Comment by thecleaner
6 years ago
> But for many, it's about having a (tiny) shot at changing the world. It can be a thrill.
Honestly this seems like Silicon Valley bait for getting people for work in an abusive mismanaged environment. And I hope most people stopped drinking the Kool Aid.
> You are also a bigger fish in a small pond - more responsibility, no bureaucracy
This I can understand, I mean if you are talented enough that you don't want to jump through corporate hoops, then it makes sense. But I would only do it for a company that has competitors. Atleast that way if you do well and get mistreated (because some founder assumes that employees are sheep), then you can always take your talent to a competitor. Better if you have the ability to take others with you.
There are a lot of envs that are not abusive. Having your workplace generalized and called abusive on the internet when it's not in real life, definitely feels abusive, however.
I've seen people join abusive personal relationships with worse pay than startups, it happens with friendships and marriages everywhere. I've also seen very bad relationships between founders and teams that have caused lots of pain...
The only way this is worthwhile is if you really believe in some product + are working with non-abusive people you trust and have known for a while + actually get paid enough to live a comfortable life. You can't join a startup thinking that the world owes you and will make you rich and the startup is how it will do that. But I just hope people reading your comment don't think that any small group of friends working on something is abusive to new folks that join.
The main question is to ask what can you make out of it as an employee assuming the worst. I know full well that there are several great people working in tech as founders. I also believe that ambitious people who really think they are fantastic at delivering products can and should try the testy waters of startups knowing full well what the true market value is of the skillset that they are building. I would never ever join a startup where your market value keeps degrading. Yet many people join startups as employees with mostly worthless stock and continue to do meaningless work that doesn't help increase their market value because they are sold the Kool Aid of "belief in product" and "changing the world" or whatever so hard. As an employee, it is important to stay mindful of your market value and where it is headed.
Yeah this definitely makes sense. I think the startup work you do should build your personal portfolio. Open source (like with an actual open source license like MIT and no weird edge cases) work helps a ton too. I think also being paid in actual cash is actually pretty good and you don't have to make weird money bets.