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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

> unpaid startup jobs

Unpaid job is an oxymoron. If they can't or won't pay you, it's either volunteer work, or a hobby. Why do charity work for a business that thinks it's going to be big; there's plenty of funding out there, let them find it and then they can pay you, and you can do work for them.

If you want to do an hour or a day or maybe even a week of work for free, ok. Maybe that's fun and interesting and you get something out of that, but after that if you're not getting anything, why would you keep doing it?

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Because you need experience. At least in my country, unpaid internships are the norm; and you won't be taught anything, or held to a lower standard. You just do the job that you'd be normally paid for, just for free.

And even then, I had a few friends that had to go for another few months of unpaid job (not internship) later on. Because nobody would hire them without experience, and some companies don't consider internship to be one.

It's easy to be naive as a dev in your mid 20s. It's easy to sell a vision of billionaire startup success to a naive person. Often we sell it to ourselves.

Feels like there should be the equivalent of Matt Levine's "Certificate of Dumb Investment" for this scenario. ~90% of startups fail. Your equity is statistically likely to be worth $0. You will likely grind for years with nothing to show for it except the experience, your network, and whatever cash comp you collected. Proceed accordingly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24285305

(edit: totally fine to still jump into a startup role if you're not optimizing for quality of life and economics; I did because I enjoyed the work and the team)

Yeah, the only real regret is I could have got this experience more quickly with less pain and time not spent with my wife

Edit: just realised that made it sound like she died. She’s fine! We just had baby #2! But we could have spent lockdown making bread and playing RuneScape instead of me grinding

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