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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

I think startups will soon be at a crossroads once the flaws in the equity compensation system become more widely exposed. People will be dis-incentivized from working at startups.

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We knew all this in 2000 in the dotcom crash. But along comes a new generation of starry-eyed kids (who are "just smarter" and don't care about experience) and they are just more meat for the grinder.

They've been saying that forever, just like they've been saying "Silicon Valley will suffer a brain drain because people will move away due to the high cost of living." In theory it makes sense, but it never happens in earnest.

Working in a startup is much, much more fun that working at a big corporation. I took a paycut several times to go work at startups just because working at a big company where you work on a single API of one of their products gets boring really fast, regardless of the pay.

But at a big company you can also spend 2/3 of your time day-dreaming or browsing the Internet. At a startup you need to be more engaged.

100% agree with "2/3 of your time day-dreaming or browsing the Internet"... however one can only take this for so long before going crazy!

Do your own thing on the side. Much better than a few stock options. But make sure to have your project excluded in your IP and non-compete contracts with your employer.

I get the draw of working at startups, but I didn't think it was worth it. The big companies here are offering 2-3x startup salaries (with real room for growth). Is the market here out of whack or is that really a trade people are making?

I guess the kicker here is "it depends on the startup" and "it depends on the big company".

Equity can still be an incentive to work at a start-up - it's just not an incentive to take a pay-cut.

Start-ups should lose its label as a cash cow - but it can still be:

- a well-paying job - high impact - more freedom - good career capital - a lottery ticket

I think the cool kids are running startups where all the data is on the table - i.e. no secrets, but rather all staff have access to all data about the company. This seems to be a trend with European startups, anyway ..

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