
Tell HN: We're bringing back the “Work at a Startup” event on Saturday July 28 - snowmaker
Back in 2010 and in 2012, YC organized a &quot;Work at a Startup&quot; event,
for founders of YC companies and prospective hires to meet each other
in person. It got great feedback and we wanted to keep doing it, but
we got stretched too thin for a while. This year, a bunch of us
revived the project. Our goal is to fundamentally improve the
experience both of joining a YC startup and of being an early employee
in general. You may have seen some of the recent discussions about
this, including a big discussion last week about concrete ways to
improve things for early startup employees (see links below). As part
of this, we&#x27;ve decided to bring back an expanded version of the
original &quot;Work at a Startup&quot; event. That&#x27;s what we&#x27;re announcing today.<p>On Saturday July 28, we&#x27;ll host our third Work at a Startup Expo:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo</a>. We&#x27;ll begin with a talk answering the
most common questions about working at a startup. Then we&#x27;ll have a
series of rapid-fire presentations by 35 YC companies currently hiring
engineers. After the event, we&#x27;ll have an open house where you can
talk one-on-one with the founders of any company that interested you.<p>New this time: we&#x27;ll have a hardware demo area where companies
building physical products can show them off. YC has more hardware
companies than ever now, building everything from satellites to
industrial robots.<p>For those not in the Bay Area, we will live stream all the videos, and
if people are interested we can have an ongoing HN thread to discuss
them as well.<p>If you&#x27;re interested in attending, please apply at
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo</a>. Any questions or ideas, please comment below!<p>Links to previous discussions:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17286939" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17286939</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15916350" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15916350</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=3676578" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=3676578</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1346103" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1346103</a><p>p.s. That recent thread about the pros and cons of working at a startup
was one of the best discussions I&#x27;ve ever seen on Hacker News. I went
through it carefully, tried to make sure that every comment got
attention, and compiled a list of the main points, which got a thorough
discussion at the last YC partner meeting. We&#x27;re going to develop some
substantive programs in response. It will take some time to responsibly make
changes that affect the whole ecosystem, but we&#x27;re going to work hard
on it; it&#x27;s an opportunity to make things better for everyone. Please
stay tuned!
======
mlthoughts2018
I would be so highly interested to know the internal YC discussion and
analysis about two main points mentioned in that previous thread you
discussed, specifically:

\- moving away from open-plan offices to something that allows most works
hours on most days to have a high degree of quiet & privacy

\- addressing the many points about how start-up compensation, even when
discounting equity risks for unsuccessful outcomes or low exits, is just not
competitive, even though offsetting factors like working on interesting
projects, flexible work/life policies, etc., are generally no worse in
traditional corps than start-ups, and quite often much better.

Any concrete feedback about the analysis that came from these points would be
fantastic.

I think it’s very exciting to hear that YC is directly discussing these
things!

~~~
snowmaker
Yes, that is what we're working on.

While it doesn't address the larger point about compensation (we're working on
that), one thought about compensation specific to this event, is that the
companies coming to the Expo are at a wide range of funding levels and sizes.
Some of them would probably not even be considered "startups" by most people,
like Instacart and Doordash, which are both hundreds of people. Many of them
do already offer highly competitive compensation; so I would not let this be a
deal-breaker for considering coming to the event.

------
jmspring
I recall the event in 2012. It was interesting. Justin.tv basically was really
looking for someone to help with the onerous task of operations -- but the
presenter was upfront about such. I recall another startup, can't recall the
name, where phrases like "we are a family", "we stay late to meet with our
customers" etc were thrown around. Multiple people around me were shaking
their head.

Both were honest and up front, but trying to play up the fact that "we live to
work" played about as well as a piano falling off a crane onto Wiley Coyote.

~~~
mmt
> Both were honest and up front, but trying to play up the fact that "we live
> to work" played about as well as a piano falling off a crane onto Wiley
> Coyote.

I'd say the honesty is merely the minimum required level of courtesy and
respect. The reaction is understandable, especially considering that, for
example, by then JTV was 5 years old. If ops is truly still _onerous_ by that
point, then candidates would be right to suspect there's something awry with
management.

I do hope that this is something that's being addressed by YC, that some
founders have the expectation of their early (and sometimes not so early)
employees of having the same loyalty or buy-in as they do. If your entire
employee option pool is 10%, it's not reasonable to ask even employee #1 for
that.

------
msoad
I'm working for one of few >10b unicorns. $250k salary. $50k bonus. $1.3m
stock with annual refreshers. I only have 7 years of experience and am a
regular client developer.

I really want to be a part of a start up and learn things to get ready start
to my own company at some point but all offers I got from startups can only
make sense if they become Facebook.

~~~
softwarefounder
Golden handcuffed!

------
whb07
I appreciate the work that you place into this. But again, what exactly are
the startups you with* looking for? If they are hurting for talent wouldn't
they take more risk in acquiring the talent just like they are an unknown
company with a 90% failure rate?

You must have a rough idea of what the startups are talking about from their
point of view. Just like you are trying to bring clarity into the startups
maybe you could provide clarity into the recruiting/hiring.

*edit

~~~
snowmaker
There's a whole range. Companies are hiring for new grad software engineers up
to senior engineers and CTOs. There are also many roles, from full-stack web
to back-end and data science and many tech stacks.

I'm particularly excited by how many companies are hiring for deep-tech roles
like machine learning, computer vision, and embedded programming for hardware.

~~~
whb07
Thanks for the quick response. I guess I’ll try to be more specific. What are
they specifically looking for and how are they measuring that?

Granted, everyone wants the “smart, motivated” + some other synonym for a
great person. But are they looking only at c.s grads from surrounding Bay Area
schools/Ex-Google and the like?

~~~
snowmaker
Something I've learned from working with a lot of YC companies, is that while
they certainly all want people who are "smart and motivated", they measure and
define it quite differently.

It sounds like your concern is whether companies are only looking for c.s.
grads from brand name schools and companies, and I can specifically vouch for
that not being the case. Depending on the company, they're likely to value
open source contributions, independent projects you've built that are
interesting, startups you've started or worked at, impressive technical work
you've done at any company, and how candidates do on their own technical
interviews (which vary greatly in substance), among many other factors.

------
dentemple
It'd be nice to see a NYC version, too.

~~~
snowmaker
Yes, a number of the NYC-based founders asked for that too.

------
nanna
Equivalent in London:
[https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/](https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/)

Looks like they've dropped their emphasis on working at a startup, which was
SMR's mission last time I checked. But I imagine there'll be some there?

------
localcdn
In general, what type/stage of startups would fresh grads (with internship
experience) fit in best?

~~~
sidlls
Based on the typical technical skills needed: almost nowhere.

Based on the typical compensation and culture: you describe the kind of
employee they target.

And that is in a nutshell exactly what all the comments in the previous thread
distill down to.

------
tempdeadbeef
I’m working at my first startup. I really hope it’s my last one. Best wishes
to those who want to live the dream!

