They won't be credited like founders, compensated at-the-time remotely near market, will be overworked to the bone if they don't actively fight it, and in the event of success will be hilariously undercompensated, if not actively screwed.
So--why?
Says who? Srsly stop working for shitty startups.
And stop assuming all founders are exploitative psychopaths. We're not. Many of us just want to build an awesome company that's an awesome place to work at.
You don't need to overwork the team for that. But you also won't get there with a bunch of disinterested contractors who just do their assigned tasks.
Contractor here who was a first tech hire for a startup once. I've seen more disinterested employees than contractors in the UK. Employees tend to leave at 1700 sharp, while contractors often the last one who shuts the lights off. You can't let go employees with a 2-week notice, so guess who's going to work around the clock when the project is behind schedule?
I don't work for "shitty startups"--it's rare that I work for "startups" at all. But, then again, my skillset is in demand in a way that accentuates the seller's market, and so I also don't have to. I'm very fortunate.
> And stop assuming all founders are exploitative psychopaths. We're not. ... You don't need to overwork the team for that.
You don't have to. But, as a matter of course, it happens. Even to those with the best of intentions.
Causes and passions are charity work or open-source work. Tying your day job--and by extension your health and your well-being--to them is not wise. As a founder, you both have an incentive to tie your own to such--but you have an even stronger incentive to tie others' to it, and so you literally can't be trusted.
It's nothing personal to state that founders are not to be trusted. It is, in a very real and literal sense, just business. Cash on the barrelhead and an absolute intolerance for fuckery are the only ways an employee has to protect themselves from exploitation.
That's one point of view. Personally, I'd say I'm passionate about technology itself and I only choose employers who work with technologies I find interesting (generally nothing that involves web stuff) whenever I can. I'm sure I'd probably have been paid better if I weren't as particular but I'd also almost certainly have quit the profession long before now as well.
We'd probably agree, though, that being passionate about one's employer itself being unwise.
(And even those pure-hearted, kind founders can lose control of their company after a bad raise.)
I guess 99.9% of all startups are "shitty" then.
> we would like the core team (first 3-4 hires) to share our passion to some degree. Perhaps naively we'd like them to become pillars of our company and help us inspire future employees.
It sound like they don't want workers, so much as worshipers. Call me pessimistic.
In this case, the author might feel that the person is not committed, and might attribute it to the part time as way to reason/explain that feeling that the other person isn't committed. Chances are, they would most likely feel the same if the person was full time. If the person was highly committed, they wouldn't even start to rationalize this way about part time, and it'd be a no-brainer decision to hire them and make it work.
I don't have problems with having part-time employees, but quite difficult to see it being "the future". There are some people who want part-time possibilities, but in my experience majority prefer full-time employment. Also usually full-time employment is also desirable for employer.
However often those who want part-time deals, are quite talented etc, so it makes sense to make arrangements with them. Also sometimes part-time is good match for the employer as well, if the workload matches that for some reason.
Passion is important, and there's a huge spectrum between "passion as an excuse to get people to work many hours without compensating them" and the bill-by-the-hour contractor attitude. You don't want your first employees to be anywhere near the right of that spectrum. Basically, you want them to proudly wear the company logo t-shirt. But this is perfectly possible without driving yourself into a burnout.
While I agree with many commenters here that way too many startups work their team too hard for absolutely no benefit to anybody, I do think that employees of small startups can be expected to have said startup at top thing on their minds, bordering family etc.
This information is missing from the OP's question. There's a world of difference between an applicant going "oh, hm yeah I can do some work for you but only 3 days a week because I'm actually focused on my side project and I hope it becomes a proper startup someday" and "woa that sounds awesome, I'm all in! but I don't want to work more than 3 days because I've a couple of hobbies / open source projects / whatever that I like to keep time for". In the first scenario, the engineer might be writing hours for you, but actually thinking about their other thing at the same time. They won't be super productive, and they'd especially not be all too creative.
Like you, I'd never recommend that a startup hire someone who doesn't have the success of said startup at top of their mind (again, possibly bordering family matters). But I disagree with your suggestion that the amount of hours/days committed is a good indicator of that. Part-time is the future, folks, accept it, embrace it.