Yes - realistic employees are the worst - they are so unexploitable!
What companies really need are wide-eyed, earnest, new college grads who have no idea what goes on in the real world, and how much they are truly being screwed by their current startup.
Those guys rock! They work 100+ hour weeks, they don't have families, or commitments and are willing to do it all for mere peanuts and empty promises of golden rainbows!
Sadly - a few years of this turns them into realistic employees - and you need a whole new batch to replace them.
Honest question: do you believe there any job where you are not being screwed? And do you believe you are an above average employee, or that you could be a founder yourself (as it's just like getting in on Manhattan early)?
If so, why not work in that job (rather than at a startup)? Or why not found a startup (rather than be an employee)?
Any job with monopoly pricing protections - a doctor or engineer at large established firms fit the bill. Once you have monopoly pricing - you are no longer the one being screwed, but rather the one doing the screwing.
Do I think I'm above average? Depends on what you mean by average.
There are zero barriers to entry in becoming a founder - so yes I'm founder material. As is everyone else. The question that actually needs to be asked is: How lucky can one get?
I know several doctors and they all complain about how they are getting screwed--by the trial lawyers, the insurance companies, the hospital, the government, etc.
This may just be a situation where the grass looks greener.
Being cynical and realistic doesn't mean you don't work hard and produce great work product. It just means that you demand to be compensated appropriately for the work you do, without being fooled by gimmicks. See, e.g., anyone who works on Wall Street. These folks live and breathe their work, yet are smart and realize that the only real way a company values your contribution is in the size of your bonus checks. That doesn't mean that culture, collegiality, perks, etc, are unimportant. It means that they aren't a replacement for compensation and/or time off.
Couldn't agree with this comment more. Far too often, a world class technical talent, upon whose shoulders billion dollar companies are being built, is happy to accept a free lunch, tshirts, beer bashes, and other distractions that might cost their company on the order of $10k per employee (if that).
One of the employees I had the most respect for was one of our core crypto consultants who explicitly said, "As soon as I walk in the door each day the clock starts, and I charge $500/hour. It stops when I walk out the door." In pretty much those words.
There was no bantering of free lunches or beer bashes (or, for that matter, stock options) with him. All business and execution.
I think that's pretty unfair. The guys who get screwed the hardest and have the fewest places to land are, quite often, the guys on the bottom. What of his post is poor advice for those guys?
(Yes, founders take more risk--though "fuck, out of a job" is not a risk to be minimized. Founders do also get much more exposure and have a better chance of finding somewhere to land immediately if things go south, as well as foreknowledge of the southerly state of things and a head start on finding that escape route.)
Were your founders taking a salary from the jump? I suspect not; maybe your situation was out of the ordinary, but most founder types I know work pretty long hours well before seeing a dollar out of it.
Opportunity costs are a form of risk; being paid a salary reduces (or eliminates) those opportunity costs and thus reduces risk.
He sounds like the worst employee ever as well as the best worker ever.
Look at this person, using the word "employee". Obviously the suffix -ee is always passive and deprecating, and -er always active enhancing. Employer and employee. Trainer and trainee. Appointer and appointee. Payer and payee.
Which is why people who create wealth, workers, call themselves workers. This person uses a more derogatory, passive term, "employee", who I suppose should thank the heavens that "employer" is a job creator. This says more about them then about you.
Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". With unemployment at highs it has not seen since the mid 1980s, with wealth being drained to the wealthiest heirs of the 1% while the people creating wealth get nothing, this hubris and contempt will backfire on these parasites in time.
