[kstrauser]

I routinely get emails like "we'd like to hire you as our CTO, and because we just got a bunch of VC money, we're prepared to offer you a generous comp package of up to $90,000 salary plus .05% equity! Must be onsite in San Francisco."

If they were aware of market rates, they could avoid making potential candidates laugh at them.

[__loam]

Founding engineer is the biggest ripoff in tech.

[kstrauser]

But... but... they already did the hard part of coming up with the idea! All you have to do is code it.

[steve_adams_86]

Literally the worst experience of my life. I don’t even mention it on my resume or LinkedIn or anything. I suppose it was a success and the product is still doing fine. I just never want to do that again unless it’s for myself.

[kstrauser]

Were you ever at Crittercism by chance?

[steve_adams_86]

No, this was a sort of AI assistant before AI thing. It was a whole bunch of state machines and decision trees and NLP. It actually worked fairly well.

[kstrauser]

Gotcha. Your name looked awfully familiar and I was going to be very happy if you were another person with it.

Not that I’m not happy with you, the OG and clearly greatest of the name!

[Terr_]

> plus .05% equity!

"Dilution? What? Stop worrying about made-up words and let's go change the world!"

[kstrauser]

That actually made me shudder.