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It's not 2010 anymore. Most startups can't even attract "the best engineers" much less hire them. This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fract

It's not 2010 anymore. Most startups can't even attract "the best engineers" much less hire them. This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG? You've got to be offering something really, really valuable like remote work, an interesting problem, and/or a new experience. Otherwise the math doesn't math.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago
Because FANG companies do not attract "top talent." They attract "very good talent," but typically talent that requires infrastructure that doesn't exist at startups. Daryl Havens is the exception that proves this rule, and you are not Daryl (unless you are Daryl and in which case, "Hey Daryl! Let's meet up sometime and chat about VAXen.")
- senko 1y ago
  Neither do scrappy startups, because they don't have the money. Top talent that accept below-insanely-great pay start their own startups.
  - OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    Yup. It's somewhat rare to find "top talent" at a startup, but more because many modern startups are stupid, existing only to suck from the VC teat. In my day... Be was a "startup" and Dominic and Andy were "top" talent. (and wasn't Dianne Hackborn at Be back then?) NeXT was a startup once and Avi Tevanian (despite my many, many technical disagreements) was an EXCELLENT engineer. RSADSI was a startup an Steve Dusse and Bob Baldwin were TOP talent. I think after the dot-com run-up, "startup" often implied "unprofitable idiot idea that looks plausible long enough to convince VCs to use your company as a demonstration of the greater fool theory." But I said "often," not "always." The critical and vexxing part of this is it's so hard to figure out which idiot ideas are profitable before the VCs shower a small cadre of Stanford GSB grads with cash.
indoordin0saur 1y ago
Engineers don't really care about equity anymore because they've been burned so many times. The big payouts from a successful company are not necessarily guaranteed the way they were pre-2015 or so. It has become too common for there to be behind-closed-doors dlilutions and investor-only exit opportunities. It has become very unwise to trust anything beyond real cash wired to your bank account.
- rachofsunshine 1y ago
  Author of the OP here - to put some more empirical backing to this, virtually every single engineer in our candidate pool values illiquid equity at 20% or less of face value, and about one in three give it no weight at all. Totally off the topic of the thread, but it's why I do things differently with the people who work for me. I'm the sole owner of Otherbranch, but I pay out a percentage of profits over certain thresholds (between 25 and 75%, rising at higher levels of profit) to the team. Keeps things concrete and aligns incentives with building something that works today rather than obsessing over a hypothetical exit.
  - eszed 1y ago
    Love that compensation plan. I wish my (and every) company did that.
    - rachofsunshine 1y ago
      Yeah, so did I. Being both a ride-or-die leftist and the owner of a company is a weird place to be sometimes, and it's basically the way I figured I could best implement the world I want to see inside the world we have.
- jcalvinowens 1y ago
  Every single solitary person I've personally known who worked at a successful startup got screwed out of their equity somehow. Literally every single one.
  - 1y ago
cmrdporcupine 1y ago
It's always been the case that FAANG or whatever are not always the "best" home for the "best" engineers. Many do not/did not feel comfortable there, especially as they became more and more corporate and slow. But unfortunately the answer now is that "best engineers" can't work there either because the layoff / employment-squeeze is in full swing. You're right that the equity packages offered by startups to engineers are generally insulting. Every time this has come up in negotiation in the last few positions I've interviewed for the founders won't even tell you what % of shares they're offering, nor any sense of what the real value is, just pretend nonsense.
- adw 1y ago
  In my experience startups have as much bullshit as FAANG companies, it’s just different bullshit.
  - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
    Absolutely, I agree. A few years ago I walked away from 10 years at Google hoping to rekindle some excitement in exchange for losing out on money. I hated the way things ran at Google and only lasted there so long because of the money. So far I've mostly found different (often worse) kinds of dysfunction and not really much better velocity. There are broader dysfunctions in our industry.
    - mmmmmbop 1y ago
      In hindsight, would you have stayed at Google?
      - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
        Probably. I was going crazy working there, I grew to really dislike it. But from a purely selfish $$ POV, it's likely I would have got caught in one of the rounds of layoffs or been able to take this latest voluntary layoff package. Unless the frustration led to bad performance reviews, which could have happened. My mental health would have suffered, but holding on another 1-3 years would have probably led to me being 5 years closer to early retirement. It was also 2021/2022, when the job market was completely bananas. The temptation to leave and get a decent paying remote job was very high. And at the time I felt Google was doing a very poor job of remote work, at least on the teams I was on. And they made the hybrid in-office unpleasant (floating desks, nobody else there, just a weird vibe). Hindsight 20/20, etc.
thinkingtoilet 1y ago
I was working for a large company with great pay and incredible benefits. I was fucking miserable. I took a 35% pay cut to go to a small company with basically no benefits. I'm so much happier now. I live in a rural area and work remote. I live reasonably. I don't need all the money I can possibly get.
Keyframe 1y ago
why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG? Once you hit a few million in the bank, have a house, priorities kind of shift. Not for everyone, but for those that would work elsewhere for reasons not money.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  The problem you'll find (I've found) in this case is that management in many of these "startups" expect a certain kind of ... ahem... motivational/authoritarian structure ... that lacks effectiveness or sense with someone who has paid off their mortgage and is mainly there in order to ship things and enjoy crafting software. Put it another way, there are people in every company whose reasons being there can conflict with the motivations of an engineer with the priorities you describe. Often those people end up being your manager.
  - Keyframe 1y ago
    Doesn't have to be a startup. Can be something _not your own_ but aligned with your interests. Maybe you care about the environment, or you're fascinated with weapons and don't particularly like people or whatever.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

Because FANG companies do not attract "top talent." They attract "very good talent," but typically talent that requires infrastructure that doesn't exist at startups. Daryl Havens is the exception that proves this rule, and you are not Daryl (unless you are Daryl and in which case, "Hey Daryl! Let's meet up sometime and chat about VAXen.")

senko 1y ago
Neither do scrappy startups, because they don't have the money. Top talent that accept below-insanely-great pay start their own startups.
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  Yup. It's somewhat rare to find "top talent" at a startup, but more because many modern startups are stupid, existing only to suck from the VC teat. In my day... Be was a "startup" and Dominic and Andy were "top" talent. (and wasn't Dianne Hackborn at Be back then?) NeXT was a startup once and Avi Tevanian (despite my many, many technical disagreements) was an EXCELLENT engineer. RSADSI was a startup an Steve Dusse and Bob Baldwin were TOP talent. I think after the dot-com run-up, "startup" often implied "unprofitable idiot idea that looks plausible long enough to convince VCs to use your company as a demonstration of the greater fool theory." But I said "often," not "always." The critical and vexxing part of this is it's so hard to figure out which idiot ideas are profitable before the VCs shower a small cadre of Stanford GSB grads with cash.

indoordin0saur 1y ago

Engineers don't really care about equity anymore because they've been burned so many times. The big payouts from a successful company are not necessarily guaranteed the way they were pre-2015 or so. It has become too common for there to be behind-closed-doors dlilutions and investor-only exit opportunities. It has become very unwise to trust anything beyond real cash wired to your bank account.

rachofsunshine 1y ago
Author of the OP here - to put some more empirical backing to this, virtually every single engineer in our candidate pool values illiquid equity at 20% or less of face value, and about one in three give it no weight at all. Totally off the topic of the thread, but it's why I do things differently with the people who work for me. I'm the sole owner of Otherbranch, but I pay out a percentage of profits over certain thresholds (between 25 and 75%, rising at higher levels of profit) to the team. Keeps things concrete and aligns incentives with building something that works today rather than obsessing over a hypothetical exit.
- eszed 1y ago
  Love that compensation plan. I wish my (and every) company did that.
  - rachofsunshine 1y ago
    Yeah, so did I. Being both a ride-or-die leftist and the owner of a company is a weird place to be sometimes, and it's basically the way I figured I could best implement the world I want to see inside the world we have.
jcalvinowens 1y ago
Every single solitary person I've personally known who worked at a successful startup got screwed out of their equity somehow. Literally every single one.
- 1y ago

cmrdporcupine 1y ago

It's always been the case that FAANG or whatever are not always the "best" home for the "best" engineers. Many do not/did not feel comfortable there, especially as they became more and more corporate and slow. But unfortunately the answer now is that "best engineers" can't work there either because the layoff / employment-squeeze is in full swing. You're right that the equity packages offered by startups to engineers are generally insulting. Every time this has come up in negotiation in the last few positions I've interviewed for the founders won't even tell you what % of shares they're offering, nor any sense of what the real value is, just pretend nonsense.

adw 1y ago
In my experience startups have as much bullshit as FAANG companies, it’s just different bullshit.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  Absolutely, I agree. A few years ago I walked away from 10 years at Google hoping to rekindle some excitement in exchange for losing out on money. I hated the way things ran at Google and only lasted there so long because of the money. So far I've mostly found different (often worse) kinds of dysfunction and not really much better velocity. There are broader dysfunctions in our industry.
  - mmmmmbop 1y ago
    In hindsight, would you have stayed at Google?
    - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
      Probably. I was going crazy working there, I grew to really dislike it. But from a purely selfish $$ POV, it's likely I would have got caught in one of the rounds of layoffs or been able to take this latest voluntary layoff package. Unless the frustration led to bad performance reviews, which could have happened. My mental health would have suffered, but holding on another 1-3 years would have probably led to me being 5 years closer to early retirement. It was also 2021/2022, when the job market was completely bananas. The temptation to leave and get a decent paying remote job was very high. And at the time I felt Google was doing a very poor job of remote work, at least on the teams I was on. And they made the hybrid in-office unpleasant (floating desks, nobody else there, just a weird vibe). Hindsight 20/20, etc.

thinkingtoilet 1y ago

I was working for a large company with great pay and incredible benefits. I was fucking miserable. I took a 35% pay cut to go to a small company with basically no benefits. I'm so much happier now. I live in a rural area and work remote. I live reasonably. I don't need all the money I can possibly get.

Keyframe 1y ago

why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG? Once you hit a few million in the bank, have a house, priorities kind of shift. Not for everyone, but for those that would work elsewhere for reasons not money.

cmrdporcupine 1y ago
The problem you'll find (I've found) in this case is that management in many of these "startups" expect a certain kind of ... ahem... motivational/authoritarian structure ... that lacks effectiveness or sense with someone who has paid off their mortgage and is mainly there in order to ship things and enjoy crafting software. Put it another way, there are people in every company whose reasons being there can conflict with the motivations of an engineer with the priorities you describe. Often those people end up being your manager.
- Keyframe 1y ago
  Doesn't have to be a startup. Can be something _not your own_ but aligned with your interests. Maybe you care about the environment, or you're fascinated with weapons and don't particularly like people or whatever.