For the first 10 months I was the only person in the office doing work ~9 hours a day. From client setup, to design, to code and deployment I did it all. Twice a week I would be joined by the other 3 part-time guys who would do what they could in their 4 hours they had. Besides myself and the other team members the founder would do sales two to three days a week part time. Now a year in we have eight full time team members (5 Dev, 1 Sales, 1 CS). My role in the company has now taken on the Jack-Of-All-Trades plus the management of these other team members. Which I consider to be a great accomplishment for myself and I am proud of. However one factor in all of this has not changed in the past twelve months: compensation.
I was never a fussy person about money, especially when it came to startups. (I was in two other startups prior to this one.) I understand that you must bootstrap and try to be as frugal and agile as possible in the start. However a year in, and I am still making around $500/week. Which, in the beginning was great. However over the past year I have moved out, bought a car (out of need, the other died), gotten married, and have had a child. (With a second one on the way.) The other two major factors are: no benefits, and the founder seems to refuse to officially employ me (or anyone else in the company.). He still gives all of us a 1099. Yet, he treats us like employees. We have required working times, usually 8AM - 6PM, we only get a half hour lunch with no other breaks, and are on-call 24-7. Honestly, those items don't even bother me that much. However what does is that if I am one minute late from my 30 minute lunch, the founder will immediately call me asking where I am. If I happen to arrive at work a minute or two late I get a lecture. If I don't answer a call, on a weekend, I get a talk about availability. And if I am sick, I am required to work from home for the day. (I was in the hospital and still required to work.) That is what really gets me upset about this situation. I am fairly sure what he is doing is illegal with the 1099 issue. But it really upsets me that for all of the work and dedication that I have put in, that I can't get cut a break once or twice.
I am unsure how many of you are in a similar situation or even care. I honestly am not looking for any sympathy on this however I am seeking advice. Two weeks ago a new-hire and I went out for lunch and he asked me about the 1099 situation and asked what he should do. I told him to take some of the money out of his check to save for taxes. He said something to the degree of "But I only make $500/week!". I am not exactly sure why that made me lose my cool. Ever since then I have felt that the founder has not only been using me, but also the rest of the team. And I am letting this issue get to me. I spend each day now hating what I am doing because I have this feeling. I know the easiest answer may be: Well why not just talk to the founder? And I have.
The response is always the same: "We can't do that right now."(Benefits/Employ) "Remember I haven't even paid myself yet for any of this!"(Compensation) "It's cheaper for you if we do it this way!" (1099) And he won't budge.
I have been doing web work since I was nine. This is my passion in life. I spend all the time I can perfecting my craft and trying the best I can to stay current. I've never cared about money in the past, but the time has come where I have to. I hate myself for letting this job get to me to the point where it makes me burnt out on my passion.
This leaves me in the position of asking myself what to do now. My gut, and my wife, is telling me to begin looking for other jobs. Any advice? (And thank you for taking the time to read this over, I deeply appreciate it.)
1) You are being drastically underpaid relative to your market worth.
2) The fact of you being underpaid will cause material hardship for your wife and children.
3) Your boss is exploiting you. Illegally, to boot.
4) Your boss will not stop exploiting you.
5) You are being used as a tool to justify the exploitation of other people.
Don't "begin looking for other jobs." Mentally commit yourself to quitting, and to negotiating (you CAN negotiate, it isn't evil) a salary commensurate with your worth at your next position. You are a working professional. It is standard to receive fairly generous benefits, including but not limited to healthcare. Should you not receive benefits, you get paid an absurd amount of money to purchase them yourself. $2,000 a month does not even approach the ballpark of what employees like that cost.
He is lying about the 1099 being cheaper, that is only true if you are an S-Corporation, right now you are responsible for a little over 15% for social security, something that you are not if you are W2 or a corp. $500 is chump change to put up with Type-A personality bullshit like be here on the spot and no sick days. That is fast food management, you need to bail as fast as you can you have a wife and kids that rely on you to seek as much as you can.
As for the "he has not taken any pay" crap, he has equity, you do not your only reward is your pay check in that situation.
Very correct. On several occasions I have been promised equity. At first as a compensation for my pay, and then as vested. However none of this ever came into existence. Every time I brought it up again he would keep putting it off. But then in any discussions for a raise or anything to that degree he would use it against me saying something to the degree of: "Well, you know you are going to get equity in this!" I called him on it once. Saying that I wouldn't want equity if my pay was increased. The conversation ended right there.
> Starting salary for a fresh junior is 40k and that is just someone who know HTML, CSS and Photoshop let alone if they actually know a server side language.
I know, like the back of my hand: HTML, CSS, Photoshop (and Illustrator/InDesign/Premiere/etc), Javascript, PHP, Ruby (not specialized to Rails, but with a year or two of experience in it), and C/C++. I've had more than a year's experience in: Java, Lua, IA32 and ARM assembler, Haskell and Clojure. On top of that, I have years of Windows and Linux sysadmining, DBA, and tech support/computer repair knowledge.
...but I'm only in my first year of University, and have literally zero measurable work experience with any of this stuff (no previous employers in any sort of technical field, no references, no portfolio..) In short, I have no proof that I can do any of the stuff I can do... what should I do?
Mentally commiting myself is something I believe I can take hold of. My main issue and worry will be finding a new employer. The area I am in currently, Northern Eastcoast, lacks tech companies. I would have to relocate to Philly, New York, or Boston to get to any hub. And currently money is too tight to do something of that nature.
With this job I got myself into this nasty living paycheck-to-paycheck situation. I will have to have something in place before I leave.
And start right this minute. Good luck!
I'm not saying do it full time, just walk out of this currently nonsense situation and do elance for a few months while you look for another full time job.
You'll be amazed at how many opportunities there actually are in this world that don't suck once you start looking.
You'll be fine dude!
Ha! Tell me about it. My current salary is $78k in Florida and I'm a jack-of-all-IT-trades. I answered a few Craigslist job ads and got offers for $100k+ in my own city. I'm soon starting a job that pays about $120k-150k (depending on my productivity/hours). That's a 70-90% pay-raise with almost no effort in searching. Also I get a lot more benefits, fewer responsibilities, and an actual bonus/raise/review schedule. Being loyal in this day and day will only get you exploited.
This is generally an option, but in this case it is not in the original poster's best interest to negotiate. The only proper course of action is to leave. His employer has demonstrated how he prefers to do business and that's not going to change. Negotiation can win you the battle, but there will be plenty more down the line. Might as well get hired by more scrupulous employers (and there are plenty and the job market is good).
"and I am still making around $500/week. Which, in the beginning was great. However over the past year I have moved out, bought a car (out of need, the other died), gotten married, and have had a child. (With a second one on the way.)"
Why would you have 2 children if you are making $500 a week? Does your spouse make a lot of money? Do you live in one of the developed countries, or a 3rd world country?
I'm having a hard time figuring out how it could be rational to have 2 kids while making $500 a week. And why have children at all if you are working at a startup? Most of my friends follow the rule that startups are what you try while you are single, but if you have kids then you should try to find something more stable.
My wife first got Pregnant a few months after I got this job. (I worked there a bit over 14 months now. The first two months were really just be doing a design or two. for them.) Before this job the money from the other startups was even more sporadic. This, was almost a relief, having a solid amount of money per week at a job where I could do what I liked. (The area has few other tech companies.)
And you are completely rational in saying that it is irrational to expect to live on $500/week with two kids. However it is absolutely possible to do with one child, trust me. At the time this was the safest thing for us to do. My wife breast feeds, cloth diapers, and stays at home with our daughter. (If you ever have a child the first two will save you a significant amount of money.)
We just found out about the second child being on the way. This plays into my emotions and thoughts on having to do something about the situation I am currently in.
and my freelancing partnership offer is always there, and is something I hope you'll consider.
"He still gives all of us a 1099."
The 1099 is a form given out by the IRS in the USA. So you are in the USA. What the hell? Why would you have 2 kids on $500 a week in the USA?
lawsuits
Do not be surprised if your "boss" freaks out and threatens you with a lawsuit. He will probably be bluffing. You need to just ignore him and ride out the storm.
I actually had a boss like this once. Not quite as pyscho, but still in the same orbit of madness. What worked for me was quiting. Every time I quit he offered me more money. I went back 4 or 5 times. Over the course of 4 years, my pay went from $15 an hour to $50 an hour.
Mind you, it was important to really quit. Bluffing did not work.
If I said "I will quit" he would say "I am sorry to hear that but we have no extra money that we can pay you."
Only when I quit and went and got another job did he offer me more money.
There came a point when I realized that simply working for him was bad for my career. No matter how much money he paid me, his business was run on a profoundly unprofessional basis. It was never going to lead to something great, and every day working with him was a day spent learning how to deal with a psycho, rather than a day spent learning how to deal with a professional, well run business.
So in the end I quit, and he could not offer me more money to stay.
That is when he started threatening me with lawsuits. These came in 2 varieties:
1.) My non-compete agreement - he briefly argued that my non-compete agreement covered the whole technology industry, so I was not allowed to go to work as a computer programmer anywhere. This was a really a non-issue, partly because no court would uphold such a broad claim, but also because the non-compete agreement had a 2 year limit and when I quit we were only a few weeks away from the end of those 2 years. So the issue just went away.
2.) Copyright. He had stupidly never asked me to sign anything regarding copyright. So I owned the copyright on any code I'd written while an independent contractor for him. He then argued that we had had an implicit agreement, and that he would sue me if I ever re-used the code. But I re-used the code on another project, and he never sued me.
One thing about these kinds of bosses: they crave control. When you quit, they go wild, because you regaining control over yourself. At such times, such bosses go a little crazy. It's best to ignore most of what they say at such times. 99% of the time, it is all bluff.
"With this job I got myself into this nasty living paycheck-to-paycheck situation."
No, no. The job is awful, but that is not what put you in a paycheck-to-paycheck situation. Outside of New York, LA and San Francisco, a single individual can get by and be minimally comfortable on $500 a week. I've done it. When I was younger, I actually had some great times living on $500 a week. I could even save up for trips elsewhere. But having 2 kids changes things. A lot.
Having 2 kids makes it much more important that you immediately go find something that pays better.
"Yet, he treats us like employees. We have required working times, usually 8AM - 6PM, we only get a half hour lunch with no other breaks, and are on-call 24-7. Honestly, those items don't even bother me that much. "
On the bright side, it is illegal for him to treat independent contractors like this, so you can sue him if you want. The IRS has been cracking down on exactly this form of abuse lately.
I'm sure the other comments from the smart folks who hang out on HN will echo the above. So I'm going to suggest a strategy for you that is as exploitative as your boss is being:
1. Don't tell him you're leaving.
2. Don't tell anyone you work with you're leaving. I know you feel lonely, need moral support, safety in numbers and all that. But DON"T. You need to take care of your family so it's time to put on your game face.
3. Start networking with other developers in your city or the city you want to end up working in. Also, meet with recruiters, employers, even investors in the kinds of businesses where you want to work. But the most important group for you to network with is your peers i.e. other web developers. They are your best route to your next job.
4. DO NOT tell anyone about your sad story. It may make you feel better, but people tend to shy away from any sign of weakness. It will not help you and it will hurt your chances of getting another job. Come up with a generic story and never go off message.
5. Don't EVER disclose what your current (soon to be former) salary is. It will cause your next employer to "level you" and also under-pay you. Again, come up with a generic (but true) story and never go off message.
6. Keep interviewing, go to second or third interviews and actually LAND A JOB before you even mention a hint of what you're doing. No matter how close you are to signing with your next employer, don't get over confident or smug and disclose what you're doing until the deal is done.
7. Once you actually have another job, give your boss notice both in writing and from a personal email account that you will continue to have access to once you leave your company. Be brief and to the point. Don't get emotional. Use as few words as possible.
Now, about that generic story about your current/former position. It needs to project a positive "employable" image that looks strong and makes people want to hire you. Something like "I've had a huge amount of fun in my current job, but I feel I've outgrown the company. I enjoy working with my colleagues and the work is challenging and fun but I'm ready for my next big challenge." Practice the message on a few people you're talking to and let it evolve until it rolls naturally off the tongue and is giving you the body language you want to see from the people you're talking to.
Employers or recruiters will ask you directly about your current salary. Simply say "Unfortunately I can't disclose that information." They're sales guys and they will push but politely stonewall. It will only hurt you badly by disclosing it. You either won't get the job because they'll smell the stench of death, or you'll get an awful deal.
The one hole in this plan is the reference you may need at your next position. They may want to call up your current employer and ask for one. You could just be honest at this point and say that he doesn't know you're leaving yet so you don't want them to contact him until you've given notice. This actually makes you look stronger because you have a current job. You're not unemployed and looking.
As a general bit of guidance in negotiating:
"Never pass up an opportunity to say nothing." ~Robert Heinlein
"Never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking." ~The Godfather
It's time for you to take care of the most important people in your life: Your family. So put on your war face and go for it! Good luck!!
1. Become slow. Start doing 50% of work you do now and quietly spend the rest of the time preparing for your interviews, getting some portfolio web projects live with POLISH, like getting those corners rounded and stuff. Its really important. Also make sure no one knows you are doing this.
2. When you quit, write a blog, just paste the same thing you wrote here. I am sure many out here will publicize it and help your message reach far. People like these need to be taught a lesson and best way you can do it is by telling everything you told here to his clients. I wonder if they would like to continue doing business with such a person.
Now to make you feel good. In India, 21 is actually early to start making money. I started at 21 at Google. 23-25 is the average age when people start taking jobs and making money. I am surprised that you are married. With your age and experience you should simply focus on building your skills, your resume. Note its better to have one or two polished and public projects than having dozens of half baked things lying around. If you need help polishing things, post it here (seperate thread) and we will help you out.
Firstly, if you're interviewing at other places when you already have a job, they are usually willing to skip references and hire you based on tech knowledge and interviews alone. Grabbing tech talent these days is really tough, and most recruiters know they have to be discreet with people transitioning from a current job.
Secondly, the job you're at is likely to give you a crappy reference after you give notice. You want to be well on your way to making that next employer your next reference as soon as possible. The alternative, i.e. being unemployed with them as your most recent references, makes you harder to hire.
I agree with you on all aspects. It would be too risky for me to do anything but act normal until I settle my future plans out. One mistake I would have made would have been on the disclosure of my salary -- Thank you.
And admittedly, working at this company has been very fun and a great experience for me. However the nature of how the founder is and the current compensation drove me to where I am right now.
Thank you again for your advice.
You are making student money for professional hours.
Please, for your wife and kid(s), get out of this horrible situation.
I'm sure someone on HN here would be more than glad to hire you for another startup.
Edit: reading some of the other comments, with respect to being too soft. Perhaps it would be worth consulting a lawyer, and let them do the dirty work. Being too soft and letting other people take advantage for you could be a good reason for hiring a hard-nosed lawyer.
The danger might be to be taken advantage of by the lawyer, too. But my mother actually once had a lawyer get her a lot of money from her employer, and he said "it is not only important because of the money, but because of you". I was really impressed by that - certainly dragging this nagging feeling around that you are a loser also takes it's toll, so fighting it out might be worth it.
If anyone on HN is hiring or looking to keep some extra talent in mind I would love to talk to you. I am very good at a select few things: UI Design, PHP (Specifically CakePHP), XHTML/CSS, and Problem Solving. I am also okay and very comfortable with Subversion and MySQL.I have a passion for the web and automation. You can contact me via HN or at: nowjobhunting@gmail.com
1. You're probably legally misclassified as a contractor rather than a full-time employee. You should read IRS Rule 87-41 to understand why that is, but the really telling part is that you're carefully managed as to work down to the minute. Dead giveaway - you're an employee.
2. Since you're clearly an employee, you're subject to the protections of FMLA. My favorite nickname for FMLA is the "F*ing Leave Me Alone" Act. If you're hospitalized and your employer knows it, it's really unnecessary to invoke FMLA to receive its protections. Your employer violated it by requiring you to work while incapacitated.
3. Because you're misclassified, you're probably paying self-employment tax, so you're getting screwed coming and going.
4. Your employer is too lazy to figure out how to get benefits for small firms. Going to a trade association like the AeA would easily get you access to insurance at a good rate. I assume he's covered through his spouse, and, as such, doesn't need coverage. So he's letting you hang.
IANAL, but I've been an exec who has had to walk in and clean up quite a few shops doing illegal things like this. Here are some options.
A) Just leave. Easier said than done, obviously. Also, he almost certainly owes you back overtime as well as back taxes that he didn't deposit consistent with the IRC.
B) Contact your state's version of the Labor Board. Explain the situation, and see if they're able to take administrative action on your behalf. This might be a good option for you, because these actions are usually sealed, and they'll order the employer to provide null references in the future.
C) Get a lawyer and sue. This can get very messy very quickly, and the real downside of it is that since your pay rate is only about $12.50/hr, even if a court awarded you a year's salary, an attorney on contingency would take half of it, and you'd still be boned. Also, future employers have a way of finding out about employee lawsuits, and it makes you somewhat more unemployable since there's nothing that says they can't discriminate against you based on your past history of litigating against employers.
Now, an interesting side option is that I suspect that you don't have an ironclad Intellectual Property and Inventions Assignment agreement with the company, given that he's a management slob. Odds are that it's buried in your contractor agreement which is, itself, a piece of fiction. There might be a severability clause in it, but I bet a judge would vacate the entire agreement if given the chance. That means that you possibly OWN the intellectual property of the company. Which is to say, in effect, that you own the core asset of the company since the IP and the client list are probably its only assets.
I can't speak for you to say whether you WANT to own this company's core asset, and certainly if you owned the IP and licensed it back to the founder, you'd have the joy of having to continue working with him for as long as that went on. But since the company is successfully signing customers and is turning over about $400k a year, that may well be a lucrative path to pursue.
Anyhow, the way you'd look into that is to contact the local branch of the nearest major municipality's bar association. Almost all of them have a referral service, and it's usually cheap or free. An attorney will probably give you an hour or so to go over the case and figure out if it's a good idea to act or just jump ship.
I wish you luck, and I hope your next employer appreciates you more than your current one does.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/Title_29/Part_825/29CFR825.111...
I agree with all of your sentiments, however.
I think your heart is in the right place, but if this guy sues his boss (from what we've read) his boss will fight him until time ends, he'll be broke, and his lawyer will be driving around his new car.
Suing always sounds great on paper until you actually do it, and if it's for any serious amount of money you start to see the nasty side of the legal system.
Don't waste the energy on it, just run away. Call into work and tell them you have Legionnaire Disease and never come back :)
The IP gambit is potentially career ending. All he has to do is take out a press release that insinuates you may have destroyed his business with lawyers out of purest spite. That press release will hang around on background checks forever.
If you need leverage, go after unemployment insurance. If you were watching the clock, then he should have been paying unemployment insurance on your behalf. The state unemployment bureaucrats are remarkably bitchy and tenacious about it, but the worst case expenses to the company are not enough to start a legal war over. They are, however, enough to get the attention of a paranoid tightwad.
I agree with you that using the law is always a bit of a gamble. But the mere threat of calling in the IRS might be useful.
And hey, if the opensource CMS in question is Drupal, shoot me an email, I'm always on the prowl for good Drupallers.
And I wish it was Drupal, he refused to move away from .NET. I will say the CMS we used is the worst experience I ever had. It is horribly bloated.
I've been treated (exploited?) in much the same way as you have in the past; it sucked at the time but I'm a better carer-and-feeder for developers because of the experience. :)
What's up with this? I was probably the most technology savvy kid to come out of my high school, and I'm still not even remotely close to saying something like this!
I bet that when you were 9, you couldn't even do most advanced algebra, let alone real web work.
I'm confused. Are you suggesting that your average 3rd grader should have already finished linear algebra? You do realize this means they did calculus and integrals in 1st grade, trig in kindergarten, and algebra in preschool, and learned long division when they were 3, right? Many 3 year olds don't even know how to read yet, and some aren't even solid on English. Or wait, did they learn that in the womb?
Hell I'm 21 and I still can't do most advanced algebra. When I was nine my passion started working in GeoCities and Tripod. I don't know any nine year old who can actually do real web work. ;)
Sorry guys!
You are not acting to your own advantage financially or emotionally. One option you have is to renegotiate your salary with the founder, and considering how hard it is to find great people, and how little he pays you, I have a strong feeling he'll budge. But if you have options (and it's your market now), do you really want to work for someone who has no ethical standards?
BTW, we're hiring: www.rethinkdb.com/jobs.
EDIT: just read your comment that you do not have any equity. Run, don't walk.
I honestly don't know what I was thinking. -- Well actually I do: Back in 2008, a year and a half into college, I won a local business plan competition and dropped out. (The competition gave office space and some startup capital.) The college I was in was a small community college and the classes weren't that great for the IT field. Going into college I thought everyone would have the same passion I did. Into the first semester I was helping teach my major related courses.
Unfortunately, not having any sense about business and being somewhat misguided by my other founders, the business flopped. I started a second business which did slightly better, and again won the business plan competition again. However our overhead was too high compared to the cashflow coming in. We started working with the company mentioned in this post and I was basically made an initial offer to work exclusively for them. (Mistake.)
Going back to my reasoning: I felt that if this company did go somewhere, that there would no longer be a need or a way to get roadblocked by not having a degree. I am a strong believer in work and passion than a piece of paper. I know I would have never hired any of my classmates from that college.
Although the justification is/was not sound at all. Getting out know is the only way for me to continue to seize my potential. I know continuing down this path will only lead to my own destruction.
You're valuable and hardworking, so get the hell out of that shithole.
With your experience, you should be able to make some incredible contributions to any other startup that has a good product/service and actually cares about their employees.
$26,000 a year is ridiculously low... absurdly low. Hard-to-fathom low. If you feel like renegotiating would create hostility then that is far and away the biggest alarm that you need to get out of there.
As coffeemug said, "run, don't walk."
Don't you hate when you come to that realization, it is even worse when you get out in the real world and find that these people make up a good portion of your technical peers. IT is one of the reasons so many IT projects fail. Crappy people make crappy products when it comes to software.
Don't fall into the education trap. I know that it chews on you and can give you an inferiority complex but unless that degree has MIT or Stanford it's crap. I fell into that trap and spent 40k to get no further than I already was. But I started thinking in my mind, I will get passed up for other people. This was after my first CTO position. Imagine that, I had made CTO, went on to sell the company, was wildly successful and yet the education trap was chewing on my mind. I realize now that the only person that ever cared was myself. We are in an industry where actions speak volumes and anyone you would want to surround yourself with as a peer, knows that a degree does not a good developer make.
- You are being screwed. This has been amply covered. - You are worth your weight in gold. If you really work 10 hours a day, hang out with your family then work into the late night... you are every CTO/VP of Engineering's wet dream. - You have rights. The law, in many places, is built to protect people like you from exploitative situations like this. Just looking at a glance, it seems like you could - if you so chose - bring this guy to court and walk away with a more equitable amount of compensation [INTERNET CAVEAT MACHINE ALERT: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.] - You deserve better. With your work ethic and your attitude I hope the next group of people you work with give you your dues
I think the key to my next situation is making sure the next group of people I work with give me my fair share.
I think this falls into what a lot of people experience is the doubt in not knowing what you are worth. In my area typical entry programming positions are at around 35k/yr. I feel my time and experience puts me well past any entry based position. I am always somewhat unsure of exactly where I stand.
One other point that I haven't seen mentioned is that you don't have to try to fix your entire career in a single jump. There is nothing wrong with taking a respectable job at a respectable pay rate with a decent company as a first step, even if it's not immediately at the level of responsibility you were on before. You'll still get a lot more money and better working conditions. If it's a decent company they'll see your potential and grow your career rapidly anyway. Crucially, you'll also have another group of coworkers to ask for references down the line, if you do decide to move on again in a year or two rather than move up in wherever you go at this point. Don't assume you have to try to jump from an awkward position right up to the manager at Google/Facebook that someone else mentioned all in one go: you probably won't make it, and you'll be ruling out a lot of potentially useful opportunities.
Two major points from me:
First, you shouldn't get angry. You're there of your own volition and have to make the best of your situation. I know it's rough to hear, but getting angry will just waste your time and make it harder to be proactive about improving your situation. I need to remind myself of this constantly.
Second, I cannot attest to the legality of what's happening within your company. However, it would seem that if the founder is such a tyrant then many people would defect (clients as well as employees).
It seems like you could start a competitor business which serves the companies clients better than they are being served now. Who knows, any illegal behavior might nullify a non-compete clause (I am not a lawyer so please verify).
At any rate, best of luck. I do believe that businesses who don't value their employees pay for it in the long run so hopefully these things work out.
Short term, try reaching out to some people for freelance work. It's probably the best and quickest way to raise your income.
I don't know the legalities and other related things aside, but I would make a rebellion, although you look in the worst position (you are being paid the same as a fresh recruit, come on!)... Walking straight to the boss and telling him either to raise pays or everybody leaves could be quite effective. And of course, 8 people talking shit about a startup can build quite a lot of momentum to keep him from getting any more job candidates/clients.
As for not wanting his business to fail, I agree taking intentional actions to cause harm would be bad, but I suspect they'll cause themselves enough harm simply by you not being there soon after you leave.
From the other side of the table, I employed a handful of people in the early 2000s. We had a couple good years, and then a couple bad years. Got the point where the money wasn't coming in regularly, and I had some people stay well past the point where it was good for their own financial well-being. While I appreciated the loyalty (whether to me or solely to the clients, I'm not 100% sure) but I did tell them to leave if they could find something else, or take side work, or something.
I would never want to be in a position where I was doing what's happening to you to someone else. I've been in situations where I've been exploited, but not to this level, and it sucked, and I got the heck out as fast as possible once the reality set in.
I would suggest expanding the freelancing. You don't have much time right now cause you're working 50+ hours per week for someone else. It should not be hard to replace what is effectively a $10/hour job with some extra freelancing work. I've had a friend of mine recently jump from 'job' to fulltime freelance, and while he's not booked up 100% of the time, he's increased that hourly rate, so just to keep up with where he was before he doesn't need to bill full time.
Go back to your current freelancing clients, and explain that you'll be on the market soon. Ask if they have any extra work they need doing, ask them for referrals to other colleagues they may have who need what you do, and then ask them to be a reference. Preferably something in writing - a predone text file that you can use on your website and to include in your email marketing for new work.
Update your linkedin.com page, and hit up your network there for more work.
Finding work, especially as a freelancer, is very much about your network, and you have to curate that aspect of your life with intention and purpose. Happenstance and serendipity are great - they've brought some great things in to my life - but it's not enough. Hope is not a strategy. :) Start (re)developing your professional network outside of your current employment situation, and watch your freelancing grow.
Maybe freelancing only tides you over for a few months, and you manage to land another f/t job. Don't ever forget that you're still in charge of your own career and life. Your current situation should help drive that home for a long time, but don't dwell on it. Use it as motivation to build your professional network so that you never have all your eggs in someone else's basket again. Own multiple baskets. Even if you don't put eggs in any for long stretches, they're still your basket.
Best of luck to you, and I hope things turn around very quickly for you.
Thank you for your advice.
You are worth far more as an employee than the meager salary and horrible relationship this guy has given you. Until you realize this, you will continue to be abused by future employers. You'll only be treated as well or as poorly as you let people treat you.
Hell, I am a fulltime employee with great benefits and a great salary, and I feel loyal to my company and team, but if my boss told me I needed to work from the hospital, I would tell him I was resigning immediately.
You need to stand up for yourself.
This experience on HN has been extra eye opening for me.
So you definitely got a bad deal.
The founder is clearly exploiting you, but he sure has justifications in his head. Something like, it was all my idea, I took the risk, it was my execution, etc.. etc.. I think you must negotiate with the founder. Basically a bit of everything that you just wrote above.
If you make something that it turns out people don't really want, though, you could get paid nothing. While that's the amount you really deserve in some sense, I can see the appeal of hedging that by letting someone else take most of that risk/reward, which is what all employees do.
It sounds like you are very hard working, so anyone will be happy having you in their team.
Do you have equity in the company, that keeps you there?
I am trying to keep this post fairly generic, however we are located in the Northeastern United States Lower than New York, Higher than Maryland ;)
2. Find another job. This boss is hopeless, you can't fix it.
3. If you want to have fun, quit and tell him that you want to reclassify all the 1099 income as salary. He'll be liable for all kinds of social security stuff, he'll be in deep trouble with the other devs... That would be a major threat to him.
I don't particularly recommend an actual lawsuit, because the money you'd gain from it is so small based on your salary anyway. Also be aware that making such a threat would be extremely disruptive to him, as it would sink his business. So he may resort to more illegal schemes to fight back. Therefore it's probably not worth it - move on!
And please blog about it. Other people in your situation need to know about this. Include specific numbers, it helps!
This company will stay alive until someone drops a dime to the IRS, at which point they'll reclassify everyone as a W-2 employee and demand income tax and FICA withholding from the boss, with interest and penalties. Unless he's put a lot in the bank from his exploitation of you all, he's not going to be able pay this (pity that he's personally liable for this; whatever the corporate structure is, this pierces the corporate veil).
You want to get out before this happens or before the IRS figures it out in some other way.
When you give notice he will almost certainly threaten you; it would be by far the best to ignore it (don't escalate, who knows how crazy he might get, ADDED: and it's best to keep in reserve, e.g. see the next paragraph), but if you can't ignore it you could always say "Be grateful I'm not reporting you to the IRS...."
If he seriously threatens you WRT to your non-compete, point out his vulnerability WRT the IRS. Unless and until he converts his employees to W-2 status (and I suppose pays his back due withholding), he's exquisitely vulnerable there.
As some have noted, don't bother to sue. At best you'd receive a pittance, per the above you might end up trying trying to collect from a bankrupt company/the owner. What you really need is closure, getting away from this bad situation which is no doubt slowly poisoning your attitudes towards work, upper management, etc.
1) If you were going to get equity you would have it already. It would have been a condition of your employment, in writing. Anything else is empty promise, as I fear you are beginning to discover.
2) Even if you HAD equity, that equity is WORTHLESS until the company is sold or goes public. Equity only has value at exit or if the company is going to pay some sort of dividend. From the sound of things, both are unlikely.
3) I know you feel like you are invested in this company, that you deserve better ... and you do. That loyalty that you feel to the company does not appear to be returned. As an employer, that is a massive failure. One of the true perks of being a bootstrapper is that I am empowered to give people the "breaks" that make my place fun to work at and family friendly.
I think that it is time for you to move on. Follow mmaunder's advice carefully, especially the part about not talking about ANYTHING you're planning with co-workers. At best your co-workers may unintentionally break your confidence, and at worst will do so in an attempt to curry favor.
You seem to have an extreme case of nice guy syndrome. You don't want to get into a conflict with your boss and you are highly willing to sacrifice yourself to meet his expectations. My guess is you would feel almost physically ill at the idea of "letting someone down" who was "counting on you".
You need to get over that, at least somewhat. If you don't set boundaries, if you don't have a notion of where your wants and needs are more important than what others want and need from you, you'll always be overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Nobody respects a pushover, and there are a lot of guys who will use them up mercilessly.
Did I read that you're only 21? If so, hey, you've got lots of time to get this sorted out. But you might as well start now. :)
Closing thoughts: Get out as soon as possible--there's a lot of ways you could go about this. Don't try to "get even", just cut your losses. Don't do anything unethical on the way out. Do not trust your boss if he starts making promises of change or reform. As soon as possible, start saving money and get a cushion built up. You'd be in a much better position now if you weren't living paycheck to paycheck. Good luck.
I haven't gotten a chance to read some of the other replies yet, but here is the brass tax: Your time at this company is done.
You know it is too; the language of your post says so.
For more clarification: 1. Your "boss" (I put that in quotes because no one needs to be your boss and he sounds like a tool) will never give you more money and will not care if you step out on the company.
2. Your "boss" WILL likely threaten you when you go to say you are leaving; ignore it. Tell him that is "unfortunate" and then leave. Give a proper notice, like 2-4 weeks to avoid any nasty claims. Please note that he will make those last 2-4 weeks as unpleasant as possible for you.
3. Move on. You have developed an amazing skill set, both from the tech side as well as the business side. Seeing and knowing a startup can succeed from the ground up like this.
You don't have so much time on this planet that you need to waste it. This guy is never going to "get better" or change, just step forward and leave this nonsense behind.
Forget the money, forget the bad feelings. Just push forward.
Oh yes, you are being exploited, plan to get out and make a huge amount more once you find a better position.
You may find these articles interesting: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29953.html http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/ownership.html
If you were an employee on a W2 then this wouldn't be an issue -- your work would be a "Work For Hire" by default.
Your boss has created a legally perilous situation for himself. If you're a contractor, then he likely doesn't own the software he thinks he does. If you're an employee, then he owes a lot of taxes.
So if you're ready to burn a bridge, here's an idea. Find an attorney who will take your matter on contingency -- many will do a no-fee consult to see if there's a case. What you want to do is license your code to your former boss (the code he thinks he owns already) for a reasonable but substantial one-time sum. Low to mid five figures doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
And as everyone else has said, find a new job. If you're looking for contract work and you know CodeIgniter, email me (in my profile).
This is how most smallish PR agencies, "digital agencies" and other sorta technical tangential "media" related companies in NYC operate.
You should just get any other sane job as quickly as possible and regroup. Working at Trader Joe's would pay as much and be less of a headache. If you can do any sort of web programming at any capacity you can make 70-120 grand in NYC. I don't know much about PA, but I know there are at least some decent jobs in Pittsburgh.
At hire, I ask founder "what do you think your exit looks like?" He puts it in terms of equity meaning for employees, "I am aiming for at least enough for each employee to purchase a nice home in this area."
A month after hire, at the first scheduled board meeting, I am granted options worth 0.5% of equity in the company, vesting over 4 years (I'm around the 12th employee). I am paid a salary commensurate with the rest of the industry in the area, as well as given full health coverage.
After about 2 years, the company is sold, making my 0.5% worth almost exactly what he said it would be worth, enough to purchase a nice home with cash outright.
Your founder is exploiting you. Don't dawdle dealing with this until you are no longer essential. You should lay it out for him, exactly as-is: you get your equity grant and a pay raise immediately, or you are walking.
Keep in mind, your founder might be trying to exploit you another way, too: he may not be planning an exit at all, or for a very long time. Meaning, equity is worthless (as long as he retains ownership). If he's making a lifestyle business out of this, equity is a big 0. Don't let him grant you equity but keep your wages at stupid levels.
1) Silently find a new place to work. (there is no reason to negotiate with your current employer, since he wont be able to raise compensation 4 times and give you all other stuff for sure) 2) Tell founder that you are leaving in 1-4 weeks. 3) Tell him why you are leaving. 4) Tell him that he have option to hire freelancers (you are freelancer now accordingly to way he pays you) on oDesk.com, elancer.com, etc sites. He will get really good quality on these sites and in the same time these $500/wk wont be abuse to these people.
I mean, if you are really good, and it looks like you are, you should fight for much better compensation/results for your - you have wife and kids now!!! And in the same time if your employer can't pay enough you - he should rebuild his business to outsource some work to other countries to not abuse local people.
* $500/week is ridiculous. You are way underpaid.
* There is no upside for you:
* Say the company is successful and starts generating a lot of revenue: you'll have to crawl your way from $500/week to a decent salary. New employees will immediately make more than you.
* If the company is sold, the founder gets rich and you get nothing.
Btw, I've founded 3 startups so I'm very familiar with what it's like to pay people little. In every case the counter to the low pay was significant equity - if the startup makes it, you get a share of the prize. If you're not getting equity, you're getting used, plain and simple.
I have a Master in Human Resource Management (on top of a IT degree and an MBA). For me, your case is a clear case of tacit abuse.
If the product you are working on is now selling, then it means you MUST have some good skills somewhere. Fact is, you are the one who has the power, but it seems to me (and I don't mean to be rude) that you don't have the guts to use it.
If I were you, I would start searching for other positions offering a much better salary for your skills. Then, come back to your company and ask for a decent raise. If you don't get it, move to the next job and don't feel guilty about it. They are not treating you decently.
You have a kid and a family to take care of.
I understand the need for sacrifice in start-up and the need for long-term commitment, but it still does not add up to me. It does not seem like you have shares in this company. If it becomes very successful, will you have a piece of the pie, I mean FOR SURE? Or are there just mere promises?
Take care of yourself and push back on this crappy situation.
That is my advise.
After securing further employment, turn him in to the IRS, with as much supporting documentation as possible.
See http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/news/20030221a1.asp for a bit more info on the IRS bounty program.
If you would feel guilty about the impact on the other "contractors" at the company, share any eventual payoff with them.
My primary knowledge is of philosophy. What this has allowed me to do is come to the conclusion that programming is an extension of datawalke's very being. He doesn't just work as an IT guy. His very existence guarantees both his programming ability and its perpetual growth.
I know for a fact that he is grossly underpaid and devalued. What he hasn't mentioned is that even on top of this job he works frequently on side projects for clients who have never been dissatisfied (to my knowledge). I honestly believe that he simply sleeps less than everyone else as a solution to his lack of time.
After that, regardless of the outcome start looking for another job, because once you have forced his hand like this the founder is likely to find a way to not need you anymore and fire you sooner or later...
Because he needs you, he's likely to agree to your terms (as long as you don't repeat it to another), and you'll be in a better financial position while looking for a new job
Then "...the universe will open doors where there were only walls." - Joseph Campbell
No it is not. You are underpaid - exploited.
I am making $400/week (4 hours/day for 5 days/week) on my freelance and I am living in the Philippines. You are in the US and supposed to earn 4 - 5 times as much.
Here, it would be illegal...
[]'s
First, find some other projects/gigs to cover your expenses and do not tell the startup.
Second, when those other gigs are secured ..spend $150 on a CPA that does tax work..have him compose a letter stating that under work conditions at startup that they need to state you as employee and withhold payroll taxes. Give cpa any docs that he needs to document this.
The purpose is not to force startup to do anything. it sot protect you and your family.
From now on, if firm sets working, hours, and has full quality control of the work than you need to only accept w-2 employee status.
Your local cpa will have a employee/ tax check list as far as conditions make it employee and which ones do not so ask for that.
if you cannot afford he $150 to $250 ask your local CPA state board or SBA office to give you a list of those CPAs that sometimes do free advice workshops on this.
And most important do not under any circumstances let the startup know your anger..just get the extra gigs so that you can get out of the situation.
S the project manager I am using know states, you have to care about the money as the right startups will than take that market rate of a freelancer(no not salary rate) and say well we can do 75% and pay rest in stock is that acceptable and as employee.