You mean Google will pay me 3x in total comp and I (mostly) get my evenings and weekends off? I also get job security beyond the next funding round?
But.. But startups are special! They can't pay for stuff! We can't treat them like an actual business!
That's honestly something that has always confounded me as an outsider to the glitz and glam of coastal tech life. How are technology start-ups any different than say, a new butcher shop in the midwest in terms of obligations to their employees?
Part of the reason for going into a startup is that you're buying a lottery ticket. There's a very strong chance the company will evaporate and "all" you'll get out of it is an intensive year or two of building things up from nothing and putting them out in front of customers. However, there's also the nonzero chance that Facebook will buy your team for $9B.
I love startups because it's exciting and genuinely fun to be scrambling alongside a team who's as into their work as you are yours. In practice it's also very low risk, because I know that if my company laid me off tomorrow then I'd be unemployed for approximately a weekend before hopping onto another team.
FWIW, sane startups also take really good care of their employees. Mine has good pay and great benefits, and that's pretty common. You don't hear about those places on the front page of Hacker News, though.
Re:We Only Hire the Best
by toomuchtodo on Monday May 23, 2016 @03:56PM
(#11756428)
Equity lottery ticket.
I called BS on Chris Dixon on this on Twitter and he blocked me. It was when he and Paul Graham were arguing that "not enough (good)engineers exist for startups, so we need to import more". I was arguing that plenty of great engineers exist, you just have to pay for it.