yossorion

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn

Disclaimer: This piece is written anonymously. The names of a few particular companies are mentioned, but as common examples only.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I'd known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I'm not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would

marick

Around 2006-2007, it was a bit of a fashion to hook lava lamps up to the build server. Normally, the green lava lamp would be on, but if the build failed, it would turn off and the red lava lamp would turn on.

By coincidence, I've actually met, about that time, (probably) the first person to hook up a lava lamp to a build server. It was Alberto Savoia, who'd founded a testing tools company (that did some very interesting things around generative testing that have basically never been noticed). Alberto had noticed that people did not react with any urgency when the build broke. They'd check in broken code and go off to something else, only reacting to the breakage they'd caused when some other programmer pulled the change and had problems.

dougireton

Company Requirements

I'm definitely not looking for work. However to provide some helpful guidance for hiring like-minded engineers, I would only consider working for a company if it met these requirements:

1. Fewer than 250 employees.
2. Concrete, measurable plan to increase the number of women and minorities in engineering roles.
3. Commitment to using and contributing to open source.
4. Collaborative, friendly atmosphere where pair programming is encouraged.
5. Meaningful work with clear linkage between work and company goals.
6. Demonstrated commitment to ethical business practices, e.g. B corp certification.

miles

#!/usr/bin/env sh

##
# This is script with usefull tips taken from:
#   https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx
#
# install it:
#   curl -sL https://raw.github.com/gist/2108403/hack.sh | sh
#

napcs

# configuration for osx clipboard support


set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l sh"

dkubb

rvm use @$(basename `pwd`) --create

miles

<!-- layout file -->
<% if current_user %>
  Welcome <%= current_user.username %>. Not you? <%= link_to "Log out", logout_path %>
<% else %>
  <%= link_to "Sign up", signup_path %> or <%= link_to "log in", login_path %>.
<% end %>

miles

.bundle
db/*.sqlite3*
log/*.log
*.log
tmp/**/*
tmp/*
Gemfile.lock
doc/api
doc/app
*.swp

napcs

if has('win32') || has ('win64')
  let $VIMHOME = $HOME."/Dropbox/dotfiles/.vim"

  if !empty($CONEMUBUILD)
    set term=xterm
    set t_Co=256
    let &t_AB="\e[48;5;%dm"
    let &t_AF="\e[38;5;%dm"
  endif