Yeh, Attention Set is a game changer. We (Aviator) also took inspiration (ahem.. copied) attention set from Gerrit:
https://docs.aviator.co/attentionset
If you are looking for an open source stacked PRs CLI, you can look into av CLI (https://github.com/aviator-co/av). Unfortunately this also only works with GitHub, but it should be possible to add support for any Git-based platform.
Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Aviator who supports the av CLI. It's a free tool to manage stacked PRs.
Background: I've worked on all side of this spectrum, left Google 10 years ago and have been working in startups since then. And now founder of a startup.
I agree that from a financial outcome perspective, the odds of making big in startups may not be in your favor.
"Interesting work" perspective may need a bit more color. No matter if you work in a big tech or startup - majority of the work is very mundane. Even if you are working on the coolest AI big-tech or startup, you are probably not doing "exciting cutting edge" work most of the time!
This is probably also why folks who join a startup looking for exciting work get bored quickly with the day-today mundaneness.
Eventually what matters from the interesting work perspective is to understand what part of the work truly gives you joy - what makes you excited about getting off the bed and do great work - even the mundane one.
The motivation could be - seeing your product being used by millions of users, solving a hard problem, sharing your research with the world, having a great work-life balance, or getting rich. Understanding that can help answer the question on what is right place for you.
One challenge I've found in big-tech is that even if the company is doing amazing work, not everyone gets an opportunity to work on the most exciting projects.
I’m only excited to work on a product that’s my baby but by my definition , startups that I’m not la founder /exec of can’t offer that.
A stranger can’t tell me how to dress my baby. So if CEO overrides me on how my product looks it’s not my baby.
If you have a baby, you don’t hyper focus on just one aspect of raising it. But even the tiniest startups rarely let engineers do things like work on marketing and customer development, so it’s not my baby.
A baby can only be taken away from you in extreme circumstances of neglect. But a startup job can lay me off at any time so it’s not my baby.
For me the only real job that fulfills this desire is bootstrapped founder. Being a startup employee is more like being a nanny than a parent.
Curious if investors are considered creditors through chapter 11. My understanding is that they will still lose the money, but the FTX users will recover everything.
Yeh, perhaps the big shift for the reincarnation was their ability to get a foothold and grow their enterprise sales business. Their strategy of building the Microsoft software ecosystem paid off very well. Also the reason why Slack could not continue competing with Microsoft teams.
The more interesting question would be whether they will go through the same downward trend again sometime in next few years.
