An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups

I've worked at 5 different startups in my career in Silicon Valley. While every company is unique, there are many similarities between Silicon Valley startups. As workplaces go, Silicon Valley startups embody the American dream: they're exciting, fun, and provide employees with great flexibility and freedom. Join the right startup, and you can change the world! This book covers topics of interest to anyone who wants to work at startups:

• How do you get a job at a startup?
• How do you choose which startups to talk to?
• How do you approach interviewing at a startup?
• How would you negotiate compensation?
• Once at a startup, what should you do to maximize gains from stock options?
• Why is it advantageous to exercise your stock options in certain conditions?
• What do the clauses in your offer letter mean?
• How do the clauses in your stock options contract affect you?

Drawing from my 17 years of experience at various pre-IPO companies in Silicon Valley, I provide answers to the above questions. Extensive examples, case studies, and detailed background are in the book. After learning about the personal finance side of handling stock options, I joined Google less than a year before the IPO and discovered that what I had learned was hardly common knowledge. Despite explaining the details to several colleagues, many chose not to do the financially advantageous thing, leading to an increased tax liability of several hundred thousand dollars. This book was the result of observing these failures, and trying to prevent others from making the same mistakes.

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What's different about this book?

• Emphasis on the engineering non-founder. Most startup books are focused on the founder(s). For every founder at a successful company, there are hundreds of non-founders. This book is for everyone who is not a founder. I don't tell you how to raise money or read a term-sheet. That's the founder's job. Frequently, the founder's goals and your goals are different. For instance, when negotiating compensation, the employee and employer sit on opposite sides of the table.
• Short and to the point. Pages are not wasted telling you how to write a resume. I show you how an engineering interviewer thinks. I did over 300 interviews for Google, and sat on a hiring committee for 3 years. Before that, I was an engineering manager for 3 different startups and also performed hundreds of interviews.
• Covers the important tax planning topics that very few startups will tell you because of fear of lawsuits. Employers are not allowed to push their stock onto their employees.
• Quotes and experience from well-known successful startup experts like Wayne Rosing (Google's first Senior VP of Engineering), Jeff Rothschild (VP of Technology at Facebook, Co-Founder of Veritas, Co-Founder of Mpath Interactive), and other startup veterans.
• More importantly, you'll get to learn what other engineers think!

Purchasing

Please use Google Checkout or Paypal to purchase. Please note that all sales are final. This book is only available directly from the author. It will not be available on Amazon or in bookstores!

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Author's Biography

Piaw Na has worked as a pre-IPO employee at 3 companies (Pure Software, Mpath Interactive/HearMe, and Google), and 2 unsuccessful startups (Escalate, and Mirapoint). He maintains a blog at http://piaw.blogspot.com.

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Of Further Interest

An ex-Googler, Samantha Crow, has started a business helping people work on their resumes. It's called Sam Reads Resumes, and if you're struggling to get your resume noticed, may be of help. If you do use her, tell her I sent you.