What's the benefit of a startup? Seems like more hours for less pay while always needing to get things done. I fail to see the appeal. They just have lunches and dinners which appeal to people.
Not that I have a lot of money saved up. I just have a couple of thousand bucks. Nothing fancy. But to me it is a seed money to try out new things, at an age where making huge mistakes wouldn't result in me being 70 and penniless. There will still be enough time to return back to IT once (if) I fail miserably. And it will also be an extended break in the worst case.
I want to explore the world, jobs, hobbies, people. I have realized the 8 hours everyday I spend on my desk is the best time to be out and about. The sunshine is literally gone by the time I get off work. If this is what hundreds of years of progress and planning has led to, I think we have failed.
So yes, I support people who think about retiring early, and actually living their lives when they are still young. If youth is the best time of one's life, it shouldn't be wasted on the desk.
Maybe you are assuming that he want to live in the states, with the interest of this money he could live easily in Spain, Thailand, Argentina, etc...
The original post suggests ~$2000, not ~200k
:-)
I think a better situation is to be financially secure by your 30s (be completely out of debt, pay off a mortgage, have money for children, etc.) and then have the ability to start companies or work freelance for the rest of your life rather than being a slave to the 9-to-5 grind.
I do like the concept of getting rich slowly and learning slowly. I would love to peruse multiple degrees (I already have two) just out of the love of learning and also meeting other lovers of knowledge.
My wife and I might retire in our mid-30s, in the US but not in an expensive area, and be completely comfortable with well under $1 million in assets. Because we live a laid back, low cost lifestyle -- with the house paid off (as of this week) our burn rate is dropping to under $20k per year.
You might need considerably more money to maintain your desired lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with that -- but recognize that not everyone is you.
That's a choice that a 25 year old need not make.
For those of us who have hit or are even beyond 35, and chose not to have kids, things look very different. Particularly if you work in North American IT, you're able to funnel all of that extra disposable income into things like early retirement, as well as improving your day-to-day quality of life (that could be vacations, gadgets, whatever you'd like...).
And I was in the same boat; when backpacking through Thailand I thought, "Thailand is cheap, I'll just raise a family here". Well sure, for backpackers it's easy to live on 3K per year. But with a couple kids, you'll likely want a safe car (stupidly expensive there), decent schools (again), something nicer than a backpacker hostel, etc. Heck, flights home to visit family will run close to 10K per year alone.
It's funny, the different perspectives people have on retirement.
I don't plan on ever retiring. What would I do? Very much the same things I'm already doing. I've tried to organize my life that way.
You're saying this after complaining spending eight hours a day (presumably five days a week) at your desk. That leaves far more leisure time than most [working class] people had "hundreds of years" ago.
A startup looks better and better.
If it's feasible you may want to consider looking for a new job. [And FWIW some great advice I got when starting out as a developer was never work where software is a cost-center].
A lot of the superiors they hire really affect the architectural policies of the company. For example, we can use Spring & jQuery but little else. Now they are trying to write apps with heavier front-end & getting into trouble cuz its a mess of jQuery callbacks with no real js framework. Why? The main architect has never heard of React, Angular, backbone, etc. (not to mention the fact that I'm one of like 2 devs who can actually write js, and unfortunately the other does not possess the equally rare skill: "uses proper design patterns"). You'd think I was joking until you met a bunch of corporate consultant programmers.
Basically, these companies try to boil web development into an old-school "IT" process but the level of intellect is astonishingly low. I've been lookin for a new gig at a tech company for quite a while but it was tough to make a change cuz this is my first gig out of grad school, had to prove myself a bit & build resume.
The only relief is that the corp "cost-center" IT kindof job I have is such a mess that its a good place to study & relax, pace of work is veeeeery slow.
Why not try to apply for some jobs now? You don't know how good your resume is until you try it
I went from research Matlab / dabbling in C# at a dayjob, to RoR, to javascript, to now pretty hardcore backend Java (EE, Spring, high concurrency for last 2 yrs), trying to move into Clojure a bit more. Most well-funded companies don't seem to like polyglots from what I can tell... But yeah I will be looking for the ones that do, plus I am studying C++ to make a bit of a more lateral move into audio digital signal processing / data-mining / machine learning.
I don't know... companies tell me I'm too expensive for the level of experience I have, yet all the high-paid seniors I work with are awful so I don't want to lower my salary expectations unless I can find a company thats actually worth sacrificing for.
Most developers get tiny, tiny amounts of equity at startups which don't pay off in the end.
And the appeal of "interesting work", soon dissipates when your up against deadlines, and the focus is speed not quality code. As is in most startups.
Just working at a successful startup won't automatically bring success, you have to be in a position to capture that success. The easiest way to do that, is be a founder.
That depends entirely on the company and the developer, there are no absolute numbers. Keep in mind though that often it's entirely fair that even the earliest employees get vastly less than the founders. After all, they probably didn't spend the last three years living in their parents' basement to get the business to the point of being viable for full-time employee #1. E.g. I think it took Kickstarter something like seven years to actually get to launch.
Most likely the equity will be worth nothing or very little - I thus value it at zero so I'm not willing to give up any amount of salary for it.
However, with that in mind, I will still give up salary in return for equity if I am (a) passionate about the business idea, (b) believe that there is a good chance that the business will succeed, (c) believe in the founders and team that is already in place, including any investors. And looking back (I am in my 40s now) the younger you are the more risk you can absorb in terms of equity. I enjoy the startup world and am willing to take risks. Plus, like any other job if it doesn't look like it is panning out or you are unhappy there is nothing holding you there.
* Google salary is $180k
* Startup salary is $125k
Expected value of stock options must be >$55k per year to be economically equal. If we assume 5 years to exit, 20% odds of successful exit, and $50 million exit, that means I must own about 3% of the company at the time of exit, assuming I have no risk aversion (and more if I do). Assuming reasonable dilution over the 5 years, I need to get substantially more than 3% today.
In most cases, only founders get that level of equity. The equity offered to future employees is, quite frankly, a complete joke for most startups I've seen. The assumption is that there aren't enough developers who can't value options well that some sucker is gonna get fleeced.
That doesn't make startup the wrong option (I went with it), but the incentives have to be non-financial. Startups can be great or horrible places to learn, depending on how much exposure you have to business processes and similar. In Google, you're in a specialized box. In startups, you can see many more aspects of the operation. Getting into a position with that kind of visibility, however, can be difficult to properly negotiate early in the career.
I spent all my days, nights, and weekends out of college working on a doomed startup during the first bubble and I'd still describe it as one of the best experiences of my life. It prepared me for all sorts of experiences since then. I was ideating, researching, designing, building, and even publicly presenting multiple new products for a company that didn't have the staff to specialize in any of those needs.
I've used those skills at companies big and small since then and have worked alongside those who haven't forged their abilities in the pressure-cooker of a startup - I wouldn't change a thing.
From a developer's perspective, you don't have to support someone else's code (at least for now). It's YOUR code - but it's also YOUR bug when they do come up. It's much less stressful fixing your own bugs then a "senior" developer who's worked there for 15 years and supposedly knows what he's doing but fails to take responsibility.
I previously worked at a large ad tech startup (using that term loosely, they had just gone public and had about 250 people) and it drove me nuts. Particularly, it was the strain of having to work for someone I didn't respect. I left and now run a company with some friends - all of whom I believe to be smarter than I. There is no better feeling than being the dumbest one in the room. That is a luxury rarely afforded at large companies. Invariably, you're going to end up with people at the bottom of the barrel. When you're the owner/boss/hiring manager - you get to pick the people you work with.
TL;DR: Startups aren't about compensation it's about the enjoyment of picking the workplace you want to be in. You don't have to worry about working with people you dislike, because you pick them all!
Edit: Also forgot to mention, I have learned exponentially more in the last 2 years of running my business than I feel like in the rest of my life combined. It's like software development/product management/sales special forces training - you really end up pushing yourself to do more than you thought you were capable of. Mostly because there is no one else to pick up your slack.
I've never worked at a startup where you can personally chose the staff..
I've noticed people at startups tend to be developers focused on the latest trends, coding fast, the latest js framework etc, less focus on writing clear maitainable code.
Developers at larger companies focus on writing maintainable code, SOLID, TDD etc, less focus on the latest js framework.
What do you want?
But all things depend on the individual companies, in some startups you won't get to hire. And for my luck, of the 2 large companies where I worked there was no chance of flex-time, or remote - or any kind of non- 9-5 schedule even for devs. On the other hand at 1 of them everyone left at 5 on the dot cause no one cared about their jobs - and a strict 40 a week feels like vacation a lot.
I think regardless of where you go you have to pick wisely (and I only picked large because my options where limited and the salaries where good.).
But as a rule small - not just startup, means you have more power and control over yourself and your fiefdom. And that freedom is what you like that's where you should go. (Or research - there's a lot more paperwork with research teams, but there's a lot of freedom as well.)
And yes - if you like writing good code you are proud of years later a big co is good place to do it. At my government gig, we wrote prototypes we'd knew would have to be thrown away, perfectly - because really why not? There were no hard to meet deadlines, or particular concerns about the grants running out. So we built things we'd be proud of, every time.
There are a whole litany of standard answers to that question such as greater risk = great reward potential, the ability to choose and work on something you are truly interested in and/or passionate about.
I feel like the reasons are somewhat obvious as most HN'ers are aware of the pros/cons of this choice though I encourage others to chime in, I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.
Take a look at...
Dwolla: they are out to destroy the Automated Clearing House industry. Bitcoin: banks need to know how to interface with that! Micropayments: same deal. Mobile: OCR for check deposits! Data science/analytics ("big data"): obvious.
Banks that fail to adopt a hacker culture because IT is a "cost center" (despite the fact that all operational units of any business are) will crumble.
You get to be involved more broadly, but you will also be working way more. You will learn a lot.
Downside of a startup -- you are putting a lot of personal time in for others benefit. Unless you are a Facebook/twitter/google/etc. (all based on luck) an early engineer at a startup is basically wasting away 25-50k/year (depending on level) he could be getting at a public company.
I've played the odds, out of about six or seven startups I worked at, one managed to pay out for the previous couple of years of work (and I am was back at market salary).
I love startups. I work with some now in my current role, I've consulted with many others over the years, but if your goal is pay for time, they are the wrong place to go.
One more potential battle story -- discussions for non-founding CTO of a seed stage startup. The personal sacrifice at the time to accept would have been about $70k/year in guaranteed money for sub 10% equity in the company and a ramp from 45ish hours to 60+hours/week. On paper from everything you can find via glassdoor/angels list/hackernews, the numbers were right regarding the offer. However, what needed to be built (in terms of the service) consulting for the same type of gig would have been $150+/hr and probably much safer/lucrative -- but wasn't an option.
Despite adoring the lead angel investor, I passed. I have my own projects going on and battle scars that kick in when I go back to thinking about being an early stage in building out other's startups on salary.
I say career because even if you don't make a lot of money, being an early technical member of a successful startup usually A) gives you a fair amount of visibility and credibility in the tech community and B) leads to a number of other job opportunities with startups with more responsibility and/or equity. Being able to execute under pressure is a valuable quality, and once founders or even VC firms know you can do it they start cherry-picking you.
Edit: should also add, don't go working for a startup just to go make money off equity. The grand majority won't make you much unless you're a very early hire; you'll probably make more over the same amount of time by investing your higher salary, ESPP, etc. at a more established company. Make sure the other factors are the "real" reason, with potential cash being a secondary one.
But I mention it because you ask why other people do it, and that's one reason why.
Everything you do is magnified, good and bad.
Most likely your not going to end up with any of that cash, unless you get into the right position first.
Basically, it’s extremely unlikely for a junior developer to be chosen to manage people, unless they happen to be the most senior person there.