greedy, boring, technocratic, stressful, delusional, etc...

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systematical
Agreed. If my company ever exits and thats a big if. I doubt I get much. 100k
would be amazing, but I am likely sacrificing 20k per year to work here at
this point. The reason I stick around here is I can work full remote and have
been able to travel the world much more. But after four years, I'd trade that
in for a really nice pension or matching 401k in a heart beat.

------
pk455
>In my experience, it’s harder to have any visible growth in a startup because
well first, what do you grow to? There is no clear hierarchy, no promotion
paths. The “no titles” thing is great in theory but unless you have a
naturally dominating personality, it likely won't work for you.

That's because you're basing growth on titles instead of actual capability.

------
dawhizkid
Speaking from experience, it's not worth it even if you are on a mission.

We're in a world where the incumbents have more resources and the talent to
execute on big ideas. There's no reason why you need to choose between
mission-driven and 1/3 the salary anymore. You can probably achieve bigger
things at a big company these days.

------
prepend
Has it ever? I’ve worked for a bunch of unsuccessful startups and it never
“made sense” to work for them. I loved it and learned a lot and still was able
to meet Maslow’s hierarchy.

But it seems like an odd message since working for startups is pretty much
never the sensible thing to do.

------
alphagrep12345
What if we are actually interested in starting up something on our own in the
future? Does the startup experience help? Or is it still beneficial to work at
Big4 (or) Fast paced big firms like Uber, Slack, etc?

------
let_var
Little late to the party. I am going second the sentiment that is presented
here. Startup makes sense for founding members with double digit equity. For
everything else go join a BigCo, any BigMediumCo.

------
sealthedeal
Also, you got paid out $15,000 on a $200mm exit. Sounds like you didnt do a
good job negotiating your worth from the start. I would chalk that up to YOUR
failure, not the startups failure.

------
WhyKill
tl;dr working for assholes gets you treated poorly. BigCo will always treat
you more consistently, but they won't necessarily treat you better or worse
than a small or new company. This headline could have been one of those
questions where the answer is no.

~~~
simmers
Every(3) startup from my experience said that they're working on providing a
401k, but never delivered. It would be hard to find a BigCo that didn't
provide a 401k for engineers (or pension). On that fact alone, I'd say BigCo
has treated me better.

------
pdimitar
> _In my experience, the deadline-driven culture crushes any scope for
> creativity and experimentation._

This is very well compressed criticism of our modern breed of capitalism.

Creativity is very rarely given a true chance.

~~~
thefujin
The example which author provides does not strike me as a great illustration
for this point though.

> “Hey, I think we should experiment with Kotlin. It has lots of traction,
> Google officially supports it on Android and seems might help us write
> better code. Here is a PR showing how it’ll fit into our project.”

> “Umm, engineers will need to learn a new language. We have other priorities
> right now. Let’s consider it later.”

Without knowing too much of details, this looks like it can be a very valid
point against introducing new language or technology when you truly have
higher priorities and current choice of languages is good enough.

~~~
pdimitar
I agree.

The part I quoted just got me thinking about a much bigger picture and things
I have been witnessing my entire life.

I realize that my previous comment is broad and vague.

------
recursive
Ok, this is definitely a low-content comment, but I feel compelled.

"Increasingly less sense" is just "decreasing sense". Or maybe "decreasingly
more sense" if you're feeling fancy.

------
meuk
> I made ... 15000 dollars from that exit. Let me put that figure in
> perspective. That is the same amount a recent college grad would make at
> Facebook in 2 months.

Excuse, but it is really hard to empathize with the author for me after
reading this. Complaining about 15k that's being tossed into your lap is not
going to make you look good.

