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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I have seen so many of their examples happen first hand in the industry.

- Lead engineer works 100 hour weeks to keep the company running for a below-market salary and 0.05% equity while the founders and product/sales leads constantly sell shares on the secondary market, buy fancy toys and travel the world.

- Technical cofounder gets a 3% equity because the "business guy" came up with the idea and deserves the other 97%.

- Early engineers are offered seemingly good equity but end up with lower class shares that are first to be diluted away, and an exit below some magic number thought up by founders/VCs earns them nothing because preferred shares get first dibs.

The startup game is probably not right for you as a software engineer if you don't have a "type A" personality and aren't willing to have uncomfortable conversations and fight to get your fair share. Otherwise you are just a resource to be exploited.

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Thx, I just learned about Type A / Type B thanks to you mentioning this

Maybe you'd find the Big Five personality model interesting as well (if you haven't seen), in particular assertiveness vs agreeableness

Thanks. I have some experience with Big Five and MBTI, but I’m not satisfied with them since they are too general in what they describe and also they’re not scientific enough imho. I’d be happy to see more rigorous research in this area because it could be both useful for self-development and it sometimes might help to understand oneself as well. And it’s also fun to do these assessments :p

I’m curious of your take on these tests

The Big Five are legit, worked out through decades of psychology analysis and studies.

MBTI is astrology for nerds.

And type A/B is like astrology with only 2 signs, funded by tobacco companies and developed by cardiologists

Not sure why this stuff lives on but it seems to be a meaningless way of classifying people

I don't know.. should car driver, or cleaner, or repair man get the same equity as founders or top managers? Does work as software developer really different from maintenance and repair guy that (sadly) easy replacable?

You get what you negotiate. That's why actors and writers have been getting royalties and residuals on their works for decades now. Only now with the rise of streaming platforms and AI content generation are they being forced to accept weaker terms.

Sure. Do you agree that software developers become modern repairman?

Depends on the project doesn’t it? Website building is pretty much commodity now, but even taking one step forward and designing scalable public APIs its going to require a different caliber developer.

If you think that an engineer is replaceable, why isn't the rest of the early employees? Or do you mean that only founders should get any equity?

I'm not quite sure what your comparison does. If you build a company fundamentally built on the work of good drivers or cleaners, yeah perhaps you should give them equity.

If you just contract that work out once in a while for a company that doesn't have these jobs at its core, then probably don't.

But also, most drivers, cleaners, and (to a lesser degree) repairman can be more easily replaced. The former two in particular don't require any special skills normal people don't already have to possess. And where skills come into play, we're still not looking at 4+ years of college required type of skills. Hence, there's not as much supply of engineers as there is for repairmen. And the roles you describe do not fundamentally create anything. Engineers, in particular early engineers in a startup actually design, construct, operate, and maintain 80% of what is actually generating value. Other roles supporting them also deserve a piece of the pie but questioning why engineers should get equity at all and someone having an idea and the funds to kickstart a company should get all seems odd.

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