What to know before working at a start-up

http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/5-things-to-know-about-working-for-a-start-up/

by MMcCreery • 14 years ago

62 34 14 years ago

thedailymuse.com

moubarak• 14 years ago

There is no better way to describe my situation right now working for a startup. it's my second desk in one month.

sparknlaunch12• 14 years ago

I worry if people don't know this before joining a startup?

For an employee, surely this would come through the interview process?

csallen• 14 years ago

I think you would be surprised at the number of people who apply for jobs at startups without being aware of any of this. Or, just as bad, who hear about this stuff but don't take it seriously.

thrwwy201205082• 14 years ago

> Start-ups have their pick of motivated young professionals, and they’re certainly not afraid of personnel shake-ups. Showing that you can easily roll with the punches is one way to ensure your success.

This seems to be at odds with the constant complaint of a talent shortage, especially when startups have to compete with the offers made by AmaGooBookSoft. Which is to be believed?

potatolicious• 14 years ago

My first-hand experience is that line the blog is mostly wrong. Startups are incredibly afraid of attrition, while at the same time eager to cut loose dead weight.

If the company values you and you hold the keys to some aspect of the company's operation, the team is far too small for them to practice poor retention.

On the other hand, with a finite runway and the need to move quickly, if you can't keep up, there's little reason why the company needs to have you on board.

So I suppose it cuts both ways... but if you're a competent employee, I see startup hiring as advantageous for the employee at this point in time.

strlen• 14 years ago

Yes, there is indeed a shortage of strong developers (especially in certain niches like infrastructure, mobile, or machine learning). It also impacts big companies and not just startups.

Startups also do experience a higher degree (usually mutually agreed upon or voluntary) personnel turnover, some time well into the later stages. If you don't expect it, it can be unnerving: imagine if the person who recruited you and who you were eager to work with quits (this really shook me up first time it happened!). Nonetheless it is actually healthy: if someone believes that their personal interests and the startup's interests no longer align (either they don't think it will be as successful as they hope, or it has changed direction in a way that their technical skills are now underutilized), it is better for them to depart.

I think the article is mostly right. One place where I will disagree is in regards to "risk": traditional corporate careers (think joining GE or IBM and staying there for 10-15 years, entering management as the only possible promotion) actually offer less job security than working for younger technology companies (whether startups or Google/Facebook).

What one should consider instead are opportunity costs: financial (a startup might match a bigger company in base pay, but they will usually not offer RSUs that you can start selling in a year), but most importantly the non-financial ones (if the startup fails, will I still learn any unique, useful, and broadly applicable skills?)

n9com• 14 years ago

This is vital reading for anyone looking to join a startup, especially if you are coming from a corporate background.

jasonkester4• 14 years ago

I used to really enjoy working for startups. You get to work on a completely open-ended project from a clean sheet of paper, with a bunch of fun people and the energy that comes from building something fast.

The "risk" that this article talks about was actually a bonus in my mind. It meant that, more often than not, the whole company would suddenly evaporate out from under you at some point and you'd find yourself out on the job market again. Since this is an industry where Changing Jobs == Big Fat Raise, having a chance to do so with a perfectly valid excuse ("we rode our $4M straight into the ground, so here I am") was a definite upside.

Not to mention that finding yourself on the street after 6 months coding non-stop while living on somebody's couch will invariably leave a fella with a nice stack of cash. The sort of cash that goes a long way if one were to squeeze in a quick nine month trip to SE Asia before hopping back aboard the next startup for another fun, fast trip into the side of the mountain.

If you're young, unburdened, and looking to get exposed to a lot of cool tech in a short time (and still get paid for it), joining somebody else's startup is totally the way to go.

Swizec3• 14 years ago

I must be doing it wrong. Somehow coming out of a startup has never left me with a big wad of cash.

jasonkester4• 14 years ago

Was that startup not paying you a salary while you were working there? Were you somehow managing to spend your entire paycheck every week?

These are the most basic of life skills, and if you find you're not rapidly saving lots of money while making any form of salary greater than $50k/year, that's a big red flag.

Seeing as how a dev worth his salt will be making at least double that, I don't have an answer for you as to why you ended up without any savings after working at a software development job.

Care to elaborate?

mjw• 14 years ago

Shame about the emphasis on long hours here. Not all start-ups expect them as a matter of course and I'm not convinced that they're a healthy part of start-up culture or crucial to success.

People should be prepared to be flexible of course, but I'd hate to see long hours perpetuated as part of this cargo cult start-up success myth and expected by default by founders.

MaxGabriel• 14 years ago

Can you talk a little more on that? The author's stat of 16 hour days for six months sounds inflated

jasonkester4• 14 years ago

Startup founders sometimes convince themselves that they need to work those sort of hours. Startup employees generally have enough sense not to.

Not to say that I'd balk at working 80 hour weeks for your Startup if that's what you want. So long as you're paying me by the hour, you can have as many of them as you'd like. You'll burn through your capital twice as fast, with considerably less than twice as much product to show for it, but hey, it's your money. I just work here.

bluedanieru2• 14 years ago

What to know before moving to the US to be in a start-up: health insurance is considered a bonus.

anamax3• 14 years ago

> What to know before moving to the US to be in a start-up: health insurance is considered a bonus

Another thing to know - it's fairly inexpensive if you're young and in decent health.

For the vast majority of you, worrying about health insurance is more silly than worrying about the cost of a car.

ajdecon• 14 years ago

Just as a caveat: "in decent health" doesn't just mean "in decent health right now". It means "has never had a major health issue that could put you in a high-risk group".

Individual insurance also means that the first major health issue you have can drastically increase your future premiums.

munin• 14 years ago

that's not true.

a friend of mine was 22, she tried to buy individual health insurance with a blank medical history and discovered that no insurer offered polices for her gender and age group in her geographic region (VA)

no one would sell her individual insurance.

as a 26 year old male with a similarly blank medical history in a different geographic region (MD), I recently had exactly the same thing happen. no one would quote me a policy because no one wanted to sell me a policy.

bluedanieru2• 14 years ago

So? Were you trying to make a point with your bullshit apologism here, or just thinking out loud?

You're wrong, for one. Self-insuring in the US is an expensive proposition for anyone regardless of age or medical history. Also this isn't the days of immigrants coming over by the boatload to spend 40 years making widgets in a factory before dying an early death anymore. The US healthcare system's poor (and deserved) reputation has a non-trivial effect on the country's competitiveness. It is dragging the economy down. And this is a part of it. Ignore that at your peril (please).

danssig• 14 years ago

Wtf? Why hasn't this post blended into the background already? US healthcare inexpensive? Pretty much everyone who's ever looked into this disagrees.

Worrying about about health insurance is silly? What a moronic attitude. Health care is a reverse lottery and there's practically no top end if you end up with "winning" genetics/car crash/whatever. "Not worrying" about healthcare insurance is irresponsible and wreckless. If you end up needing expensive emergency care the rest of us have to foot that bill because you were so arrogant as to think it couldn't happen to you.

Unbelievable.

michaelochurch3• 14 years ago

I think, personally, that "the startup scene" is tapped and that it's time to move on. I'm not saying "join big companies". I think it's time to forget this social media bubble idiocy and move back to Real Technology, in companies big and small. Joining a startup doing Real Tech can be a good move, but joining some mummer's jape because "it's a startup" is not.

The most important thing, when joining a company, is to enter one with a real engineering culture. Are the most qualified people making important decisions? Is it going to stay that way? Will you be able to make decisions that affect you? (Expecting to make decisions that affect others, in your first 12 months, is asking a big much.) Too many of these hot startups (and almost all of the VC darlings) have shitty MBA culture. Sure, they have free pizza (at 8:00 pm) and engineers can wear jeans, but the major decisions are still made by the wrong sorts of people.

Also, I think the social media bubble is going to embarrass itself just like the last one did, and I think it's going to splotch a lot of resumes. I think it's wiser to make for Real Technology now rather than in 2015 when a large number of people are trying to do the same because Google is no longer acq-hiring IUsedThisToilet apps for $487 million.

Finally, becoming a subordinate employee at a startup is usually a shitty deal. The stock option on 0.01073% of the company isn't real ownership. It's a lottery ticket. And if you don't know what preferences the investors have, you're in absolutely no position to evaluate the equity even if things do go well. (By the way, my friend had an offer at a VC darling, for 60% of the salary he was making but about 0.25% of the company. When he asked if there were preferences against that equity, the offer was rescinded. I don't know if this is normal, but it is telling.)

There are 4 reasons to join a startup. 1. For a promotion. This can be dicey because the startup might hire people above you as it grows, defeating the purpose of that move. If you join a startup as the first programmer and end up answering to an MBA-toting VP before your equity is fully vested, you've been fucked. Startups have good reasons not to make their first programmers CTOs, but if you're the first programmer, you should absolutely insist on investor contact and lock in a VP-level title. 2. You know and trust the people running the operation. I would say that this is the big one. Startups can be amazing opportunities if you trust the people running the show, and if they trust you to make important decisions. 3. Literally no one else is doing that kind of work. Since blue-sky R&D (once funded by large companies and governments) has disappeared or is only available to people with PhDs from top departments, this is not an uncommon case. 4. You're a founder.

thrwwy201205082• 14 years ago

> By the way, my friend had an offer at a VC darling, for 60% of the salary he was making but about 0.25% of the company. When he asked if there were preferences against that equity, the offer was rescinded. I don't know if this is normal, but it is telling.

This is disturbing, but it does seem like he dodged a bullet there.

I'll corroborate that I had an offer rescinded when I tried to negotiate salary and benefits... but this was not a startup. Do companies that behave like this think that everyone is desperate to work for them?

Killah911• 14 years ago

A startup's a great place to be if you're "young at heart"

What to know before working at a start-up

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