I can't echo this enough, I have been going from startup to startup most of my career and I am about burned out and have almost nothing to show for it financially. I am ready to work with a big player from now on. I wish someone would have told me steer clear of startups unless I was a founder.
The problem is that since we are drawn to startups, we tend to read material about startup by startups. And startups would never say joining one is bad, since they need employees. And they would never make it easily known that founders get most of the benefits here. They throw things around like "great culture" and "office perks" but at the end of the day, they walk away with millions and you walk away wiser. Saying you're the next Google is like saying you're the next Buffett - the numbers make it too unrealistic for an early employee to do well.
I'm a startup founder and will happily say that if you are an engineer, in Silicon Valley, in 2018, and you are maximizing for income, then you should not work at an early-stage startup.
I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. Startups employees are squeezed out by vc dilution and lack of big exits. Those $1m total equity cash out from startups I fear are fairly rare.
Whereas working for faang type companies, a l5 is more or less guaranteed to make $300k a year. $500-750k is doable without being a “brand name”. Timing and luck, but the spread is much smaller.
Startup founders have made a devils deal with vcs to underpay employees. You know it. Unless you issued preferred stock to all employees?
Maybe a devil's deal, but not with the goal of under-paying employees.
I know very few founders who have the highest salary at their own company, which is as it should be. Founders of VC-backed companies are making an explicity equity-vs-salary trade-off.
And every founder I know would love to pay employees more.
The challenge is that taking VC money is a commitment to try to figure out how to grow relatively quickly. There are never enough resources to try all the things you wish you could, on the way to product-market fit.
It's perfectly reasonable to criticize this model, but it's not a model that is intended to negatively impact early stage employees. Hence the discussion in this thread, much of which is about how the economic context in the SF Bay Area employee market has changed, and how to adapt.
Look at this another way: employees at early stage boot-strapping tech startups generally make less money than employees of early stage VC-backed startups.
It's marketing BS of selling dreams to both Entrepreneurs and in turn to employees that keeps the boll rolling for VCs. If you are honest you will realize that it's def. designed to take advantage of employees.
Unfortunately Im in the midwest and Im interested in something very niche (operationalizing data science using hadoop, spark, etc) so i would have to move to SV to work at a non startup company and honestly I just dont want to.
I'm happy you say this, and I wish it was more well known, even if obvious. People join early-stage startups for the potential bucks. I'm not saying that's a good reason, but I'm saying most graduates, who are not as educated about the world, will join a startup for the money upside. Being honest like you are is not the same as admitting there is some degree of deception in the culture about how well off you'll be as an early employee in the startup world.
Yeah my first company out here in the Bay Area was a startup. After that experience, not really looking for another startup position at the moment. All my friends I used to work with have moved on to other non startup companies and are all making minimum 50% more in terms of total compensation.
Yes, yes, there is always things more important than money and they have all that too as well. They can afford good leadership, good management, talented ICs. I can go on and on.
