How (not) to get a job at a startup...

by auston • 18 years ago

26 88 18 years ago

arien• 18 years ago

On one hand, money isn't everything, but on the other it's naive to think that people don't have bills to pay, so I can't agree completely with the "don't mind the salary" song. It is important, we like it or not.

That aside, I couldn't find any indicators about the offered salary. But unless I'm missing something, the requirements are really standard, nothing out of the ordinary (complexities of PHP? With CodeIgniter? Right!), and being a startup I wouldn't expect it to be high.

So, maybe a decent rant, but probably out of place.

mikeryan• 18 years ago

So what is the rate offered? I admit the attitude is a bit high brow, but he may have an extremely valid point.

fallentimes10• 18 years ago

Maybe, but he sounds self-entitled. Those are the worst type of people.

I don't like either of the attitudes in the post. I would never work for the poster and I would never hire the applicant.

nanijoe• 18 years ago

If my potential employer has a problem with money being my motivation, scratch my name from the interview list. IF I really wanted to work for slave wages, there is a McDonalds on every street corner

auston13• 18 years ago

market + options: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681

abstractbill2• 18 years ago

I agree he was obnoxious in his email, but the "We’ll take care of you ... trust me" response doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, sorry.

Surely this is what stock options are for?

davidw• 18 years ago

I was going to say the same thing. "We'll take care of you" is simply not a promise that startups can make. You might work your ass for them for a year at a below market salary, only to see the whole thing tank.

HansF2• 18 years ago

True, or to be laid off if you're considered 'too greedy'. Let's not forget your employers had this great idea and you should be happy to be honoured to contribute to that great idea. After all, you're jut a code monkey.

mrtron2• 18 years ago

Never trust someone saying that.

IsaacSchlueter4• 18 years ago

I trust what gets put in writing and signed.

Contracts exist so that we can trust each other.

auston13• 18 years ago

That is absolutely correct.

helveticaman2• 18 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. First off, whenever someone says "trust me," as a rule of thumb, don't. His advice sounds really self-serving. Trustworthy people are always open to committing in writing or in ways that don't require so much trust.

Now, the dude who wrote the cover letter doesn't seem all that stupid to me. Sure, the writing isn't great, but for all you know English is his second language. I'm not so sure about his hacking skills, though (CSS?). I'd still interview him.

brianmckenzie• 18 years ago

You might be surprised how hard is to find a true CSS expert. He may be exaggerating its difficulty compared to other languages though.

potatolicious2• 18 years ago

CSS is very difficult in the sense that implementations vary so wildly, and browsers demonstrate random bugs where you least expect it. Oodles of experience counts for a lot.

coliveira• 18 years ago

If they treat candidates like that, imagine what they do to employees.

sherl0ck• 18 years ago

The line of "We’ll take care of you ... trust me", it remind me of some mafia movie, "give me the money, and I'll take care of you"

fallentimes10• 18 years ago

Paying people what they used to get paid +1 is such a yes-man brigade.

"Oh so & so gave you that, we should do that too".

I understand why companies do it, but there has to be a better way. More incentives? More equity? Back end performance driven pay?

One data point does not equal market rate. And other factors: work hours, environment, benefits, perks, etc are just as important.

Has anyone else dealt with this at their company?

mseebach• 18 years ago

It's a good rule of thumb. If I'm going to work for less what I'm getting now, there should be a well articulated reason for it.

Now, that might be that I'm currently overpaid, but still looking to leave my job, or that the job is very very cool, or that I'm getting stock options that I'm really confident in - and of course, if I'm relocating to an area with a significantly different cost of living.

alaskamiller8• 18 years ago

It's the fast and dirty way to establish the value of a person. If HR actually did their jobs, it wouldn't be happening or matter. A good HR staff would pinpoint the right candidates, fit them into the right group, and be able to negotiate them to maximize the company's budget.

But then, I only worked at big corps.

jd2• 18 years ago

In a healthy company a lot of value is created. Therefore, there should be plenty money for salaries. So, simply, if salaries are low the company isn't generating enough value or the bosses are cheap.

How is that a good thing? Of course, in a startup you can't have everything - but that doesn't change the fact that in startups the employees often share a great deal of the risk (in opportunity cost) and don't get rewarded in the same scale when it all works out. Worrying about money, especially in times like these, is perfectly natural.

And quoting somebody's email verbatim, without permission? That shows a lack of class (it's really that rude), but worse, it shows a lack of -judgment- because Auston should know he can't gain anything by ridiculing somebody's cover letter and grammar mistakes.

Don't get me wrong. I do agree that a hurriedly written cover letter that only focuses on the salary should land the resume on the no-hire pile. But why attract negative publicity to your own company? I don't get it.

auston13• 18 years ago

Right, I suppose I should have been more candid.

We are in the final stages of the development of the product. So there is no revenue; we're paying market (45-60k) plus options, but we're not ready to just dish that out to anyone.

It's kind of like finding a girlfriend. If you're filthy rich (and its obvious) than the playing field becomes uneven. We want people who are motivated by long-term opportunity, not taking a salary and clock punching from 10-5.

OK you may have a point here, but surely, if this post were to discourage people who are only looking for a salary haven't the "ends justified the means" ?

jd2• 18 years ago

That's definitely a valid point. Even if you had the money to pay above market rates, you still wouldn't because you know people exist who are willing to work really hard for less than market rates, if that gives them the opportunity to make a difference and build something great. In your case, you have to pick between extra runway and salary. That's a no brainer: 2 months of runway can be the difference between profitability followed by success and failing.

About the end justifying the means: Scaring off people you don't want to hire in the first place is easy. The problem is that by doing so, you're bound to give off bad vibes to people who would otherwise consider your company. Bear in mind that the people you want to hire are -by definition- in high demand. That means that they can (and should) demand a lot from you.

Just like in dating, people need only one reason to dismiss you as a qualified employer/so. Don't give them that reason.

axod2• 18 years ago

45-60k is market? :/ ouch.

abstractwater• 18 years ago

I hope you're giving a LOT of stock because for 45K you're gonna get high school kids or part-time college students.

bjun• 18 years ago

Hrm... because startups are not about making money right?

festivusr• 18 years ago

Granted, this guy's cover letter is not going to win him the job. But "Send us your resume! We'll post it on our web site and make fun of it! And your grammar, even though ours is not completely correct either!" is not going to win this company applicants, either.

edw519• 18 years ago

Good catch. Perhaps this article should be retitled, "How to Not Show Class when you are Recruiting."

auston13• 18 years ago

Perhaps, or possibly "How discourage self-entitled leeches from applying to your company".

geuis2• 18 years ago

I lived in south Florida for years before coming out to San Francisco. Working in IT down there was horrible. I will guarantee they aren't paying more than $35k-$40k per year. Here in SF I make nearly 3x as much as before doing the job they are advertising.

auston13• 18 years ago

We're paying market: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681

geuis2• 18 years ago

Yeah, thanks for proving my point. All of you people in South Florida need to sink into the ocean. I was the IT admin for a mid-sized real estate company for 2 years and while I liked my job and loved the people I worked for, the pay was crap. I looked for 6 months for a job after leaving there and jobs like yours were the only ones that kept popping up. You expect to get the most skilled person in the world, yet only want to pay them in packing peanuts. There's a reason that skilled people like me(I consider myself skilled) leave South Florida, and its because of people like you.

IsaacSchlueter4• 18 years ago

If you pay average, you'll get average. The job description is WAY above the average.

Frankly, "we're paying market" in this case is an insult, and it says a lot about your company.

lacker• 18 years ago

I don't think that guy really wanted the job. He's trying to do you a favor by pointing out that you are asking for a lot more than you are offering.

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

So asking for fair pay will eliminate you from consideration? Count me out.

Dilpil• 18 years ago

New title: How (not) to make hackers want to work for you:

1. Offer below market rates.

2. Be extremely vague about option plan.

3. Show a history of verbal abuse towards previous applicants.

lemonysnicket• 18 years ago

About us:

We are LeadLog, a small startup company in South Florida building lead management software. We're two biz dev guys, a ux guru and a hacker with solid business experience.

Hmm...something seems wrong about this equation...

palish• 18 years ago

Yeah. They're going to sink like a lead log.

IsaacSchlueter4• 18 years ago

Telling that the blog domain name is "get real or die".

The job request and the response to criticism are anything but realistic.

So I wonder which one Dashboard is going to do?

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

While you may not agree with the writer's suggestions, he was largely respectful. You were sarcastic, and made fun of his grammar. I'm sure he feels great reading your response on your blog.

Here's a question we should all ask ourselves: How could we have handled it better?

I would have written back to the fellow, thanking him for his interest. At least your karma points in the real world (you know, the ones that are even more important than those on HN) would do well.

Next, given that you haven't yet found a candidate, I'd either look to hire someone remotely, or hire a contractor to work on the most important stuff.

Good luck.

henryw• 18 years ago

good developers may be "interested in working on something innovative", but no one is gonna work for long without proper compensation.

13ren4• 18 years ago

There's an attitude of putting people down going round HN.

The applicant in the story put down the other applicants. LeadLog put down him, publicly. And now, HN is putting down auston. Everyone is criticising everyone else's spelling and grammar - and therefore becoming more self-conscious of their own.

If you are truly capable of creating value for others, putting others down is pointless for you. But it's worse: focusing on other's mistakes can and will erode your ability to create value for others. You will end as a destroyer of value.

Pride comes before a fall, and you won't be the first. Not by a long way.

s/Dashboard/LeadLog

unalone3• 18 years ago

I largely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: a little hostility helps people to check themselves. It forces you to think before you speak and before you post, which means there's a good chance you check yourself before you submit thing. It ensures a degree of quality control, and that's something that I think Hacker News benefits rather than suffers from.

The first forum I joined was one of people who enjoyed ripping on people who said stupid things and who wasted space. I joined there at a pretty young age: I still credit it for teaching me to think about and revise things that I post online. I still remember it fondly, in part because it was a tight community: it scared most people away, but that was good, because it was a site for a niche audience. (Similar, I'd say, to the niche audience that ought to be in Hacker News.)

I've also worked with forums that aimed towards nice: they tended to have a less fanatic userbase, and the people who remained were of wildly varying quality. Nice in excess leads to a downfall.

(I also haven't noticed much unfair hostility until the last month: the election polarized a lot of people, and brought in a lot of attitudes that seem less concerned with new information and interesting articles. Hopefully it will pass.)

13ren4• 18 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

I think you've combined two meanings in the word hostility: one is to argue and debate, i.e. antagonistic or Socratic; the other is to be disrespectful and insulting - aggressive domination, to win by making the other lose. The same with nice as its opposite: one meaning is to approve of anything with no objectivity or truth; the other is to respect others. I agree that challenging people is a good thing (even though it can feel uncomfortable and "not nice"), provided it is done is in a respectful way.

I think the key is whether one's goal is to get to the truth and learn and build; or whether one's goal is humiliation to show your superiority. However, it's fraught with danger to evaluate what someone else's goal is, because your interpretation of their intention is necessarily a step distant from the truth about them. But I see many comments on HN that are clearly seem way or the other (the remainder I'm not sure of).

I really love being shown I'm wrong by someone who sees more than I do. For the supernatural sense of expanding one's world, it's second only to experience. :-)

keefe• 18 years ago

"We’ll take care of you if you are dedicated to your work, trust me." - Trust? How about no...

fallentimes10• 18 years ago

This should be titled: How to post a startup story on a site that loves startups and get down modded in to oblivion.

Impressive Auston.

auston13• 18 years ago

lol, thanks.

dnaquin• 18 years ago

I had to say basically the same thing to a CEO just a couple weeks ago.

Of course I did after I was offered the job for what I can only describe as a joke. I asked for twice as much and though he offered me more, I had to say no and wish him the best of luck finding any developer at that price, let alone one who knew fizz-buzz. Needless to say, I couldn't have worked for him even if he met my demands. Truly the "we'll take care of you, trust us" makes no difference once you know how you're valued.

noonespecial• 18 years ago

Whenever some one tells you "Its not about the money..." that's how you know its about the money.

fourlittlebees• 18 years ago

Y'all are missing the point. Start-up offers totally unrealistic salary, and gets some script kiddie who couldn't hack his or her way out of a paper bag. Said script kiddie builds the app using toothpicks and glue. App actually gets users and completely s*s the bed. Founders realize they have a great idea and a loyal audience, but now have to spend a HUGE amount of money completely rebuilding the app because the existing codebase is useless.

What's worth more? Scaling your app at the outset and then rolling in profit? Or saving bucks at the outset and then blowing 10x more later on trying to fix the mistakes. Let's ask Twitter.

asif• 18 years ago

Is it too late to jump on top of the pile?

strlen• 18 years ago

Actually, if you're looking to "make money in a start-up", you'd join a start-up that you believe has growth potential and ask for an appropriate equity stake. As a trade off, you yourself accept a below market rate as a form of an investment.

If one is not seeking money in a start-up, but rather experience, environment and personal growth it would make sense for them to ask for a market rate salary (which is a valid concern if they've got a a family to feed or a mortgage to pay). Before you say "but isn't the experience/environment worth something" - yes it is, and the trade offs they make to gain that experience would be working longer hours, less job stability as well as lack of chances/challenges/opportunities/perks that only a big company could provide (e.g. if you're looking for a great UX/UI person you are probably competing with Yahoo, who has a really strong UX/UI organization; Yahoo offers its developers the challenge to scale a web application to thousand node deployments and billions of page views, you would never be able to do that).

For an employee applying to your start-up, taking a higher salary may as well be a smart thing to do, as judging by your posting (again, I may be wildly off track here and I mean no offense) you're building yet another LAMP webapp - not anything that's going to be wildly different from what there is on the market - in other words, you aren't building the next flickr/delicious/twitter much less youtube/facebook (and of course not the next google/yahoo). That's fine and there are always the above mentioned reasons to join your start-up (experience, environment) but the equity may not end up amounting to much (you could build a viable small business, but you wouldn't have a spectacular exit, especially for employees holding 0.25-2% equity which would be typical for a lead engineer).

Another point: if an employee sells themselves short to you (e.g. less options, less salary) how do you know they won't sell your product short (e.g. write worse code to save time; or purchase inferior hardware/hosting services to save money -- or even literally, sell your product for less than it's worth if they're a sales person).

So in short, your choices are either to expect an employee that matches the compensation you give them (below average comp. - below average employee, "market comp" - average employee, great comp - great employee) or convince the employees that their equity will amount to something. That's not always the wrong way to go: if building customer facing web applications isn't your company's core competency you don't need a great UI hacker - but that clearly isn't your case.

How (not) to get a job at a startup...

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