It seems like every HN Hiring post over the last 6 to 12 months is for "Founding Engineers". When you read the job ads, what they are actually looking for is a unicorn engineer who can build the entire product including Backend, FrontEnd and DevOps while also being an AI domain expert and any number of other demands.<p>This post is a perfect example of this: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/roe-ai/jobs/CZrzxk6-founding-engineer<p>They usually offer 0.25% to 2.0% equity and 150k to 200k per year.<p>I guess I am curious if there is a reason they all started doing this at the same time? Was there some kind of YC memo telling them to do this?<p>Why would someone with those skills and qualifications go work for a startup building their entire product for 2% or less vs just building it for themselves and retaining 100% equity?<p>This whole trend seems super misguided and somewhat exploitative from the outside but it must be working if they are all doing it?
YC doesn't do memos, and I doubt that partners have been telling founders to do this. Some of the lingo around startups can be fashion-driven.<p>Personally I find the term "founding $employee" a bit oxymoronic and I tend to take it out of job ad titles on HN when I see it.<p>FWIW (<-- I am not a startup advisor!) my answer to your question is that any engineer who is inclined to "just build it for themselves and retain 100% equity" should do so. The only reason not to is if you don't want to, or have reason to believe that joining someone else's startup will be better for you in the long run.<p>Sometimes engineers want to work at an existing startup for a while, in order to learn things before starting their own. That seems legit to me. But you can also found your own startup without doing anything like that. Plenty of founders do, and YC is happy to fund them.
"Why would someone with those skills and qualifications go work for a startup building their entire product for 2% or less vs just building it for themselves and retaining 100% equity?" Oh boy, tried that many many times. Turns out 100% of 0 is < 0.25% of a billion.<p>BTW if anyone is going to apply to one of these remember that 2% max equity is NOT REALLY THE MAX. Ask for 10% and slowly work down and settle for 6%.
> When you read the job ads, what they are actually looking for is a unicorn engineer who can build the entire product including Backend, FrontEnd and DevOps while also being an AI domain expert and any number of other demands.<p>Tangent, but is there a descriptor for that in a traditional corporate setting?
> just building it for themselves and retaining 100% equity<p>I tried that once, and once was enough. It's not very rewarding to own 100% equity in a failed startup, especially when it failed because you were too focused on building the product to also build the business around it.
> Why would someone with those skills and qualifications...<p>Well, because there is more to building a business than code? I certainly know engineers who can be a one-man wrecking crew to build out an initial product. But I don't know any of them who also want to do sales and marketing, accounting and fundraising, HR and the legal side of things.<p>As far as why they are called "Founding Engineers"... meh, it is just a title, and trends in titles come and go.