Ask HN: What does it mean if lead engineer moves to competition? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does it mean if lead engineer moves to competition?

5 pointsrollinDyno9 comments

Roam Research is a popular note-taking app. It's hard to say whether it's the most popular in a competitive, but it's got plenty of loyal supporters as shown by the number of people that suscribed to the 5-year-plan for 500 USD.

Recently, their lead engineer left for a YC competitor: Athens Research [1].

Is this as indicting as it looks? Or is it common? This engineer was in Roam for less than a year, so I don't think his shares were vested, so this is at least a signal that he thinks the shares in Roam are going to be worth less than shares in Athens (assuming equal participation.)

I think this is an important question for prospective users, as they're making long term investments not only money-wise but also because of data lock-in.

[1] https://twitter.com/AthensResearch/status/1414254253124866052

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We can speculate around someone's motivations all day, but no one can speak for this engineer but themself, and it sounds like they would (understandably) prefer to keep private matters private.

At the end of the day he probably got an offer more favorable than his current package in some dimension that's important to him. Boring answer but it is what is. Earlier stage often means opportunity for more equity...

That said, Roam itself appears really small and only to have just raised 9M ~9 months ago. So they are likely either raising their next round now / imminently.

As someone with no horse in the race, I do not think it says anything about Roam itself. The average employee tenure at a startup is ≤ 12 months and I want to say the actual figure is ~9 months so this isn't particularly unusual.

One potentially interesting question might be, does Roam have a non-compete [and will they attempt to enforce it]? But it looks like they are based in SF... so probably not.

Another potentially angle is to research the background of the new startup's founders. It looks like Athens' product is open source [1] while Roam's is not. That can be substantial to a lot of the engineers at the end of the day.

[1]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

It could be personal. It could be Athens offered him more shares. It could be likes Athens vision or he doesn't like his coworkers.

The whole point of a corporation is that "key people" aren't so key. If Steve Wozinak had left Apple in 1977 it could have been a lethal blow. He crashed his plane in 1981 and took an extended leave and Apple got along fine without him. (e.g. he had nothing to do with Lisa, Mac...)

The lead engineer might consider _ALL_ shares/options of startups worth zero and took the leave because of other reasons. It's really difficult to take an educational guess based on a few lines of description.

Software engineers are the new sport players.

My thoughts exactly. It's just part of the game. Join a better team, get better pay, win more trophies.

Since you have so many details, why not just ask the person “why the job switch?”

He's declined to comment.

Please respect their privacy then.

This sounds normal. When someone wants to leave a job, whatever their reasons, their best move is often to find another job in the same niche, as it allows them to bring their subject matter knowledge.

If you are reading anything more into it other than a person made a change in their career for their own reasons, you are reading too much.

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