Ask HN: What reasonable person would work as a founding engineer?
25 points by atleastoptimal a day ago | 29 comments
Esp for a non-technical founder. You are signing up for 80 hour work-weeks to help bring to fruition the dream of someone else who will reap far more of the benefits.
"Able to wear many hats", "High agency", "Ability to go above and beyond". If you really had these attributes you'd be much better off starting your own company.
aristofun 18 hours ago | next |
I do wonder too.
I’ve checked few startup offers with calculator. Math just doesn’t add up.
Unless you’re a founder with >10% stake - you virtually _never_ end up financially better than in hi paying position in a big company (think low faang range +).
Even in the best case scenario.
Surprisingly in some cases i know you’re much better off being among few 100-200 forst employees rather than a founding engineer in a promising startup.
“Founding engineer” is a weird concept - you get stressed and used almost like a founder, but paid ~ like first employees.
Unless it’s a new microsoft or google. But such companies don’t just publish founding ingeneer jobs.
But based on the comments here there will never be a shortage of naive people who buy into all that startup romantics and silly slogans like “money is not everything” (sure, but we speak about jobs here, not about our dreams, don’t we?)