[robterrell]

If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles, and you're willing to work 996, be just a little bit smarter and found your own startup and take all the upside.

[margalabargala]

> If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles

I think your framing is backwards.

Getting hired as a random employee, going in expecting 9-9-6, with the sort of comp these companies manage to pay, means there is a smartness ceiling, not floor.

[throwawaymaths]

> just a little bit smarter and found your own startup

does that work? how do you convince investors to give you money if you don't have a network/didn't go to stanford?

[petralithic]

Not all startups are venture-backed.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles

s/smart/stupid/g

[marqueewinq]

Well sed

[martin-t]

Or nobody could take the upside.

Imagine if ownership of a company was divided according to the amount and skill level of work.

[vkou]

A co-op or a partnership? But how will the non-productive class make money from it?

[godelski]

This sounds nice on paper but difficult to implement. I'd love to hear how you'd go about this. But I'm also pretty confident that if you show me a metric I can show you 10 ways to hack it.

[scubbo]

> and take all the upside

And all of the risk.

Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.

[skeeter2020]

>> Most startups fail.

so how is it different being a salaried employee at one of these companies? You say they're likely to fail; shouldn't you get the bigger lottery ticket then?

[whstl]

First: regular employees are already taking the risk of being jobless some time in the future when joining startups.

Second: there is no CEO in tech taking a smaller salary than their employees.

[_0ffh]

That's the fun part: If you find investors, then they're taking the actual risk while you pay yourself a nice salary.

[komali2]

> Most startups fail.

So, where's the risk? You still just were working anyway, pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years. And now you have "Founder" or "Founding Engineer" or "CEO" or "CTO" on your resume. So you didn't have a good exit. So what?

[vlod]

Yep as the corporate job is super stable nowadays. /s

I speculate that most people here, have come under the receiving end of what "At Will" contact.