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Most Common Early Start-up Mistakes

Both Sides of the Table

Assuming normal valuations at fund raising rounds you’ll be down to 6-12% after you’ve created a stock-option pool and raised capital. But these people seldom make retirement money from the stock options on these companies. It you have a great software engineer that’s awesome.

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Fog Creek Compensation

www.joelonsoftware.com

Fog Creek explicitly recognizes that many good software engineers have no desire whatsoever to do "management" or to take on a formal personnel management role. One of the purposes of the Fog Creek Professional Ladder is to create a career path with promotions for engineers who simply do not want to do management stuff at all.

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Can A Startup Do OffShore Development? Part 2

prosperati.com

As a result, local universities here churn out thousands of new graduates each year who can spell Microsoft but understand nothing about proper software engineering. You work long hours at below-market rates for stock options, a chance to participate in the financial payout of the company’s success.