[bradlys]

This is a bad take. If you truly value options at $0 then you’re often getting a garbage deal wherever you go. If you’re only negotiating over salary - you’re screwing yourself.

Options is how you actually make money at startups. The salary is only enough to make sure you can afford to exercise your options regularly and not starve to death in an extremely HCOL area.

If you value options at $0 - just join FAANG and never join a startup.

[ptmcc]

The vast, vast majority of startup options are worth less than toilet paper. To say nothing of the shenanigans like dilution and liquidation preferences that will screw you.

They are lottery tickets at best. Yes, sure, someone sometimes wins big, but the odds are not in your favor.

[bradlys]

If you think they're lottery tickets - pick a better startup. Seriously. You shouldn't be joining startups unless you think they have a chance of liquidation for you.

If you really do think they're worthless THEN JOIN FAANG.

[whakim]

The average time to exit is something like 8-10 years right now. Are you suggesting you can pick the startups founded over the last year or two that are going to have a big IPO in 2030?

[indecisive_user]

Even if you magically knew which startups could be viable 8 years down the road, there's tons of factors completely outside your control that could tank a startup in an instant; e.g. covid, a world war, regulation, etc.

That "carpool as a service" startup might have had a great business strategy up until a pandemic showed up. And if you're spending 8-10 years waiting for a payoff, you only get ~3 shots to pick correctly.

[peter422]

There is no reason to work anywhere for more than 4 years. Vest the options, which have a 7-10 year exercise window because you’d only take a job at a company that had them, then quit and get another job and take another shot.

Your lottery ticket remains whether you are working there or not. The only reason not to leave after 4 years is if you are a founder or the company is giving you extremely generous compensation.

[gambiting]

>>There is no reason to work anywhere for more than 4 years.

I sometimes feel like no one on HN actually enjoys what they do. It's strange.

[tdumitrescu]

Every company gives refresher grants. If you only got 1 grant over 4 years, then the company doesn't care about retaining you.

[jjeaff]

If you think your lottery tickets are worthless, then pick better lottery numbers!

[ricardobeat]

Unfortunately I think most people will miss the sarcasm on this one.

[ptmcc]

I wish I had your unimpeachable knowledge and foresight of which small fraction of startups will not only succeed, but succeed so much that your options will actually be worth something meaningful.

I would wish you the best of luck, but sounds like you don't need it.

[scarface74]

VCs are not able to “pick good startups”. They diversify and don’t care if nine out of 10 fail.

For every one person who got lucky and think it was because they chose well, there are nine you never hear about.

[zwily]

One out of ten odds are also much, much better than the lottery though.

[scarface74]

“Success” means that the VCs get their money back and maybe make a decent profit and even the founders might make some money. It says nothing about you as an employee making money.

I wouldn’t want to spend years of my life on a 1 out of 10 chance.

[aahortwwy]

Lottery tickets aren't worthless, and the expected value of a startup option is higher than a lottery ticket.

You shouldn't value them at $0.

[xmprt]

This is an even worse take. The only way startups are a good way to make money is by working at a VC. And that's only because they can buy into 10s or 100s of startups at once and only need one to succeed.

> If you value options at $0 - just join FAANG and never join a startup.

This assumes that people only care about money and not about job satisfaction, mission, team, more scope/control over the company's future, etc. There are many good reasons to join a startup. Making money isn't one of them.

[8note]

Valued at $0 because thats what theyll be treated as when the founders and moneyed investors get paid out first.

Sure, options are how you get rich from a startup, but you dont get rich at a startup by working for one, only by being a founder or an investor.

That's why I work at a FAANG:P startups exist to screw their employees

[JumpCrisscross]

> you dont get rich at a startup by working for one, only by being a founder or an investor

I’ve written small (<$50k) Series A cheques into companies where employee no. 20 made more than I did. That’s fine. They invested a hell of a lot more and put much more on the line. Options shouldn’t be counted on. They’re high risk. But no need to be that cynical. Plenty of people want the ones they were in the trenches with to win big when they do.

[ricardobeat]

I bet that employee didn’t have 50k in cash to invest in extremely high risk equity. Even people making 200k/year wouldn’t consider 50k a small amount (it’s almost half of your net). A higher-than-average salary is quite different from “getting rich”.

[JumpCrisscross]

> A higher-than-average salary

Sorry, I meant on exit. They built up more equity over the years through employment and cashed out. This wasn’t a blockbuster exit either.

[matwood]

I mostly agree with you, but I would just add 'on average' to your comment. There are exceptions, but the most surefire way to reach financial security is to get a job in big tech.

[RexM]

That’s a new one for me, what’s the P?

[kzzzznot]

I think it combined with the : (missing a preceding space) was supposed to be a sticky-tongue-out emoji

[highwaylights]

I love the way your advice to people is just join FAANG like everyone gets to.

Why not just become The Rock? Dude makes way better money than Google pays.

[matwood]

I didn't read it that way. Startups live on the backs of people who either can't or don't want to work in big tech. The US in particular glorifies entrepreneurs and scrappy startups, but it's super hard and most fail.

If I thought I could pass the tech screening, and then deal with big company bureaucracy I would tomorrow. Instead, I'm a tech generalist who also doesn't mind handling business or selling, and I have a low BS tolerance. I've done ok in small companies over the second half my career, but I certainly made less than big tech.

[scarface74]

I would say until the last three months, it seems like with a few years of experience and “grinding leetcode” anyone could get into one of the BigTech public companies.

I got in by doing a slight pivot from software engineering. But I definitely tell a couple of younger relatives who just graduated to do the monkey dance.

[skinnymuch]

What is diff about last few months? I’m going to be doing the monkey dance too. I don’t get satisfied from doing more enjoyable coding work compared to salary increases. Even if I don’t get to big tech until after a recession possibly hits.

[scarface74]

Companies are slowing down hiring and the startups and recently public companies are laying off people and freezing hiring.

I’m older (48) and fell into BigTech via the cloud consulting division - cloud application development. I never had to go through the leetcode grind. But my path was very narrow and I recommend that people go through the leetcode grind.

[skinnymuch]

Ah yeah I was not sure if that’s what you meant. I’m older relative to college grads or graduate students.

I’m switching to programming as a full time career now after coding on my own for a long time.

I’m now trying to pivot to getting any meh job and then grind through leetcode in spare time. Vs do the grinding and possibly find myself unable to get a decent job.

Of course I’m not necessarily going for big tech for either first career job. Just as close as possible with the leetcode and hope to be in there after the 1st.

—

Will you have to do the leetcode grind if you switch job and want to “level up” as it were to an even better job and company?

[scarface74]

I only know about small non tech enterprise companies where I never had a serious coding interview and was able to lean on my experience and my most recent job at BigTech where I didn’t go through any coding interviews, was able to lean on my experience and did have a couple of System Design rounds where I had to explain real world implementations.

From what I understand, for more senior level software development positions, they still put you through coding, system design and behavioral.

[jjav]

> If you value options at $0 - just join FAANG and never join a startup.

Basically, yes.

Most (large majority) of startups can't pay market rate salaries. So if you value options literally at $0, then a startup is only an underpaid overworked job, so skip it.

So to even consider a startup job, you need to mentally give some expected value (probability * value) to those options. The probability is going to be very low, so the potential value needs to be high, i.e. don't join without a significant option grant.

[jokethrowaway]

But I don't want to work in the office in a hcol or study algorithms for three months or get bogged down in performance reviews.

Tons of startups and mid sized companies give you an ok salary and some serious advantages.

Even ex fangs end up there because of those advantages.

[fatnoah]

I've done startup, FAANG, and everywhere in between. Each offers advantages and disadvantages, but I learned far, far, far, far more about building software in my many years at startups. I've done everything from standing up infra, configuring routing tables, doing tech support, helping with sales, writing code, being a product manager, being a people manager, being an executive with a 40+ person distributed org, going through an acquisition, living through dotcom boom and bust, 2008 crisis, etc.

FAANG pay was ridiculous, and there are also great things to learn there as well, but I value my startup time much more in terms of my own growth.

[kelnos]

I think there are plenty of valid reasons to want to work for a startup (rather than a FAANG) that have nothing to do with compensation. Not for everyone, of course, but that's fine too.