996

> 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.

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.

> 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?

Well, sure, if you can raise capital then go for it. But if I'm burning savings trying to bootstrap that is just riskier than enjoying a salary with some risk of job loss.

>> 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?

It is different because you collect a salary the whole time and build your resume. Its not like you file an LLC and then receive a check in the mail for two years of whatever you want.

For a CEO founder, 996 is necessary to even have a shot at building and fundraising, and even then you're likely to quickly fail. Instead an IC banks on joining a founder who has funding and can get more while you build and collect a reasonable salary, and save for rainy day.

Counterpoint: is that because to become a CEO one most first obtain money to fund themselves and others?

An employee has the opposite arrangement, they find a job to receive money. A CEO finds money to have a job.

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

If you're a founder and not paying yourself a salary, you're one of the class of dumb canon fodder founders that VCs have indoctrinated to create a steady supply of cheap assets they can acquire and cheap engineers trained and vetted for their real investments.

From what I’ve heard the startups nowadays are only interested in people who already have a resume.

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.

There's a lot of people on HN that are not from the USA: at-will doesn't exist in many other wealthy countries.

E.g. I'm from New Zealand, and at-will contracts are not legal for employees. A company can use contracts (employing a contractor) but contracts are effectively restricted to professional specialists. A company can use temping agencies but the agency takes a big commission on top of wages. A company that has to sack someone can often get hit with financial penalties through the employee rights protection laws.

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

That's not just false but very often false.

> If you find investors

It's a big if. Few can get funding especially without connections. In that case, the odds are heavily against you.

I'm not sure what is being argued here - if you have connections, can get the money and the opportunity is clear, go for it. However, you should be clear with the above before you put your assets at risk - a job, property, savings or whatever.

It doesn't make sense to follow hype into adventures with odds of success lower than gambling. That seems obvious, but what do I know.

> It doesn't make sense to follow hype into adventures with odds of success lower than gambling.

Don't get me wrong, I agree. I'm just pointing out that for those who do manage to get funding (however fickle and/or unfair the process may be) all the natural risks of true entrepreneurship are moot.

Er, we're posting this on a website run by a VC firm that routinely gives out investments to huge numbers of tiny teams from around the world. Literally anyone can apply. And we're supposedly in an AI bubble caused by investors ploughing hundreds of millions into any company with .ai in the name. It can't be true that getting investment is hard and requires connections.

> pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years

We have a difference of understanding of what "startup" and "failure" mean. I'm not just saying "most startups don't have an exit event" - I'm saying "most startups make negligible money (either through revenue or investment), so the founders are taking a loss the whole time they're working".

If that's not correct, then a) I need to update my mental model of the whole situation, and b) thank you for bringing it to my attention!

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

Never said they weren't. But they're taking _less_ risk because they are at least taking a salary the whole time.

> paying yourself a salary

From what?

Ah well we must just know different folks. Every startup I've been aware of in my personal life was a weekend project amongst people who kept their day job, until they could get into yc or something, and then get to a seed round. The only self funded quit your day job startup I know of in my personal life is the restaurant I opened and closed within a span of a year. Learned my lesson!

Genuinely astonishing - and I mean that literally, not pejoratively. Thanks for this perspective. I do know myself to be very risk-averse and pessimistic, and undoing that mindset is a personal project at the moment. Thanks for these anecdata, it's helpful to be reminded that real people can and do succeed there.