Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://hharnisc.github.io/2018/11/25/twenty-questions-to-ask-before-joining-a-startup.html <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about low-friction options for getting a sense of the engineering quality. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that technical debt and bad software development practices are a top concern.

Being quite senior now, I'd feel comfortable asking:

1 - To see their CI dashboard

2 - To see a sample of their production systems stdout & stderr

3 - Asking to review a recent non-trivial commit (with the person/people who wrote it)

4 - If you're interviewing remotely for an on-site position, finding out if they have an open office

5 - Finding out how they do deploys / devops

<comment><USER3> In the context of a startup, I would expect almost all of those to be disappointing. But maybe that's what you're hoping to see.

In my opinion, if you're a start-up and you've got all those boxes checked, you're possibly doing the right things in the wrong order, and that's a red flag for me. What I hope to hear are responses like, "so this is how we're doing CI. It's awful, almost non-existent. But that's because at our scale it just wasn't important. But as we grow it will become VERY important, so here's what we're thinking about doing in the next 6-12 months..."

I've experienced a start-up with lots of tooling and process , none of which matters when you take forever to ship (and stay shipped).

<comment><USER4> This.

As I always say, "If you are building a startup, over-engineering is a far bigger sin than creating technical debt."

<comment><USER5> But having CI, proper logging, and code review isn't over engineering. The time, effort and bugs saved by spending 1-2 days putting these policies and procedures in place is valuable early on.

Of course, each of those pieces is at risk of becoming over engineered. But hopefully the team has a leader that knows when to move forward and when to pull back.

<comment><USER6> Particularly CI. If you want to be able to release fast and often, having that automated is going to save you a lot of time.

And CI doesn't immediately have to include everything you'll eventually want; just having automated build and deploy will make your life a lot easier. Add some automated testing as soon as you can afford to (which hopefully is right away, because it's not that hard to set up), and you're ready to move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> It is also important to note that early employees experience more dilution events. An example of a dilution event would be raising another round of funding. This is another reason why joining a company early should offer more equity._

I disagree that it's important to note that early employees experience more dilution events. I know you're trying to educate but this type of advice unintentionally _misinforms_ people and causes people to pay attention to the wrong thing. Ultimately, the more important math is _number_of_shares multiplied by share_price_. As long as that goes up, dilution is not as important. What employees will care about is whether the _total money wealth went up_ and not whether their 5% ownership turned into 4% because a new investment round bought 20% of the company. I have no idea why dilution attracts so much verbiage that's out of proportion to its mathematical importance.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. The most common way to predict payout is to compare to other companies' exit valuations.

E.g. "Oh, company X got acquired for $250 million. We do something similar. If I own .025% of the company, I'd make $62,500 if we exited at that valuation. Cool."

It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% if you're lucky enough to have a successful exit.

<comment><USER7> _> It's important to be aware of dilution events so that you realize when you accept the offer that your .025% will be more like .008% _

But you're repeating the same error of prioritizing the wrong thing: dilution.

What employees ultimately care about is their wealth calculation: _shares_multiplied_by_price_.

Example of the type of math people actually care about:

      0.008% (because dilutions) a $1 billion company is $80k
      0.025% (no dilution) of a $100 million company is $25k.

People would rather have $80k than $25k. The dilutions that dropped them from 0.025% to 0.008% is irrelevant trivia.

For most employees that are minority shareholders, dilution is a _side-effect_ calculation in the realm of academic trivia. Dilution is not a purposeful strategy in this situation. Highlighting "dilution" in advice for employees in an attempt to make them more financially more sophisticated has the opposite effect!

The scenarios for dilution to be a calculated strategy would be something like a founder considering 2 different offers from potential investors. One VC offers $20 million for 15% of the company. Another offers $30 million for 25% of the company. Or some founders selling too much of a percentage such that the dilution crosses some boundary such as 51% ownership where they collectively lose control of the company. These deliberate decisions around dilution are very different from employees realistically worrying about dilution dropping them from 0.025% to 0.008%!

<comment><USER9> You're entirely (technically) correct. The issue is that side-effect often comes into play because employees like to calculate potential future outcomes, and that's done based only on overall company value (since that's one of the only data points that's available from past acquisitions).

I'm sure you get this and I know the psychology of what an employee might hope for shouldn't be relevant, but unfortunately it is.

(For those who don't fully get this - what I mean is that folks often look at a potential outcome and say "other companies like this have been acquired for $1-2B vs $100B, so if I'm being given 1% at $10M my stake could be worth $10M!" When in reality after dilution, that stake might only be worth $2M, which is a very different outcome after 5-10 years of hard work at below market salaries.)

<comment><USER10> Another aspect of this is that if you join an early stage startup and work there 5-10 years without any new equity grants (such as the annual refreshers that many companies give) while the company grows and does new funding rounds, then you're getting screwed badly.

<comment><USER11> only financially, which isn't one of the reasons you should work for a startup!

<comment><USER12> I think getting paid (preferably well) is always one of the reasons why people work for _any_ company, including startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is good stuff.

I want to emphasize one point. A company may offer you options, or restricted stock units, or any sort of equity in the company.

When they do this, they are asking you to invest in the company. They are asking you to buy your shares with your scarcest resource: time.

Do NOT be the slightest bit embarrassed to ask any question you want about the company's capital situation, funding prospects, premoney valuation at the last funding round, amount of "runway" left before they need revenue or another round of funding, names of major shareholders, preferred shares outstanding, etc.

Warren Buffett would ask lots of questions if they asked him to invest; so should you. Mr. Buffett probably would ask better questions, but that's OK. The company should encourage questions from YOU: they're asking YOU to invest.

If they bristle at your questions, it's a red flag. They may say, "look, that's confidential, can't answer specifically," and that's OK. But they shouldn't get annoyed.

And, remember, you can't pay your rent or buy groceries with unvested options. You need cash money for that.

<comment><USER11> > And, remember, you can't pay your rent or buy groceries with unvested > options. You need cash money for that.

You can't pay your rent or buy groceries with vested options either.

<comment><USER14> You can leverage it in salary negations i.e. I have options on xxxx £1 shares of a private company which would only sell out at say 30x 40x.

Then again the UK is saner when it comes to employee shares - and I am lucky that I have EMI options - which are taxed at 10% CGT and 0 income tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Option piece is misleading.

You own 1% of options and company is bought for $10m.

Your payoff?

Likely $0.

He forgot to mention preferred shares given to VC's with liquidation preferences that likely never disclosed to new engineers.

This is what makes new engineer to sacrifice his salary for a possible liquidation even that likely either never happens or there is no money left for him after VCs took their xN ratios off the payoff.

<comment><USER16> Can you elaborate on why your payoff is $0 if you have 1% vested common stock in the company?

<comment><USER17> Liquidation preferences mean that some shares have rights that others don't. In a liquidity event (IPO or acquisition), the people holding the "preferred" shares get paid out first, according to the number of shares and the valuation of those shares. If all the cash and other assets from the acquisition are given out to them, then anyone else holding the less-preferred shares get nothing.

Usually, the founders and VC have the preferred shares, while someone writing unit tests at 3am does not.

<comment><USER18> Are "liquidation preference" shares just tagged as being worth more than their actual value though? I can't reconcile how they could get paid "according to the number of shares and the valuation of those shares" _and_ have there be nothing left over for the non-preferred stock. If the founders/VCs have any n% of a, say, $10M acquisition, that still has to leave money for everyone else, unless the total number of shares is >100%, someone has a funny idea of a $10M company being worth more than the $10M that was paid for it, or there is something else going on.

My understanding is that you're perfectly correct, however — I'm just trying to demonstrate how I don't really "get" it. I presume there's some other number involved in the "liquidation preference" that is visible to those involved that make it more than a mere n% of company calculation.

Edit: Googling this, it seems like these special investors get to recoup their investment if the company is selling for less than what they valued it at at their time of investment. (And since it seems like this generally applies to VC firms, I gotta say, this is really lame. It was a bad investment, but you know the actual employees took a lot more risk in it, and yet the _VCs_ get a better return — albeit a loss.)

<comment><USER19> If you have preferred shares, you often have a "2X liquidation preference"[1] or other multiple. This means that you are guaranteed to get _at least_ two times your initial investment in a liquidation event, _even if_ the value of your shares at the time is less than that amount.

This can (and often does) eat into the common stockholders' (e.g. employees) liquidation amounts.

1\. [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-liquidation- preferences-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-liquidation-preferences- work-2014-3)

<comment><USER20> In my experience (~ 20 years at institutional VC funds), 2x preference (or anything above 1x) is extremely rare. It comes up only when there is a distressed situation, and the investors do not believe that they will receive any money beyond their liquidation preference (i.e. other junior liquidation preferences will consume the rest of the proceeds from the sale of the company).

<comment><USER21> I saw it around the dot-com days along with a lot of other extremely dubious terms for extremely desperate founders - at least in NYC.

Agreed that more than a 1x liquidation preference these days would generally be surprising, but in a low end scenario or with a few big rounds, all it takes is a 1x to wipe out any upside for founders and employees, but if you're deemed worth it, the acquiring company can offer you a worthwhile incentive to stick around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The only valid reasons for working at a seed-stage / series A startup:

You are a founder.

They are working with a technology or in an industry that you specifically want to work with and it is very hard to work on it professionally, and doing side projects are infeasible.

You need experience and you have no other option to get experience.

You are getting a significant title bump that moves your career forwards.

Invalid reasons for working at a startup:

Equity (getting rich off stock options) - this is very likely to be worthless unless you are a co-founder.

Salary - you would make (much) more at a big company.

Work life balance - you will work harder than you ever have.

Stability - does not exist.

Benefits - very bad.

Learning - they will not have any formal training nor time to train you, so be prepared to self-learn.

\---

All that said, I enjoyed my time as an employee at multiple startups. Just go in for the right reasons and your eyes wide open.

<comment><USER23> > You need experience and you have no other option to get experience.

This was me and I paid for it. Right now I'm on week 8 of 30 hour weeks. It sucks.

<comment><USER24> I thought standard work weeks were 40 hours (at least in the US)? Are your work weeks normally shorter?

<comment><USER25> 40 hours is the target. In practice, most salaried employees work around 50-60 hours a week -- more if you count checking and responding to email after work / pager duty / etc

<comment><USER26> While I'm aware some would call this a rather contrarian opinion, I truly believe that if you're in a salaried position and routinely _required_ to work 45 or more hours a week, whether by actual mandate or "but that's just what we all do here" cultural pressure, there is something wrong with that company, more than likely starting at the top. Many companies have extraordinary crunch periods for one reason or another, and that's fine, but if you're in a crunch period more often than you aren't, that's no longer extraordinary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd also ask questions to get a sense of the "soft skills" of the founders or whoever will be managing you. It's a truism, but "people quit managers, not companies."

There are tons of resources online for questions to ask, and I think the company/viability questions from the post are good, but I would add to them some of these types of questions:

How you will be managed/evaluated and the mission of the company: [https://www.themuse.com/advice/8-questions-most-people- dont-...](https://www.themuse.com/advice/8-questions-most-people-dont-ask- hiring-managersbut-you-should)

How your founder/manager will navigate conflict, which is inevitable: [https://www.thebalancecareers.com/interview-questions-to- ass...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/interview-questions-to-assess- conflict-resolution-skills-1918500)

</comment><comment><USER28> Major omission: Does the business model make sense to you?

More specifically: Is there a demand for the product? Are there competitors? If not, why not -- are you sure the product is actually something that somebody wants? If there are competitors -- how will your startup compete with them? Do you trust the people running the company to guide it to success, either directly, or because they have plans to hire people who can? Is the technology feasible, or are the founders embarking on an R&D project?

There are no guarantees of course, and you can learn a lot and have fun at a startup that fails, but do your best to join with your eyes wide open.

<comment><USER29> Agreed, but this is sometimes very hard for a candidate to assess if they themselves are nowhere near the target customer.

Asking about competitors is a great question though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Having worked at several start-ups, I'd say the employment risks are not worth the cost. In most of my cases, when the start-up hasn't raised enough money, you end up with a poor work environment - pissed off/stressed bosses, weird work hours, "do anything" to save the business mentality... Generally layoffs/firings occur pretty abruptly and you're left filing for unemployment without a "thank you". My advice would be to wait for a start-up to be "derisked" / 3-5 years old with a solid run rate above $100m in revenue.

The few success stories, such as Airbnb and Facebook, are the extreme exception.

<comment><USER11> I think a willingness to take on the risk is assumed by the author. Once you've made that choice, then how do you evaluate one startup vs another. (as an employee)

<comment><USER30> i think we'll look back a decade from now and realize 90% of the start-ups from 2008 to present were small businesses in disguise with MUCH MUCH smaller markets than forecasted by founders.

i think hopping to a startup and back to a big tech company is fine. i've done it for career advancements, but it was grueling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Major Omission: People

Ask yourself-

Do I trust the founders?

Can I have healthy debate with the founders?

Will my feedback be considered by the founders?

Am I compatible with the founders?

Are the founders compatible with each other and are they able to work together constructively?

<comment><USER32> Bouncing off this comment with an example from the last job I worked at (a startup).

> Do I trust the founders?

At first, I did because I was too green about small businesses. I thought the worst they could do was pay me lower wages. Oh, boy, was I wrong. Not only did I get 1099'd, but also had my hours and wages cut two months in. (The 1099 was resolved, though, thanks to the IRS's contest process.)

> Can I have healthy debate with the founders?

I found out after joining that the founders were married. So no to this one.

> Will my feedback be considered by the founders?

It was, but then promptly discarded since the founders lied about their technical skills (they knew enough to sell tech but not to build it). So everything was a game of "why can't you just drag/drop this X thing like we can in Photoshop".

> Am I compatible with the founders?

One of the founders sold me on the fact that he played guitar. But then I found out that they blasted the office with very light AM classical music for the whole day. So nope, not compatible.

> Are the founders compatible with each other?

They were married, so no.

> Are they able to work together constructively?

See the above comment.

\</comment></comment><comment>

Anyways, my experience is only anecdotal. But yeah, really dive into the founder's dynamics to see if you can tolerate them or not before accepting a job.

</comment><comment><USER33> Get. It. In. Writing.

I will say this much. People have bad memories. That includes you. You think you remember that conversation perfectly? You probably don't.

Get. It. In. Writing. And don't trust anyone who won't commit to writing.

<comment><USER32> And make sure you are present when everything is sent to the copier. If the boss tells you that he/she needs you to sign two copies, don't do it. The copy you receive could be a totally different document than what you signed for the company. If the boss insists on making a copy at home, don't sign anything either. Offer to meet at a Kinkos or something to copy stuff. You want to make sure you're getting the same document out that you signed.

Or just go work for a more established company where you don't have to deal with this stuff. Because, frankly, you're not ready for a startup if you don't have the mental intuition to ask for everything in writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The list of questions is great but I don't think there is a way to get to this kind of information for the majority of candidates.

1) A startup with marginal success and showing growing signs can simply ignore you and your questions and move to the next candidate. Startups where all these ducks are in a row has a strong candidate pipeline and they simply move on. You run the risk of standing out not as a diligent person, but as someone who is meddling in issues beyond his/her means.

2) A startup willing to divulge all this and walk the extra distance for you is probably too raw and desperately short of talent. When you get hold of all of this information, you might feel this startup is not worth it, given you now know where the skeletons are buried.

In the end, you really kind of have to wing it. Just like the VCs, the founders and everyone else is at an early stage of an endeavor. It is a high risk game, period.

My 2c is often towards ignoring all this math and doing your best to learn more about the founders, their motivation and if they will take care of you. Good founders always find a way to compensate you for your hard work whether by financial means or by paying it forward in other ways.

</comment><comment><USER35> I believe that equity is mostly SF thing.

One of my friends works in a startup in Berlin where he was offered equity as one of the founders (10th engender or sth like that). Chances that he will be able to liquidate them in foreseeable future is non existing.

Nobody else that I know was offered an equity, even though quite a lot of my friends work for well funded startups. I worked in some and nobody offered me anything else but a salary.

If I relocated near SF? Sure, there would be a possibility. If I was a rockstar and one of first 5 cofounders? Also yes, but I am not famous.

I am really skeptical about any such post, as I saw myself that some strategies that works in Silicon Valley do not work anywhere else and I am not into moving to the most spoiled IT region in the world.

<comment><USER36> FWIW, Germany specifically has complicated tax laws that make equity tricky. Namely: if your equity ever increases in value — e.g. if your startup raises a round of funding and gets a higher valuation — you owe capital gains taxes on the increase, even if the equity itself isn't liquid (which it might very well never be). There are workarounds, but they're a hassle. None of this is an issue in the US, where you're only taxed when you sell.

I've never been an employee of a German company, but I'm in the process of founding a startup here in Berlin. I totally get how saving early employees from having to deal with that headache would be a blessing.

(In general, the advice in the article tracks with my experience working not just with SF-based startups but companies in other top-tier tech cities like London and NYC. If you get a job at a startup in SF, you'll absolutely get equity as meaningful part of your job offer, even if you actively don't want it. A large part of startups' ability to hire depends on them being able to convince you it's okay you're being paid literally less than half of what Facebook pays because someday your 0.01-0.1% equity stake might be worth something)

<comment><USER11> > None of this is an issue in the US, where you're only taxed when you sell.

Nope. In the US, you may be taxed when you exercise, and will be taxed again (against the new basis) when you sell. Whether or not you are taxed at exercise is a very complicated matter.

Keep in mind, when you are granted stock options, you don't actually have any equity. You have an /option/ to acquire equity. The taxable events are the acquisition of that equity and the subsequent liquidation of it.

<comment><USER36> You're totally right about options. I was thinking more explicitly about stock itself (e.g. RSUs in the case of employees at companies that issue those instead of options, or founder's stock in my personal case).

Separate from that, things are still more fraught in Germany: whatever your US taxation situation is, I'm not aware of any situation where a valuation change in stock/options/etc you're holding will trigger a taxable event for you, as I understand to be the case with Germany. As I understand equity taxation in the US, you'll only ever be taxed when events happen that you yourself have initiated (e.g. exercising options or selling stock).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd treat the specific questions here with a grain of salt but directionally the emphasis on making sure you inform yourself about the things you care about is good. I wouldn't expect that asking questions of the prospective employer is the best way to inform yourself about a lot of things though. A lot of devs for example could use some advice about options, how they work and what the tax consequences are when you receive or exercise options. Your prospective employer really can't give you this advice in any credible way - you need to seek it out independently and do your own research.

Some of the specific questions are not great depending on cultural context. For example if someone joining my dev team asked me to pay to ship their car somewhere I'd ask them why they needed a car to code. But I'm in London, where having a car has marginal/negative utility versus being essential in other places.

On the equity side, if someone asked these questions I'd know they don't understand equity. What would really help is to see the cap table so you get liquidation preferences etc but you're not going to get to see the cap table most places if you're just going for a dev job. As it is, he says you might not get told the strike price on your options, which in many/most countries your employer would be legally obliged to tell you as it's part of the valuation of your comp for tax purposes.

</comment><comment><USER38> A few comments from prior experience:

Equity in a startup is often used as a way to entice people to work without having to pay them market rates. If you suspect this is the case, definitely keep in mind that this equity could very well never be worth more than $0.

If you are interested in the value of the equity, then you have to be interested in the value of the business. You must understand whether you think the business value can grow. And this requires much more research and business strategy evaluation than most jobs offers.

</comment><comment><USER39> The power dynamic: You're seeking a job and mostly at a younger/lower power position and might not be able to question the founder too much. It's the kind of soft power that the #metoo movement has talked about. Unfortunately, there are people who are ready to misuse that.

It's worse than when negotiating with a bigger company actually, cause there you're just negotiating with HR department employees who would follow the law more closely. At a large corp, you largely get what you expect.

Be very wary of what you're promised and told. I, unfortunately, was burnt by this. I largely trusted everything that I was promised/told about the company performance. But it was all hoax.

So an additional tip: Cross-check with your friends how they feel about the company. Make this effort even if you are a bit introverted and don't like discussing job offers etc with other people. Match what your research about the startup tells you with what the founders told you about the company performance. Look out for red flags.

<comment><USER40> > Cross-check with your friends how they feel about the company.

This is very important. I have a friend who took a job at a Mysterious Fintech Startup - he told our social circle in the pub and the entire table collectively groaned and encouraged him to find something more stable (red flags involved being paid pre-tax, etc).

They went bust a month later, a day after he decided jumped ship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ask to see the pitch deck. A good startup will have a pitch deck that clearly explains the plan, market, team, and more.

</comment><comment><USER42> I like this as a great starter list. When I joined my first startup 8 years ago, I didn't know to ask basically any of these questions. I just assumed I'd work hard and get a Lamborghini some day (only half joking).

On the fundraising side, I'd add, "What is your fundraising steategy" when talking to the founders. This massively changes potential value calculations in terms of equity. I know some founders who are focused on not raising funds and pure profitability, others who are focused on growth by any means. Part of the calculus here is that by not shooting for more fundraising rounds, the founders may be signaling that they won't be selling anytime soon. In that case, you should look to understand what your exercise rights are for your options. Do you have to exercise within 90 days, or is there a grace period?

</comment><comment><USER43> More questions to ask before joining a startup: [https://www.aaron- gray.com/questions-to-ask-at-a-startup-int...](https://www.aaron- gray.com/questions-to-ask-at-a-startup-interview/)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm about to agree to join a startup, but reading all the comments made me hesitate.

But I don't see a growth opportunity in a big company, the work is boring as hell and there are engineers, who joined 5 years earlier than I did, are still on same level as mine.

And the key engineering work is hold tightly by early members, unless they retire, I don't see a chance.

And I want to do robotics. Although my current company is investing in the area, they only need people with the right background, i.e. PhDs in robotics. And I have talk with google recruiters, they let me choose a position before the interview, but all my selections are as boring as my current position.

Doing a startup seems to be only way?

</comment><comment><USER45> These are mostly offer stage questions. If somebody asked most of these in the opening interview I'd probably pass.

My most important preliminary questions are all trying to get to root of one issue: Does this company follow a theory x vs theory y leadership model. So many companies out there claiming to be team oriented but in actuality are top down, my way or the highway operations.

<comment><USER46> The "Responsibilities" section is stuff I'd expect to ask/answer in an early round interview. But yeah, the rest is all offer-stage stuff.

<comment><USER45> Very weird that those were the last questions on the list...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > How does the company collect feedback from customers?

I've read quite a few of these guides and they mostly focus on equity/benefits but I think product/market fit and feedback loops are a treasure trove for job seekers because they can show you the future as well as how focused the founder(s) are.

As a founder I've never been asked about feedback loops and rarely get asked about product market fit. We're not technically a startup anymore, so that could be why. But I think those are useful questions for any company that isn't a household name like Facebook or Apple.

What you should be looking for in an answer is whether it sounds like the company knows who it's serving and is actively working to understand that audience even better.

Regardless of valuation, rounds of VC, or the flavor of popsicles you can find in the fridge, fit is what will ultimately get success. In my opinion/experience.

P.S. - understanding everything else is also super important for _you_, but this is important to understand to tell if there's a future in which those would be worth anything.

</comment><comment><USER48> > A good rule of thumb is 25% of take home pay should go towards housing and > up to 40% in the Bay Area. 40% can be done if you minimize costs like going > out or have a second income.

This is an interesting, and perhaps telling, assertion. 40% can be done if you minimize costs, not only in the Bay Area, but anywhere else. Thus, the implicit point here is apparently that the opportunity set in the Bay Area is so great that it's justifiable to allocate an additional 15% of pretax income just to live there, relative to anywhere else on the planet.

I'm not sure if I buy that, especially within the context of taking a job that you've already been offered that has a defined comp package vs. moving somewhere to find a new job.

<comment><USER49> As long as the other 60% in the Bay Area is greater than the 75% elsewhere, you're better off in the Bay Area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I am not seeing that this document addresses the important concept of timing. That is when to ask the questions. I am not certain that (as in any negotiation) it pays to ask everything initially. It would be like going out on a date with someone and hitting them with a list of questions prior to even having the dessert. Timing is critical. For one thing depending on how well they like a candidate they might be more likely to agree to something that they initially say they can't do. Especially once they have invested enough time.

There is no clear answer for the correct time other than to not assume it's simply ok to state everything upfront (vs. time wasted on the part of the applicant).

</comment><comment><USER51> I think it's important to note that in many situations, money > equity.

90% of startups fail.

If you have two options, one being getting payed your preferred rate, and another being taking a huge pay cut for equity.. experience tells me to take the money every time and you'll have made the right choice 90% of the time.

For most people money on hand today is way more important than future money that may never even materialize. And if you're not most people, there will be future opportunities to buy into the company one way or another if you want to be an investor. You don't even need to invest in the company you work for, there might be better investments that your real money that you get from the job can afford.

</comment><comment><USER52> Awesome post. Definitely good timing as I was about to start an Ask HN around this as I go through the process.

I've also asked about early exercise (83(b)) and term sheets, if there are bad terms i.e. liquidation pref, anti-dilution etc but not all companies are willing to share this info.

Also, I am curious about why companies don't just have a black box formula output generator, with your equity offer value, saying this is our projection and based on our current termsheet if the company exits at this value your options are worth X, with the option of dilution built in.

</comment><comment><USER53> >> Technically there are 23 questions but I grouped the last one together as a question for new potential teammates. Also 23 questions to ask before joining a startup didn't have as good a ring to it.

Actually, I'd argue 23 has a way better ring to it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma)

</comment><comment><USER54> This is great if the assumption is that the startup will be successful, however given the failure rate it feels like the focus should be on risk management. How much risk should I as a developer be willing to invest knowing that statistically things might not work out.

Additionally, it would be great if there was material like this that was much more approachable by someone early on in their career.

</comment><comment><USER55> With regard to equity, I wouldn't join a startup unless it's cheap for me to buy the options. If you get your cliff, and it costs 50k to buy your options, you are sol. You options are to throw away your equity, or be stuck at a shitty job.

Whether it's worth it "to get rich", is kind of a bs argument. If the opportunity exists to be a founder go for it, if not take the next best possible option.

<comment><USER14> So you can do the sell some stock to buy the rest thing Nil Paid I think its called.

And tax wise it can work out better as you don't pay income tax of the shares sold to buy the others - this is scenario dependant.

<comment><USER56> it's a startup. your stock is not liquid.

<comment><USER14> You only do it when there is a liquidity event

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I dunno how anyone else feels, but I'd add a 21 that's pretty important to me. How is the startup planning on earning revenue?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> There are no engineering questions on this list, and the more I think about it, the more correct I think that is. Unless you're stretching the definition of a startup, most of what passes for current engineering is volatile and subject to lots of change. Better to ask questions about the team and their experience so you know what you'll need to build.

<comment><USER32> I guess the only real valid question that you can ask in this situation is "Does anyone here currently contribute to the code?". If the answer is yes, start asking questions about the dev process. If the answer is no, then they're trying to use you for a cheap "computer person" and you should move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I remember a similar list of questions being posted in the past that were for any engineering position. Couldn't find the one I was looking for but this was posted a while ago and seems pretty nice: [https://www.keyvalues.com/culture- queries](https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries)

</comment><comment><USER60> Here's some advice. Don't feign passion. If you could give to shits about the product wait for a better opportunity. Next. Your coworkers are competition. Treat them as such. Next. Ask for at least 20% more than you'd settle for but only after you receive an offer. Last. Don't become a JAP. You're welcome.

</comment><comment><USER61> Questions 4 through 14 are likely not to be answered, or founders will be cagey about it. IMHO, if you get stiff-armed and you're applying to be in the first 10 employees, then run.

My general view is if you're in the first 10 or so employees for a VC-backed startup, you deserve near-founder benefits (including financial transparency).

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm looking at joining a seed-stage startup straight out of college as #8. What would be a good range for equity?

<comment><USER63> 0.25-0.5

<comment><USER64> how do you know the number? is there a table somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's not clear to me if these are intended to be startup-specific questions only.

It asks "How does the company collect feedback from customers?", which sounds like a pretty generic question, but there's nothing at all about working conditions, which I'd consider a top priority at any job.

</comment><comment><USER66> +1 for finding out how much power individual board members have, although you may have to dig into the history of the startup, press releases, and ask rank and file staff members about recent events. The Board can easily kick out the CEO and anyone they hired without much notification.

</comment><comment><USER11> > This could be a difficult choice for someone who doesn't have much cash on > hand.

This is a vast oversimplification. The entire section on equity is very, very deficient and should just be disregarded.

This article is a fine start, but it still needs lots of work.

</comment><comment><USER67> Have you actually had a startup tell you how many options are out there?

I've joined a few different startups all series B or later, and have asked at least 2 of them how many total shares there were. Neither would tell me.

<comment><USER11> In 2018+, it doesn't make sense to accept an offer that includes options without knowing how many are outstanding.

one late round "startup" i worked for, 300-ish employees and series F (just before I started), but still very much a startup, actually gave very, very detailed info in the option/RSU packet as part of my offer, without me having to ask for it. It included per-round valuation and dilution info, shares outstanding, other good stuff. Not liquidation prefs though. I've never seen an offer packet like that before or since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Ask that all payroll be secured for at least six months and paid through a third party. Had a founder pull all the money out in 2009 and I lost $90k in unpaid work.

</comment><comment><USER69> try those questions:

\- do employees work overtime because they have to or because they want to? \- what do you do to keep your employees happy? \- whats the turnover rate?

</comment><comment><USER70> the answer to every question on this list:

"We are a private company and don't share this information."

Outside of the room, the Engineering team laughs at your questions, Operations and the CEO give each other quizzical looks before laughing too, and they go on to the next candidate.

You get smug satisfaction for not going with "THAT Company who cant answer simple questions", until a reminder about the rent payment comes in due and all you want is a 30% pay increase over your last/current role.

<comment><USER71> So true! I've interviewed with several startups (about 50-60) in the past, over the course of 5 years. I had offers from most of them, while some of them rejected me after the interviews (for whatever reasons they had). Your comment is so close to reality (based on my interactions). Some laugh, some genuinely have no clue, some act arrogant (you can either join based on whatever limited information is provided, or leave), and some say they don't share any such information.

I've worked at two startups in the past. The first startup tanked. When interviewing for the next role, I did ask these questions, but had no luck. Ended up taking an offer with 15% increase over my last role. Two years of work, and I find out that this startup too, is on its way down. Eventually ended up moving to a big company.

<comment><USER72> You must have been doing multiple interviews per month, every month, for those five years in order to get to the stage of getting an offer from a majority of the 60 companies. That sounds exhausting!

<comment><USER71> I did. Once I joined the companies that did not openly answer my questions during interviews (about finances, strike price, etc.), I ended up realizing all the negatives/problems of the companies from the inside.

Then on, I had only two choices: (1) ignore the problems and not worry about future, or (2) act fast and start interviewing until I have options if something goes wrong. I chose the second option, and hence a lot of interviewing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> 5 years ago this would've been awesome, I asked all of this to 5 employers in SF. Now in 2018 Silicon Valley we're treated like chattle as coders/lower so I don't see the relevance of any of these questions beyond signalling. You can be laid off at any time and for no reason or because of prejudiced liars who want you off the team. Call me jaded, I've been screwed at almost every startup and told simply that the pattern is me and left to die on the streets. My #1 question is how we feel about lying, followed by how much I get paid per hour (no salary, no options).

<comment><USER17> Maybe off-topic here, but: you sound very bitter, and that bitterness is no doubt understandable. I'm currently being pushed around at work by incompetent people who have lied routinely, and it stings. I'm sure the same has happened to many if not most people in the industry.

But you and I both should let go of that bitterness and even forgive the liars if we're to move on as people. I'll quote an old saying, "Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die."

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> (I think it's hilarious I'm being downvoted for making a factual observation...)

It amazes me how different startup culture, and tech culture in general, is from the rest of the country.

\----

Every job I've ever worked at:

Relocation expenses? hahahaha

Equity? haha we'll wave your brokerage fee to buy as our stock purchase program but if you wanna sell, you'll be paying brokerage fees.

Responsibilities? You'll do what we tell you, when we tell you, and you'll live with it. If you don't like it, you're fired. You are disposable, we do not need you, we can replace you in a matter of days with someone that'll happily shut up, sit down, and do as they're told.

\---

Then of course things like bonuses. I've never had a bonus at any job I've worked at in 17 years of W2 employment. Not once. In fact, I've never even had an annual cost of living increase just a 'merit based increase' at some jobs which is almost always less than inflation.

<comment><USER75> Hmmm, I think relocation expenses are pretty standard, but not as high as they may need to be if you need to break a lease or something like that.

<comment><USER76> Any idea of the average (for the personal part of it) ? For a EU to US move ? With like 5 years of experience ?

<comment><USER77> It's worth noting that relocation expenses don't change too much depending on experience. They generally average around $10,000 from my experience, but it isn't paid out in advance, but usually as a reimbursement. Some companies will give you a card to do it on as a means of not having to be reimbursed, but even that's rare.

<comment><USER76> Thanks for the info.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon hints at sales figures for AWS - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/78754/amazon-doesnt-reveal-what-it-makes-on-cloud-computing-but-heres-the-number-anyway/ <comment><USER2> Given that this is revenue, and given that Amazon has a "market-share-or- death" pricing model for margins, this really tells you nothing about AWS's profitability. It could be running at a loss (it wouldn't surprise me.)

I'd be much more bullish on Amazon as an investor if they gave _any_ guidance as to when they will actually start taking profits. There's just something that feels wrong investing in a company that very well may _never_ become profitable in my lifetime and whose share price will just float on hope for a day that will never come.

I still think Amazon is an amazing company, but their approach to providing shareholder value (the role of a public corporation) is definitely a little unorthodox.

<comment><USER3> As an AMZN shareholder for years, I guess I think of it the other way: I own shares because I believe they provide value to me and society via service and bringing about efficiency, and I as a proud shareholder am evaluating them in such a metric, opposed to quarterly earnings numbers.

<comment><USER2> Right I guess the point I'm making is that once Amazon is forced to raise margins, will they still be Amazon? If Amazon never raises margins, what's the investment thesis? Something has to give.

The main theory is that Amazon is building up such a wide economic moat that consumers are going to be willing to put up with higher prices or competitors will still never be able to beat them on margins even when they start to take profits. This is a pretty huge bet.

<comment><USER4> I think AWS is a classic case of economies of scale enabling profitability outside the reach of smaller companies. The AWS R&D get's reused for there internal systems driving down the costs of running there internal systems. So even if AWS only breaks even it's still a net win for the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AWS is of course huge, but many forget that Rackspace is in the same order of magnitude at $1.3b yearly revenue last year and growing about 24%.

Source: <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=rax>

</comment><comment><USER6> I've heard from the CEO of a large company that partners with Amazon a very similar figure for the revenue of AWS.

From the same source, I've heard that some services Amazon.com relies on runs on competitors' infrastructure, even though AWS offers the same service, and no, not as a backup service but as the primary solution for that particular service.

<comment> z-factor They were using Akamai and not CloudFront last time I checked (which was a while ago). And of course they must have legacy systems that were built before their in-house solutions were available.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whomever changed the Headline - thank you. Its much clearer than my abbreviated one (original waaay too long)

</comment><comment><USER7> Philosophical question: For companies that are conglomerates, or at least have very different business units (like Amazon or GE or Microsoft), should those companies be required by law to break out their earnings by major division?

<comment><USER8> Impossible to enforce - companies are free to shift things around internally to produce any numbers they want, as long as the totals are correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> VMWare reported twice as much revenue as (is derived for) AWS for the recent quarter. AWS is cheaper, but even so, I'm trying to wrap my mind around how that's possible.

<comment><USER10> VMWare makes money on support and integration, AWS on volume.

Amazon has historically taken their competitors to the cleaners on margins, especially the dead tree publishers.</comment></comment>


Instacart stops selling alcohol for compliance reasons - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/11/instacart-stops-selling-alcohol-for-compliance-reasons/ <comment><USER2> Incidentally, of all the startups we've funded, Instacart is one of the ones we ourselves use most. Jessica can't stop talking about how great it is. You learn how useful grocery delivery when you have small children like we do, and Instacart is by far the best option for this.

Instacart is one of those rare products that's _surprisingly_ great. I.e. you don't realize how good such a thing could be till you try it. A lot of the best startups have this quality. I wish we could figure out a way to identify them when they apply to YC, but at the moment I admit we can't.

<comment><USER3> I just got a delivery 30 minutes ago, in fact. For years, I'd used Safeway.com's delivery services and now that I have used Instacart, I'll never go back. The UX is 100x better, delivery is much quicker (and cheaper), and I can order on my phone.

<comment><USER4> > You learn how useful grocery delivery when you have small children like we > do, and Instacart is by far the best option for this.

Woah, I've been reading PG essays and the HN comments by you and the other YC partners for several years but didn't realize you two have kids!! Congratulations! I imagine they'll have incredible futures ahead of them growing up in such an intellectually stimulating environment/family!!

Again, congratulations PG/JL! I'm sure you two will be wonderful parents! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It's called due diligence."

And this is called talking out of one's ass. It's easy to armchair quarterback from a cozy cubicle at Pando HQ. When you run an actual company, especially as a solo founder, you'll realize how thin your bandwidth gets stretched. Unless it's core, you adopt a 'cross that bridge when you get there' mentality. Which is exactly what Apoorva did here.

Seriously, once you go down the 'due diligence' road, there are a million things to check up on. Focus on the core to get up and running, fix things as they break and worry about the rest later.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't agree more. When you are a startup founder you are often times inventing a new way of doing something. Often there are no pre-written rules, you make them up as you go along and you find yourself doing things previously thought to be unthinkable. Most problems do have a work-around. I will not be surprised if in 2 weeks this founder solves this trivial problem by going to locally owned stores and working out a cash-flow arrangement (independently owned stores will be delighted by the lead-gen).

<comment><USER7> I would agree that it's easy to armchair quarterback but I think it's reasonable to say that this should have been expected or at least had come up in ANY standard analysis of potential risks when evaluating a startup that delivered alcohol. If you've bought alcohol, you would know that there are legal requirements to sell it. It's no different than considering other factors that could affect a delivery service like liability if your drivers get in a car accident or tax issues around reselling groceries, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fortunately, Swig! (<http://swigme.com>) is still 100% legal and open for business.

Swig! is an instant beer & alcohol delivery service that partners directly with licensed brick & mortar retailers to enable online ordering and one-hour delivery. Unlike Instacart however, we did our homework and engaged liquor licensing attorneys to vet our model.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Swig! When Instacart was still selling booze, we competed with them.

<comment><USER8> > According to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, all > transactions of alcoholic beverages must be made directly through the vendor > that holds the liquor license – in this case, Safeway. An Instacart shopper > is not allowed to simply buy alcohol off the shelves and sell it like any > other grocery item. So, instead of a customer paying Instacart when buying > booze, the money should go to Safeway, and then from Safeway to Instacart.

How do you comply with this?

<comment><USER9> That quote itself seems to spell out the only way they really could -- the money goes directly to the brick+mortar partner, and then to Swig.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know nothing about Instacart, but are they selling the items themselves or are they just a delivery service? Although I imagine an alcohol delivery service has its own problems, specifically with regards to age verification. This shouldn't surprise anybody, alcohol law is complicated. They should feel lucky they have not been hit with heavy fines over this. Everybody in California should feel lucky they can buy alcohol at a Safeway, over here in Maryland chain grocery stores(in fact all non-franchise chains) are not allowed to have liquor licenses.

<comment><USER11> _I know nothing about Instacart, but are they selling the items themselves or are they just a delivery service?_

From the article:

"Instacart employees pick up the groceries from a local Safeway and bring them to a user's door. But that's where compliance becomes an issue. According to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, all transactions of alcoholic beverages must be made directly through the vendor that holds the liquor license – in this case, Safeway. An Instacart shopper is not allowed to simply buy alcohol off the shelves and sell it like any other grocery item. So, instead of a customer paying Instacart when buying booze, the money should go to Safeway, and then from Safeway to Instacart."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone doing any business with alcohol really should check the laws first. I don't think this will seriously hurt InstaCart (I'd personally use them for food or cleaning supplies; I have too much alcohol already), but if you had an alcohol-centric business, this could be a big deal once you get traction.

One of the big things is in many states you can never discount alcohol or give away free alcohol. You can do stuff like free food, but even making it conditional on alcohol purchases is bad in some states (but not others).

</comment><comment><USER13> I saw this coming, especially with their "Send beer to your friend in San Francisco" promo a few weeks ago. There are just too many regulations on alcohol.

<comment><USER14> Oh yeah, my free beer! I'm assuming the promo is no longer? Regardless of this change, I'll still use Instacart. It's a great service with quality customer service that's only getting better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now this thread has been pg-jacked, I can't help but feel that the submitter's unashamed plug for swig! has severely backfired.

No doubt when instacart sorts out the regulatory hurdles involved in alcohol sales they'll have a bunch more subscribers courtesy of hn.

And so it goes.

</comment><comment><USER16> A million Stanford undergrads cried out in fear.

<comment><USER17> My freshman year, Safeway began their online delivery service. They didn't card for the first month or two, which got them plenty of business from our dorm. Good times.</comment></comment>


It's the End of the World as They Know It: Burden of Being a Climate Scientist - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/07/weight-of-the-world-climate-change-scientist-grief/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Put another way, climate scientists often resemble Sarah Connor of the Terminator franchise, who knows of a looming catastrophe but must struggle to function in a world that does not comprehend what is coming and, worse, largely ignores the warnings of those who do. "An accurate representation" of the Connor comparison, one scientist darkly notes, "would have more crying and wine."_

and

 _They know this deep truth: They are on the front lines of contending with the fear, anger, and perhaps even panic the rest of us will have to deal with._

and

 _Katharine Wilkinson points out, "Right now, we prioritize technical training in science and policy. But the tools of the trade will become increasingly emotional and psychological." At a recent panel discussion, she recalls, she blurted out, "I have no child and I have one dog, and thank god he'll be dead in 10 years." Afterward, people asked Wilkinson if she truly believed that. "The truth is, I do," she says. "And it's only going to get more intense—the emotional nature of this work—as climate change happens and the necessary actions become more urgent."_</comment>


AMD Gives More Zen Details - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/10907/amd-gives-more-zen-details-ryzen-34-ghz-nvme-neural-net-prediction-25-mhz-boost-steps <comment><USER2> Anandtech article:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/10907/amd-gives-more-zen- detai...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10907/amd-gives-more-zen-details- ryzen-34-ghz-nvme-neural-net-prediction-25-mhz-boost-steps)

3.4+ GHz for 8-core base frequency (TDP is apparently 95W) is good news.

<comment><USER3> 95W? Given AMD's recent poor track record in terms of $$$/performance for desktop CPUs...

I'll be extremely surprised if it's faster than a 4-core core i5 skylake which runs at 65W TDP, in the $200 per cpu price range.

<comment><USER4> _" Given AMD's recent poor track record in terms of $$$/performance for desktop CPUs..."_

Are you kidding or did you mistype? Current AMD processors don't generally compare favorably to Intel with respect to some metrics, like absolute performance per core or performance per Watt. However if there is _any_ metric where they match or surpass Intel, it's actually perf/$.

The reason is simple: perf/$ is the only metric where AMD has some control: they can decide to lower and lower their price down to wherever they need to be. If AMD wasn't competitive on at least perf/$ they would be in a much worse situation.

Here is one example I witnessed first hand recently when doing some video work: a good old $100 3.2 GHz 8-core Phenom matches or surpasses most ~$200 Intel processors when encoding MPEG2 files to H.264 with the Linux x264 encoder.

<comment><USER5> $100 buys you

Intel Xeon E5-2665 ($80 on eBay) = 8 cores, 2.3-3.1GHz

Intel Xeon E5-2660 ($60-65 on eBay) = 8 cores, 2.2-3Ghz (so you can buy two for $120-130)

Intel Xeon E5-1650 ($97 on eBay) = 6 cores, 3.5-3.8GHz

E5-2665 beats FX-8350 hands down, and is cheaper.

[http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2665-vs-AMD- FX-8350](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2665-vs-AMD-FX-8350)

[http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-1650-vs-AMD- FX-8350](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-1650-vs-AMD-FX-8350)

<comment><USER6> Buying CPUs on eBay is generally a bad idea. When people consider price/performance they don't generally include second hand cpu markets in the equation. Also, xeon MBs are more expensive.

<comment><USER5> Buying on eBay from reputable sellers is just fine. I do it all the time.

I can buy a whole workstation with E5-2665, motherboard, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD, all for $414, shipped.

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/162274529994](http://www.ebay.com/itm/162274529994)

I doubt you can find something like that with FX-8350 and cheaper. And it will still be slower.

<comment><USER7> What's the power usage of those things? I think I'd notice the difference in my power bill vs buying something like an i5.

<comment><USER3> A xeon e5 2665 is rated at 115W thermal, so two of them at full load (let's say, calculating prime numbers) would be 230W... plus the overhead for fans, motherboard, hard drive other heat producing components in the system. I would guess that the lenovo workstation in the ebay link is probably 310W electrical load as measured by a kill-a-watt if you run simultaneous full cpu, ram and disk benchmarks on it.

Depends a lot on your electrical cost. Some people live in places where the power costs $0.05 per kWh. Some people live in places where it cost $0.36 per kWh (Hawaii).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> During the press event it was suggested the boost mode would operate primarily off of temperature, taking into account high-end cooling setups. Seemed interesting, if not innovative. As far as I'm aware, existing boost modes tend to be static ranges.

I'd really like to see Ryzen meet or exceed Intel i7-6700K/7700K single-core performance using boost mode clocks with a reasonable cooling setup. That would eliminate any reason whatsoever to choose Intel for gaming until their 10nm product arrives Q3 2017.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I wouldn't set your hopes that high, if that were the case Intel has 4 to 5 generations of silicon already prepped that they could start churning out in volume within 3 months.

Comparatively, AMD has been building chips to order as of late, since they do not have the money to build a bunch of chips that may or may not sell, so your looking at a 3 to 4 month delay before you can get a new chip like Ryzen after announcement.

The cache arrangement (see pic halfway down) and better branch prediction are interesting though, cache has always been a space where Intel has been able to use way less transistors to store the same amount of data.

[http://semiaccurate.com/2016/12/13/amds-zen-becomes- ryzen/](http://semiaccurate.com/2016/12/13/amds-zen-becomes-ryzen/)

<comment><USER8> > _... if that were the case Intel has 4 to 5 generations of silicon already > prepped that they could start churning out in volume within 3 months._

Can you elaborate? I'm fairly certain Intel deviating from their existing roadmap to such a degree and on such short notice would be extremely difficult at best.

<comment><USER9> After the Pentium 4 debacle, Intel Israel came up with the Core micro- architecture to replace it. Since then, Intel has built up a 4 to 5 year buffer of developed silicon so that if any generation or two is worse than their competitors, they won't be caught flat footed & have to pay contra- revenue to incentivize manufacturers to use their chips.

Most notably this can be seen in review samples of chips sent out, where AMD and Qualcomm will send out chips dated as being made shortly before being sent per the packaging, Intel will send out chips that are dated 4 to 5 years old, as they are from the first or second run of silicon that Intel did with that chip design.

<comment><USER8> > _Intel will send out chips that are dated 4 to 5 years old, as they are from > the first or second run of silicon that Intel did with that chip design._

Fabrication process advancements (i.e. die shrinks) in that time span are enough to rule out what you said with near complete certainty—let alone the notion Intel is somehow shelving architectures for 4-5 years at a time.

Architectures may be developed over those spans, sure—but not shelved for that long.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying that they have 4 to 5 full micro-architectures shelved (that'd be insane), but from talking to Intel Oregon people they do keep a deep stock that will buy them a few years. Think incremental improvements like you see from Intel every year, not 20% or 30% performance improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This being HN, I'm hoping someone more competent than me in the area of CPU architectures can comment, but as a scientific programmer some of the details lead me to adopt a very cautious attitude for now, especially given the 95W TDP. Given the architecture, producing a performance-competitive 8C/16T chip at 68% of Intel's TDP (95W vs 140W) seems very dubious.

Most of the things they're touting in the slides amount to little more than finally catching up to Intel (SMT, branch prediction (minus the neural network thing), cache bandwidth, etc.). Also, some of the areas where they seem to exceed current Intel architectures may turn out to be a mixed blessing. For instance, I'm not sure if doubling L2 caches (512kb/core vs 256kb in Intel CPUs) is a great idea given bandwidth limitations and associativity effects. We also don't know the amount of vector registers these CPUs will have, which will greatly influence the performance of optimal CPU-bound code.

Can anyone with more experience comment on the low level details they've released, particularly the issues per cycle and cache architecture figures?

<comment> Tuna-Fish The advantages I see over Intel are:

1\. Wider retire (probably only when executing two threads)

2\. 32B fetch from icache.

3\. Wider issue when executing from uop cache.

4\. Larger icache

5\. Larger L2 cache helps hit rate.

6\. Larger schedulers, leading to larger practical instruction window

7\. Split FP/Int pipelines, meaning more execution resources and instruction window in mixed code.

Mixed:

6\. Very different branch prediction. AMD has used perceptron predictors before, the talk about AI-driven CPU is just better marketing on this. Perceptrons work much better on some loads, worse on others. What has been released about their newest seems to point to some kind of mitigation of the worst cases of their predictors. Could be great, could be a letdown.

7\. Narrower FPU and load-store. This obviously hurts on wide AVX loads, but the adoption of wide AVX so far has been terrible. Narrower FPU gets them shorter distances on chip, leading to higher clocks.

Disadvantages:

8\. Their split integer schedulers can have bubbles caused by their inability to move instructions between lanes after dispatch. Part of their prediction talk seems to be focused on mitigating this, but it's still something that Intel CPUs just don't have to worry about.

9\. Less AGUs. On any code without rmw ops, they probably can't maintain full memory throughput.

10\. Larger L2 cache probably hurts L2 latency.

Current Intel CPUs are in effect designed for 4uop/clock throughput, with both the frontend and the retire limiting them to that over long term. Especially when both threads are running mixed code, this one appears to have a higher peak throughput. How often it can hit that peak is another question -- if I had to make a quess, I'd say that Zen runs highly optimized code better, but the lower latencies of the modern Intel CPU makes them better at worse- optimized code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is an English article: [http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-eight- core-cpu,33...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-eight-core- cpu,33180.html)

<comment><USER12> > in a HandBrake-based video transcoding task, Ryzen scored a narrow win > [against a stock i7-6900k]

Man, if that holds true in more benchmarks, that's fantastic news. AMD chugged along by "competing" further and further down Intel's product line more or less since Sandy Bridge, if they can genuinely compete with the i7 now I can't wait to see the next few years. Intel has always seemed content to release incremental improvements until they get kicked in the pants by somebody else, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a bunch of stuff waiting in the wings to maintain their edge over AMD.

<comment><USER13> Delta of 5 seconds (54s for ryzen, 59s for 6900k).

Also IIRC, ryzen wasn't using any form of boost while the 6900k was allowed to push its enveloppe.

Not a time to buy an intel cpu.

<comment><USER14> Tre 6900k was not only not boosting they downclocked it to a locked 3.0ghz....

If there is no room for boost on Zen parts it's gonna be dead in the water for enthusiasts. My 5820k does 4.6ghz and it's a 6 core part.

That said what's even more important is going to be USB 3/3.1, storage and PCIe performance which ATM on AMDs current platforms are abysmal.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Tre 6900k was not only not boosting they downclocked it to a locked > 3.0ghz....

This is incorrect. They did a "both CPUs locked to 3.0GHz" test a few months back, today they did a "Intel CPU running absolutely stock, AMD one locked to without boost" test.

<comment><USER14> Yes we covered this already check the child posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a MSRP for the RYZEN flagship that they showed off today yet, because I havent seen one.

But as long as it stays under the $1100 of the 6900K I think they can secure the mid to high-end enthusiast grade market which is good because I am tired of intel controlling that portion of the market

<comment><USER16> There are rumors about $500.

<comment><USER13> If they're still making an adequate profit at 500$ they're gonna grab a very healthy chunk of the market. It's more than half intel's competing product. Even price cuts ..

<comment><USER14> It will depend on how well they'll be able to push the CPU in 4 core mode.

If they can't reach at least 4ghz it wouldn't matter.

Games are not optimized well beyound 3-4 cores these days I can disable 2-3 cores on my 6 core CPU and maybe lose 5% fps in CPU intensive games.

Intel can push their clocks pretty darn high especially with OC which now comes out of the box with every enthusiast grade motherboard.

If you end up having a 3.4ghz part going against a 4.5ghz part the 4 extra cores might not matter.

Even in professional use cases adobe doesn't scale above 4 threads like at all and many video encoders also don't scale some even don't scale beyond 2.

The only thing that really scales well universally is 3D rendering.

<comment><USER13> Good points overall, but I wonder what about new usages like neural networks ? Seems like new tricks might make multi threading a bit more trendy compared to previous years.

<comment><USER14> I don't know what's the use case for heavy ANN work on only an 8 core part.

For ANNs you want as many threads as possible I would think.

Xeon SOCs and what ever AMD would pull out to compete with 48 and 64 thread parts would probably be something quite different than this.

<comment><USER17> Naples is their 32-core part on Zen: [http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd- naples-32-core-zen-proc...](http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd- naples-32-core-zen-processors-photos.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we all give Mark Papermaster a healthy round of applause? Amazing what he accomplished. Who would've thought AMD would ever even come close to Intel in performance again?

<comment><USER19> In my humble opinion it's probably this guy who deserves at least as much of the credit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_\(engineer\)) The whole team, really.

<comment><USER20> And (unfortunately?) this guy is now at Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> But is it going to support ECC memory?

Also with Intel you can upgrade to more performant Xeons. What can you upgrade AMD to?

<comment><USER22> The AMD server line has usually been named Opteron.

And by the way, Xeon CPUs aren't usually faster than regular Intel chips. They may have more cache or more cores, which might speed up some programs. But otherwise, they're the same. Or even slower since their motherboards don't overclock well, overclocking not being a big selling point for servers.

<comment><USER23> One of my machines has a low-end Xeon because at the time it was basically 1:1 performance comparable to an i7, but cost ~$40 less because it had no integrated graphics.

<comment><USER24> [http://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/xeon-vs-i7i5-whats- differe...](http://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/xeon-vs-i7i5-whats-difference/)

Biggest difference with i7 vs xeon, xeon can handle sometimes upwares of 1tb of ram now. i7 maxes out at 64gb. You be the judge. i7 were usually 32gb, especially the LGA1100 series. The LGA2011 were @ i7 handled 64gb. LGA 2011 Xeon's are all 64GB+. Also support for ECC ram. So basically if you are not pressed for raw CPU, and you need just a lot of cpu for simulations, VM's etc, xeon is your go to CPU. Xeon LGA2011 series has some crazy CPU Socket configurations, you can get a lot depending on the motherboard vendor. I think some as many as 4+ CPU Sockets. i7 cannot run in parallel with another socket I believe. Just like with the LGA2011 1600 vs 2600 series xeons.

<comment><USER25> LGA-2011 i7s can handle 128GB of RAM now. 6800k for example: [https://ark.intel.com/products/94189/Intel- Core-i7-6800K-Pro...](https://ark.intel.com/products/94189/Intel- Core-i7-6800K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz)

The previous generation (5820k, etc) were only officially rated for 64GB, but they too worked fine with 128GB in practice. Intel just never updated the spec sheets once 16GB DIMMs became available.

<comment><USER26> 8Gbit DDR4, really. In fact, I think the first 128GB (8x16GB) kits that used it were targeted at Haswell-E.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They are staying consistent with a 40% IPC improvement number, which is great. This should finally be competitive with Intel's current offerings.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does AMD now have an equivalent to Intel's open-source tboot for DRTM?

In the past, AMD avoided artificial "enterprise" segmentation with security features like IOMMU, but did not always have the necessary BIOS, board (e.g. TPM) and open-source tooling that Intel solutions provided.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ars Technica article: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/amd-zen- performance-d...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/amd-zen-performance- details-release-date/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I want to believe, I really do. Intel can't offer a compelling reason to upgrade my 5 year old 3930k--there's no question that the desktop market has stagnated in the face of a weakened AMD. Can anyone enlighten me as to what video encoding and 3d benchmarks might omit that a more well-rounded passmark score would not?

</comment><comment><USER31> It's all wasted ink and pointless flapping of gums until a tech magazine gets their hands on a production model with a set in stone RRP, and does third- party benchmarks. You can't eyeball the actual performance from the marketing material, and neither can anandtech.

</comment><comment><USER32> More competition is good, though I dont have many hopes now. I switched to Intel starting with "Cores". I don't see myself upgrading my 4690k anytime soon, but I hope but the time I need, AMD would have some nice offerings.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does it have AVX512 support? Or at least AVX2?

<comment><USER10> They claim AVX2 support, yes. No AVX512, but even Xeons don't have that yet (sadly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Neural network for memory access huh? Interesting!

<comment><USER13> I wonder how this will affect the software side. Programmers and compilers.. how do you interface with a NN based prefetcher to avoid regression and hiccups.

<comment><USER35> If it's a truly adaptive branch predictor, one could naively believe it will yield good results for most inputs. Even if it's an absurdly deep pipeline with a cache miss penalty worse than the Pentium 4, it would be premature optimization for the vast majority of programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What about Vega? When is it going to be released?

</comment><comment><USER37> Will the new Zen include the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP)?

(To those asking, PSP is the equivalent of the Intel Management Engine).

</comment><comment><USER38> Is it plausible a procesador like this to be used on new Xbox scorpio, later next year?

<comment><USER19> The original Xbox One used a Jaguar[0] based chip, which is really quite a different bread than the Bulldozer or Zen micro architectures. (It's closer to what you'd find in a netbook than in a high end machine, minus the custom memory cache/controller setup AMD designed for Microsoft.)

While it's possible they'd switch micro-architectures, if history is any indication, I suspect it's more likely what you'll see is a die-shrink (28nm -> 14nm) combined with higher clock speeds. And hopefully a faster memory controller (I think that's more the bottleneck than raw CPU power). But that's entirely my speculation.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_\(microarchitecture\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Support for multi-processor systems would be very awesome.

</comment><comment><USER40> you've seriously never heard of pcmark or passmark?

noob alert :p

<comment><USER41> Please don't do this here.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13174901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13174901) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Flagged for non-English link.

</comment><comment><USER43> An interesting read about the Zen by a financial analyst:

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/4030174-advanced-micro- devic...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/4030174-advanced-micro-devices- quite-filter)

<comment><USER44> Seeking Alpha is so pushy about registration. 2nd page or below the fold, it stops you. Use mobile and it stops you (and forces you to use their app). Their app continually pushes for registration and is very neutered without it.

If they are this pushy to get my information, how pushy are they in selling it or in spamming me?

<comment><USER45> I don't trust them either, in fact no "pay" wall I've ever seen has pissed me off more than Seeking Alpha.

<comment><USER46> Im currently using Throw Away Email, and wow, they are nasty pushy. And yes, I'm polluting their Database. Too bad, so sad :)

Theyre digging in "what kind of brokerage work do you do" and then asking very pointed money-market questions.

When you get to "Suggestions" they aren't suggestions; they force you to enter multiple stocks.

So fuck them. Here's a Copy/Paste.

_______________________________________________

Summary

In my previous article I showed how speculation going into Zen's launch greatly exceeded speculation going into the Athlon and Opteron launches.

In this article, I take the comparisons further.

I compare both the revenues expected/attained by AMD and the market caps into the 3 launches.

The Investors of today like AMD nearly 4x better than when Opteron (or Athlon, for that matter) was looking pretty.

My thesis on Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) is as follows:

        I am negative on AMD because it is my belief, based on leaked benchmarks, that the company's incoming Zen-based CPUs will still underperform Intel's offerings materially, when it comes to single-threaded performance. I believe AMD will compensate for this the same way it has, historically: by selling CPUs with a higher core count. This puts AMD at an intrinsic margin disadvantage, which is made worse by the fact that AMD is fabless whereas Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) runs its own factories (so AMD loses the foundry margin as well).
        I also think AMD got way ahead of itself. In my last article, titled "Advanced Micro Devices: Then And Now", I explained this by showing AMD's behavior versus how it behaved during 2 extraordinary past events: the launch of the original Athlon and original Opteron. In both those instances AMD stepped ahead of Intel while with Zen AMD is only expected to get close to Intel. Still, in both of those instances AMD had nothing like the present run going into those launches.
        While I am negative on AMD, I am not negative enough to sell it short. I don't think the timing is right for such a move. I also think that there's the chance Zen gets "close enough" even if it underperforms, allowing for substantial share gains while selling at a discount. Thus, before considering selling short AMD, I'm waiting to see how Zen actually performs.

With that being put out of the way, I'm writing this article because I think the prior one didn't quite filter through. From the comments, one would guess that the message "AMD is much more speculative going into Zen than going into Athlon or Opteron" didn't register. The criticism was far and wide, including such things as:

        This time is different because the market is larger.
        This time AMD is different because it also has GPUs and custom silicon and whatnot.
        That's only share price (it was an adjusted share price …), not market capitalization.
        AMD was thought to go bankrupt this time, and back in 1999 or 2003 that wasn't the case.
        Etc, etc.

Well, I feel I need to give some more detail here. This detail will show that sentiment today is even more extraordinary than what the previous charts showed. So here we go.

Revenues, Now And Then

Over the last 12 months, AMD has produced $4.24 billion in revenues. For 2017, including the early Zen launch, expectations are for $4.55 billion in revenues. Now, remember:

        This includes Zen.
        This includes GPUs.
        This includes custom solutions (consoles, etc).

Why is this revenue number relevant? Consider the following regarding the past two episodes I mentioned:

        Athlon. In 2000, AMD had revenues of $4.64 billion.
        Opteron. In 2004, AMD had revenues of $5.0 billion.

In short, AMD's revenues were larger in both those years, versus those expected for 2017 including Zen. This includes Zen, GPUs and everything else, thus rendering the arguments that AMD is "much more" today completely moot.

Market Capitalization, Now And Then

In my previous article I compared just the relative share prices going into product launches. Of course, AMD has had many losses and M&A (acquiring ATI) throughout the years. This naturally led to a much higher share count today, versus what it was back in 1999/2003\. How much higher?

        As of the last 10-Q, AMD reported a diluted share count of 815 million shares. Potentially, the actual diluted count is over 1 billion shares (diluted shares for the quarter don't include all potential dilution because AMD reported a loss).
        As of 1999 year-end, AMD had a diluted share count of 294.6 million shares.
        As of 2003 year-end, AMD had a diluted share count of 346.9 million shares.

Now consider the following:

        After the current run, AMD sits at $10.75. This gives it a market capitalization of around $10.75 billion.
        When AMD released the Athlon, the stock stood at $9.58. This gave it a market capitalization of around $2.82 billion.
        When AMD released the Opteron, the stock stood at $8.47. This gave it a market capitalization of around $2.94 billion.

It's easy to see that AMD's market cap today is wildly higher than what it was back then (1999, 2003). That is, while the share price isn't much different, due to the share count AMD today is valued at a significant multiple of AMD right before either the Athlon or Opteron were launched.

Conclusion

From this exercise we see that:

        AMD today is expected to have lower revenues when it starts selling Zen, versus the revenues it reached when it was selling the Athlon and Opteron. Perhaps estimates will be revised higher. Perhaps even much higher. But the present estimates are factually lower than what was attained back then.
        Yet, at the same time, AMD goes for a market capitalization that's 3.6-3.8x higher than it was back then, going into the Zen launch.

Thus, it isn't hard to conclude that the AMD of today is massively more speculative than the AMD of either 1999 or 2003. All the arguments that it has more products now are also rather irrelevant when we consider that today's AMD is still expected to be smaller than the AMD which resulted from those past (successful) launches. Never mind that we're comparing numbers after a verified success (1999, 2003), to an uncertain success (2017).

Finally, yes, AMD is more diversified today. However, AMD isn't potentially more profitable because back in 1999/2003 it controlled its own foundry and now it doesn't. Instead, right now AMD has contracts which try to assure the foundry's economic returns, while punishing AMD's.

All of this being factual, what we can easily say is that today AMD's stock discounts improvements wildly in excess of the analysts' expectations. If those improvements don't materialize -- well in excess of expectations -- the stock will have very significant downside.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

<comment><USER47> Short AMD has been the only real drag on my otherwise excellent trades this year. I've learned my lesson -- I won't short a growth stock anymore.

That said, puts were fairly cheap so I took some as my last gasp effort to see if AMD actually tanked.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pre-rendering static websites with the 23 year-old wget command - <AUTHOR> https://apex.sh/blog/post/pre-render-wget/ <comment> jake-low Thank you for sharing this; I find the technique refreshingly simple.

> You may have seen people achieve this with a more complex headless Chrome- > based solution, but for many sites, this will be perfectly fine!

Can you elaborate on the difference between using wget and a heavier solution? I assume the main difference is that a headless browser can execute JavaScript and then serialize the resulting DOM back to HTML, allowing you to build sites in client side frameworks (React, Vue) and then make static versions of them for deployment. Are there other benefits of using a full browser vs. simply using wget?

<comment><USER3> I think this article unnecessarily conflates the pre-rendering techniques used for JS-heavy websites with what I would call a static website build/compile process.

Using wget to compile your website is a clever idea. But it won't work if your website uses JS to generate links, so I wouldn't call it pre-rendering (since there better not be any post-rendering)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it doesn't work if you're relying on JS for interactions and layout, but wget's crawling technique works great if you're happy with using server-side rendering for content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title makes it look like wget is obsolete. Why not use the original title?

<comment><USER5> The HN post is by the author himself and in the first paragraph the author also mentions '23 year-old wget'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't it make more sense to generate the html and save it to the appropriate file from the blog generator itself?

What if you have a page that is there but it's not linked from any other page (a landing page for example)? It would never be pre-rendered.

<comment><USER7> I did exactly this with a rails project once, called render_to_string on each page I was interested in and saved them as HTML files. The wget method is clever but I agree, working within the same system makes the most sense.

<comment><USER3> If you are using a web framework designed for dynamic processing - <USER2> something like Java servlets/JSP, or in the authors case Go - it's often non- trivial to find/implement a render_to_page function, let alone enumerate all possible pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to combine _wget_ with _HTMLDOC_ [0] for convert static websites to PDF book.

[0] [https://github.com/michaelrsweet/htmldoc](https://github.com/michaelrsweet/htmldoc)

</comment><comment><USER9> Would it be less maintenance to use your web server's cache feature? Both Apache and Nginx can cache dynamic pages to static files.

<comment><AUTHOR> These days I think most people deploy static sites to a CDN, they get you such great performance I can't imagine not using a CDN, my site loads in 10ms in London for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ha, I remember this being a thing to pre-warm caches in java systems a zillion years ago. What was once old is new again.

</comment><comment><USER11> wget is not a command, it is a program

<comment><USER12> i would argue that it's both. what it isn't, is an internal command built into the shell. but what it is is a series of characters that identifies a binary, and the act of submitting those characters is a metaphorical command to the shell to invoke said binary. but maybe im just being pedantic ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment></comment>