And let's not even forget the fantastic benefits that Microsoft offers its employees that most startups cannot afford to.
I often quote Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, asking "What do you want?" Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
Out of people I know working for startup type companies, one cut his teeth building enterprise Java stuff at a bank and the other spent time in the military.
More importantly, a lot of them would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft connections.
"waste" is subjective. Twenty years of your life working 100 hours a week in startups? Twenty years of your life traveling the world with a low paying job?
A particular path being appealing to you doesn't necessarily make other paths bad.
> Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
Sure. Imagine the man who doesn't accept that all he wants is a stable job which will let him spend more time with his family. Instead, he works at a tiny company day in and day out, dreaming of the big payoff (with paid dinners).
Sam isn't giving general career advice here -- read this advice as if you're giving it to a risk-seeking, ambitious, 19-year old (the title of the article...).
In that context -- his advice makes perfect sense.
The article isn't explicitly directed at "risk-seekers," but merely at ambitious people. It's incorrect to conflate the two. Ambition can just easily manifest itself as a desire to seek a large salary, climb the corporate hierarchy, and seek a nice lifestyle. As a member of the cohort at which this piece was directed, I don't know why everyone assumes that we want to expose ourselves to risk, or why everyone asserts that we ought to.
Why does everyone exhort the necessity of risking everything in an attempt to change the world? What is so bad about simply pursuing a nice life?
three kids, a safe job, two Ferraris, and the ear of Larry Ellison?
or how about
Climb the ladder, eventually transition to politics, and become a Senator on a technical platform?
ruswick's point is that ambition is not the sole province of the startup crowd.
"I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies ... that was a terrible decision"
What is this company? How does he know that it's a breakout company? Is he able to tell the future? Because there's an EXCELLENT chance it's not a breakout company. There's an excellent chance it WILL go bankrupt.
Microsoft + 30k more.. or a startup that has a fantastic chance of failing.
Anyone who chooses Microsoft over a startup, I completely understand.
Basically, if you're at the point where you think you can do some architectural work and real decision making, you're likelier to be allowed to do that at a startup than at a large company.
Let's face it: if you are having trouble feeding yourself, your view on money will be extremely short-term. As it should be.
So the difference the extra money makes is likely to just mean lifestyle changes like taking the bus instead of driving a new car and less ambitious holidays. If you can put up with that for a few years then it makes sense to take a lower paying job if you believe it will have better long term prospects.
I've met all too many designers and engineers who started out exactly like this, and years later come to realize that they've been underpaid by more than 50% below market rate for half a decade, and have little more to show for it than one entry on their resume and a case of Stockholm syndrome.
That's a home they could have bought if they knew their real value and weren't being exploited by a greedy employer. It's years of bitterness and job dissatisfaction they could have avoided by better knowing their value and having the right kind of ambition-inspiring peer pressure.
Let's assume you're not such a person, but at the same time I hope you would help educate your young designer about what exactly she's sacrificing by working with you at a salary of "making more than her mother." Please help her understand what she could be earning if she's willing to possibly relocate and hustle a bit, and allow her to make an informed decision.
Ultimately, one can only expect companies to do what is in their best interest, which is often antithetical to the employee's interests. One has to take responsibility and ensure that they get paid fairly. The employers certainly won't.
Keep in mind she has no education beyond high school, no professional experience, and some pretty serious holes in her skill set. She's simply not equipped to land a $50k job on her own right now, even if that is "entry level". Her choice is between taking this, or bagging groceries, or taking tens of thousands in loans to go to college (which may or may not get her a job after). And when her skills are rounded out and the money is there, I'll pay her going rate, and gladly.
Moreover, she's not just my employee - she's my friend, and my daughter's friend. I'm not hiring her because she's cheap. I'm hiring her because I have faith in her talent, her drive, and her taste. I'd rather take her on and spend a few months polishing her skills than take my chances with a "better" employee whose taste I don't yet trust.
So yeah, far from exploiting her, I'm trying to groom and mentor her to build the kind of career I believe she should have.
Yes, I'm sure this is what you're telling yourself.
> she instinctively understands the value of giving 100% as a measure of self-worth.
Instead of money, of course. She's not worth that.
> she has no education beyond high school
Completely irrelevant.
> when her skills are rounded out and the money is there, I'll pay her going rate, and glady.
No, you won't. There will always be one more skill she lacks and there will always be one more thing you need to buy "for the company" (but use yourself, of course, because it's your company).
By "take advantage", you mean offering her a direct path into her intended career.
As for how much I'm planning to pay her when we can get funded: I was planning on $30k salary. Per indeed.com, "entry level graphic designer minneapolis" is $31k. At the national level, that number can go as high as $50k, but frankly, she doesn't have the skills (yet) to get a $50k job. After a couple of years, she will.
So just based on what you've said in this comment, you're giving her the choice of either working for a small percentage of 0 ("equity") or she can wait until you have the money. Should you ever get the money, you're going to pay her just under market for an entry-level job. If you don't get money for 2 years, she's clearly no longer entry-level, you've gotten years of work from an impressionable young girl for free, and you're going to do her the favor of paying below-market wages.
Maybe your intentions are good and it's just the execution that is piss poor, but judging on the comments on this post you are seriously taking this girl for a ride and you should be ashamed of yourself.
So you're exploiting her and psychologically pressuring her.
You forgot to mention the part where she could earn enough in equity to pay for private art school without working.
That's a pretty small sampling to make such big claims about a company.
he apparently wasn't making the claim about the entire company
Plenty of startups have worse people than the worst of Microsoft. Some of them have people who couldn't get a job at one of those stodgy, blue-chip companies if their lives depended on it.
The range is very wide at most of the startups. I worked at one where there were some seriously good engineers, but a really bad one ended up becoming the lead architect and things went to hell quickly.
It's also important to remember some of the really cool research projects companies like MS are working on and then think about the pretty basic low tech consumer facing products a lot of startups are working on.
MS research is pretty awesome.
It's pretty clear he isnt knocking the old guard, but answering the question in the the way the person asking it was likely anticipating.
In the case of the former, the author is clearly myopic. One needs money to live, and the majority of technology companies reside in cities in which the cost of living is substantially higher than the mean. I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. If anything, one should take a job at an established company, pay off their debt, then take on risk.
In the case of the latter, the author is simply being needlessly dismissive and arrogant. Large companies host hundreds of great engineers and do incredibly meaningful work. Frankly, Microsoft is one of the strongest innovators in the market at the moment. Even if one isn't constructing the most alluring product, one can at least take pride in the fact that they are working on a product with a scope many orders of magnitude larger than most startups. Working on Windows might not be the captivating notion, but it is still meaningful to tens of millions of users.
What kind of plebeian can't afford to exit school with $500/mo student loans and $2,000/mo rental payments? ;)
More importantly, according to Hacker News, the average salary for a software developer who is at least capable of coding himself out of a wet paper bag, is $150k, so below-average means an "acceptable" $120k, at least. Right?
He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people.
Oh, because working at a startup guarantees he will work with smart people? Sheesh.
The U.S. has held a very privileged position in the world economy over the past century, which has fueled tremendous growth. You're basically betting that the U.S. continue to be a "growth" stock over the next 25 or 50 years, and continue to see huge gains in productivity and global competitiveness.
It's not a completely crazy idea, but it's not the sure bet you make it out to be, either.
It's a much safer bet than many other things.
That quote drips so much of elitism its disgusting. MS still has many brilliant engineers and is building alot of really complex stuff, probably more than your average startup ever will. This is the kind of talk i find really off putting about the whole startup-scene...