Working for a startup makes less sense

Re:Working for a startup makes less sense by ummonk on Monday December 23, 2019 @11:40PM (#21869922)

>Another thing I really want to do is offer a 4-day work week with the promise of sabbaticals and/or remote work. That might not be attractive to everyone, but it's something that would speak to me and that I would want in addition to equity and salary.

I think this would be a very strong advantage in the hiring market (assuming you can raise money from investors who're okay with it).

I'm not your target market (I'm just an in-demand software engineer who happens to be learning ML, not a top computer vision researcher), but this is something I'd be willing to accept substantially lower comp for.

Unfortunately most startups seem to require even higher work output than big tech.

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Re:Working for a startup makes less sense by tatar on Tuesday December 24, 2019 @07:08AM (#21871448)

Well, that's his big bet isn't it. There are a lot of studies that claim 4 day work week will keep productivity more or less the same.

The catch here is this will potentially enable you to hire those 10x people. Even at reduced productivity, 80% of 10x is more than double productivity for 100% of 3-4x people, and perhaps this work environment will foster other people to increase their productivity as well.

With the right people and product, I see this as the ultimate weapon against big tech, most of which will have shareholders that will act a lot more conservatively when it comes to risks compared to startups.

This is not something big tech will be able to accommodate in the current macro-economic environment, no board will approve basically a 20% salary bump to all employees and while risking a potential drop in productivity.

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