Thomas Davis thomasdavis

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn

Disclaimer: This piece is written anonymously. The names of a few particular companies are mentioned, but as common examples only.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I'd known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I'm not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would

Ideal Postgres environment

Documentation

Documented replication topology
Documented network topology
Documented interface topology - including users, passwords, connection estimates, load balancers, connection proxies
Documented procedure, schedule for failover and testing
Documented procedure, schedule for disaster recovery and testing

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