[titanomachy]

I’m a low-senior engineer recently laid off. I got lots of emails like that and politely declined. I have a bit over four months of severance pay. For the moment, I’m enjoying other fulfilling activities as well as spending some time upgrading my tech skills through independent study.

I’ve considered some startups, but it seems like it’s often difficult to enforce boundaries on work… I benefit a lot from being able to go offline completely on evenings and weekends. That was always possible in my last job except during the occasional oncall and maybe one or two major launches per year. Also, the pay offered is usually half of what I made in my last job, or less. If the current market situation persists for another six months I’ll probably relax my standards. Or if I get contacted by a startup that’s especially impressive or interesting, or someone I trust tells me it’s a great place to work.

Pay isn’t the most important factor, but I don’t want to get locked in at low comp and have to change again in six months. Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups. With Google or whatever I can always find contacts who work there and ask them how they feel about their job; with startups every person I talk to is trying to convince me to join and is incentivized to downplay the problems.

[JSavageOne]

> Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups.

Yes this is a big problem as you have no idea what you're signing up with startups. Maybe the founder expects you to work 12 hours/day and constantly be available, maybe they will fire you a month before your equity vesting, or just randomly fire you one day despite having never given any negative feedback. I've seen all of this at startups, and there is zero accountability. Last time it happened to me I wasn't even offered any severance.

If anyone is considering working for a startup, please do your due diligence. Do not be naive and think that because the founders are very friendly and their startup is backed by YC that they are a good place to work and won't fire you the second they have any doubts about you (personally I'll never work as a full-time employee for a startup going through YC ever again, but that's a story for another day).

Going forward if I'm ever thinking about working for a startup, I will reach out to employees, and ideally ex-employees, to get the inside scoop on what the founders are really like behind the smoke & mirrors.

[rk1987]

So true.

I know a friend who led product at a startup (YC). One fine day he shared concerns on how company is narrowly focusing on just one parameter. 10 mins later, he got employment termination letter.

[rcarmo]

Not just startups - even established non-tech companies reaching out can be _very_ opaque, since their tech staff essentially exists in a parallel dimension…

[gen220]

If you're interviewing with an early stage (read: pre-series B) startup, the founders believe you're a good fit, and they have seeded a good culture, they will be happy to let you interview every person they've hired so far.

I like to ask these people "Why did you choose this company versus any of the other ones?" and "What were your expectations about [thing I'm uncertain about], and how did your experience differ from that?"

Startups actually have more signal to offer than most big tech companies. However, the onus is on you to scuttlebut, and it's true that the risks of not doing it well are more severe.

Re: compensation, if you are able to demonstrate competence and efficacy, early stage startups will offer you a cash basis comparable to that of big tech. Of course, if your expenses have inflated to the expectation of selling big tech RSUs every year, you should expect a pretty significant "real" cut in annual income unless you walk in to another public company.

[titanomachy]

You're right that the cash compensation is often similar. But estimating the value of options is really hard! One of the better (seed) companies I considered working at was able to tell me what my options would be worth given various exit scenarios. In that particular case the company would have had to exit with a $5B valuation in order to match my FAANG compensation. The company was worth $100M at the time. When I pointed this out, the founders reassured me that they were very confident that their company would exceed that valuation :)

[pcthrowaway]

Curious if there could be repercussions are of joining a startup, enforcing your boundaries, and if they don't respect them, quitting early (just leaving them off your resume).

You get a bit more cash, and I can't see it impacting your career negatively (though you do end up trading some of the time you could be resting and collecting severance to see if the company might be a good long-term fit)