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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

> Problem is that this is not how this is unravelling. Large lay-offs like that cull entire departments, not the lower performers.

Companies like Google are overstaffed by the lazy, entitled Prima Donnas. You can see it all over HN in its advice:

"Don't go to a startup! You would need to work. Rather get a job at FAANG, get paid a very large salary, leave on the dot, don't ever be on call. Also, best part, you will get at least a few hours a day to play around on the internet. Also, remember, you have a power of pocket veto! If you do not like something, just don't do it. What are they going to do? Fire you? You will get another job in a jiffy!"

With the zero interest rate environment gone the culling is inevitable.

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Advice on HN not to go to a startup is because 99% of startups have bullshit equity options these days.

They're not worth the risk and stress because the VCs and founders are keeping potential payouts to themselves but pushing a huge amount of the financial risk and work stress onto their staff.

Unless you're a cofounder or maybe a founding engineer, payout from a reasonable sale of a startup these days -- if it fluked out and actually happened -- ends up being little more than the annual comp at one of these BigCorps.

TLDR, you don't get a job at a FAANG because you're lazy, you get that job because you're looking out for yourself and your family and you'd prefer not to be someone's plaything.

That said I got sick of Google and went and shopped around last year and now I'm working at a smaller, series B funded company now and love it. But I ain't hoping to get rich, just job satisfaction.

When VCs and founders get their shit together on equity agreements, early stage startups will be more attractive again.

EDIT: Also hate to burst your bubble, but on-call rotation is a part of plenty of Google SWE teams, not just SRE. But they do pay a handsome bonus for the time you're on-call.

My buddy and I were just talking about this. A company we were modeling received $4.2M in VC funding and had 20 employees at time of purchase. The purchase price was never advertised, but we assumed a 7x multiple on last known value and assumed the sale price at $25M. $25M turns out to be a little over $1M per employee after 4 years (company started 2012 and was bought in 2016). I asked out loud "why would you do this when you could just go to Microsoft or Apple, do less work, and make the same money in the same amount of time".

Now this price is skewed towards the investors and very early employees, but the point still stands. You will very clearly make more money working for an established corp than a startup.

I mean, if you explore scenarios in https://www.tldroptions.io/ even your scenario of $1M per employee is super rare. Actual stock option agreements I've seen and heard about recently for Series A early stage startups were small fractions of a percentage point of outstanding shares, and subject to potentially many more rounds of dilution.

The only time in my 20+ career I've gotten anything real out of an employer being acquired was when Google bought my employer (for just under $400m) in 2011. In that case, though, the stock conversion of my options was only part of the generous compensation package from Google. And in that case it certainly wasn't "I'm gonna go retire now" money, either.

Many are happier with a more modest lifestyle if it means pursuing something of deep interest. For example, researchers in industry make substantially more than their academia counterparts.

The lottery ticket is just a bonus.

I am quite happy to be doing more interesting work after 10 years of slinging protobufs, hence why I have gone to work for startups recently.

But what I'm trying to say is in reality there are no lottery tickets being issued. Except maybe to the founders. Trying to frame it that way is a real problem. Actual equity agreements are mostly not much money at all. I had a founder try to make this claim to me quite recently -- it's nonsense, because I know the kind of offers he was writing up, there was no "lottery"-like outcome possible.

And it is this inequity in potential outcomes that makes the startups less attractive and also diminishes anybody's desire to work excessively hard. The potential payout isn't there. Maybe if one is an exceptional negotiator, I dunno.

Sure. The question then, is if Google, with its deep pockets will let you pursue your deep interest, better or worse than a startup dedicated to a niche.

Depends, I left Google about half a year back. One of the roles I was considering was a former employer, a non-profit, which would have been roughly a 50% compensation cut. But I loved the work, and loved the team. Ultimately I went another direction because of some poor choices they made around remote work.

The discussion that led to it was "I'd rather we have less money than you be miserable all time time" from my other half. The culture at Google isn't for everyone. I didn't fit with it (or at least in my org) and it was a constant source of frustration on both sides.

I don’t know why you think working the hours you’ve been hired to do is being a “Prima Donna”. And I don’t see how getting paid a large salary, having better work-life balance and being hirable are negative things.

Seems like you would rather advice people to have bad working conditions and sacrifice their personal life for a shitty salary on a startup.

> I don’t know why you think working the hours you’ve been hired to do is being a “Prima Donna”. And I don’t see how getting paid a large salary, having better work-life balance and being hirable are negative things.

You want to do an average work working average hours, you get paid an average salary. That would be about $70k/year.

I'm super happy that FAANG started to cut the fat. The sanity is returning to the market.

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