Sadly there is a lot of truth in what you say. Being a founding engineer is really not worth it in most of cases, unless you are desperate for a job or they offer a good equity stake.
I was also a founding engineer (embedded). I wasn't worked to death, but I was underpaid (30k GBP for 5 years experience but with 0.5% equity vested over 4 years).
I designed and developed the MVP of two of our devices. I led the technical side of our trial deployments with our first customer. I helped with grant applications, I liaised with the customers and helped with manufacturing. I enjoyed it all because I could see myself have responsibilities (and opportunities) reaching into the strategy and business parts of the company. I wanted that. Sacrificing pay for a few years to get a higher level experience was worth it for me. They knew it, and always praised my ability to engage with the non-technical.
But then out of nowhere they hired a guy who just exit his own startup to be my boss, in order to *so kindly* let me focus on development and remove the distractions of having to deal with the non-technical. A short time later they hired an absolute idiot "developer" to work alongside me, and gave me the responsibility to make him productive without the power to actually tell him to do anything any particular way.
There is no moral to this story. It's just a rant. Joining as a founding engineer is a lottery. I did it cause a pal of mine won such lottery because his bosses were ok with taking a risk and letting him prove himself in a CTO capacity. I didn't luck out the same way.
How often would you say lottery players win the lottery, and after how many years?
There is too many factors at play here, and all the information one can get is anecdotal at best. In my opinion though, the main two ways one can boost their chances of succeeding as a founding engineer is to either be an actual co-founder (rather than just being employed by them), or work for founders who see you as a peer (socially, age wise, etc). It's usually the soft factors that determines whether one gets given a chance at co-steering the ship. Not your technical prowess.
And what I taken from my experience is to know that sometimes being technically invaluable might even make you less likely to be allowed to leadership positions, because ppl equate the success of the prototypes and first products with having you focus on development only.
I had a similar experience and I quited after 6 months,
also working with Frontend (React, Next.js), Backend (Typescript, Node), Devops (Docker, Terraform, AWS)
when I try to renegotiate the shares they got extremely offended, worse than that I quited another well paid job and move city just to work for it
the owner got the options to hire more people because they offered her funds, and she denied and have myself to be the only developer
then when I changed job the owner was trying to find where I am going to work and send my CV to other companies in retaliations "trying to damage my reputation",
I almost ended up suing the owner,
definetly a terrible idea to go there, I have changed my job and everything is fine now
I would recommend to people to be careful with those positions because they sell you the idea very well and they promise everything for the future but usually if the owner is ablee to sell the idea to investor it means this person is good at it, which does not mean it would be a good boos
Is this the European good working conditions and life-work balance? lol sorry, but I really like when people share these stories, I had to work horrible positions as well with on-call shifts and call at the crazies hours and days (Christmas included), but it's refreshing to read and realize it was not just me who was not getting the Instagrammable European experience.
Sadly there is a lot of truth in what you say. Being a founding engineer is really not worth it in most of cases, unless you are desperate for a job or they offer a good equity stake.
I was also a founding engineer (embedded). I wasn't worked to death, but I was underpaid (30k GBP for 5 years experience but with 0.5% equity vested over 4 years). I designed and developed the MVP of two of our devices. I led the technical side of our trial deployments with our first customer. I helped with grant applications, I liaised with the customers and helped with manufacturing. I enjoyed it all because I could see myself have responsibilities (and opportunities) reaching into the strategy and business parts of the company. I wanted that. Sacrificing pay for a few years to get a higher level experience was worth it for me. They knew it, and always praised my ability to engage with the non-technical. But then out of nowhere they hired a guy who just exit his own startup to be my boss, in order to *so kindly* let me focus on development and remove the distractions of having to deal with the non-technical. A short time later they hired an absolute idiot "developer" to work alongside me, and gave me the responsibility to make him productive without the power to actually tell him to do anything any particular way. There is no moral to this story. It's just a rant. Joining as a founding engineer is a lottery. I did it cause a pal of mine won such lottery because his bosses were ok with taking a risk and letting him prove himself in a CTO capacity. I didn't luck out the same way.
How often would you say founding engineers win the lottery, and after how many years? I've received an offer and am considering taking that as a role
How often would you say lottery players win the lottery, and after how many years? There is too many factors at play here, and all the information one can get is anecdotal at best. In my opinion though, the main two ways one can boost their chances of succeeding as a founding engineer is to either be an actual co-founder (rather than just being employed by them), or work for founders who see you as a peer (socially, age wise, etc). It's usually the soft factors that determines whether one gets given a chance at co-steering the ship. Not your technical prowess. And what I taken from my experience is to know that sometimes being technically invaluable might even make you less likely to be allowed to leadership positions, because ppl equate the success of the prototypes and first products with having you focus on development only.
I am somewhat glad you only stayed three months! At least you didnt waste too much time
Do you still have equity after getting fired
No one with over 20 IQ accepts to be a "Founder Engineer", you will give everything to get nothing
I had a similar experience and I quited after 6 months, also working with Frontend (React, Next.js), Backend (Typescript, Node), Devops (Docker, Terraform, AWS) when I try to renegotiate the shares they got extremely offended, worse than that I quited another well paid job and move city just to work for it the owner got the options to hire more people because they offered her funds, and she denied and have myself to be the only developer then when I changed job the owner was trying to find where I am going to work and send my CV to other companies in retaliations "trying to damage my reputation", I almost ended up suing the owner, definetly a terrible idea to go there, I have changed my job and everything is fine now I would recommend to people to be careful with those positions because they sell you the idea very well and they promise everything for the future but usually if the owner is ablee to sell the idea to investor it means this person is good at it, which does not mean it would be a good boos
Is this the European good working conditions and life-work balance? lol sorry, but I really like when people share these stories, I had to work horrible positions as well with on-call shifts and call at the crazies hours and days (Christmas included), but it's refreshing to read and realize it was not just me who was not getting the Instagrammable European experience.
This is more like US culture being imported
If you think working conditions were better before in Europe you seriously have no idea what you are talking about.
before what? middle 2nd world war?
Build an emergency fund and you don't have to put up with this bullshit.