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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been on both sides of that negotiating table. It’s ok to say the role won’t match a bigco compensation package, and if that’s you priority you should probably take the bigco offer. An early stage startup is a fundamentally different experience, with pluses and minuses relative to big co’s. If the +’s outweigh the minuses, take the job.

No whining need be involved, on either side :)

(Fwiw, I do think it is important for early stage startups to be even handed and fair on pay, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily have to go toe to toe with the biggest offers)

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The problem is that the expected value of the equity itself is negative in the current environment.

If the tradeoff were to give up some guaranteed money for a low shot at a big payoff, then that would be a reasonable tradeoff! But right now it's prohibitively expensive to exercise.

I'm surprised that YC doesn't lobby to fix the tax code so startup's can attract experienced people, but maybe YC is just about supporting founders, and there still enough employees willing to take a bad deal and work at an early stage startup.

I should have been clearer. I’m saying it is ok that the expected comp is lower. If the other things add up for you, it’s not necessarily a bad deal. (But it can be, you have to evaluate with clear eyes)

Another way of thinking about this: developers aren’t really fungible , neither are roles.

For clarity, although this is probably buried by now: I definitely think that if there is real upside at some point it should be shared with early employees, not just key senior hires later - and I push for this wherever I am. I just don't believe you can make this stick in a expectation-value sense. Certainly not rigorously.

> that doesn’t mean you necessarily have to go toe to toe with the biggest offers

Most startups insist that their world changing idea can be built only by engineers from MIT or Stanford. That is where the whining on both sides come from.

My philosophy is if you think they're wrong and you don't need those people, then they have poor judgement, and you're better off not working with them in that case, and in fact could beat them by pursuing similar goals while not using that strategy.

And if they're right, well then what's there to be upset about?

I am not upset. I, as you said, avoid them.

I was offering it as an explanation.

I believe that there are startups that need special engineering skills. The 40-for-founders-40-for-VCs-20-for-employees math don't incentivize those, though. Which is a shame.

At the turn of the century, a new crop of VCs with founder-friendly terms came about. The industry benefited from it. Many startups that would not have otherwise been founded, were successful.

I am hoping that the market will eventually bring about VCs and founders with employee-friendly terms.

Me commenting here is towards that goal. You have a right to disagree with me, but why argue that I should not be making this point?

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