👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Sept 29
Average salaries at tech companies, your equity is probably worthless, everything is overvalued, and more!
Yo! Here’s what happened on Tech Twitter the week of September 29th - October 6th.
As always, reply with feedback and forward this to your friends!
Don’t join a startup
Startups are risky AF. If you’re going to take on risk joining a startup (and lower pay, longer hours, etc.), you better have enough equity where there's a sizable payout if it succeeds.
🔥My Hot Take🔥
Most startup employees don’t have enough equity to get rich. Even those that think they do actually don’t - dilution and liquidation preferences make even a healthy 1-2% equity offer non-consequential for most startup outcomes.
Your best bet is to join a startup because you like the people, product, and/or opportunity to learn.
If you want to get rich, go work at Google.
@anothercohen Pretty much everyone in this thread has conflated these two questions:
#1: Is being an early employee riskier (in an absolute sense) than a founder?
#2: Are early employees fairly awarded for their risk?
Answer to both is "No."
@anothercohen I’d be surprised if this was unpopular
Low pay
Low equity
Low job security
No free time
That’s a lot of trust in the founding team
@anothercohen @Thomasbcn 100%. Founders get credit for trying (and if they handled things well, great connections for their next venture). Employees get nothing but a dark spot on their CV and X years of opportunity cost. Being a failed founder is celebrated in tech.
If you want to make lots of money, don't start a company.
Just learn to code, work at Google, and retire with $20M.
Everything is overvalued
NYU Stern marketing professor Scott Galloway got a bunch of VCs and founders trigged. Not an unexpected perspective given the valuation smackdown that has been happening in public and private markets lately.
If you were to ban an account from Twitter, I would start with this nonsense. :)
Scott Galloway @profgalloway
@rabois I think sideline people love opportunities to slam folks that are building things. Always reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena.
@rabois @DelRey It’s really easy for @profgalloway to make these calls since he’s paid for ratings and have zero skin in the game.
He would never put up a $100,000 bet on any of these — would you @profgalloway?
@profgalloway But, but...that's hard. OK I'll try.
Good buys (even though some are private):
1. Zapier. The "connecting API" space will keep exploding.
2. Atlassian. Very efficient company, great at M+A.
OK, this is hard.
@profgalloway Love & appreciate your analysis and you appear to be right way more than wrong. but a suggestion to spend 20% of your time focused on good things. Many entrepreneurs, like me, are grinding day in day out & inspired by some of these co's. Building is hard & some love would help :)
Insightful Tweets
"Consumer internet is dead" -- there's a meme that the sector is dead bc:
1) the big tech cos fast-follow
2) the app store has ossified
3) ad monetization sucks
4) the VCs don't want to fund anything
I disagree -- consumer products are alive and well, but they've morphed.
I've been thinking a lot about the importance of GTM. Here's a clear example of what a growth ramp looks like when you own the distribution channel (MSFT) versus when you acquire every user for the first time (WORK), even when you do an historically good job at it.
Read this thread to understand how pathetic *most* VCs are at generating returns and why they opt towards playing a Ponzi scheme of fees and fake markups...the suckers are the LPs and the employees of zombie companies propped up by these dollars whose equity is really worthless.
Jawad Mian @jsmian
Q: When you were doing check-ins with senior leadership, did you find decks necessary? If so, curious if you found certain content/structures to be best.
Definitely check out the McKinsey Situation-Complication-Resolution (SCR) Framework speakingsherpa.com/how-to-tell-a-…
More 👇
Many talented academics now realize that a $200k grant is just a waste of time relative to a $20M VC raise to commercialize their tech.
If their passion truly is pure research, they can self-fund after the exit. Comparable difficulty to getting tenure, but far more useful.
Julia Galef @juliagalef
Have always been confused by mass-VC dismissal of physical businesses. We did some digging at @obviousvc and the answer is actually much more nuanced.
Super interesting and well written by @itsmeeraclark. worldpositive.com/the-revenge-of…
Fire Starter Tweets (click these!)
Best tweet of the month.
Norgard @BrianNorgard
i continue to be very interested in vocational training startups that aren't specifically about turning everyone into engineers.
how do we help professionals of all sorts continue to upgrade their employable skills - including technical - ongoing?
Asking genuinely:
If a PM ships a new feature on time, but the new feature doesn't move the needle on usage/engagement/etc, have they still done a good job?
1. First language: Basic / Java
2. Had difficulties: Java
3. Most used: JavaScript / Python
4. Totally hate: Java
5. Most loved: Go / Python
6. For beginners: Python / Ruby
What about you?
What is the most controversial thing that you believe to be true, but you know most other people will vehemently disagree?
Funny Tweets
Stop 👏 calling 👏 new 👏 stream 👏 processing 👏 services 👏 Kafka-like. Start 👏 calling 👏 them 👏 Kafka-esque.
People I am hearing a lot from today:
- People who are not surprised
- People who have noticed that “Zuck” and “fuck” rhyme
- People who deleted their Facebook accounts over 400 years ago because they saw this coming from a mile away
Congrats to founders on selling the business after 7 years of hard work:
▶ 🔘─────── 00:02
Reminiscing on how radical the idea felt back then:
▶ 🔘─────── 38:07
Thanks to investor 2 social tiers above me for sending me the deal:
▶ 🔘──────── 2:58:47
Random Tweets
Average salaries at tech companies:
Nvidia $170,068
Twitter $162,852
Google $161,254
LinkedIn $157,402
Facebook $152,962
Salesforce $150,379
Microsoft $148,068
eBay $140,056
Qualcomm $139,754
Adobe $135,027
Source: Glassdoor
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