India
5h
555
Any Indians Think Kashmir Should be Independent?
Work Visa
13h
593
How many of you in EB-2 India category think of going back to school for PhD and getting a bunch of publications?
India
13h
743
Congress = Muslim league
Tech Industry
21h
456
Please Help :: Should I pursue CS Masters in USA or remain in India to join Startups?
India
13h
936
What do vegetarian Indians eat for protein?
I am Haas (UC Berkeley) graduate working as Product Manager. I have not worked at a startup and hence the question. I earn 180K (base pay) per annum and to get promoted is long wait. Looking 10 years down the line, would I have earned more working for startup or at Amazon? All perspectives are appreciated (however rude they are!)
risk adjusted return, big tech almost always wins. making money at a startup requires: - you're early and important enough to get substantial equity - startup gets hyped and does well - startup goes through a liquidity event - you are actually able to sell in such liquidity event - you didn't get diluted to hell or cut out in intermediate fundraising rounds unless you're a founder, too many unlikely events need to add up to exit from an early stage startup later stage/big pre-ipo makes more sense, probably closer to big tech
That’s impossible to answer with great certainty. Over 10 years, odds are that most startups would pay much less. However there’s a small possibility one will pay out much better than Amazon.
Working for a startup is a roll of the dice. Most of the time the equity they give you turns out to be funny money
Join a startup only if any one of these criteria are met - you are the founder - you got rejected at all big tech.
So Anthropic / Mosaic now, Deepmind 6 years ago, OpenAI 3 years ago are full of people that couldnt do LC mediums to work on MS Word and GarageBand. Got it.
Most people here are risk averse NPCs
You will earn more in the long run with Big tech - RSU refreshers compound and the chances of you working at a startup that does successfully exit are slim. In addition, even if the startup exits you're not guaranteed to make anything from the event. Ask me how I know.
Lower valuations and preferred shares?
Preferred shares, price dropping after IPO, and in one case after the company's exit employees were just straight up sent a note saying our purchased shares had been dissolved by choice by the company and were now worthless. That's one thing most people miss in their stock grant Ts&Cs - most companies reserve the right to dissolve or declare stock worthless if they so choose.
I was lucky in the past with joining startups at the right time, just before a ~40x increase. However, since this was very early in my career, my equity was not enough to make this a huge deal. Also, cashing in on the increased valuation can be tricky. It may be that the cheap money driven crazy valuation days are over, for now at least.
Counter argument: the money you make directly at a startup will probably be worth less than what you would make at big tech. But if you pick a good startup you may learn a lot more and have more fun than at big tech. That can potentially put you in better career shape long term depending on what you learn.
Worked for two startups in my career. A year at each. The gains from one startup offset the losses from the other but I would have been better off with big tech RSUs for that time spent either way.
I spent 7 years at a startup because I believed in the product and the success of the company. Compensation went from 60 to 115 in 7 years. Wrote them a check for 2500 for my shares, which optimistically will be worth 50k at ipo Meanwhile the rest of you are buying houses and cars and retirement accounts. Take the sure thing.
In the vast majority of cases, no