
How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub - jseliger
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k
======
jmtame
Loved Tom's social hack for finding cofounders, from Startups Open Sourced. He
also has a really good outlook on the role of design in startups.

Q: So, the best way to get to know somebody is to go drink with them?

A: That is absolutely the best way to really get to know a person and what
they really like and are interested in because if they are interested in
technology, then they will have no problem geeking out with you about Ruby or
Node or something for three hours, over drinks; that’s when you know that you
found someone that could be a really successful cofounder. I think there
really is something to doing business in bars. In the early days when there
were four of us—we had hired Scott Chacon—we would go to this bar called
O’Reilly’s, up in North beach. We went there almost every week and that’s
where we would talk about what we had done. This is after we had started full
time and it was where all the decisions were made. A couple of drinks in, you
start to just say what you mean instead of thinking so much about whose
feelings you are going to hurt or whatever, you say things very bluntly, like,
“I think we should do this, and I think you are wrong for saying we should do
it a different way,” and now you can have an honest argument about what needs
to get done and what the concerns are about the company or how it’s structured
or how the stock is going to be split. All this stuff will come up over drinks
and as long as you are not too drunk, it can be helpful.

~~~
sahillavingia
Warning: this restricts you to finding cofounders that are 21 and over. :)

~~~
i386
Not if you live in a country where you can vote and drink at the same age :)

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larrykubin
I'll be honest. When I first read this post nearly three years ago, I barely
knew what Git was, the stock market was crashing hard every day, hundreds of
thousands were being laid off, and turning down that offer seemed pretty
foolish. Now I can't live without GitHub.

~~~
jrockway
Honestly, I don't think turning down an offer is ever a real problem. You can
always ask for the offer again; does a company as big as Microsoft ever have
enough smart programmers? People come and go every day. There is probably room
for you somewhere.

~~~
hammock
This is very true, just want to add the caveat that the notion of low cost of
foregone opportunity you are talking about could apply to mature-stage
companies, not necessarily fast-growing ones.

Also there is tremendous selection bias in which of these "I turned down X to
do Y" stories get told, of course.

~~~
notJim
I would definitely read the "How I turned down a $300,000 job at bigcorp to
found a startup that crashed and burned 18 months later" story.

~~~
tlipcon
I turned down a job at Google (not 300k but hey, it's Google!) to join a
startup. The startup started to sink about 2 years later.

I learned a ton and didn't regret it for an instant. Moved on to a new startup
2 years ago when it became clear the first was a dead end. Google recruiters
continued to ping me religiously every 6 months regardless.

Moral of the story: Google, MSFT, Facebook, etc will all still be there in 2
years. Especially if you're early in your career and don't need the cash
today, go wherever you will learn the most.

~~~
akronim
it was 300k over 3 years... so your offer probably wasn't that far off!

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BrandonM
_> When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say "wow, that
was an adventure," not "wow, I sure felt safe."_

A great conclusion to a great article. Definitely a motto to live by.

~~~
davidw
A cynical mind might say that a really adventurous life might also expose one
to more risk of being _young_ and dying, rather than old. Or other less than
pleasant outcomes.

~~~
acangiano
That's why our brains afford us both desires: the need for adventure, and the
need for security. The two keep each other in check. Adventurous people, who
aren't reckless, simply choose to be more adventurous than fearful when there
aren't too many real safety risks, but mostly perceived ones.

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pjhyett
It's worth noting that none of the Ruby guys Tom worked with at Powerset are
still working for Microsoft 3 years later. The guys I've spoken with had a
miserable time working there and left to work for other startups like Greplin,
Bank Simple, and Square.

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lawnchair_larry
How did github get early users?

~~~
mojombo
We invited everyone we knew in the Ruby community. We all attended local Ruby
meetups and talked to anyone that would listen. We used it for our own open
source projects and invited would-be contributors to join the fun. We used an
invite-only model during the private beta to create artificial scarcity and
encourage people to invite their friends.

~~~
brandnewlow
Am sending this to every person I know building a community-driven site.
You've perhaps unwittingly boiled the general solution down to its base
components.

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twakefield
Great post, but dammit, now I'm going to have "You’re The Best" by Joe
Esposito stuck in my head all day.

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joelhaasnoot
This story is encouraging! I'm soon to graduate college and am figuring out
what exactly I want to do next. One of the options is to work part time on my
startup, next to another part time job or freelancing. It's a lot easier when
you have savings to make such a leap, then again, I live lean and live cheap.

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vipivip
Turned out to be the best move.

~~~
jmtame
No kidding. Coming from a guy who has never raised a single round of funding
and has operated profitably every single month since launching (except for one
month where he hired two people), they're doing really, really well.

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wildmXranat
Very nice read. That also leads me to mention that Github, as good as it is in
'social' coding or whatever that means, does not fill a gap for a proper
resource on how to use Git. Not that it should and it clearly doesn't carry
that mandate, but there is hefty amount of respect to be made for any group
that de-mystifies git in all it's glory.

Hell, there are plenty of comments here, on groups and proggit from users that
lose their hair over advanced use of git.

In my opinion advanced consulting services and migration planning for
currently SVN,CVS engaged companies would be nice.

~~~
dasil003
> _proggit_

One too many Gs: progit.org

~~~
drbaskin
I'm having trouble determining whether you are serious, but I suspect the
original poster was referring to reddit's programming community.

~~~
dasil003
I'm suggesting that's a better place to learn about git not to mention being
created by one of the Github guys.

~~~
dasil003
Okay since I'm just getting driveby downvotes, let me explain the source of my
comment. The original comment said:

> _That also leads me to mention that Github, as good as it is in 'social'
> coding or whatever that means, does not fill a gap for a proper resource on
> how to use Git._

Well, Scott Chacon (#4 githubber I believe?) wrote the book to demystify Git.
Of course, there is a certain irreducible complexity there, but I think Github
has made a significant contribution there, so I don't think it's fair to level
this criticism at them out of passing unfamiliarity.

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chopsueyar
"You're the best around, Nothing's gonna ever keep ya down!"

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greg_gti
When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was
an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”

Great quote and I try to live my life by the same philosophy

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emehrkay
I pay for github, great decision :)

~~~
zackattack
GitHub makes using version control fun.

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louislouis
"The next night, Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:24pm" Was there a time-machine
involved overnight or is it supposed to be 2008?

~~~
spacemanaki
I think the post was published in 2008 but it was talking about events from a
year earlier:

"2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago,
almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke’s Sports Bar..."

