I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to recruit friends of mine to come work with me at my super early startup. In doing so I’ve had to educate a lot of my friends on what it’s like to be at a startup, and why you might want to join one. This post is a summary of all that advice.<p>My hope is that I can inspire more people out there to quit their job at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, The Man, and join a startup :).
For starters, the article is mistitled. A more accurate one would be "10 opinions About Working at a Startup vs. a Big Company". Although "platitudes" might be even more accurate than "opinions".<p>But there's one thing in particular that annoys me here:<p><i>And by the way, if you’re a good engineer you’ll have zero issue finding another job. Zero.</i><p>You'all have zero issues finding a new job if you're a good <i>interviewee</i>, but not necessarily if you're a good engineer. I know lots of people (myself included) who are at least decent engineers but <i>terrible</i> interviewees.
Startups are a fun place to work, but don't fall for the fallacy in point #8 (the only one in the article that's wrong).<p>Your market value is your market value. Sure, a startup will ask you to take a pay hit, but that doesn't obligate you to do so. Having "good people" is way more important to a small team than a large one, so if you fit that description you absolutely can negotiate a good bill rate. You'd be silly not to, since they definitely need you more than you need them.<p>If they make grumbly noises, be sure to point out that you're happy to trade in your lottery tickets for a competitive wage. As has been discussed here endlessly, startup employee shares are pretty close to worthless even in the best case. Tell them they can keep them, but since they're hiring real computer programmers they're going to need to pay a real computer programmer salary.
I don't think #1 about where you have bigger impact is universaly true.<p>I worked in BigCo on a big (and commercialy successful) software project used in hospitals. More than 1,000 people (soft devs, QM, sales&marketing) are employed by BigCo to work on it. Even when I contributed less than 1/1000 to the project, I believe my contribution to the world is still quite big, since the software is deployed to 10,000's of hospitals and assist with (sometimes life-saving) procedures every day.
I think this paints a too rosy picture and doesn't nearly touch on all the startup horror stories that can exist, especially for points from #4 to #9.<p>This post speaks well about startups done right. It barely says anything about startups done wrong. Likewise, although the examples are much fewer, there are big companies done right and big companies done wrong.
I know this is a startup biased crowd, but the claim that this is a comparison article is pretty thin.<p>I'm not going to claim that working for a big company is the perfect solution for everybody, but it has some great advantages. My favorite is that I can actually be just a software engineer and not an engineer/tech support rep/sysadmin/manager/etc. I actually think I spend more time on technical challenges at a large company than I did in my time at a startup.<p>I also think that point #10 is really dependent on the company. Is working at a social gaming startup really "being part of something bigger than you"? If you work at a company and you believe in their vision, that's way more important than the size of the organization.
Funny that you posted this today: I just wrote a blog post titled "Entry Level Start-Up Job or Entry level Big Company Job + Side Project."<p><a href="http://dalethoughts.com/2012/03/entry-level-start-up-job-or-entry-level-big-company-job-side-project/" rel="nofollow">http://dalethoughts.com/2012/03/entry-level-start-up-job-or-...</a><p>The combination of working at a big company while having a side project may outweigh the benefits of working at a start-up (at an entry-level gig).<p>At the entry level, the pay-cut you're taking by working at a start-up can be significant on a personal level. For someone who recently graduated college choosing between a 40k gig at a big company and a 35k gig at a start-up, that 5k will be much more significant than an engineer taking a pay cut from 85k - 65k.
I have to disagree with #9. In a large company, there is an HR department and a hierarchy that balances power. In a startup, you may have to deal directly with the personality of the founder - which can be an overwhelming and socially bizarre experience on its own - but, worse, that opportunity can attract sycophants and yes-men and backstabbing and all sorts of politicking that can't happen in your minor engineering department in BigCo, because at BigCo there's no access to powerful people, so no way to try to manipulate them. Sure, BigCo has politics in the executive lounge, but I don't have to hang out there.
I disagree with the idea that startups are inherently riskier. Sure you may only have 12-18 months of funding, but you also have much greater knowledge of the funding situation going in. Big companies have layoffs all the time, and as an employee you are much more likely to be kept in the dark about the circumstances leading up to them.
While Larry Smith isn't necessarily the best presenter, I think this article misses or doesn't address any of the points he makes on a good vs. great job in the first few minutes of his TED talk (<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_ha...</a>). I would argue that none of the 10 points Alex makes in his article matter if you don't care about what your company does. People still seem to have a hard time understanding that the size of a company has nothing to do with the company's mission, and forget that proximity to that mission becomes more difficult as the company grows and the mission is diluted.
I disagree with the generalist comment. Startups have limited $$ in the bank and want a specialist who can hit the road running. However, startups also want someone who is willing to take on additional roles and help out in the overall growth of the company.
Thanks for the post Alex. One of the things I do like about being a developer at BigCo is that it's possible to keep the politics at an arm's length - something that I think would be almost impossible in a startup with a handful of people. (Whether this kind of hands-off approach is actually good for one's career is another matter.)