Frankly, it's almost impossible to find good engineers in NYC. The banks do take them all, that doesn't mean that it's impossible to start up in the city, it is just harder.
On the west coasts, startups compete with other startups and employees bounce around making similar amounts of money. In New York, startups compete with financial institutions which can and do throw enormous amounts of cash at employees without a second thought, hence the startups can't compete.
I have to agree with the echo chamber part of things though, startups in NYC are doing different things than startups on the west coast, but maybe that's because there's just fewer startups here that there's more ideas to go around...
I wonder if the banking thing isn't as much of a problem as it seems. I work as a financial recruiter, and one of the patterns I see is an on/off relationship with startups and banks, e.g. working two years at Goldman, then one year at a new search engine, then a year at Credit Suisse, then three years starting up a new wiki-based whatsit.
If you know you can quit and -- within a few months -- be earning a great living writing trading algorithms in C++ or reporting systems in Java, a startup is a much saner risk. This also applies to quants and physics majors: many smart folks are lured into the private sector, but many many more smart people can consider a Physics PhD because of the money they can make (if they need it).
If you know you can quit and -- within a few months -- be earning a great living writing trading algorithms in C++ or reporting systems in Java, a startup is a much saner risk.
That cuts both ways, though: it's too easy to bail at the first hint of trouble at a startup, which is why there are relatively few great startup stories out of NY.
It's easy for a programmer to cover higher living expenses in NYC because tech jobs pay well here. If you quit your job to make a go of it with a startup, you had better start making money quickly, or your reserves will be depleted before you know it. This has happened to me twice in two years.
It doesn't work in quite the same way for physicists/quants though. Once you leave physics and go into finance it's extremely hard to make the jump back -- a few years in finance puts you way behind your peers in the race for publications, and you're pretty much stuck there forever. The startup scene is far more forgiving to its apostates than the physics scene is.
I personally wish it were easier for physicists to spend just a few years in finance to find out whether they like it, and/or to save up some money.
I have to agree with this. It took us (massify.com) forever to find talent.
NYC has an agency mindset which doesn't work in a startup environment. So you hire people from razorfish, digitas, r/ga, etc. but they're expecting the same 9-5 lifestyle and have a hard time adjusting.
So, by "not the same 9-5 lifestyle," what do you mean? I would hesitate to put words in your mouth, but please tell me the startup lifestyle you have in mind, and whether it is of equal quality. I'm going to give you a handicap, though: You cannot use the concept of "doing something you love," because you cannot require that your employees love it as much as you, or you'll find nobody at all.
I mean self-starting, self-organizing out of the box thinkers that can deal with the chaos of an early stage start-up.
My experience is that a lot of agency people have a lot of problems coping in environments without a lot of process, nor are they inclined to feel ownership.
There is no sense of equal quality when comparing the lifestyle of a startup to that of working at an agency (of which I have 10+ years experience working in). At an agency, there are people above you and people below you and despite whatever flaws in the process that the agency has, it at least has one.
Figure that most early stages are typically 3-4 people. Process isn't as important as this stage as getting stuff done and getting stuff out. In fact, an intricate involved process at this point would do more damage than good.
At 5-10 people, process starts becoming important, but that process must be devised amongst the people in the company. Most agency people we've had come work at Massify during this period had a hard time adjusting as we attempt to soothe the chaos. It takes a fairly rare blend of ambition and drive to succeed in a startup at this point.
And, btw, if you're handing out equity, they sure as shit better love it or they should really move on. They needn't love it as much as I do, nor do I expect that from them, but they better have some affection for it or they should hit the road. When things get grim, it's this certain love or passion for the product that carries you through.
I've worked in such environments, and as much as I enjoyed the work when I was able to do it, the reality was that we wound up wasting a lot of time spinning our wheels because we accidentally stepped on each other toes. As a result, I wasn't able to do the work I wanted to do, and was hired to do, most of the time that I was there. So the affection wore off, and I gave up and left once I saw the writing on the wall.
I've also worked in companies of 3-4 people (including me) that had basic processes (source control, requirements management, etc), and the results were FAR better. We ended up spending MORE time doing our job, not less. We also spent a LOT less time cleaning up messes and wondering why we acquired 15 build errors every time we synced the code from source control.
Though I agree that a small group doesn't require a lot of process, chaos is counter productive.
You're the one who has it wrong. You're just having trouble finding people willing to sacrifice their lives for their jobs, and those aren't the people you want working for you anyway.
On the west coasts, startups compete with other startups and employees bounce around making similar amounts of money. In New York, startups compete with financial institutions which can and do throw enormous amounts of cash at employees without a second thought, hence the startups can't compete.
I have to agree with the echo chamber part of things though, startups in NYC are doing different things than startups on the west coast, but maybe that's because there's just fewer startups here that there's more ideas to go around...