Hacker News Reader

Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

> total comp you are looking for as a part of your own plan for your life.

I very recently learned a damned hard lesson in this. I believed in the product, I was given interesting problems to solve, there were good benefits, there was a good culture, I had stock options. The pay was shit, the options evaporated during a merger, and I want to buy a home.

Next round, I'm getting paid my worth and it's going to remote. "Believing in the product" is just a load of bullshit that C-suite spin to enrich themselves. They believe in nothing but their own bottom line, so why shouldn't you? Figure out what you are worth, what working conditions (overtime etc.) you can tolerate, and do good work for good money.

View on HN

The best advice I've seen is to value stock options at zero. Most startups fail. There can also be huge dilution and other risks. At the end of the day, it comes down, as you're saying, to whether you enjoy working there or not, and whether or not the base salary is enough to make it worthwhile.

This is true of all variable compensation components, regardless of being stock options, profit sharing or discretionary bonuses. You need to weight it by risk, which typically means zero real value and potentially a nice surprise.

> The best advice I've seen is to value stock options at zero.

I don't know. I understand that, but on the flip side I got lucky and currently my equity is worth money. In SV equity can make up a large portion of your compensation, it shouldn't be ignored.

Sure, generally equity from a public company is worth more money. But equity at startups can still be valuable. A better conservative approach to startup equity would be to negotiate first for a good base salary and then negotiate for equity. VC-funded startups can pay well.

Can you extract actual money from your equity or is it locked in until some future event happens? Private stock can be internally valued highly but the hard part is extracting the value. Before going public so many events can legally occur to reduce the value of your shares.

Don't count your chickens before they have hatched.

I will say that it's not BS to "believe in the product and have interesting problems to solve." I've been there myself.

However, you have to look out for #1 and "interesting problems to solve" won't pay the mortgage, so you better make sure that despite how great the job is, you are paid at least the market rate.

From the outside it looks like you're swinging too far the other way now. Pay is known to be a huge motivator to a specific point, then fade rapidly; that's where a product you believe in and interesting work picks up. It sounds like you didn't get enough money, or your needs changed, and obviously it's best if you get both types of rewards. I just quit my job knowing I was getting paid more than comparable coworkers because I was bored though, so try and be conscious and intentional in your own motivators.

I would say there's an equilibrium (that many people don't seem to reach).

With an actual objective look at it, I couldn't care less for any of the products of my past (or current) companies. However, I'm able to care about doing my best work for whatever the company is building but I also haven't had to contend with having to build stuff that I actively disbelieve in (like no advertising for example). I do like the fact that my companies have used reasonably recent technologies and at times also "too new technologies" - as in "the newest JS framework that nobody knows yet and that screws up all the time and you can't google for troubleshooting". So that keeps me interested enough. However, I am not someone that will work 80 hour weeks just because I am allowed to work on project X or with technology Y or because I "believe in the product". That's what many companies are trying to achieve. You believe in Facebook and their product, you get 'great perks' and are willingly staying at the office for way longer than you should for your own good.

The other end of the spectrum is unionized workers that will drop everything as soon as the clock hits 5p.m. And no I'm not talking Walmart cashier type work here. It can be understandable enough I suppose given how some companies treat workers but so far my companies have been treating me well enough.

Right, this was more along my line of thinking "good work for good money." I'm still delivering great ideas and code for my new/acquisition employer, but their money isn't good so I'm not sticking around.

My main contention with "believe in the product" is that it's a canned phrase that I've heard time and time again, to encourage employees to "pull through for our mission" through "sacrifice from your family that is appreciated." The only people who ever benefit from that are the C-suite; customers get broken software coded by broken developers and support has to break themselves fixing the mess. It's a meme, by the purest definition, and it seems to work: people (myself included) get riled up in cameraderi and put themselves and their family second.

If they truly appreciated our sacrifices, we'd have money in our bank accounts, not "belief in the product."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com