Ask HN: Job offer too good to be true?

1 points by jelan 2 years ago | 4 comments

I have about 5 years of web dev experience and recently got an offer from a small company based in Seattle.

I overall enjoyed the experience of interviewing with them and it seemed like the people there were talented and down to earth, but after reading some Glassdoor reviews it made me stop and think again.

There are a good number of reviews about the company complaining about executive leadership, how the company has had a lot of attrition and hiring engineers has been slow, etc…

The offer I received from them was definitely above market rate for my level of experience, and after reading some of these reviews I’m starting to think that the company might be in a pretty bad situation that I didn’t pick up on while interviewing, and that’s why they are paying me about 40k over market rate for the base salary and being very generous with equity

I’m not sure if it would still be worth trying to work here or not, I was impressed with the people I met with and the product the company makes is related to satellites and would be interesting to work on, it’s just not very encouraging to read a lot of negative reviews before starting something. Not sure if it’s worth the risk or not for the extra money

mytailorisrich 2 years ago |

Equity in a small, private company is essentially worthless.

You'd want to ask about their plan and timetable for an IPO or an acquisition before you can even consider if that is a gamble with non-zero chance of a positive outcome.

pestatije 2 years ago |

all your doubts can be cleared up in one day, lets say one week, of you working there and talking with people...wheres the risk? you lost one week of your time?

jelan 2 years ago | |

I think the risk is that if it is true I would have to work there for at least a while

pestatije 2 years ago | | |

why? the contract? employment contracts normally have a 30-day walk-out-without-notice clause