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> You pretty much don't have a shot at getting rich

I agree with most of your points except this one as it's very situational. Maybe not as an intern, but having real albeit small equity in one of these tiny things can be negotiated, and they can get sold. Unlikely, sure, but the possibility is there.

But in general it's about what you're optimizing for. You're points are right for optimizing for intra-company career advancement, resume material, or party cred. But if you have other pursuits, especially with side projects, kids, or just general comfort it can be a good choice.

My point is that companies that are slow-growing are rarely sold, and when they are, they usually aren't sold for much. The eye-popping valuations for companies like Whatsapp, Instagram, and YouTube were all based on growth, and on strategic fit with the acquirer. When an acquirer wants you for these reasons, there are large time pressures and asymmetries of information you can leverage to extract a lot more money than the financials would dictate. (Whatsapp, for example, sold for something like 1000x revenues.)

Small slow-growing companies almost always sell based on financials, and typically for lower multiples than an equivalent large public company would (because their revenue is more concentrated in a few customers and so they're more exposed to revenue risk). I've heard 2.5x revenues or 15x profits as numbers commonly batted around; above this and there's virtually no reason to buy the company vs. invest in public stocks or apartment buildings. On a typical 10-person company that makes a profit of about $300K on revenues of about $2M, this comes out to a sale price of roughly $5M by both valuation measures. Own 1% equity (this is generous, and would usually indicate employee #1 or 2) of a $5M acquisition and you get $50K, which is probably a lot less than the salary you forego over a few years by not joining a big company.

Most of the employees at those places didn't get rich either.

On the flip side, I think there are a higher number of small companies willing to pay a bit above market + bonuses for real talent vs. large established companies that are constrained by HR processes. If you're good at selling yourself, you may be able to make more than you would at a big company.

I literally just started a job that corresponds exactly to this. "We need really good principal engineers and we'll fight to get them."

(We're hiring, btw. Email's in my profile.)

At this point, both of the tech companies I've been at both match the description and were bought private from public. Ancedata for sure, but it can happen. You make money as an employee when this happens, just not a stupid amount of money. A nice bonus amount of money. Depends entirely on how much stock you have accruing.

I think there might be a lesson in that people who made their money as employees in startups that get sold generally don't repeat the process. They more often become investors.

That's diversification, all the upside and none of the trouble of actually doing any work.

> cred at parties

maybe i'm naive, but if party cred were a serious priority, i would probably have chosen a different career altogether.

When I used to socialize a bit more around SF, there definitely was social cache to being part of a unicorn. Declare that you worked at [Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, Square] and you'd have people wow or talk about how smart you were. There is a huge social capital element here.

ah okay, I always sort of imagined it would be like that in SF. I live in a metro area that is not as tech-oriented. when I tell people I'm a software engineer at parties, the only thing they find impressive is that I actually have a full-time job.

I get a lot of "oh yep, you look the type". Ouch.

I get a lot of "you're very social for a computer person".

I guess it's a compliment, but it feels a little backhanded.

I got a complement that i don't sound montonouus like a programmer.

Other time, someone said but i don't imagine you as a tech bro.

not a compliment.

I dunno, I know a lot of 'compliments' are nothing of the sort, but I can see this one being well-intended. It's not actually saying anything bad about the target, just awkwardly pointing out that they don't really fit a negative stereotype. And because 'socialness' isn't a quality where more is always better, it doesn't have quite the same damning-with-faint-praise vibe as it would if it were about, say, intelligence or looks.

Pointing out that someone does not really fit a negative stereotype will ussally not be perceived as a positive.

I said usually, because it is possible to convey different meanings by tone of voice and other non-verbal means.

But, based on the words alone, it will not be interpreted positively.

> Pointing out that someone does not really fit a negative stereotype will ussally not be perceived as a positive.

Agreed, I just think this is relatively likely to be one of the exceptions, or at least to be genuinely well-intended. Partly because it's not so likely to seem like damning with faint praise, and partly because the stereotype itself is less deeply offensive than e.g. racism.

(Especially if the trait in question is something like sociability, rather than social skills. If someone says they find me less introverted than they expected based on my profession, it's hard to take much offense at that. I think calling someone 'very social' is a bit ambiguous, but I lean toward interpreting it this way.)

It could be worse....

I get both the “I’m not like most computer people” and

“You don’t sound Black”. That’s usually from old White southern people. At that point I usually just do the southern retort “Bless ya heart”

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bless%20your...

I live in a public service town that's far more educated than the average city, a huge IT presence but it's mostly boring enterprise IT. Hard for "systems programmer" to stand up next to "diplomat" or "international anti-people-trafficking lawyer" in terms of party cred.

DC?

CBR.

When I used to live in a "normal" part of the country, telling people I'm a Software Engineer would usually lead to one of two things: 1. They'd pivot to asking me where I worked (which I didn't feel comfortable sharing with a random stranger, since I worked for a small enough place that it felt a little too specific) 2. They'd lump me in with the annoying IT guy who fixed their stupid Windows issues at work.

Now that I do live in the SV area, I guess I carry some of this baggage with me. I work for the sort of place that would get me local "street cred," but still feel uncomfortable sharing it. Then again, I'm also raising a family and never go to parties anymore, so the opportunity doesn't actually manifest.

I am genuinely curious about the tech start-ups that give you "street-cred" in SF. At most of the places I hang out at they dislike techies and blame on them the rising rent prices, monoculture, in general the cultural demise of the city.

Actually at most parties or bars I have to "hide" that I work in tech, or come to terms with "that guy who works in tech... but hey he's ok, unlike the rest of the lot".

So, I 'm honestly wondering where you guys get high fives for being part of a unicorn around here! (referring mostly to the parent posters)

Not in SF/SV but maybe in parties with a lot of unicorn employees?

My time in the party scene was basically '09-11, which was before Techies became The Evil Empire. Back then folks were like "Oh, you work for Google, that's awesome, I love your products." Or even more specifically, "Woah, you worked on [Google doodles|the front page of Google|GFiber], I remember seeing that, tell me more about it." It was starting to change around 2012, but right around then I got a girlfriend, got married, and had a kid, and so I basically only have time to hang out with either my wife's friends (for whom I'm just "X's husband") or the friends I made at Google. I'm vaguely aware that much of SF hates techies (and ironically, a few of my wife's Peace Corps friends are in that bucket, which makes for awkward attempts to mix friends groups), but I don't hang out with those people, nor have I worked for a big tech company for going on 4 years now, so it doesn't affect me much. South Bay - where I go to random meetups - is still very tech friendly because that's basically all people do here.

Interestingly, when I go back home to New England, I get a much warmer reception introducing myself as an ex-Googler than in SF. I still have schoolkids at my high school ask me about what it was like to work on Google Doodles, and I ran into a nice ex-hockey-player on a ferry in Connecticut that asked what I did ("software", without elaboration) and then was like "Oh, that sounds exciting, you must make bank" ("I do okay...").

Anyways, I grew up as a nerd in a small town in the 80s, and whatever hate techies get in SF now is nothing compared to that. The U.S. (and probably the world) has fragmented into a lot of micro-tribes recently that all seem to hate each other, but at least they're tribes where it's not terribly difficult to find others who share your values and appreciate what you do, while in the 80s it was monolithic American culture vs. any individuals unfortunate enough to be different. Techies had a brief moment on top from 1995-2000 and again from 2005-2011 where they were getting rich and the rest of the world was enjoying the products they built, but now that most people take for granted the Internet & mobile world they've built, it's just another corporate industry.

The Silicon Valley region is one of the few places where being a Software Engineer is considered a normal and mainstream career.

I once worked at a company exactly like this, and I agree entirely. It was awful, and I'm glad I quit. In fact, it was the only company I've ever quit (of the four companies I've worked at, I got laid off from two others, and I'm still at the fourth).

It's not worth it. The company was resource-starved, management had no experience managing people whatsoever and ranged from "clueless" to "abusive", and the owner/CEO was a notorious cheapskate who underpaid us (when I left, I found out I was making 3/4 the salary I should have been), refused to provide any kind of health insurance, and was so paranoid about losing control of the company that he only sought funding from angel investors and refused to either seek VC or give employees equity. When I worked there, we were in constant demo mode. We were always prepping for a big demo for one small-time investor or another. I think we spent more time on demos for investors than we spent supporting customers. Hell, one time we came within a hair of being on Shark Tank; it ended up falling through because of bureaucratic reasons, but after it fell through I was told that the owner/CEO had no intention of ever accepting money from any of the VCs on the show and just wanted to be on the show for the media attention.

Oh yeah, and when our landlord began discriminating against me for being transgender, the company just rolled over and refused to provide support. Why? Because they'd gotten a massive discount on rent because they were the very first tenants in a building that had just reopened after years of being closed, and they were afraid to do anything that might kill the deal because they wouldn't have been able to afford rent anywhere else downtown (and they insisted on being downtown because the owner/CEO's son, the CTO, lived there and wanted to be able to walk to work). Never mind that they would've had a space three times larger for the same money if they'd just set up shop in a suburban office park like every other tech startup in Dallas. I had to get the city involved myself, and the owner/CEO almost sabotaged my case during one informal mediation session (I ended up winning, by the way).

When I quit at the end of 2014, we were only marginally larger than when I started in early 2012. That's two and three quarter years of my life I'll never get back. My only consolation is that I'm still friends with a few of my coworkers from that period of my life.

> you're a couple of customer cancellations away from layoffs at any time

These are WAY more rare than you think.

For the record, I've worked 50+ of these types of businesses and if the company chugs along for 10 years, they're pretty safe bets.

> I wouldn't recommend making a career out of it, though.

Hopefully this doesn't come as too snarky, but I wouldn't recommend taking advice from someone who has had one anecdotal experience with something.

I've been at one of these for two years out of my Masters. My time here is definitely by its sell-by date.