Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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What upside potential? The notion that a startup is going to make you a millionaire (or even --- what you're telling yourself right now --- a hundredthousandaire) is one of the most misleading things about startup culture.

You will make more money plugging away diligently at a career in the Fortune 500 than you will spending the same 30 years in startups. I use the word "will" here in the same same sense as you "will" win with KK facing 72 unsuited. Anybody here capable of starting a company is equally capable of walking in the door at six figures in a big company.

The reason this "upside" notion is so pernicious is that it's fed by powerful biases. We read about the successes. Even the failures we hear about, we're reading about them by and large because they were "successful". The overwhelming majority of startups won't get fundng, won't get significant customer traction, won't feed their founders 2 years out, and won't get enough press attention for us ever to hear about. Their stories are also boring.

As for what you accomplish with your life, remember this: over 10-20 years at a big company, you will build things that people will use. Over the same years at a startup, you're inevitably going to pour your heart and soul into code that nobody will ever see. If you're unfortunate enough to "score" any funding, even after the company dies, you're probably not going to get to do anything with that code.

The economics for a non-founder in a startup are drastically different than they are for a founder; however, the risk is only slightly better than the founders. It is among the worst risk/reward tradeoffs I can think of.

The two reasons to do it are (1) some people love the opportunity for responsibility/growth or environment and/or (2) the poor risk/reward is actually an investment in themselves, so that they can gain the skills to become a founder.

For founders, I don't believe it's relevant that the median startup doesn't make money: the more you found, the better you become; a diligent and intelligent founder is bound to ultimately make quite a bit of money, but it may be a good number of tough years and failed startups before that happens.

Totally agree. For the average employee, their potential upside is pretty small unless the company experiences Google-like levels of success. And if it fails, they aren't even likely to get respect from potential employers for the attempt. After all, a startup that doesn't take off is just another small company. If you're going to work for a startup, you need a better reason than the money.

Your reasoning here is tainted by survivorship bias.

Yes, founders and employees share similar levels of risk in a startup that has reached the point where it can hire FT employees.

But before the startup hit that point, it endured a period of drastically higher risk, which the employees never saw, and which the founders are being compensated for.

The only conditions that must be true in my reasoning is that (1) an early non-founding employee faces substantially higher risk than a corporate job, (2) at lower pay and with substantially less equity than would compensate for that risk.

That the risk was higher for the founders prior to the FTE is certainly true, but irrelevant, because we are not comparing whether an FTE has a good risk/reward tradeoff relative to an opportunity to join earlier in the startup under the same terms, but rather relative to a corporate job.

You make excellent points, but consider that "upside" isn't entirely measured in dollars, and the situation the OP describes isn't the only possible one.

I've done my time at Acme Corp, and it doesn't interest me. I built really great, really fast software that did [insert generic thing here], for people who didn't even want to be doing that, but did it because they were paid $9.25 an hour to operate the software I wrote to do [generic thing].

In addition, I had very little agency of my own -- I did what I was told to do, and I did it quite well, and was rewarded for doing so.

But human beings are bright sparks in a simmering universe of dust -- I feel like in some existential sense, we as humans not /meant/ to toil at arbitrary tasks. We're meant to live, to experience, and to make connections. To be in love, to witness beauty. Maybe to create some beauty of our own.

What it boils down to for me that the independent way of operating, as opposed to the structure of a corporation, gets me that much closer to my dream of existing as a "real human being." You can't really buy that.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head as to why I don't want to end up in BigCo. I worked as a cog in a moderately sized company that had been around for a good deal of time. I felt like the work I did didn't honestly matter. I was scolded harshly for my mistakes and hardly recognized for my achievements. Now I'm doing web development with two other guys in a cool little house-turned-office. I show up when I want to and I dress how I want to. I'm appreciated for my work, and I feel like I'm actually doing something useful.

I can understand how the whole "dress like you want to and show up when you can" thing can make people automatically think of laziness, but I really disagree. I show up when I'm ready to get some shit done. When I was working at the more "standard" business, I had to show up at 8, whether or not I was actually capable of doing any sort of real work. I'm far more productive being able to set my own hours, and so are my two co-workers. We do in a week what used to take my previous employer over a month to do (with a significantly smaller workforce).

The reason this "upside" notion is so pernicious is that it's fed by powerful biases. We read about the successes. Even the failures we hear about, we're reading about them by and large because they were "successful".

You hit the nail on the head. I know 4 very talented engineers who have been in silicon valley for 12+ years each. I have tried to recruit all of them at various times, but they have always been swimming in great offers, in good times and bad, so they are good. Between them, they have worked in at least 10 start-ups. While none of them are starving, no one got rich either. They have lived frugally, so they have a decent pile saved up, but that was done the old fashioned way, not through hitting the lottery.

Its also possible that within a big company you can build stuff that no one uses. I've seen it many a time. And in a big company you lose that other important thing ... whats that called ?? ... Oh yeah ... your soul. As you ascend the ranks its just one big political game.

That's not an argument, it's a My Chemical Romance song. If your work doesn't mean anything, you change jobs.

You can do everything right at a startup and still fail. In fact, even if you do everything right, you're probably still going to fail. You have many more opportunities to correct in a bigco career.

I agree with everything you said... except useful stuff part.

There is much more stuff being thrown out or made totally useless in a year at big companies than all failed start-ups have ever produced!

and they did not require someone else's money to lose it.

I don't think that's strictly true. A shareholder, somewhere, lost value. VC's are just shareholders that make riskier bets.

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