I hate to be that guy, but part time, evenings and weekend only, remote workers who want equity and not hourly/project compensation are basically the exact opposite of the type of employment arrangement startup founders are probably interested in. I'd be happy to proven wrong but sounds like a pretty raw deal for founders, since this type of arrangement not only dilutes them or takes from the options pool (which, if they are funded, is a much bigger deal than paying the person) but also introduces all kinds of overhead and unnecessary pain in dealing with the logistics and lack of focus the employee will inevitably have.
The only time this could be a good deal is if there was a real lack of engineering talent available for hire, so I guess if you consider startups outside of the talent hubs it could make sense. But even then, if the startup is considering remote workers, this is far less appealing than a full-time, M-F, salary based employee.
are basically the exact opposite of the type of employment arrangement startup founders are probably interested in.
That all depends. For example, if I'm an average Joe with an idea for a web-app, I sure would like someone to build it for me for 10%-20% stake. Makes sense for me, not so much for the contractor. On the other hand, a mature startup with investors, option-pools, and technical talent, wouldn't really go for something like that. Too much hassle and not enough reward.
Between those two extremes I'm sure there's some middle-ground where it makes sense for both parties.
I think there's some valid points in there, though I think that the cost of hiring a full time employee is often beyond the budget of an early phase startup, especially when founders and initial owners have covered most of the early work and only require an on-demand ad-hoc technical assistance or advice to deliver and support the product in the end.
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I hate to be that guy, but part time, evenings and weekend only, remote workers who want equity and not hourly/project compensation are basically the exact opposite of the type of employment arrangement startup founders are probably interested in. I'd be happy to proven wrong but sounds like a pretty raw deal for founders, since this type of arrangement not only dilutes them or takes from the options pool (which, if they are funded, is a much bigger deal than paying the person) but also introduces all kinds of overhead and unnecessary pain in dealing with the logistics and lack of focus the employee will inevitably have.
The only time this could be a good deal is if there was a real lack of engineering talent available for hire, so I guess if you consider startups outside of the talent hubs it could make sense. But even then, if the startup is considering remote workers, this is far less appealing than a full-time, M-F, salary based employee.
That all depends. For example, if I'm an average Joe with an idea for a web-app, I sure would like someone to build it for me for 10%-20% stake. Makes sense for me, not so much for the contractor. On the other hand, a mature startup with investors, option-pools, and technical talent, wouldn't really go for something like that. Too much hassle and not enough reward.
Between those two extremes I'm sure there's some middle-ground where it makes sense for both parties.
I think there's some valid points in there, though I think that the cost of hiring a full time employee is often beyond the budget of an early phase startup, especially when founders and initial owners have covered most of the early work and only require an on-demand ad-hoc technical assistance or advice to deliver and support the product in the end.
"But even then, if the startup is considering remote workers, this is far less appealing than a full-time, M-F, salary based employee."
That depends on who is managing the remote workers :-)