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Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of retaining employees. If I work for a company that lets me choose the most fulfilling work, compensates me fairly for that good work, and gives me enough time off to re-generate, and actually seems to care for my well being, I'm more more apt to stay.

When I talk to ex-coworkers, the reasons they often cite for leaving are: 1) weren't empowered to achieve their career goals 2) weren't compensated relative to the value they felt they brought 3) worked on too many failed products and 4) burned out.

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In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves.

In a SV scale-to-the-moon startup, you hire cult members, not employees. You want them to work for minimum wage and equity only.

Sometimes that means hiring people who are naive but can be manipulated in the right directions versus experienced people who have done it all before.

You want them to work for minimum wage and equity only

Then, based on past HN articles, you proceed to do your best to scam them out of the equity you gave them.

All 3 of your points are achieved if the startup is growing fast and its product is succeeding. It seems like you'll optimize employee retention by making sure the work is worthwhile, even if it's hard, rather than by making sure people don't do too much of it.

(I don't disagree with work/life balance in general, but I'm pointing out that your data supports Sam's point that you should give people generous equity for working on a product that's worthwhile, rather than your point that they shouldn't devote themselves 100% to the work.)

You're right, I do need to support my hypothesis with more data. Consider another data point:

My dad works for a government contractor where the profit / margins are fixed, so essentially a "limited" growth company. He's been employed for over 30 years.

Why has he stayed? Because he can work 40 hours a week. His pay is good (EOY bonus is tied to a project success). He holds a position of value (to him not just to the organization). In his career he has seen more product failures than successes, but his successes were large, and he uses the knowledge from each to consult other projects in the organization (eg, he feels valued).

My takeaway is to look at your career in totality - it goes beyond equity and a worthwhile project because in a long career, you'll have many worthwhile projects and many that are not. And for the vast majority of startups, equity is worthless. It also includes interaction with team members and how you want to shape your company's future, and how your company wants to shape yours.

Yes - people like to win. If the product succeeds, and the start-up is racing upwards, people will forgive a lot of other things.

I think on work/life balance, there are populations who care about this, and populations who don't. And this changes over time. When I was younger I was happy to throw my whole life into tough projects. Now that I have a family it's tougher to go "All in" with projects.

Some other things that should be considered in work-life balance are flextime, working remotely (even if just for one day of the week), and (paid) maternity/paternity leave. Many companies still don't offer any of these.

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