🔻 Rebuttal 4: The "Support" vs. "Engineering" Trap
"We just need someone to handle the infra support & keep the lights on for now."
If your Founding role is just support, your architecture is already failing. Senior engineers don't support chaos; they automate it out of existence
#RebuttalSeries
🔻 Rebuttal 3: HR tools don't support it excuses
"Our payroll tools don't support legally binding equity or full-time commitments for international contractors."
This is an operational red flag. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how global startups actually scale.
#RebuttalSeries
🔻 Rebuttal 2: Founder vs. Founding Engineer math
"I don't even earn this much as a co-founder."
This is a massive operational red flag. Founders trade cash for equity upside & the exit. Founding Engineers trade peak-earning years for immediate leverage.
#RebuttalSeries #FoundingEngineer
🔻 Rebuttal 1: The Geo-Parity pay in pre-seed startups
"We only pay local market rates because you're based in X city"
You're optimising for a zip code while your competitors are optimising for velocity. In a world of global, asynchronous shipping, location is a legacy variable.
#RebuttalSeries
🧵 The Rebuttal Series:
I’m turning every "small-minded" rebuttal from my stakeholder gigs into a gift of content.
A devaluing discussion is usually a symptom of a deeper failure: in the architecture, the business model, or the fundamental understanding of the person in the room.
#RebuttalSeries
