Are companies hiring enough for this to be viable and to get 20% of first year salary? I thought all of that had died down significantly, but I haven't been following closely.
Good question! It's certainly not a favorable environment to be founding such a company, although we are seeing some signs of a change in the weather over the past six weeks or so. That's not a huge surprise, one of the optimistic cases for how things might go was "we spend time doing all the awkward experimental stuff while the market is bad, so we're positioned to ramp up when it improves".
Certainly the market is one likely cause if we do fail, though.
Anecdotally seeing similar things. Had a FAANG hiring manager tell me that they over indexed on new grads in the 2010s, and the hiring was now focused on 5-10 years of experience. So basically the same cohorts, just at a different career stage.
Would not be surprised if hiring showing a trickle of coming back, is partly due to the AI overhyping showing a trickle of coming down too, based on a couple of recent articles I've read (e.g. recent GS (1) one), and also on based on common sense, which is not very common, as Voltaire said, starting to trickle back too.
Certainly the market is one likely cause if we do fail, though.