Hacker News Reader

Comment by hox | Hacker News Reader

Things not addressed that I think are important:

1. Salary. Startups always seem to offer lower salary in return for said equity.

2. Career development. Startups demand that you build somewhat hacks solutions for the sake of time. In many instances you might not get the opportunity to learn how to do things right. Too much of this and you get used to building hacks products.

3. 80-hour work weeks might not be the norm, but what about 60 hour work weeks? that's a deal bresker for some.

4. Diversity. Startups are notorious for hiring people just like the founders.

View on HN

Salary. Startups always seem to offer lower salary in return for said equity.

If you're the first engineer, sure. As the second or third engineer it's a lot more likely that you won't get any equity (or nothing that won't be diluted in to oblivion by the time an exit comes along), and you'll be on a lower salary with a promise of a decent raise when the business gets traction. But that might never happen...

Also, if you do get equity, it'll probably be as a number of shares ("We'll give you 10,000 shares!") and no one will tell how many shares have been issued. So in reality you're getting 0.001%.

If the CEO of the startup you're talking to won't disclose an actual percentage, that's a HUGE red flag to me. I expect an early-stage startup to give me an offensively-low percentage of stock; I expect them to respect me enough to not beat around the bush and pretend that's not the case.

I've talked to CEOs that make offers focused on the number of shares / $ amount. They were happy to reveal the total size of the pool, when asked. I think if they didn't, that'd be an issue.

I've mentioned this before on HN, but I was at a start-up where we lost candidates because, in the candidates' words, the other company was giving 200,000 options, and we were only giving 500 options.[1] 200,000 would have been the entire company. [2]

I can totally believe that the CEO is giving the raw number because that's what the labor market has trained him to give.

[1] It's possible they were lying because they thought working for us would suck. It's not true that we were better off without these people because they didn't know basic economics and accounting. Lots of very good people don't have a clue how that stuff works.

[2] If I ever found another start-up I am going to go hog-wild and make quintillions of shares just as social commentary.

>2 The only reason that hasn't bee done is that (at least in MA) there is a fee per share created. Here it is $100/100k shares. That would make it very expensive to file your articles of incorporation (roughly 1 Quadrillion dollars)

If a startup won't talk about equity percentages then they aren't offering you anything. Do not accept that offer. That said, as an employee (especially a junior one) you will not be getting a very high percentage of the company as part of your option grant (think 0.25%) and it will be vested over the course of 4 years.

What's a reasonable percentage for a first engineer, do you think (not counting CTO)?

How much experience does this first engineer have?

Sam Altman thinks it's 1.5%[1]

I really liked another blog post by Sam about equity distribution as a startup grows: "a company ought to be giving at least 10% in total to the first 10 employees, 5% to the next 20, and 5% to the next 50"[2]

Quora has anecdotal evidence that 0.5 - 1.0% is common[3]

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire

[2] http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity

[3] http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-typical-amounts-of-equity-...

>Startups demand that you build somewhat hacks solutions for the sake of time.

So do large corporations. This is not a factor of how large your company is, it's a factor of how forward thinking your technology leadership is. If they're not thinking further than the next three months, it's pretty much always going to be a hack.

True of course, but with startups this is more of a necessary evil; for larger organizations it is a sign of engineering dysfunction.

IME large corps always go for the "quick wins". They get external companies in to tell them the things their employees already told them about, and then it's a box ticking exercise to race through that list before their next progress meeting...

#4 is a tough one. I don't think this is only true of startups. To some degree it happens everywhere. Anecdotally I have seen a relatively large swath of technical teams in my years consulting. Most teams are not diverse and I have seen some interesting cultures develop. Most managers will hire people that they like on some level. Its just the nature of people. If a hiring manager doesn't like you you probably wont get the job unless you have a niche skill that justifies him putting up with not liking you. I don't think it is good or bad, but generally just the way things are. One place(a large oil and gas pipeline) I consulted had a manager who ruled with an iron fist and over the course of about 5-6 years(which was the average tenure of the team) the team evolved into a group of very passive people. I actually know someone who left that team after 6 months because he couldn't deal with the managers style. However the 7 people who did were happily there and that team was not very diverse: all 40-ish year old males from India.(I am not making the implication that East Asian males are passive. Just this team of them was as the managers style curated that)

Very good point, and I agree that the hiring manager in place tends to be the biggest cause of bias in hiring decisions. However, more mature organizations tend to either have more checks in place or more formalized HR processed that can hopefully reduce the effect of bias in hiring.

Definitely not saying it's perfect; oversight can only all so much.

> Salary. Startups always seem to offer lower salary in return for said equity.

Not necessarily "always", if the startup is well funded, they will pay you well, AND give you equity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com