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notbitter | 4 years ago | on: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

Care to share some of that real data? You're right about the haze of wishful thinking around the issue and seem to be in a position to clear it up a bit. You can infer something about the value of face time from the universal FAANG commitment to centralized HQs, despite the huge costs of this policy.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Why are engineers treated like peons in the startup world?

For better or for worse, the system is named "capitalism" not "hardworkerism".

In the "you can't cheat an honest man" department, you can be sure that some of the engineers complaining about nepotism now were expecting to cash in on the CEO's connections when they signed on.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Why I’m helping startup founders

If you avoid the questions "why was this written" and "how did it get from the author to my eyeballs" you will never develop a working bullshit detector.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Why I’m helping startup founders

Thanks for your passive-aggressive reply. My comment was directed at the author, not at you. I don't know what if any connection you have to the author.

However, you should note the content-free enthusiastic comment by LeonW, posted right after you submitted the article, in which he does not mention that he is the author's co-founder. You might also have noticed that many articles from this blog are similar: a catchy headline, a bunch of vague inspirational words on an uncontroversial subject, a token link to the conversion funnel, and a surprisingly high rank on the HN front page.

If you aren't even slightly suspicious that this article is 99% conversion fodder and maybe 1% altruism, I am not going to be able to explain it to you.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Why I’m helping startup founders

You are actually hurting startup founders by farting out this HN-optimized fluff of platitudes and having your co-founder vote it up. Please stop it.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is it fair if my employer pays me less if I don't have a degree?

They are bullshitting you. Big companies can have rigid salary structures, but at a startup you have lower pay because that's what you accepted. The degree argument is a negotiating tactic to get you to accept lower pay.

That said, if you don't get a degree you will likely be fighting this battle over and over for the rest of your working life. And college is a lot more fun when you're the same age as your classmates.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: Jack Dorsey’s 28.3% Square ownership gives him 75% control.

terminology around this issue can be VERY confusing

You are not making it any simpler by redefining "control" in this theoretical way. You are making some very naive assumptions about independence: you'd be much better off treating the investors as a single voting bloc, which is what the usual sense of "control" assumes - and if there are multiple founders you should assume that serial investors are very sophisticated at splitting them.

A good followup would be to go out and actually measure the distribution of voting outcomes rather than making a strong claim based on the most tractable assumptions you can find.

notbitter | 13 years ago | on: For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure

Some of the advantages listed in the article are questionable. A talent pool so small that everybody knows each other, potential partners who are so out of the loop that they don't know about your established competitors, and the opportunity to hire ex-finance guys who were unhappy with their last bonus.

notbitter | 14 years ago | on: The Horror of setting up a Google+ account for my mom

Google has some inner conflict here. The marketing strategy is "more private than Facebook" but the obvious way to measure the success of Google+ is by how much oversharing people are doing. Optimize for that and you get pushy UX like the one described. Hopefully they can figure out a more nuanced metric.

notbitter | 14 years ago | on: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

This is human nature, not specific to geeks or men. If you call somebody on their bullshit you have to expect some blowback, even if you do it as tactfully as Jessamyn did in this case.

What's sad is that one of the guys on the team could have fixed this with much less awkwardness, but apparently none of them stepped up.

notbitter | 14 years ago | on: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team

Usually: millions to the investors and founders for their stock. Employee stock will be worth little due to investor preferences. The acquirer will pay hundreds of thousands to retain a few "key employees", and tens of thousands to the ordinary developers (similar to what they'd get as a hiring bonus). This is why it doesn't make sense to be a startup employee.

Your question about why developers can't capture more of their value is a good one. Obviously acquirers would prefer not to pay $1M signing bonuses if they can avoid it, but they also seem to be happier about paying off VCs than engineers.

notbitter | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: First startup. What do I ask so I don't get screwed?

Totally disagree on #2. Walking into a better gig is easy, but it means you lose years of investment in the previous company (due to dilution, preferences, loss of retention bonus on acquisition, etc). Many of us on the engineering side consider that "getting screwed" even if folks on the executive side think of it as business as usual.

To the OP, I would suggest that the only sure-fire way to avoid getting screwed is to remain indispensable all the way through to a liquidity event. Even then, employee #9 may not see much from their equity.

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