From...

by Mary Brandel

(IDG) -- It was about a week before Andy Rappaport was expected to begin work as lead software engineer at Eprise, a start-up Web design firm in Framingham, Mass.

He went into the office to sign the required new-hire paperwork when he was called in to a meeting. Turns out, the company wanted him to interview the next round of new hires.

"The candidate asked me, 'How long have you worked here?' I told him, 'I start next week,' " Rappaport recalls.

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Such is life at a start-up company. The rules are written as you go. Job descriptions are in flux. And the pace ranges from very fast to even faster. As Rappaport puts it, "You're a resource before you're even on the payroll."

The number of people joining start-ups is on the rise, especially with venture capital funds being poured into new Web-oriented firms. Some people think they stand to strike it rich if they go to work for a start-up and it has a successful initial public offering (IPO) or gets purchased in a lucrative deal. But they may toil 60 hours per week for years just to watch the company sink. Guess which category is the larger?

If your stomach is sinking just reading this, you may not be cut out for a start-up. The people who are happiest at these high-flying companies are the ones who salivate — not sweat — at the thought of living and breathing work, changing priorities and even job descriptions on a dime and meeting challenges under impossible deadlines.

"We look at our watches, not the calendar, because things change so quickly," says Jim Jonasen, CEO of PeopleMover Inc., a prepublic software maker in Manhattan Beach, Calif. He likes to talk about the chief financial officer at PeopleMover, who used to be head of corporate finance at Disney. "His wife will call and ask, 'When are you coming home?' He answers, 'When we go public, honey,' " Jonasen says.

It's a good story, but the fact is not every marriage, and not every employee, could survive the hours, the pressure and the sheer energy of start-up life. Can you, for example, handle the increased degree of accountability? After all, these companies usually have small staffs, with each person handling a lot of responsibility.

Some people call this trait "intestinal fortitude," and it's a characteristic Jonasen says he seeks in his new hires. "We look for people who have the courage to stand up and say, 'We should use that new flavor of XML, and here's why,' " he says. "As a start-up, that's how you take one of these quantum leaps and beat out the competitors."

You also need to be able to deal with long hours. From anybody's account, 50-hour-and-up weeks are the norm, "and 'up' is the operative word there," says James Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago. "And they can be unusual hours, in the middle of the night and weekends if crises hit."

A typical day for Mike Myer, director of product development at RightNow Technologies Inc., a Web-based customer service start-up in Bozeman, Mont., goes like this: "I typically wake up, work an hour or two at home and then go into the office and work into the night," he says. And while any information technology worker is accustomed to working in what Myer calls "maniac mode" for weeklong and monthlong stretches, "here, you've got much longer periods in maniac mode."

Unlike higher-level employees, programmers and other technical workers can expect start-ups to pay well for all the time they put in. "People who bring the actual skills in will get paid market wage or better because companies are competing against each other looking for those skill sets," Challenger says. First-rate (emphasis here on "first-rate") software engineers are making from $90,000 to $125,000 at start-ups, says Dudley Brown, a managing partner at BridgeGate LLC, a management search firm in Southern California.

On the other hand, vice presidents and directors can expect pay cuts, balanced out with stock options. But while nearly everyone employed at a start-up is offered stock options, no one should take these too seriously.

"People tend to think their company will have an IPO and everyone will get rich," says David Laskey, a senior programmer at Gomez.com, a Web start-up in Lincoln, Mass. "But for every eBay or Amazon out there, there's a lot more that go to the wayside. Options aren't everything they're cracked up to be — they're like buying a lottery ticket, except you get to influence it."

Laskey's advice is to keep your mind on your work, not the potentially big payoff. "The people who really will enjoy what they do will look at (stock payoffs) as a bonus," he says. "They'll keep their mind on the goal of, 'If we build a good company and we were able to contribute to its growth, there might be a nice reward at the end.' "

Start-up benefits may not equal those of larger companies. At RightNow Technologies, Myer says the benefits aren't as lucrative as those at his previous employer, AT&T/Lucent. But it's a different story at PeopleMover. "For us to get the kind of talent we wanted to get, our benefits look like Xerox's," Jonasen says. The company offers everything from gym memberships to dental insurance to on-site flu shots.

You need to be flexible about job descriptions at start-ups. "I came here to develop products, but there have been evenings where I set up routers to administer the firewall," Myer says.

There's always more work than bodies to do it. "You see individual programmers suddenly being thrust into an important customer spotlight and having to act like a polished sales engineer," Rappaport says. "And (you also see) the inverse, where the vice president of engineering is suddenly doing manual testing because that's what has to get done."

Less pigeonholing

Flexible job descriptions can work to your benefit. "There's a lot less pigeonholing in most start-up environments," Laskey says.

At Gomez.com, where Laskey creates dynamic applications and content for the Web site, "we switch responsibilities around a lot" based on necessity and individual interest. For example, when Gomez started serving ads on its site, Laskey was charged with integrating the ad-serving software with the site. As a result, he began working with the salespeople to help them organize their advertising campaigns.

Such flexibility makes it easier to plot a career path. "I'm an engineer, but I spent some time in sales, and it's easy for me to move from my engineering job to a guy who goes to a lot of trade shows," Rappaport says. "I've also spent time as a manager to try that out, and I was able to come back to programming. I've been able to try out a bunch of things and dabble in things without changing my job."

You also have to be open to change in your day-to-day work. Because start-up strategies can change overnight, priorities are in a constant state of flux.

"The switch from working in a highly structured environment with a clear systems development methodology with a longer-term work schedule and budgets vs. 'get it done, get it out, get going' — for some IT people, that raises concerns about quality," says Jim Ware, vice president at Concours Group in Kingwood, Texas. "Deadlines are more important than quality." For people who believe in quality checks, reviews and extensive testing, this kind of shift would be traumatic, Ware says.