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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

...the head of the start-up incubator and investment firm, Y Combinator, gave opening remarks, recommending that young people avoid jobs in big tech. “You get to program your life on a totally different scale.... The worst thing that can happen to you is you get a job at Google.” He called those jobs “$100,000 a year welfare” — meaning, he said, that workers can get tethered to the paycheck and avoid taking risks.

Why would you want to work for a YCombinator startup if you're not a founder? You're taking the risk, you get underpaid, and you don't get the big potential payoff.

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The head of YC will always give advice that helps their cause. They will not say "go get a job elsewhere and don't work for the companies we invest in". Setting aside if that is good advice or not you should always consider the motive behind it. In this case, they are too biased to be trustworthy so don't try to analyze something possibly thrown in bad faith. Plus, I know for a fact that they have invested on companies started by recent grads that started their careers at big corps and then jumped ship. You gotta find a problem to fix somewhere, right?

... only that in 2018, it's anything but $100k. New grads would scoff at that; they're easily clearing $200k if not more[1]

And I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. YC's stance is convenient since they have a vested interest in getting talent for your startup. I see it as more desperation in the face of the current reality that most people can comfortably earn for their future while working at a big co and then choose to move to a startup (in whatever capacity) further down the line once they're more "woke" so to speak.

[1] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

If (big if) you can choose the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase etc. and become one of the first 20 employees, your payoff is going to be far greater than if you're the founder of an average YC startup. There's also the closer-knit network than at a huge company like Google & the opportunity to learn several times more than you would at a big company.

Definitely not for everyone and you will be paid less off the bat. But if you think about the course of your career, working at a startup(s) for a few years is probably a good way to lengthen the upper tail of your future potential wealth distribution with relatively limited downside risk.

> If (big if) you can choose the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase etc. and become one of the first 20 employees,

Completely irrelevant. As one of the first 20, you have exactly zero idea if it's going to be the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, etc.

Your chances of landing at a company like this as a first 20 are perhaps .0001%, and if you did land there, you won't know it was a success for 5-10 years afterwards. And as a person straight out of school, you are not getting key-hire level of equity in your offer package. You'll get an amount that would equalize the total comp were you to go to a bigco, IF the startup sees modest success.

Big payoff is not the reason to go to a startup. As one of the parents said, work environment is the reason. IMHO anyone out of school should go to a startup, not a bigco. For the work environment.

Same reason you'd work for any startup - because startups are fun and interesting? You get a level of autonomy you can never have at an established company, with freedom to experiment and work creatively.

As someone who has worked for five separate startups, I have to disagree. While you do get close to your teammates, in my experience the managers in startup-land tend to be a lot less flexible because they have their vision of how something is supposed to be done.

I work for a giant evil megacorporation now, and I honestly feel like I have more freedom here to explore new stuff than I ever did as a JS/PHP/GOLANG/MONGODB Ninja/Rockstar/Guru in startup land.

Worked at 3 startups and 2 mega-corps and had the absolute opposite experience.

The only time a manager at a startup was trying to stringently manage me was when he was hired from a mega-corp. Lot of startups make that mistake.

For me, startups still remain the best place to explore new technologies and capabilities (incl. personal upskilling) under a deadline (as opposed to personal projects).

It's an interesting dynamic. BigCo doesn't live or die by a single employee or customer, so they can afford for devs to explore tech/ideas/etc.

But in terms of actually commercializing/releasing something, there's so many hoops to jump through that good ideas simply get stifled.

Startups are the opposite - they can ill afford a developer spending a week learning NewStack, but if someone floats an idea that fits (or improves) their business model, they can execute in the blink of an eye.

As with most things in life, there's pros and cons to both.

The (in?)famous article Don't Call Yourself a Programmer [0] argues otherwise. The author warns against working for a startup, unless you're the founder or committed to what he calls a lifestyle. Instead, he argues you can work for a hi-tech big corp, enjoying autonomy and fun projects as well as a good work-life balance.

Not that I agree with everything in that essay -- some pretty cynical and controversial statements there -- but what he says about startups seems worth considering.

[0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

That's a great article. I especially love the bit about equity, which ought to be valued at $0 for all practical decision-making purposes.

My experiences with the tech giants have featured neither autonomy, fun, nor anything resembling a work-life balance; they do pay well, but not well enough to make that kind of experience worthwhile. Life is here to be lived, not put off for later, and I'm not going to waste mine grinding away on a bunch of tedious bullshit so long as I have an alternative.

Then again, here I am writing from my cubicle at yet another tech giant, which recently acquired the startup I was working for, and it's been a much better experience so far. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up sticking around for a while.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I definitely agree that life's too short to waste it grinding away at tedious tasks. I'm certainly not arguing for doing boring stuff at a big corp!

>you can work for a hi-tech big corp, enjoying autonomy and fun projects as well as a good work-life balance.

The big companies I have worked with have always had legacy software and slow moving projects. (Edit: 2 out of 3 of the big companies I have worked for. One was very cool, but the location was absolutely terrible).

I suppose the author of TFA argues you should choose your big corp wisely ;)

My own experience has been mostly low/mid-tier companies (software factories mostly) and they are terrible: slow moving, legacy and uninteresting projects; low motivation; no highly qualified people to learn anything from; nobody cares if the damn thing works.

My current job is at a relatively big company. Fast moving projects, interesting tech (depending on the project), high motivation, lots of very knowledgeable coworkers. Granted, my experience is a really small sample (1 out of 1) and I've never worked for a startup so I can't compare. One of my friends has been struggling with his own startup for some years, and while the tech is interesting, his day to day is very stressful (and highly focused on staying afloat) and I wouldn't want it for me.

I know a fair number of people who had fun, interesting careers in their 20s. But when we talk about investments and saving, they all seem to suddenly realize that time is limited, and if you’re going to trade it for money, it’s best to get as much money for your time as you comfortably can.

I feel like a good stage play or even book has been written about this.

Not sure if you have a specific one in mind but I for one am curious.

There is a lot to be said for getting a job at a BigCo and getting out of debt before taking big risks on startups.

Nothing to be surprised about what YC is saying, considering YC makes money if good people work for their startups.

Who cares about the payoff? Startups will still pay you a good enough salary, and if they don't why would you even consider working there? It's not like startups don't pay a salary at all.

And if a startup does pay well, why is it risky to join? Worst case scenario it folds and goes bankrupt in a year. It's not like there's a shortage of software jobs that you'll be unemployed for a long time. Also, for people who want to become founders in the future, joining a startup is their best option to learn about how businesses are built and what mistakes to avoid in building said businesses.

So not everyone is joining startups just for the payoff or to make it big. People are way more realistic than that.

Equity

If that's your goal, start your own company.

The best way to learn how to start your own company is to join an early stage where they give you lots of responsibility and ownership. The closer you are to the founders the easier it is to learn from their mistakes.

This isn’t really true. The important experiences at a startup are meeting and learning to work with investors, the board, regulators, early key customers and so on. As an employee you won’t get this exposure (tho’ the founders will dangle it in front of you like a carrot). As an early employee your job is to grind, sacrifice your health and relationships, then get diluted out by the next fundraising round.

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