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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

If you believe it's exploitative, why not take the other side of the trade? Go become a startup founder yourself.

Lots and lots of people in Silicon Valley do that, and ultimately, that's what's causes market correction. If there are way more startups out there than talented engineers capable of building products, then the engineers can negotiate a much better deal for themselves. Or they don't and go out of business, but if that's the case, then your initial assumption that they have no real personal risk in the venture doesn't hold.

I know a senior engineer (Boston area, not Silicon Valley) that's made multiple millions multiple times as an early employee. She comes in to startups after they've fucked up their v1 so badly that they can't bring it to market, negotiates a very sweet equity package, fixes the product, and then cashes out when they IPO or get bought.

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> Go become a startup founder yourself.

The issue isn't me. And, I might already be a founder. That's besides the point.

I'm happy for your friend. That's excellent, to be able to negotiate well. Most people don't. And most people are TOLD, repeatedly, that 1% is an "excellent" percent even as the earliest joining a company.

The word "exploitative" is as tricky today as in centuries past. If the employee doesn't want to work for peanuts, why not go somewhere else? The market will eventually correct, compensate everyone fairly (by some definition of "fair"), etc. Well, my argument is not that the market itself is broken, because employees enter them under free will. My point is that engineers (early and otherwise) should not accept that their contribution is worth so much less than the 2-3 people on top. This is especially true for the first engineer, who joins at 1% next to the founder at 40%, but it applies to every after as well.

I've been both a founder and an early employee. As an early employee, I always received a salary, and knew I could leave any time I felt like it. My level of risk was low, and I was perfectly happy with my equity knowing I had a nice upside without much downside at all.

As a founder, I haven't paid myself in months, and have commitments to my customers such that I 100% can't just shut things down and leave to do something else without killing a lot of relationships and getting a terrible reputation.

Of course, I can only speak to my own experience, but I'm satisfied with my amount of equity in both situations.

I've been a founder and an early employee as well. As a founder, you sign on for the bad times. As an early employee, I always got duped.

As an early employee, I've had to go without a paycheck on multiple occasions. I had to go without healthcare for several months even though I was told the company already had it in place.

Sure, I could leave anytime I wanted. But I would forfeit all my stock if I left. Even if I left because they stopped paying their engineers. Besides, the money was coming. Why leave now? They promise they will make it up.

I've been told that everyone in the company had to take a 20% salary reduction to keep things alive. I could have left then too. Again, forfeiting my shares. But again, I bore the downside of the business without anywhere near the potential upside.

The important part is that none of this was malicious. The founder just had no idea what he was doing, and thought they had to lie for the good of the company.

As an early employee, I hired people into both the companies I'm speaking about. I'll never do that again. I haven't ever done that again. I urge everyone to not be the first engineer.

As an employee you're limited by the quality of the C-suite.

If you swap equity for salary, it's important to understand that you're not gambling on the quality of the product or the idea, but on the quality and integrity of the people you're working for.

You probably won't have enough information to make a good decision about their quality and integrity until you've been working somewhere for a while.

But generally, if one promise doesn't work out, you have good reason to suspect others won't too.

Equity is really just a promise. So you should have a lot of evidence of reliability and integrity before you count on it.

I think you're quite right. I tend to feel that people want to do good, and make judgments based off that.

Since my early mistakes, I've started telling myself "You're not negotiating with the person across the table, you're negotiating with unknown parties and circumstances in the future".

That kind of removes the human element.

In all situations, you really have to look after yourself. If someone ever asks you to work without pay, they're asking you to up your risk. Demand more equity. The greater the risk, the greater a return you should get, otherwise you're making a bad investment.

Founders can be assholes. So can investors. Always look after yourself (and your team, if applicable). Too many assholes and horror stories not to be wary.

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