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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Doing the opposite now. Spent the last year in a very early stage startup. Finally got fed up with the low pay ("but we're giving you equity...") and the lack of direction. It seemed like every other week we had a new direction. And the latest new direction was so bizarre that I'm tempted to make a mockumentary about the whole thing.

Finally had enough of the startup scene; I'm going to go to work for a very large semiconductor company getting paid 2.5x what I was making at the startup. Feels like I'm getting a real adult job again.

tl;dr: I learned that not every statup idea is worthwhile.

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It can feel that way for some startups. I was at one early startup and the direction was constantly changing, with feature and code thrown out weekly, or daily at some point.

The problem was the founder wasn't being honest with himself or us. He should have said, we didn't know what we were doing and we were just exploring, throwing anything on the wall to see what stuck, rather saying we were on a sure path and we were building software for real. We were really building demoware or PPT, not real software.

The cost and effort in building demoware is vastly different from building real software. It became incredibly frustrating to have misaligned goals.

> And the latest new direction was so bizarre that I'm tempted to make a mockumentary about the whole thing.

Care to share some dirty details?

I shouldn't. It's possible that some of the folks back there read HN and the idea would be immediately identifiable. Heck, maybe they'd even sue me for violating the NDA or something (but it's not like the bizarre idea is even monetizable).

But in a couple of years... that mockumentary idea would be comedy gold.

You know, there's more than one company doing social mobile photo sharing, right?

Sounds like a company that did customer development after product development.

"but it's not like the bizarre idea is even monetizable"

...and in fact it's what they were trying to monetize that was really funny.

You sound just like someone from 2001. No matter how much we try to rationalize and/or avoid it, the industry keeps going through the same cycles.

Startups aren't for everyone and not all startups are created equal. It would be unfair to assume all startups are misdirected and low paying. There are plenty of positions that pay market rate salaries and give equity. While you can definitely make a greater base salary at a semiconductor company or "adult" job. You miss out of the potential upside of startup equity, the excitement of a growing startup, wearing many different hats and trying to build something disruptive.

> Startups aren't for everyone and not all startups are created equal. It would be unfair to assume all startups are misdirected and low paying.

True. Didn't mean to imply that. This particular one was misdirected and low-paying.

> You miss out of the potential upside of startup equity

How many startups actually make it to the point where the equity is worth something? I'm guessing it's under 5% of them (even in good times). So at some point you need to make the calculation as to whether the equity that you're trading pay for is going to be worth anything. In my case I determined that it would never be worth anything.

Over here at TripLingo, we collaborate on the direction of the company. Our fearless leader(tm) however, has set the vision from the beginning, and continues to impress the vision with some small tweaks as we've moved forward. But we're a small team still - only 6 core folks - so YMMV if you're in a larger startup.

One yearns to work in/start a startup, yet the other side of mind is too accustomed to the stable, perhaps a bit predictable and boring, life that comes with a job in a stable company. Its a hard choice!

curious that this is the top rated comment. Seems a lot of people have had this experience. It's a shame that you joined a startup with no direction. Give the scene another try. There are entrepreneurs who know what they're doing.

So what you're saying is that pivoting is different than thrashing about?

same here - gave six years of my life to a startup, finally threw in the towel, joined a large company and (three weeks into my new job) have never been happier at work.

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