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When the bullet dodges you
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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High risk high reward jobs are rarely a good advice for someone trying to establish their own life in their twenties especially if you don't have a safety net. It is like suggesting math PhD students to go after the biggest unsolved problem of the century. It is much more sane to try to do such stuff when you are established in your career. Also I am not sure what is the rewarding part even if the start-up becomes wildly successful best you get out of those are some shares with lots of strings attached, it is not like CEO makes every initial employee a high end partner.
I'm not suggesting they do it, I'm saying if they do it they should demand a lot of equity.
Well then that startup will likely move to the next candidate (among hundreds) with their ten stage interview. I can understand owners and leads of startups wanting to work their ass of to lift their company and dreams off the ground. But if they expect a regular employee to do the same for a low salary and barely any extra benefits then they are delusional. If they use sentences like "we are a family", "this is our dream", run.
Yep. Add "work hard, play hard" to the list.
But yeah, at least in tech one of the motivation tools for employees is equity, even post-IPO you get RSUs and some form of ESPP. If you don't offer big equity for an early stage startup why would someone work for you instead making mid 6 figures at a FAANG?
I'm at the start of my career and decided to join a startup now. I'm at a point in my life where I don't need to support anyone other than myself, and can afford to work a lot for relatively low pay because it's fun to build something new from scratch. I can afford that this flops.
In ten years, I'm hopefully in a place where I want/need more stability, free time, predictability, and better pay. Either the startup works out, and I can have that, or I'm hoping that the experience I get working on it will allow me to get a "normal" job when I need it.
Edit: What's with people downvoting me for saying that I personally have joined a startup because I personally think it's fun and rewarding? Jesus...
Honestly if I am going spend my years on building something from scratch and sacrifice so much for its growth, I would like to have some say on its further development and future course and a fair share of its success too (acknowledgement and financial wise). That rarely seems to happen in startups, apart from top engineers and executives. Even if you come up with ideas that transform the company, best you get is some sort of bonus and maybe sth you claim you have done in your next job interviews.
If you want such rewarding stuff then work in the academia for somewhat a better salary and much more freedom and ownership of projects you develop and supervise (even as a postdoc).
I'm getting cheap options for a decent share of the company as part of my contract, so I will have a say in future development :)
well that sounds like much fairer treatment than the experience of many people around me. do those shares come with strings attached?
Only string attached is that I'm required to sell them back to the company if I quit. I think that makes sense, since we're not publicly traded, and want all shareholders to be people actively invested in the company.
yea that doesn't sound bad. I have heard couple stories where by the time people were allowed to sell their shares, they were barely worth more than supermarket coupons.
This is the worst advice I have seen in a while. Academia is the absolute worst for salary, with an eternity actuelly not earning anything (or if in the US, having to pay yourself!) plus the stress of constant chasing of funding, politics that make big corporations pale and whims of reviewers that have no idea about your niche. I didn't even consider a post-doc, went straight to industry. Best decision ever.
Only go to academia if it's truly your passion and you don't care about money for some reason.
I am comparing academia to working as an initial employee in a startup though, not to working as an employer in industry in an established firm.
In this case salary is likely better, you still build stuff from scratch on topics that interest you, you don't work so that some guy can achieve his/her dreams, you have a higher chance of getting credit for the stuff you do (though wouldn't say %100 because yea fucking humans...). It even comes with the same levels of future uncertainty that a startup does lol. That being said as with anything luck is the major determinant here too. If you end up with a group of immature people and a bad PI you may live hell on earth (as you would anywhere). But I believe your chances of ending up with a fun gang of intelligent people is quite high, including the PI.
I respectfully disagree. The potential reward in a startup is orders of magnitude higher than academia. The percentage of time dedicated to useful work is higher in a startup (funding proposals suuuuck). The time you start earning money is years earlier in a startup (no need for masters or PhD). I agree about credit (which unless it's Nobel level is almost worthless, and usually the department chair gets the most credit anyway) and luck.
While I don't regret my years in academia, it's only because it helped me land my first industry job which would be super difficult without that background. Academia itself as a career path was a big no for me after my first two published papers.
My experience in startups is quite limited, it is some 5-6 friends who applied early on worked and got disappointed. It seems to me that if you are not a founding member, even if the startup makes it through (against quite bad odds), you don't get rewarded enough for working quite a lot for a low salary. Even in one case a friend of mine who came up with quite a good idea that was useful to the company got sacked later on without a second thought or a thank you, let alone a share or a bonus (because of bad financial situation). Also the politics drama (that is abundant in academia yes) also exists for startups on a higher level. Where there are rich shareholders and funders, you are always at the whim of politics between people. Many startups go under because of political decisions by shareholders to stop supporting a certain sector (or even a shareholder being assassinated during some sort of gun fight, in Canada, yea this is a real experience). So that is not special to academia, politics unfortunately exists in any place humans do. It is surprising that it is also so entrenched in academia but yes it is.
Proposals, oh man, nowadays that is the same level of bullshitting involved in AI determined industry interviews, I completely agree. However, if your group is of medium+ size and your PI has some sanity, then odds are you have some project administrator that writes the proposals mostly but I do realize that is not the generality in research groups.
Mostly agree, I guess it's subjective. The startup has the advantage that you could negotiate or go to a different startup or big corporation, academia is basically just the one path.