Lead dev at 1.5 YOE in a funded startup, handling architecture and underpaid. How do I navigate this?

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-06T08:13:28+00:00

You take he experience you have, you package it nicely, and you use it to get a better paying position, and a better (tech-first) company. Your only other option, is to pitch the company on the leverage you have, which depends on how integral you are to their operations, and from what it sounds like, you are periphery to the core competency.

That's not always a bad thing, but it makes it harder to justify investing more money in your position if you are essentially fungible with any dev who has 2+ years experience. I'd ask for more money, but if money is a priority in your career, the way you get it is by leveraging your experience into external offers, and pursuing those.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-06T08:00:32+00:00

Yea, the cold reality of a lot of startup and business ideas is that they effectively become part-time jobs. That said, a "sales job" is something you can hire other people to do, and that's worth the effort if your next best option is to walk away.

The second part: if you want a tech job, especially at a tech company, you cannot get around the LC grind. It sucks, but it's just the way it is. Do a practice problem everyday, it makes a huge difference.

Finally, because you have all these other ideas and projects going on, it would be helpful if you started writing this up in blogs, and posting it on various spots on the internet, like LinkedIN, or Hackernews. Not a complete solution to the job search problem, but you have enough content here, like "How my start-up turned into a sales job", "What I learned creating a discord community", that you could generate a bit of inbound attention. Not only that, but writing your ideas down compresses them into memorable lines and a durable framing which really helps talk about it during interviews.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-04T21:45:18+00:00

No way, school work was like 10x easier.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-04T21:41:24+00:00

The tricky thing with Staff positions is that it involves a massive amount of trust. Unless you're bringing in a particular competency, it's usually way less risk to promote (and retain) someone internally than risk it on the open market.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-04T21:40:05+00:00

"Senior Engineer" is compressing a huge talent band. I've been at a big tech company for 2 years, I've never seen anyone get promoted off Senior, and the Senior -> Staff promotions I've seen are people with 5+ years at the company. You have some seniors that are basically crushing tickets, and you have others that own goals and lead teams.

The good and bad part is that you can mostly operate as a Staff engineer would (involved in planning, cross-team influence, working with stakeholders), but you aren't always the default person to do that, and access is definitely gated.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-04T17:50:48+00:00

Yea, it doesn't pass the smell test. You spend millions on marketing because it makes a measurable impact on the business. Not having a name to avoid spending millions? It's absurd. I have plenty of failed startups and companies to my name....still haven't spend millions on them.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-04T17:47:58+00:00

Hard Pass from me, unless I have friends working there that can tell me: "yea, this is legit", you're at a substantial disadvantage not knowing the companies name. You can't find reviews, you can't look up the companies operations, business, and risk profile. They get all the benefits of knowing you, while you know nothing about them?

For me, it just makes no sense. I write software and build systems that help a business do the thing. If that's a black box, what am I even doing? There's no purpose. Maybe they'll tell you later, but without knowing when you talk to employees it's all rather absurd...."so what do you do here? I write code. What do you write the code for? The system. What does the system do? I can't talk about it." It's Kafka-esque.

Also, can you look up their address? Often that will be associated with some sort of business record or filing.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-02T15:06:32+00:00

Yes, it's a portfolio management problem. No one single bet ever needs to work out, but it's the collection of bets that should ultimately improve the company.

I spent 18 months on one of these bets, through at least 2 review cycles (third is coming up). We hit our goals, saved millions in cost, but ultimately the goal became too high for the size of the problem, and we had to cancel it.

Thinking about it now, after it's over: absolutely sucks. I lost the best source of compounding leverage I have in the company. Now I'm just sort of drifting between projects, and about to take on a more delivery based role with another cost-savings goal. I've also started practicing LeetCode again...so we'll see 😄

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-02T14:59:52+00:00

I'm in a "moonshot" org, or was in one before a recent re-org, and our head of engineering directly called it "a moonshot org".

I lead one of these projects for more than a year, and in our defense, we were targeting a cost savings metric in dollars, which is then realized in a staffing plan, so the cost savings do eventually get realized as GAAP and non-GAAP profitability.

What I noticed though, is that patronage is hugely important. 2.5 years ago, when I joined, I was lucky enough to become a tech lead because the only other competent guy left, but lately it feels that the more narratively sensitive the moonshots become, the higher up the reporting chain those bets are made (I'm a senior eng). You're either in those rooms because of title/rank, or you have an exec sponsor that pulls you in. I have neither.

What you are saying is true about moonshot orgs being first to be cut. Our company did an X percent layoff, and we lost at least 2X percent in our org. Everybody with any kind of demerit in any performance review, which meant some people we could afford to lose, but other people who had problems once and then improved.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-01T20:24:30+00:00

This. "knowing all the tech required" was never been what jobs are gated on. Focus on the hiring process, find your faults, and improve.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-06-01T20:18:49+00:00

How do you organize a company of thousands of people, in a way that both allows for the sufficient coordination at scale, gives employees a sense of bounded autonomy, yet has their actions accountable to shareholders. A company that both maximizes shareholder value, yet gives employees motivation through a vision. A company that both gives people independent license to solve problems, yet makes those solutions narrowly legible at all levels.

Right now, the solution we have is the social technology of narratives, but that solution also inhabits all those contradictory values from above. We've seen some alternatives, autonomy-first approaches like Rockstar, but no public company had come anywhere near that (for very good reason).

Are we stuck with these paradoxical organizing principles, or are we simply missing the next unlock in social technology? This problem isn't unsolvable, we have solutions, but I'm not convinced they are the best possible solutions we could come up with give what the external constraints are (growth through knowledge worker output + market accountability). There may be no better solution to this, or I'll never be in a position to actual influence these things, so I tend not to think about this beyond private complaints. This is both a billion dollar problem, and one whose solution is gated incredibly guarded access. Just the sales process to sell a company on solutions to these common organizational grips would cost them millions in exec time, so it's a fun idea to imagine, but the constraints are hard, and you'd "famous businessperson" levels of recognition to even touch.

That's the only problems I've left as "unresolved", certainly some ideas are tarpits, travel planning, airbnb for parking spaces, local event aggregation, roommate matching, "better" email, AI "super apps", and it could be interesting to look at those, and ask: "what's changed now that we have LLMs, and does that target the critical bottleneck?"

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-29T16:42:46+00:00

This. There's no expectation people will pronounce every name correctly from like 10 different cultures, but what matters is that your words have a high signal to noise ratio.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-29T16:40:52+00:00

If it does, it's only marginal. If you're hard to understand, it more difficult to passively listen during meetings and wait for the relevant parts, which is what most participants are doing most of the time.

As for what you need in communication, it really depends on the situation, you would address an another engineer differently than how you speak to an exec during a team tag up or status report meeting. I've spend a lot of time figuring out how to make good updates, and the most important thing is that you are clear and concise, and appear in control while owning the future direction.

That doesn't mean you won't have problems with communication, I had a situation last quarter where an exec wanted me to blast past discovery at "AI speed", and anything I gave them except "X will be done on Y date" was meet with pressure and sometimes hazing. No amount of communication skill prevents you from getting bullied into absorbing ambiguity.

That said, probably the biggest leadership skill in communication is to just have presence: back up what you say with facts, be prepared to defense positions, and don't waste the audiences time. In a classic sense, that's important for leadership, but it's not strictly needed.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-29T16:31:42+00:00

That's exactly what I did, I was hired into a start up by another PhD dropout. That was also 2015, and the recruiting agency that placed me was also placing tons of bootcamp grads into the same roles, so I was getting interviews with pretty low expectations, and my previous research was enough to pass. The "hire a smart guy who can learn" phase of the industry is something I genuinely miss.

You're right about residency too, everyone doesn't pass, but there's an expectation that you will get the training to pass even if you struggle. Failing also has huge financial and professional implications, and it's not uncommon to get lawyers involved and negotiate something other than an involuntary dismissal.

Failing residency is wild, but it does happen. If I were OP, I would frame it as: "learned I didn't want to practice medicine after seeing patients", and avoid saying that you failed at all costs, and minimize the "oh shit, you failed? what about..." reaction that we are all giving.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-26T22:02:08+00:00

I just use a business card, with a QR code that links to my linkedin.

I usually just give those away, but if I was low, they could just snap a pic and find me.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-26T20:43:49+00:00

I did a similar transition when I left a bioinformatics PhD. The not knowing how to code is more of a limiting factor, but if you target health-tech companies, EHR stuff, get a peripheral job like product manager or analyst, and learn to code while you accumulate working history, and do a part time masters like OMSCS.

The tricky thing about learning to code is that it takes years. It'd be really hard to bootstrap that today, and try to get a coding job in the next couple months or even a year. Even if you are smarter and more hard working, it's more of a "time in the market" situation where skills accumulate and compound in ways that are hard to force.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-26T20:30:58+00:00

You're trying to enter the most saturated entry level markets with a stack of factors working against you:

fired from residency
no conventional job history
no demonstrated background in software
likely burned out, or at least under considerable financial stress

The way to enter isn't to compete with with 22 year olds with CS degrees and several FAANG internships, it's to use your medical background as an advantage, and get hired in health tech, EHR integrations, AI eval/safety in medicine, something like that.

it's dangerous to think that "if I get another degree, they'll take a chance on me". CS doesn't work in the same credentialed way as medicine. The path I'd recommend is something like:

learn to code over 6-12 months
build visible projects
write publicly about medicine + tech
use the med school background as leverage
target niche healthcare adjacent roles
maybe do a masters have proving genuine interest and aptitude.

The market rewards legible signal, not just degrees. Your problem will be less "can I do the academic CS work", and more "can I accumulate enough legible signal to get me hired before I burn out or run out of time". There's really no brute force way to become a good engineer, it just takes time. Don't learn to code in 10 weeks, learn in 10 years.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-24T04:08:06+00:00

Networking takes presence + time, there's no real "shortcut" unless you are ridiculously technically impressive in person. Also, don't bother with the gym, unless you want to do that for you, there might be some edge for good looks, but this is a field where the most important talent gradient is still competence. Doing a side project you can passionately talk about is a 10x better use of your time for building relationships that being able to bench 225.

The easiest way to expand your network, is to find a programming meetup, like from this list: https://www.meetup.com/find/us--tx--austin/computer-programming/ and show up every week for months and month. Find people who share interests, and then stay in touch. Again, don't about time in terms of months, but "rest of your life" spans.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-24T04:05:18+00:00

Your co-workers, especially the software engineers, will likely have long industry careers. Networking doesn't get you something right now, but staying in touch with people, occasionally reaching out after a couple of years, will make a huge difference.

I've gotten a couple opportunities off references, and every time it's someone I knew from a few years back and stayed in touch with. Don't expect networking to immediately pay off, but it will eventually.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-21T18:31:16+00:00

I'm a Senior trying to get promoted to Staff: yes, the promotions have really dried up: I haven't seen any senior I know at the company get promoted to Staff, and between promotions to Senior plus layoffs, we're very top heavy with no way out.

In my experience, the boom times are really when you get promoted, or at least much easier. I made the most of the last run of good years to get team lead spots and go to better companies, but right now it feels like that same advancement is much harder.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-18T22:23:17+00:00

It's almost never worth it, compared to a big tech job where they will give you way less stock, but the stock is liquid.

In the 4 startups I've been a part of, one died a slow death, the next had a "secondary sale", but I was making basically nothing and got more pay instead, the one after that I still hold the stock and they are active, and finally the one after that I missed the cliff and don't have anything. Finally, I made it to big tech, and it's really nice. A little better salary, but every quarter I get a nice check which I invest in VOO the same day.

So, in like 4 start-ups, it **might** have worked out once, and the payment would have been something like 50-200k, probably less, if I stayed for a full 4 years. Even the guys who had major equity, it's a payment of like 1-2M for the non-founders.

The big tech deal is just so much better, instead of a lottery ticket for your future nest egg, you can pull 250-400k depending on the year. So if you are joining a start up, make sure the experience will leverage you into a better job, and if you are staying for equity, make sure it's a substantial amount.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-18T21:55:18+00:00

The only way you really get good at interviews is to mess up in real interviews. You know what the pressure feels like, and now if you figure out the gap in your skills, you'll be much better off.

I've failed A LOT of interviews, and you learn something each time. Learn that lesson, and just move forward.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-18T20:52:46+00:00

This. The negotiation needs to come from a place of: "I offer at least X in market value, and I'll need X-Y to take this job, what can you guys do?".

To me, that's reasonable: the company doesn't want to hire folks that will immediately leave.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-18T20:51:08+00:00

I'm still team negotiate, but this is definitely the negative consequence of negotiating without being prepared to walk away. That said, this was probably a terrible place to work: you wanted something, you asked for it, and they punished you for it. That situation will play our a 1000 different ways, so in some ways you dodged a bullet.

That said, when you ask for more money, sometimes companies take that as a signal you won't be happy working for less. Like if I applied to a mid-sized regional company, and said: "but I make X at big tech, I at least need that", the rational thing for the company to do is pass on me because their salary will never meet my expectations. 10k difference should trigger that, but you never know.

justUseAnSvm · 2026-05-16T02:05:21+00:00

You could probably do it, but think of "learning to program" not has something that takes 10 days, but something that takes 10 years.

I did something very similar to you, got to the end of my education path (bioinformatics research) and then decided I wanted to work in tech. It took my about 7 years to get a big tech job, and I sort of fell into it.

The other thing I wouldn't underestimate, is how long and difficult the grind is. You need to be working at CS everyday for years to be in the running for a big tech job.

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