Why I only work with startups
swizec.com
swizec.com
There are dozens of other things you could say that would have the same rhetorical effect without trivializing a severe problem, and it's beyond impolite not to. All you have to do is write "Nonstartups are just horrible to work with, like standing in front of an automatic baseball pitching machine."
HN has determined that this is the most insightful thing you need to know about the article: That the guy used the word rape.
I believe that discussion about appropriate language and communication styles is very applicable to HN. We're trying to be a better, more insightful discussion board with higher quality than other sites. Better writing is one way to do that, so it seem like a perfect discussion point.
Discussion about appropriate language and communication styles is indeed applicable to HN. And when an article about that gets up-voted we're all free to discuss our feelings on the topic.
Since the top comment was insightful and correct, and may be even more valuable than the original article, it's been upvoted.
Regardless, too many, and the reference to rape in the original article was unnecessary. But, repeating nice round inaccurate statistics to exaggerate a problem is also dangerous.
Do you mean someone with $x in funding and a revenue stream looking to grow?
Do you mean someone with an idea who works on it at night?
Do you mean "facebook" (which some people will continue to consider a 'startup' until they IPO)?
The only problems I faced with doing govt work so far is the paperwork. It seems convoluted, but really isn't generally that much more than a contract any mid-size company might require.
Many smaller companies (and what we'd now call 'startups') I've worked with give me the "gosh, we just spent $42k on this other company and they weren't any good and now we don't have any budget, but if you do this work for us we'll pay you back later with some more work or great referrals!". That's the situation I used to run in to more often than not. That tended not to happen with larger companies. Well, the wasting of money might have happened, but they'd find money in some budget to engage me if they wanted me.
Working at someone else's startup is a recipe for getting exploited - overworked and underpaid. And the worst thing about it is that it's all couched in an atmosphere of guilt trips and taking-it-for-the-team.
Perhaps there are exceptions. I just haven't seen any. I'd rather work for The Man in my day job in a cold corporate environment where everything is explicit from the get-go, get well paid for it and crank out code for my own startup in my free time.
You can get a lot of the great benefits of startup work (cool people, small teams, fast pace) and avoid a lot of the pitfalls (low salary, worthless equity, guilt trips).
Are they on the same pay scale or do they pay less since it's a "startup" a money can be tight
I could probably get better rates at bigger companies, but being a small guy in a big pond of what, to them, looks like interchangable cogs I don't have a lot of bargaining power.
How do you convince someone who doesn't know about this stuff, that it's better to pay you fairly than pay peanuts to the neighboor kid? (for what they think is equal work done at equal quality since they don't care)
http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/
I recall many people accussed him of hypocrisy, since, in the mid 90s, he was a big advocate of graphically simple web pages, pages that could easily go over a modem and a phone line, yet he bloated his pages with images that had nothing to do with the content of the page.
I always liked Greenspun's idiosyncratic photos. It was fun to try and spot thematic links between the photos and the text. Usually they were so subtle that you doubted their very existence, but sometimes they were obvious and funny.
Overall, I agree with the author as well. I have said no to several jobs because I did not feel that I share the client's vision. Especially, when you choose to be in an underserved segment, you can name your price and your terms.
I work in a fairly large company (hundreds of thousands) and there is none of this paperwork culture at all. The fast-paced environment is exactly what I work in, time to market is everything and we sit opposite our users. The work is fascinating, I regularly chat with the global head of my dept (my boss' boss' boss) about details of something I'm working on.
There's lots of incentive to do well, and to have your own side projects, which can turn into big projects with budgets and people behind them.
Not saying the article is wrong, but there are many different styles of working across business sizes, and I'm not so sure that start ups are predisposed to not have any of the issues mentioned.
I would add to this:
8. Open-ended work
You can improvise any way you want and pull from any toolbox you want. You can take the work in unexpected directions on a whim.
9. Platform for meeting interesting people
If you put out something of genuine value, you can use it as a kind of leverage to get in touch with interesting people. It also becomes a form of social honeypot (ie I get e-mails from interesting people from time to time because of the magazine I run).
10. Levels you up like crazy
You have to learn a bunch of stuff. My ability to execute a project and "git r done" comes directly from Interesting Times Magazine.
11. Gives you a sense of genuine achievement
Self-explanatory.
12. Allows you to scratch the itch you get from reading business/selfhelp materials
When I was only reading about stuff I was always going like "arrgghgh I need to actually be doing this". Scratching that itch feels GOOD.
If you are depending on one check from one client to come in so that you can make rent this month, I think you should be looking at your own financial practices, not anyone else's.
Yes, I've had that happen.
Freelancing is a terrible way to make money. It's like you traded in one boss for X where X is the number of clients you have.
Sometimes it just makes more sense to put your own ideas on pause for a bit and help others with theirs.