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by ethagnawl 732 days ago
> All you’re saying is that in the contemporary context it’s exceedingly foolish to be an employee at an early startup.

As a rule, it is and always has been. For every unicorn piñata stuffed with winning lottery tickets, there are hundreds/thousands? of others whose employees walk away with nothing or less (debt, strained relationships, mental health issues, etc.) at worst or a job at AcquiHireCo at best.
1 comments
bradleyjg 732 days ago
There was always very high risk, so it was only ever for certain people. But in earlier iterations of SV it was possible to become generationally rich as an early employee. The VCs and founders have fixed the glitch.

To put it another way: early employee equity was always a lotto but now the payout is like some lame scratch off instead of the powerball jackpot.

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est31 732 days ago
The startups where employees get really rich still exist. I'm pretty sure the early employees of OpenAI are generationally rich for example.

It's just that these companies very often are the darlings since their inception, get constantly talked about. Everyone wants to to invest in them and everyone wants to join them. So they have the ability to pick out the best talent, in other words, it's unlikely you'll be able to join that specific startup.

But even 20 years ago, try getting into early Google. From what I heard they had extremely high bars for hiring as well and only lowered them once they got so large that the pool was exhausted.

I'd argue that the total comp at the established companies for engineers has increased precisely because of competition from startups: to make the startup not be the better option.

Does that mean that VCs are not taking a bigger slice than they used to? Absolutely not, but I wouldn't put the blame solely on them.

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bradleyjg 732 days ago
Re: openAI

We’ll see when it happens. If I had to name a company most likely to have massive landmines buried in front of common stock cashing out, it would be at the top of the list.

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comp_throw7 731 days ago
Notwithstanding the gross non-disparagement stuff, they've already had 3 tender offers, so not sure what you're waiting for.
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