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Comment by svrma | Hacker News Reader

The comments here at HN are quite harsh imho and I feel bad for possibly ruining someone's day. Is there a way for me to delete the submission?

I posted it on HN as I liked the points in the article. The points in the post are reasonable provided there's fair equity for the employees (which I believe is disclosed prior to joining - I have no knowledge about dilution, preference etc). I also agree with the commenters on HN that it doesn't make much sense when there's no equity.

But there are too many comments making the same/similar point.

I personally find what Alex is doing is inspiring, running a 200 person company (ref: article) at 23 is remarkable. I also applaud his courage to publicly share what he thought was best advice.

I might get downvoted for this but I couldn't not say this.

View on HN

It should definitely be left up. It’s okay to have that world view at his age, and it is probably serving him well right now. I remember being 22-23 and wondering why everyone didn’t want to work 12 hours a day. Why were some leaving before 5, some came in late, some just in general did not give a shit. Here I was working hard not only to learn brand new systems, but build a disaster recovery plan, capacity planning, and production control scheme from scratch. And trying to finish my degree on the side. While I’m doing all of this, these shiftless people were making excuses about kids having to be places, or wives who wanted their husbands home, or people who always seemed to be sick. I didn’t understand.

I’m 47 now and I completely understand. Over time, I realized that there was life outside of work. Kids were actually fun to hang around, and my wife is my best friend. Not my job, and not my coworkers, the wife I chose to spend time with actually is fun to spend time with.

I get what Alexandr is saying, I really do. Except for the CEO bit, I had the same world view 25 years ago. And it’s a good world view for that age. However life will change, our experiences will broaden, and I feel he will probably have a completely different idea 20 years from now.

> Here I was working hard not only to learn brand new systems, but build a disaster recovery plan, capacity planning, and production control scheme from scratch. And trying to finish my degree on the side. While I’m doing all of this, these shiftless people were making excuses about kids having to be places, or wives who wanted their husbands home, or people who always seemed to be sick. I didn’t understand.

I think Brad Fitzpatrick described in Coders At Work or similar being frustrated about how people would clock out at the end of the day, when all his energy was invested in the company. And that it took him a while to realize that it comes with the territory of being a founder. You have a massive stake in the outcome, that employees aren't offered. The incentives are just wildly different, so it would be amazing if the behavior wasn't also wildly different. In fact, startup employees are often undercompensated, compared to their brethren at publicly traded firms.

> I get what Alexandr is saying, I really do. Except for the CEO bit, I had the same world view 25 years ago

Honestly I feel like if you're a founder of a company employing 200 people, you should have maybe just enough emotional intelligence to understand the motivations and incentives of most of those 200. Or be prepared to be replaced.

  > The points in the post are reasonable provided there's fair equity for the employees

This is maybe a fair argument for a very small number of founding engineers, who start with multiple percentage points. The idea that it extends to employee 200 is a fantasy because you are asking them to commit to a degree that you will never be able to commit in them.

Give a shit about your employees first, and you will find employees that give a shit about you. Asking them to centre their lives around your company when you will easily sacrifice them at needs is deeply flawed.

What you’re seeing is the response of The Hacker community. The most wise thing you can do is listen, especially if you disagree.

>>> The points in the post are reasonable provided there's fair equity for the employees (which I believe is disclosed prior to joining - I have no knowledge about dilution, preference etc).

That's why you don't understand. Long story short, employee's equity is worthless because it will always be reduced to nothing by dilution/preference and even if the company grows a hundred fold.

There are only two people who benefit from a (very) successful company, the founder and the investor.

The first point of the article, that the founder expects employees to care about the company as much as him, is delusional. Folks here understand that because they've been burned before.

There's no reason for employees to care so much about a day job because they will get nothing beyond their regular salary. If anything they are risking quite a bit by working for a smaller company.

Personally, when I feel that a HN thread is too negative. Let them be. It's fine. In most cases, I don't think they feel bad. They simply express their opinion and are fine with expressing a negative one. You can especially tell when people reply to those people. While discussion may get polarized, it's still interesting to read on an intellectual level.

I think voicing your opinion and having food for thought is more valued on HN than most other communities I see. Whether that food is negative or positive, is simply another flavor.

While I voiced my disagreements with this article, I value the discussion (and to some extent the article). Whether I view an article as good or bad, in most cases I value the discussion much more than the article :P

I'm happy you submitted it :)

I don't feel "running a 200 person company (ref: article) at 23" is remarkable if you look at who runs a 328.2 million person country now.

Running a company is a different skillset from getting to the position.

Leave it up. He deserves the opportunity to see what people here think.

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