[LRUG] Looking to meet...

[Paul Robinson]

On 14 Sep 2011, at 21:47, Ben Griffiths wrote:

> Sorry if I offended you, Paul and Michael, by somehow suggesting I'd
> pay you with stale dog biscuits and wafer crumbs. I'm fine with you
> not getting in touch. I'm sure you're right about me being 'frankly
> unprofessional', by the way.


My argument wasn't about you. Well, OK, in part it was, but my argument was about the wider point:

There are a lot of start-up founders out there who are expecting to pay people less than their worth *because it's a start-up*, as if it's some magical fairy land that justifies less money to be spent on wages.

The games industry does this because, you know, it's the games industry, that's got to be fun, right? Cue 100-hour work weeks on poor pay and endless stories of devs and testers not seeing their families for months at a time as they resort to taking sleeping bags into the office...

Even a joke at suggesting that start-ups are fine to be under-resourced, for staff to be underpaid, and for there to be no equity or options involved to reward people for the effort they put in pisses me off, because every time I go and get a new job at a start-up I have to have this argument:

Me: My day-rate for contract work is £x and I'll consider £y as a salary based on a 12-month contract, £y - z% if I have skin in the game in terms of equity assuming a 3-4 year exit plan. Not options: equity.
Them: But it's a startup! We'll give you a new Macbook!
Me: I already have a very nice machine. I need to pay my rent, but I'm prepared to carry some risk in terms of pension contributions and take a few percent in equity instead.
Them: But it's a startup! We don't have any money to spend on developers!
Me: You just raised half a million in funds. You just told me you did.
Them: But that's already allocated on marketing spend and our offices in Shoreditch.
Me: How were you planning to pay your developers market rate?
Them: We don't need to! It's a startup! Better than working for a huge company, right? Here, have a nerf gun!

The companies then fall into one of two categories: those who realise that if they want good talent, they need to reward that. I'm not asking for 50% equity or £100k/year. I'm asking for enough to pay my rent and bills and enough equity to maybe pick up six figures before tax in 3-4 years time.

Others don't. They want to keep all the equity to themselves or free to be bought up in more rounds of funding, and they want to sell this myth that working at a start-up for terrible money is reward in itself.

I'm sure Ben that you don't have any intention of exploiting people to build wealth for yourself, but your message can unfortunately be read in an era of complete jerks recruiting developers, as being completely straight up and legitimate.


> From this thread you'll have seen some of the people who've worked for
> me before and what they have to say about me - don't let the trolls
> put you off.


I'm not a troll, I'm just experienced at being ripped off. I hope you and your venture well, and I hope that your new found team are well-rewarded for their efforts.

I'm sorry if you think I'm being "nasty", but I think a serious point was worth making here: there are some complete douches out there who would think exactly what you wrote seriously, keep it to themselves and then complain that their developers were getting "uppity" about being ripped off.

Even worse, some might point to your post and say "Look, Ben did it, he says it's OK, why not?" without realising you weren't serious.