[savoy11]

I believe at this point most of the people on news.ycombinator are well aware of the "work at startup" bait. If you are that good to help a startup to grow from 0 to millions, you typically get $150K at Google (for example). For the 4-5 years it typically gets for the very few successful startups to cash out, you will be earning $750K for sure + benefits + sanity + normal life.

If you are that good and you are not one of the founders, you have to be very careful in your decision to join a startup. For every success story (it gets multiplied x 1,000,000 by the press), there are thousands of dramas and flops noone hears about.

[messel]

Agreed, there's a serious risk vs reward problem of founders vs first employees. I see founding as an exciting option, equity, control, low/no pay before revenue or funding.

First employees face a different risk, starting with a competitive but subpar salary with very small equity and little stability (get fired and your vested equity goes away), and they work long hours like founders.

If you found, you have to find a way to make it worth the risk to early employees. Many founders go the route of hiring first employees out of school where their options are slimmer.

[steveklabnik]

> sanity + normal life.

What sounds like a downside to you sounds like an upside to me. Normal life is pretty crappy, though $150k sounds tempting.

[kscaldef]

> Normal life is pretty crappy

You're doing it wrong?

My "normal life" is pretty awesome. Happy hour and meals with friends and girlfriend several times a week. Exercise most days. Most weekends include at least one of: hiking, rock climbing, skiing, snowshoeing, mountain climbing; often in wilderness areas with no cell phone coverage. Movies, live music, theater. Time to read books.

[steveklabnik]

It's mostly about the flexibility, not the after-work things. After working in a flexible environment for the last 10 years, and doing a little bit of 9-5 style work for the last few weeks, it really sucks.

[snow_mac]

Damn. I want that flexibility. I love the outdoors.

[lkrubner]

steveklabnik,

I was about to say the same thing, but you beat me to it. I think the type of people who are most drawn to startups are the ones who go insane working the so called "normal life". I prefer to work at startups - maybe that means I'm crazy. But I prefer my brand of crazy over other people's version of normal.

[flacon]

I agree. I recently worked as an Engineer at a startup for 2 years and helped take them from nothing to large scale. But after n many rounds of fund-raising and no additional stock option bonuses whats my incentive to stay? Founders, don't think that you can maintain a developers interest and enthusiasm in your idea over a period of years w/o some additional cash or options on the table.