Every time an engineer joins Facebook, a startup dies

16 points·merijn481··6 comments

Next to all the talent acquisitions (Sofa etc), many a great engineer is hired away from a sometimes promising startup by Facebook (Lightbox etc). What are examples where this happened? Your thoughts please!

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Why do we assume that being hired at a startup is inherently better than being hired at Facebook, or any technology company for that matter? People can create just as much value at a large company than at a small one, though there are fewer outliers.

People may create more value at a large company but most of the compensation will go to the founders and investors.

Most of the compensation goes to the founders and investers in startups as well.

But this isn't really a problem then. If the issue with people being hired away from startups is that startups create more value for society, then that's an externality, and we should care. But if it's a question of potentially higher compensation, then we can expect people to act selfishly, and so it's not really a problem.

>Every time an engineer joins Facebook, a startup dies

eh, I'm not convinced. Sure some will, others go on to have jobs with decent family-supporting salaries, great benefits, and predictable hours. I know a couple of engineers like this who make > $100K in the midwest and they're home for dinner at night by 5:30 every night. It just isn't a dichotomy of startup or poverty and shittiness without contribution to society.

I'm sure there are exceptions in the talent acquisitions but most startups just aren't worth keeping and are going to die. Talent acquisition is a way for the story to end without you becoming homeless.

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