[Berone]

The path to getting into these founder / c-suite roles is those founding engineer roles in which you can learn how to scale and operate these ventures.

The founding engineer role at 0.5% is not meant to be a role to retire on, but a stepping stone to those bigger roles.

[satvikpendem]

Not really, it's better to just start your own startup instead, there is not much need to spend years as a founding engineer before becoming a founder, you might learn some skills but it's nothing you can't learn yourself, as evidenced by the people who are first time founders who did not previously work at a startup. If you get to some scale and get acquired (or even shut down), you can leverage that for future higher positions that a founding employee would not get you.

[Berone]

It just depends on if you have the background and talent to warrant that role. I think that is an exceptional case for someone to get funding and support to build a venture without any operating experience.

[satvikpendem]

Most companies that YC and other VCs fund are by first-time founders, mostly those who have not been in other startups. Like the other commenter said, the path to being a founder is actually founding.

[lazide]

If operating == running an existing similar company, then almost no successful founders I’m aware of had such experience before hand, did they?

[compiler-guy]

A "Founding Engineer" at 0.5% is an inflated title for "someone who can actually produce a project but is going to get clobbered at exit time."

The title itself is mostly a lie.

[Berone]

I agree. What started as a title that signaled the individual was there at the earliest parts of building the venture, it has been abused.

[Seattle3503]

It seems common enough that early engineers are purged for "higher quality talent" from the big companies at some point. Most of the high quality engineers won't join early on because they don't work for startup equity. Once the business is established and salaries are higher those FANG engineers are happy to join.

[Ancalagon]

Except I personally know a number of CTO/co-founders that never served their time that way and went straight from Google/FB/big-tech to CTO..

[Berone]

Sure, I didn't mean to imply it's the only path to those seats.

[catlover76]

The path to being a founder is actually founding. One doesn't need to be a "founding engineer" beforehand.

[lazide]

Being a better wheel isn’t going to put one in the drivers seat - no matter how good of one they are.

That said, if someone is the type who pays attention and learns what is going on, being close enough to see certainly helps.

[ClarityJones]

> meant

by whom?

[Berone]

The folks designing the compensation plan and explaining the plan to the potential employee. I can't speak to unethical cases in which things are misrepresented.