Agree with the points around increasing equity and comp. One thing about option plans is that the devil is in the details. How things play out in a liquidity event or the tax ramifications can be large based upon how the plan was set up years prior. My guess is founders probably don't spend a lot of time sweating these details and the lawyers are concerned about protecting the company. YC could help by pushing for plans that are employee friendly. Publish articles about how to set up plans in a good way. Publish articles about what employees should look for when comparing offers. Possibly publish legal docs that companies can start from similar to other sets of documents you've published.
SEEKING WORK - Remote (US)
I am a senior full-stack Java developer and DevOps/infrastructure engineer. I can help you with:
* Understanding your goals and translating them to a technical solution
* Prototyping/MVP
* Full-stack development work
* Improving your development tools
* Setting up continuous integration and deployment
* Automated testing
* DevOps and automating your infrastructure
I am a senior full-stack Java developer and DevOps/infrastructure engineer. I can help you with:
* Understanding your goals and translating them to a technical solution
* Prototyping/MVP
* Full-stack development work
* Improving your development tools
* Setting up continuous integration and deployment
* Automated testing
* DevOps and automating your infrastructure
Have you had success replying to those posts and asking 'Would you consider a freelancer for this position?' or how do you go about it since these threads seem to implicitly indicate that they're looking for employees?
Successful startups go through a couple of phases as they grow. At each phase the skills needed from the team will change because the challenges to get to the next level are different. And the team will often turn over along the way. Not everyone who was there in the beginning will be there at the end. And that's okay. Now maybe you have the skills and experience to grow with the organization along the way or maybe you don't. Lots of people maybe can and maybe can't. Sometimes it depends upon where you are in your career. Was this your first time managing? Then maybe you need more experience and growth to be the CTO of such a large org. It can often feel like a demotion when you are passed over and senior positions are filled from the outside. I understand where you are coming from. I've been in your position.
Whether the CEO lied to you or not really depends upon context. When did he tell you this? Obviously things have changed as the company has grown. Perhaps he didn't foresee the need for a CTO at the time but now he does. Things change and the needs of the company change with them. And remember he himself is growing and learning as a manager. If he was inexperienced he probably just couldn't foresee the need. Also how realistic is it that a growing/successful technology company won't have a CTO? I find it unusual that it took until ~450 people to get one.
Where do you go from here? If you'd like to be CTO (of your current company or another) the first step is an honest self assessment of the skills and experience you'll need to attain and perform in the position. Second you'll want to talk to the CEO about where you fit in to the company and your room for growth. You'll need to convey your understanding of the need to bring in senior management but also convey that you feel that you can grow along with the org to accept more responsibility. See if you can lay out a plan to do that. If you don't like what you hear coming out of that process then its time to start looking around.
It's helpful to remember that the British took very different methods of governance among different colonies at different times. They very much used different means depending upon the local situation and what they were trying to get out of a colony. Also colonies that were populated by British people (US, Canada, etc.) have a very different cultural and social heritage than the colonies where Britain showed up in a pre-existing society with established norms.
I use PyCharm for Python development and I like it quite a lot. I find the code completion and debugger to be the most useful features. At $99 for an individual it is not terribly expensive and well worth it.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people who leave school 'for a little while' with full intentions of going back can find it difficult to do so and then never go back. When you're in the 'real' world you can start to accumulate commitments and the more of these you have the less compatible college is with your life.
From other comments it sounds like your main motivation is to make yourself more marketable to future employers. CS grads are already highly marketable especially when combined with internships and/or part-time work. It sounds like you already have good experience and presumably you will have more during college with an internship or some such thing. If you complete a degree you'll have the qualifications that hiring managers would look for. Having full-time experience instead of part-time isn't going to give you any added benefit. And it probably won't get you a higher starting salary - you'll be in the same hiring pool with all of the other new grads.
And there are costs to be considered. You'll be delaying your college experience by a year. Your friends will be meeting smart interesting people and going to parties and spending late nights in the lab working on cool projects and learning about things they hadn't even heard of before. You'll have to get up early for work tomorrow. You'll be delaying the start of your career by a year. Your salary can rise pretty quickly in your first five years after school. How fast it goes up will be determined on how you perform on your first job(s) not on some work you did when you were 18. The money you earn next year probably won't make up for delaying that process by a year. Also note that salaries can vary widely by geography and are much higher in the Bay Area, New York, etc. If you want to move to a higher earning location you'll be delaying that by a year.
It's mostly an ecosystem thing. Large companies follow the lead of their vendors and Oracle/IBM/HP all push Java. There is a vast array of third party tools and software packages for doing boring enterprisey stuff like monitoring and integration. If you want to integrate or extend one of the big ERP or CRM systems that is mostly Java. At this point there are lots of people that can be hired with passable Java skills and most consulting outfits have large Java programs. Admittedly this is something of a positive feedback loop that got started because the big vendors stared it 15 years ago.
As for team delivery speed it is certainly possible to deliver quickly. The dynamic languages have definite advantages over Java. There is less XML/property/configuration stuff to manage for instance. But the Java frameworks are actively developed and they get better all of the time too. Delivery speed is mostly a team and organization thing. Large orgs can take forever to deliver the simplest of things. It can take forever for people to decide what they want. You might have to get permission from three different VPs. You may have to schedule a series of meetings to have a decision made and it can take a couple of weeks the find time when all stakeholders have open time on their calendars. You may be dependent upon cooperation and resources from another team that isn't really motivated to help you because they have their own stuff going on. So it's not really a technology problem, it's a management problem.
I'll second the advice of building something that displays your skills. Another option would be to use your testing experience and look for a position building an automated test suite. Once you've proven yourself and gained some experience you'll probably get an opportunity to take on other projects. Are you looking to get hired in a startup or anywhere? There are employers that hire less experienced programmers regularly - usually larger companies. With a year or two of experience there you should then be in a position to get a job wherever else you like.
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, JavaScript, Java
Résumé/CV: https://standardresume.co/r/crwohlfeil
Email: [email protected]