Hacker News Reader

Comment by louischatriot | Hacker News Reader

Some good points, BUT. The first employees do not take nearly as much as risk as founders. Yeah you might lose your job if the company fails, but at least you were hired and got a salary from day one, you didn't have to work for a year or more on no salary and not knowing whether you would be able to raise money to even hire that first employee.

Seriously, start a company before stating stuff like this.

View on HN

Most employees are likely taking a lot more risk than founders. In the worst case, a founder has to look for another job (same as the employee), but with experience at being an executive at a company. Lots of founders won't have to look for another job even if their company fails in the worst way.

An employee, on the other hand, puts 100% of their eggs in your basket. If the company fails then they have no income at all, through no fault of their own. What goes on their resume? "I was a grunt at some company you never heard of and never will because it doesn't exist anymore".

Granted, it's possible a founder could be putting up a lot of their own money and end up being broke if it fails, but I think in today's world of seed funding and so on, I'd call such a person an idiot. :)

Being an "exec" at a 2 or 3 persons startup is not far off being a grunt. In fact it is the same thing. Putting "CEO" on your resume is not impressive if your company failed.

From an employee point of view, your argument is not valuable. The employee has to compare start-up offer against big-corporation offer. The hype of start-up seems to create irrational behavior.

Concerning the founder, if his business can not pay salaries... then it is not a good business.

To be blunt, you don't seem to have founded a company. If you had, you would know that some businesses just take some time to become profitable. And that's not just Internet-based business, look at Tesla or SpaceX for example.

So what? Employer's problems like that shouldn't matter to the employees. As your employee, my duty is to care what's in it for me (more precisely, my family that I have to feed), not what's in it for you.

What you say is true, but it doesn't rebut the parent's point: for the employee, it's not worth it

I agree. I was not trying to defend jobs at startups. We're hiring but can't afford high salaries so I totally understand that such jobs are no good for most people : not well paid, you lose it if the company fails, long hours, stressful. There are good points too (I wouldn't be doing it otherwise!).

The first employees do not take nearly as much as risk as founders. Yeah you might lose your job if the company fails, but at least you were hired and got a salary from day one, you didn't have to work for a year or more on no salary and not knowing whether you would be able to raise money to even hire that first employee.

The one thing You Truly Cannot Afford at work is low social status.

If you're a founder, raise a seed round, but fail, you can still say, "People gave me $1 million to follow my dreams, bitch", and explain your failure as the sudden entrance of a massive competitor (e.g. Google) into your space. People will understand and not see it is your fault. The social status that comes with having raised money (other people thought you were impressive) moves you along to a job as a Lead SWE, Product Manager, or real executive.

The company failing isn't the worst thing that can happen to you as a startup employee. If you get fired after 3 months with no severance and no reference, you are fucked because no one wants to hire someone who got fired from a dogshit startup. You are actually better off making the company fail (if you can) at that point.

Yep you're right, founders have that upside too. But raising a seed round is not that easy (don't believe Techcrunch :)), and if you can't do it your story will be "I spent xxx months/years on something nobody cared".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com