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I just got an informal job offer from my friend's startup company here in Baltimore. It's almost exactly what I want to do (engineer soil microbes) and although it would only pay 60k, I have significant financial assistance from my parents to buy a house, and would come with significant equity in the company, which could have huge upside.
On one hand staying in Baltimore is hugely appealing. I have a ton of friends and community here, the crime problem in the city has gotten significantly better since I started my PhD, and I could actually afford a house, even without my parents' help. On the other hand, dating here has been total ass, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up the dream of academia just yet (although I think American universities are sinking ship for a variety of reasons), and while crime has gotten significantly more under control than when I moved here in 2020, there's still an anti-white racial animus here that I don't like. I'd also have to speed run the end of my PhD, but that again shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I guess I'd like your guys' thoughts: should I stay or should I go?
I didn't expect the night soil market would be so hyper-specific. I suppose they're more likely to take probiotics.
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Getting paid for it is the dream, obviously, but you can also obsess over old books while developing an alcohol problem as a hobby.
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How old is the startup? How much funding have they gotten? Most startup equity is worth $0 in the final analysis.
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I had no idea the bio job market payed so poorly. I would highly caution my undergrad CS students about taking such a position. I'd be telling the CS phds to run screaming for the hills. I'd think you'd get a much better deal at a shitty postdoc at some tier3 university. I'd be shocked if your advisor would tell you differently (but please correct me if I'm wrong... it's always eye-opening to see what non-CS folk put up with).
About the equity: I can't imagine this company is on track to a >100 million exit that would be required for any non-founder equity to be worth more than toilet paper. The standard advice in the CS world is to treat non-founder equity as a possibly nice bonus that you'll get in 5 years. I've basically never heard of someone's equity being worth more than their annual salary at exit except in the unicorn google-esq cases.
The idea is that I would get paid more after a year or two when the company grows. Postdoc salaries around 65-75k.
I don't know about bio startups, but I will say that there's a 90+% chance that a company saying "we'll reevaluate your salary in a few years" is lying through it's teeth. I have never seen that happen for anyone after about 1998. Maybe it can happen, but I've never seen it.
Startups will constantly reevaluate your salary. That is, reevaluating whether to make your salary 0 because you're no longer useful to them.
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I got betrayed as heck in an early stage startup, so whatever you do make sure you don’t fall for equity cliff bs. Get your equity doled out every month or so.
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