What's your experience working for a YC backed startup?

Took a 50% salary cut for 2% of PagerDuty as the 7th hite. I was devops but spent almost all of my time on marketing, taking us yo conferences and easily closed enough big deals to cover my pathetically low salary.

My father died a couple weeks before re:invent. In my grieving I took us there and hooked us up with netflix and yahoo, probably worth more than the funding we had at that time.

During the conference a creep was hitting on our married office admin and basically stalked her. Our cto and ceo were cowards and did nothing so I protected her.

Ashamed of their cowardice they fired me. A month later we hung out and they offered to bring me on as a marketing consultant. We got drunk and they admitted a higher up at YC told them to fire me because I had too much stock.

I would never, ever do businesd with a YC company again.

I will get shadowbanned for this post.

Founders made 8 figures, most employees including early ones got less than 100k. Back during the dotcom boom, options were distributed a lot more generously. At the first company I joined, the admin assistant made enough from the IPO to buy a vineyard and retire.

I've worked for two YC companies. One was around 10 people, the other around 40. There was good and bad as with any company, none of which was directly attributable to being a YC company. I don't think there's much signal you can derive from it as a candidate really.

Around 50-60 people. Excellent team, wasn't crazy about the founders. Whatever the stated goals of the company were, the only ones that mattered day-to-day were getting to (and maximizing) the next investment round. Eventually left due to frustration with the above: I didn't join for the stock options, I joined to make a good product, and it seemed like every decision leadership made hurt the product in the long run in order to chase short term KPI gains. That strategy ultimately backfired, wouldn't you know it.

I've worked for or in some contracting capacity for 3. My thoughts:

1. If you're joining in the very early stages (like YC batch time), make a plan in writing with the founders for how your compensation will change once the company raises/grows. Those early days will be hectic and it's easy to let those changes get delayed, and something unexpected (good or bad) always comes up since they're startups. You are going to be sweating a lot to get things done by Demo Day or whatever the milestone is, so make sure the comp situation is clear.

2. Do your own analysis on the unit economics of the business to evaluate your potential payout. There will be lots of projections thrown around to attract investors -- as an engineer, you will be able to see all the data and make your own projections.

3. The more industry experience the founders have, the better. Worked for a top 100-500 company? Managed? You're de-risking the job culturally.

4. As far as evaluating character/people you want to work with, pay close attention to how people you are considering working with treat people significantly below them in pay grade. Go out for a coffee and see how the founder treats the waiter -- it sounds silly or obvious but I find it's a good judge of character.

Teams I've worked with: 2-6 people, very early stages.

The YC accelerator is really set up to encourage the founders' best qualities and to drive them forward in a supporting environment. The shape and culture of any YC company is almost entirely due to the founders, not YC.

Just remember to price all the equity/options at $0 as you go with the decision making (and double check it's not actually potentially negative, can happen in some cases due to taxes), as you're not a diversified fund with tens/hundreds of companies in your portfolio (which helps with smoothing out the volatility, as well as being able to handle the complexity of the capital structure).

If youre looking for data to back up a feeling you have about it “being bad sometimes” youll find it. But you knew that.

I would actually focus more on what kinds of behaviours, skills, and values you appreciate in your coworkers and apply that to the founders. The culture of any company is dictated by them primarily, so meet with them after you decide what works best for you.

I'm sure there are a lot of really great companies, led by great people, that are backed by YC. But I wouldn't assume anything about the caliber or maturity of a company just because it was accepted into YC.

I spent a couple months on contract with a friend's startup that had been accepted to YC. The company was just 2 founders when I joined with a barebones concept and no customers. I ended up doing (in my biased view) most of the meaningful engineering work during my 2 months there, including 100% of the work to build the marketing page and the product demo that was used for their pre-seed raise. There was no semblance of work-life balance. There was an expectation to work every day. Every coding marathon to ship bled into the next day's work on equally urgent tickets.

The offer I got to stay long-term was a few percentage points, vesting over 4 years, and a salary that would basically just cover living expenses. Another friend of mine had just got an offer at 350k total comp at a large company as a (MID-LEVEL!) engineer, so the decision to leave seemed pretty obvious.

That said, I think there are some decent reasons to join a YC startup.

- If you really believe in the company's mission, product, or founders

- If you prefer the go-go-go work environment. Some people are just wired this way

- If you plan to start your own company, it might make sense as a stepping stone and learning experience

I have worked for two, and the differences between them are so stark at every level that I wouldn't venture to think that there is a lot of commonality between YC companies in general.

YC startups aren't significantly different from any other startup at a similar stage.

How different is “working for a YC startup” than “working for a funded SV startup”

Is there anything in particular that YC does to set up employment structures/ways of working?

As this seems like asking "What is your experience working for a publicly traded company?"

The people are driven. Absurdly driven.

Every YC compant is different. YC provides investment and coaching for senior leadership. YC companies are startups with the good and bad of that.

I've interviewed with several, worked at none yet, but hopefully that would change soon. Similarities I've noticed:

- They grow fast. Unlike larger companies, there's room for promotion. Unlike smaller companies, you're not stuck being the sole person responsible for a thing for the next two years.

- Lots of tech debt. All startups have them, but YC ones are on another level. Like the Collison validation method, where they'd give an API and there would be a human on the other end handling all payments that went through it. They often acknowledge and manage it better than most startups.

- Product oriented. They believe good product leads to profits, which leads to investors. You don't end up building as much crap that nobody uses.

- Hard work. Some are proud, some are defensive/hide it, some hint it (free dinners).

Other than that, culture is mixed. You have liberals and racists. High and low pay. Bureaucratic and flat. Sincere bosses and charlatans.

Exactly the same as a non-YC company