Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

But he's very successful. Who's viewpoint are we supposed to champion here - the employee or the employer? Should we not be happy when an employer is successful and can get a lot from his employees with minimal expense? Does the process of building a startup not put us squarely in the side of the employer?

View on HN

Max...he has made a bunch of money. I wouldn't say he is 'very successful'.

Show me the engineers fighting to go work for him.

I give Mahalo 3 - 5 years before shutting their doors.

Hopefully that will humble him a bit.

You are characterizing the relationship between employers and employees as zero-sum. Does that need to be the case? Should that be the case?

"Does the process of building a startup not put us squarely in the side of the employer?"

I guess that depends on your motivation. Being your own boss is one reason to launch a startup.

But, being a boss doesn't give you the right to impose your value system on your employees.

Depends on your definition of successful. I don't consider him particularly successful.

This is a general question and not specifically to you: how successful is he? I have him mentally associated with netscape.com and a bad digg clone, and some time on the VC side of the table - so for people like me who don't know the background there, what did he do entrepreneurially and how well did he do for himself and his investors?

Actually, in startups everyone is aligned in their interest due to stock options. Anyone who looks at it as employer/employee just doesn't get the startup dynamic. As an investor in 20 startups I'm constantly pushing to give more stock options to employees, and as the founder of three companies with over 100 f/t employees and 250 part-time folks, I'm constantly pushing to increase stock compensation over cash comp. Why

Why what? Don't leave with that cliffhanger!?

its not necessarily true that increasing stock-options to employees align their collective interest. for a startup; it only really works if everyone has close to equal shares

Its sorta like paying disney employees with disney-bux for their bonuses.

in my mind, success is not primarily measured in money. happiness is much more important. it's a broader representation of life's needs, including money. also, success is not a zero-sum game. on the contrary, a lot of the more successful startups treat their employees better than average.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com