Why you should work for a startup at least once

One reason this woefully reductive article doesn&#x27;t mention is the value of learning about what <i>not</i> to do when the time comes to start your own startup. Why caring about optics instead of revenue is a bad idea. Why peddling reputation instead of product can get you in trouble. How dangerous founder-founder disagreements can be for morale and success. How important it is to hire good talent.<p>The fact is, if you choose to start your career working for a startup, you will likely work for a failing one. That can be a more valuable lesson than working for a successful one.<p>Established companies have largely weeded out inefficiencies, problems with product-market fit, and so on. If you work for a startup, you will learn very quickly why you don&#x27;t see the &quot;startup culture&quot; in mature companies--at least not all the bells and whistles associated with a startup--because it doesn&#x27;t work. Letting employees work from anywhere when the company has no sense of direction doesn&#x27;t work. Paying for meals 3x a day for the whole staff when there&#x27;s no bottom line revenue because the CEO would rather be photographed with a celebrity than make a sale doesn&#x27;t work. Giving entry-level employees right out of college the power and responsibility to distract the company from its core mission doesn&#x27;t work.

I think it is better to work for a established company at least once<p>I get overwhelmed by people who never really had any respectful work experiences and started to call themselves Director&#x2F;CEO&#x2F;Founder<p>And surely they failed

The advice in this article would make a lot more sense if the title were &quot;Why You Should <i>Found</i> a Startup at Least Once&quot;, because working for a startup as an employee, even a fairly early employee, really isn&#x27;t all that different from working for a larger company. There are more changes in direction, that&#x27;s all. But you&#x27;re not the one calling the shots on the changes, so whatever.<p>(I&#x27;ve worked as a junior employee for two startups, one about a year in with ~10 employees and the other about five years in with ~100 employees.)

I don&#x27;t agree that all of these are exclusive to startups. In my experience, smaller, more laid back companies generally hit most if not all of these points. The company I&#x27;m currently with certainly does, except maybe #5, and it&#x27;s been around for a couple decades.<p>To me this reads more along the lines of &quot;5 reasons to work at a small company&quot;, and #5 is the only one that&#x27;s more startup-specific, though there are companies out there that provide that too, and are not startups.

Just be wary when learning so much, so quickly - quantity vs. quality is a very serious concern in this arena.