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Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies

• mrshoe 17y ago
  there are probably 100 Steve Jobs born every year. The vast majority just never have a chance or give a thought to starting a revolutionary new company. A Steve Jobs that doesn't give a thought to starting a company is not a Steve Jobs. That's all he thought about from a young age. Just because our "top talent" often goes to big firms doesn't mean our top founders are going to big firms. A startup founder is more than just top talent; it's a very rare breed.
• nfnaaron 17y ago
  "Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died, and as a result our world is a little less wealthy, innovative, and interesting." Or, a future founder just began the process of gaining experience and perspective.
  • philk 17y ago
    This is a bit of a trap. It's easier to take big risks if you have little to lose. Once you're established at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or Google you have a comfortable standard of living and a job that gives you both challenges and social status. Letting go of all that to be the guy slaving away at a crazy idea is often harder than trying the crazy idea because you have little else. Also when you're busy at work time can just fly by. It's easy to look up from working and find a few years have gone past.
    • ALee 17y ago
      Same with startups. One moment you're in college starting a startup, the next you're 3 years older still doing the same thing. Startups are a more difficult path because they don't always have forward momentum because of the high risk.
    • nfnaaron 17y ago
      "This is a bit of a trap." Yes, it can be. The truth is, some of those brilliant kids going into BigCorp are lost startups, some are future startups, and most won't be startups regardless, because most people aren't founders. "Also when you're busy at work time can just fly by. It's easy to look up from working and find a few years have gone past." Roger that.
      • EricBurnett 17y ago
        The truth is, some of those brilliant kids going into BigCorp are lost startups, some are future startups, and most won't be startups regardless, because most people aren't founders. Exactly. I will be starting at Google in June, but I am not a "startup lost". I have thought about it, and eventually came to the conclusion that I am not startup material for a number of reasons. This may change in the future after I have worked for Google, and if so, I can always join a startup then.
        • huherto 17y ago
          You probably know this already, but it if you dream of eventually doing a start up make sure to keep your expenses under control now. Your expenses tend to grow along your paycheck. It can be really hard to downsize if you decide to go the start up route.
          • mikepurvis 17y ago
            I agree with this. Even if your paycheque is $5k a month, practice living on half of that or less—maybe a lot less. It won't hurt to save the rest anyway.
            • sailormoon 17y ago
              Agree, agree, 100x agree! You do not need a BMW, buy a corolla. You do not need the loft, live in the cheapest decent unit you can find. Don't get into the showy lifestyle trap.
    • huherto 17y ago
      That is exactly right. I wish to start up a company. Or devote more time to the companies that I already started. But mostly because I don't feel I fit any more in the corporate bureaucracy and politics that drains my energy every day. Yet it is hard to trade the security of a good paying job for the risk of starting up a company.
      • gridspy 17y ago
        Then the only other option is to go hell for leather on your start-up in your free time, even if that means you don't have a life. If it doesn't get you that fired up, perhaps you need to brainstorm a better opportunity. I can't leave my cushy job yet either.
    • tetha 17y ago
      Plus if it is a goodcrazy idea, chances are that it might be built as a google application.
    • jasonkester 17y ago
      Ah, but if you have managed to make yourself ridiculously employable by proving yourself at a few high-profile companies, then you suddenly have "little to lose" again. One of the reasons I feel like I can safely Entrepreneur myself down to a few grand in the bank before looking for a contract to top up the finances is that I know I'm pretty much a single Twitter post away from a good job offer. Had I not first established a bit of a reputation before taking off on the startup track, I wouldn't have that safety net, and might be a bit more quick to grab any contract job that came along.
      • gridspy 17y ago
        That is a pretty good safety net right there. Though in some ways it is great to "burn the boats", because having your back to the wall and being forced to make it work (even if that involves a week of cold calling) can be the difference between success and giving up.
      • gaius 17y ago
        Exactly. And having a "name brand" on your CV helps more than having been to a top college. 3 years at McK or GS and you will never have trouble getting anyone to take you seriously in business. It doesn't excuse you from anything important, but it does mean you don't need to waste time establishing your credentials to everyone you speak to.
  • hello_moto 17y ago
    I'd love to see more people to pursue this stream (Join Google, learn, and become a founder in the future). There's a lot to learn from Google (especially in terms of code review, writing good, clean, well documented code). Let's rephrase that: "Every time I see a brilliant kid going to a chaotic startup that encourage shortcuts and brilliant hacks, I see our industry dying slowly." PS: I understand that not all startups are like that, but what are the odds/ratios?
    • vorador 17y ago
      Not necessarily. After all, Unix was built by brillant kids who glorified shortcuts and brilliant hacks.
      • strlen 17y ago
        I understand this is an ironic thing for me to say, given my alias, but is UNIX (along with C and C-descended languages) the best we could do?
        • peterwwillis 17y ago
          For the PDP-7/11? Probably.
          • strlen 17y ago
            Certainly agreed, it's amazing what they've accomplished on such limited machines, just it shouldn't be held as a pinnacle of engineering or computer science (else, why would the people who built it be at working on plan9 and go?)
        • jmtulloss 17y ago
          The best we can do is usually not the goal. Good enough is the goal. People look at great products and say that sentiment isn't true, but you always have to release. Take the first iPhone. When it came to feature checklists, it was embarrassed by every competitor out there. It nailed the interface though, and that was Apple's definition of "good enough". The shipped, took the industry by storm, and have since added most of those checklist features that everybody thought they needed in the first place.
  • dagw 17y ago
    Exactly, most truly successful entrepreneurs I know had a few (or a lot of) years in a larger company before starting their company. This gave them not only vital experiences, but also a lot of insight into the problem which their company tries to solve.
    • mattm 17y ago
      Including Steve Jobs (although I'm not sure on the number of years for him)
  • frederickcook 17y ago
    I absolutely disagree. With YCombinator and the dozen similar programs out there, the traditional barriers to starting companies, namely "not knowing what you don't know" are being removed. For a web start-up especially, the only cost associated with the startup for a group of young founders is time. The goal at Google, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey is to recruit top talent, and give them enough money and benefits that they are completely content and never have a reason to leave. Some still will, but most are probably destined for a career as a middle manager.
    • wakeupthedawn 17y ago
      Maybe this is true at Google, but you need a fair amount of dedication to stick around at Goldman or McKinsey. Nobody becomes a career middle manager there. Well, maybe some back-office jobs at GS.
      • silverlake 17y ago
        According to friends at Goldman, it's quite easy to be a career middle manager at Goldman in IT. There are many people there for 20+ years, the only job they've ever had. I've been told that McKinsey has an "up or out" culture (get promoted or leave).
  • mortenjorck 17y ago
    1. Get recruited by Google 2. Work at Google for a few years, start a 20% project 3. Leave Google, become a founder 4. Get funding, hire more employees 5. Launch a successful product, build a big userbase, get favorable media coverage 6. Get acquired by Google
    • jules 17y ago
      Isn't the 20% product owned by Google already?
      • ejames 17y ago
        Yes, but once you're "the guy/gal who wrote $SUCCESSFUL_GOOGLE_PRODUCT", you have a lot of credibility, experience, etc. as resources to make your own product that you do own. The point of the 20% products for Google is to give the company startup-style flexibility. It works the other way, too - if you take a product from whiteboard doodling all the way to an official Google product, well, a startup is like that, except 100% of the time, on your own bank account, and with no admins/middle managers to take care of the business side for you.
        • gridspy 17y ago
          Yes, but given the 20,000 employees at Google, how many $SUCCESSFUL_GOOGLE_PRODUCTs have you seen per employee?
      • mortenjorck 17y ago
        I'd guess ex-Googler startups tend to draw more from their founders' general experience at Google than from specific products, but I've heard of rebooting the idea of a 20% project outside with a broader scope.
    • bgraves 17y ago
      Interesting timing :) Looks like this is what happened with Aardvak. I'm just speculating, but the formula seems to hold true in this instance. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118214 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118214
  • sjs 17y ago
    Not to mention that startups can't do everything a company the size of Google can (such as start their own ISP providing gigabit service). There is a place in our society for all shapes and sizes of companies.
  • frederickcook 17y ago
    I think the fact that this comment keeps getting up-voted is an indicator of the high ratio of Google employees to startup founders on HN this morning.
  • dasil003 17y ago
    Funny you should mention Goldman Sachs. The startup I work for is founded by a former Goldman guy, and I'm looking out my apartment window at a startup founded by a bunch of Google guys (BloomReach).
    • deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    • iron_ball 17y ago
      Not to mention that if you're successful at Goldman Sachs, you can quit and spend the rest of your life doing startups and still have enough left over for a golden pyramid when you die.
  • rbanffy 17y ago
    Don't forget Microsoft.
    • Sukotto 17y ago
      Looking back over the last decade, it seems like Microsoft is a lot closer to IBM than to Google. People don't go there to learn how to innovate. they go there to work a full-time job for the rest of their lives.
  • mkramlich 17y ago
    And gaining contacts and cash. Which in turn help him later to build a startup. So I agree, it's not all bad.
• GiraffeNecktie 17y ago
  "Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died" What does mere dumb brilliance have to do with creating a successful startup? I thought it had more to do with stamina, discipline, luck, persistence, flexibility, hunger, vision etc. If that brilliant kid is more interested in working for a big company, maybe it just means that they were smart enough to realize that they weren't cut out for the ramen life.
  • alain94040 17y ago
    Or it could be that they didn't even know it was an option for them. Going to work for Google is the easy thing to do after college.
• larsberg 17y ago
  There are a bunch of advantages to the non-startup route: - Weekends are yours. - Guaranteed good pay. After ~4 years at MSFT, I was making nicely north of $200k gross. As a developer. In 2004 dollars --- it's probably more now. - There are technical people more experienced than you, interested in mentoring your growth. I used to joke as a hiring manager that you could tell quickly in an interview how long someone had been in the startup pit because they had learned no new concepts (only new technology) since they started. Why would anyone technical who doesn't explicitly want the startup experience do it these days? It's not like the mad IPO cash-out and low corporate pay days of the late 90s / early 00s.
  • mtomczak 17y ago
    I think this is the flip-side of the startup coin that many people forget about. The quote from the article that stuck out most for met was "But most of all: nothing is more motivating and inspiring than the sense of ownership and self-direction only a startup can provide." Having decided to walk away from the startup I helped to found, I couldn't disagree more. The three things mentioned by larsberg are three things I'd grown to sorely miss. In particular, no-one is around to teach me test-driven design, and when I'm already putting in 120% during the day, I'm deadened to the desire to self-learn through books and scavenging on the internet.
  • Psyonic 17y ago
    Did you join MSFT straight out of college? If so, that's amazing money for only 4 years experience... or at least it seems that way to me
  • coliveira 17y ago
    I agree with you. If you are really a technical person, being the founder is not the most enviable thing to be. You can learn much more being in a successful big company. However, if you see technology as a way to make money, founding a business is the best way to get ahead. It all depends on what you really value.
  • deleted 17y ago
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• pg 17y ago
  I think the reason so many VCs think the VC business needs to shrink is not that there' some limit on the number of startups, but because of a historical accident that caused the VC business to bloat suddenly. The bubble of the late 90s caused a great increase in the number of VC firms, and many of the new arrivals were incompetent. When VCs say the VC business is going to shrink, it's largely a tactful way of saying that those firms are going to get GCed.
  • apsec112 17y ago
    Actually, I pretty strongly think that there is a limit on the number of startups, if by "startup" you mean "small company in which people create wealth largely through computer programming". According to the BLS, there are 1.3 million "software engineers" and programmers in the United States (cite: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm). This number will go up over the next fifty years, but not by that much; projected growth is 2% annually. One could see this number increasing more rapidly if programmers are in so much demand that their salaries (either in the form of cash or startup equity) go up very fast, but we don't see that happening; programmers nowadays don't get paid that much more, in either dollars or equity, than programmers five or ten years ago. Now, how many of these programmers have the skills needed to start a successful company? Let's be optimistic and say 10%, which is probably above your estimate ("The top 5% of programmers probably write 99% of the good software", cite: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html). Now, out of those, how many have the personality and determination needed to start a successful company? In the overall population this number is probably less than 5%, but the traits needed to become a good programmer (high energy, determination, ability to think well) probably correlate significantly with the traits needed to start a successful company, so I'll be optimistic again and say 25%. Now, what's the viable window for programmers to start companies? At a guess, I'd say probably around age 22-37, so 15 years. I'm going to be optimistic again and assume that all working programmers are within this age range. Now, how many founder-class programmers do you need to start a successful company? This number could probably range from one to five, but I'm going to be optimistic again and say one. So, dividing it out, the number of successful startups every year is bounded above by 1,300,000 * 0.1 * 0.25 / 15 = ~2,200, and this is almost certainly an overestimate.
• rythie 17y ago
  V.C. is suffering because there are not enough companies that have got to a big enough stage for them to fund. There needs to be more put into early stage companies. I meet endless companies in the U.K. that can't easily even get $20k to get off the ground. Yes, we've got SeedCamp, but it only funds 5 or 6 companies a year. There are 1000s of good potential companies in the U.K. alone that can't get this first step of funding. And that's the U.K. which is fairly developed for this and there are lot of countries that this could apply to. Basically, I think we need several Y-combinator style companies in every country in every industry. I think as people see the returns come into Y-combinator there will be explosion of these companies as there a lot of people can spend $2m/year on a range of outside bets.
• agravier 17y ago
  Many ex-googlers I know are now startup founders.
  • aditya 17y ago
    Right, however most are not.
    • MikeCapone 17y ago
      Most non-ex-googler engineers aren't either.
• carterschonwald 17y ago
  I know a number of people who after they graduate would love to focus on startups under the right circumstances, but one of a number of constraints they have is that they need health insurance, which isn't at present something that fits easily into a "Boot Strap Budget"
  • mrkurt 17y ago
    It only gets worse when you have a family to insure as well. Individual health insurance can have lifelong implications and it's a massive, massive amount of additional stress. I, for one, don't enjoy worrying about a member of my family getting cancer or diabetes or something and dealing with pre-existing conditions clauses for the rest of our lives.
  • skennedy 17y ago
    Do not forget about the massive amounts of debt that many students leave college with. Payments start 6 months after graduation.
    • usaar333 17y ago
      It actually isn't so bad for CS students at public schools. Some internships (msft, google, facebook, etc.) pay enough to cover a year's worth of tuition and housing.
  • garply 17y ago
    Well, they could go without health insurance. Frankly, if you're going to be uninsured at some point in your life, such a young age is the best time to do it... it's when you're old and sick that you want to be insured most, not when you're young and healthy.
    • carterschonwald 17y ago
      It not the simple for folks with congenital health conditions or who are can't function due to a medical disorder without some prescription which is easily affordable with insurance, but impossible to afford in a "ramen profitable" san insurance context. An easy example would be someone with severe adhd. The relevant sort of medication can cost as little as 30 dollars with insurance, but total around $400 dollars otherwise (apparently there can be a nontrivial difference in efficacy of generic versus nongeneric). Such a person, working at/on a startup, would need to be able to functionally transition between working on a variety of tasks through out the day, ever day, irrespective of how engaging each task is to work on. These are precisely the circumstances where that person's adhd would be most problematic. And thats a simple example, what about say a person with Crohn's Disease (and need to be able to cover the expenses that happen whenever it becomes problematic), or someone with bipolar disorder who with the right prescription and monitoring at worst has on vs off weeks in terms of productivity. Yes, these examples are relatively sparse, but nonetheless there are certainly easy to construct examples where the absence of insurance to cover certain regular expenses makes "ramen profitable" untenable
• fnid2 17y ago
  When I was in college, I went to the career center looking for a job. I had my resume all spiffy and on it was a startup I had been working on in college. The recruiter asked why I didn't pursue the startup idea and I said, "I need to pay the rent." I think that sums it up right there for most. We enter college with nothing, and we leave college with less than nothing (i.e. $100,000 in debt). So we go get a job so we can pay the bills meaning we get $5k a month coming in pretty easily and that's a lot of money. It's definitely enough money for a college kid to pay for rent and be happy for a while and they probably end up being so happy that nothing else is worth the risk. Why risk $60k a year on a startup that will buy you (if you are lucky) some ramen to eat and some space in your parents' basement? A BMW plus a phat apartment in a high rise is difficult to turn down for something that appears, for all intents and purposes, to have about a 1 in 1000 (at best) shot of success. That's why we have no entrepreneurs anymore. Life is too easy without them.
  • Psyonic 17y ago
    "That's why we have no entrepreneurs anymore. Life is too easy without them." Any evidence to support a decline in entrepreneurs? The internet seems to be overflowing with them.
    • fnid2 17y ago
      It's probably selection bias. It's easy to find people you want to find on the internet, but look around you in the real world. If you aren't in silicon valley, it's very difficult to find entrepreneurs and it's even harder to find them outside the internet.
      • garply 17y ago
        I'm in Beijing, I'm in the food industry, and I'm surrounded by entrepreneurs who almost never go online. I turned down the posh jobs out of college and my partner quit McKinsey to found our company. A friend just bought a million dollar factory for his t-shirt and pants company. Entrepreneurship is not just online and the notion that entrepreneurship is in decline feels very wrong to me. I'd like to see data.
• larsr 17y ago
  "Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died" Many smart "kids" (gee, thanks dad, glad you know what's best for me!) want to solve interesting problems, not muck around with all that other stuff you have to deal with as an entrepreneur.
  • robryan 17y ago
    Arguably the best place for that though is a startup where your first employee with a large stake? There's no doubt there would be many very interesting positions at Google, but I'd imagine there would also be some very boring positions for developers straight out of college.
    • nostrademons 17y ago
      First employees have to deal with a lot of gruntwork. Possibly more than the founders, because they're often the ones stuck setting up the production servers, dealing with customer complaints, hacking through that sticky bug, firefighting, training/interviewing new employees, and generally doing all the boring stuff while the founders are out sealing business deals. As for Google - it's what you make of it. I know some people who've gotten stuck in a narrow corner of the company, but I've personally been exposed to a pretty deep cross-section of the search stack, and worked on some fairly exciting projects. Working for a big company doesn't excuse you from actively managing your career - if something exciting is coming up, volunteer for it! And nobody can stop you from working on other stuff - if there's something interesting, just go hack it up and ask for forgiveness later.
      • anonjon 17y ago
        "if there's something interesting, just go hack it up and ask for forgiveness later." This is probably the best advice given on hacker news today.
• grok2 17y ago
  BS. This is true of anybody joining any company.
  • jmtulloss 17y ago
    He didn't say it wasn't.
• gxs 17y ago
  The company where I work currently, an analytics company, was founded by a McKinsey alumn. The company is going on 9 years. Our biggest client last year was McKinsey and when he first started the company (i.e. before biz dev), he leveraged the contacts he'd made at McKinsey heavily. All in all, I'd say the article argues one extreme, when as usual the truth is somewhere in the middle.
• dusklight 17y ago
  Yeah but not all engineers who join Google stay in Google forever. The ones who eventually leave and start their own company bring with them whatever parts of the Google culture that they felt were valuable: maybe it's the data-driven, engineer focused management style, maybe it's the code review and use of real computer science in the creation of software, maybe it's the free food rule. They also leave after meeting a lot of smart people and making a lot more connections that could potentially help them in the future.
• flogic 17y ago
  It's hard out there for a venture capitalist... Cry me a river. Let engineers choose the life that it best for them.
• rflrob 17y ago
  Is it just me, or does it seem unfair to lump Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Google all into the same class? In particular (having worked at none of them), I'd reject putting Google, an engineering company, into the same category as the other two, which largely cater to institutional clients.
  • nfnaaron 17y ago
    They're all subsidiaries of BigCorp. Once you get past a certain size (employees, sales, market cap, whatever) it's unavoidable to become BigCorp, regardless of the differences in your particular company's culture. Once you've become so capitalized that your company's stock is itself a commodity, you're BigCorp.
    • krakensden 17y ago
      Thank you Mr. Tautology.
• ALee 17y ago
  This seems to be subtly jabbing Aardvark's acquisition, specially since Hunch (cdixon's startup) is still out in the open.
• rajatmehta1 17y ago
  This article is very true.Normally when a person is fresh out of college the responsibilities are less, he might not be married or might not have a housing loan etc, so it is the right time to start a startup. Once a person joins a big company he comes into something known as a 'comfort zone' , its easy to get into that zone by following a defined path or trend i.e to say good college + good marks + some contacts and you land up a good job with good pay.Its difficult to get out of this comfort zone. I personally feel innovation happens mostly in startups.It does happen in big companies but in bits and pieces but in startups it happens all the time because innovation is the only thing that can make a startup a success.
• andylei 17y ago
  Most people here seem to think that startups are more net productive / innovative / whatever than large corporations? Even if this is true, that doesn't mean that everyone should join a startup. Big companies like Goldman, McKinsey, and Google provide value not only to normal people, but also startups. Google builds tools and infrastructure that help power the Internet. There are probably tons of startups that rely on Google products like Gmail and Google Maps, and without smart engineers working at Google, those startups would be worse off. McKinsey provides consulting services to companies big and small, including startups. Some startup engineers may not have the best knowledge for how to best access a foreign market, and companies like McKinsey, who do this research all the time, provide valuable business advice about how to set prices, enter new markets, structure growing organizations, and all kinds of other business questions that startups may not know how to answer. Even Goldman Sachs has something to contribute to startups. GS financial advisers (as well those other banks, obviously) are the ones telling large sovereign wealth and pension funds to diversify their allocations into categories like venture capital. This money is critical for lots of startups to grow. Maybe these companies aren't completely necessary for startups to start and grow, but they do have a lot to contribute to this space.
• tybris 17y ago
  VC just needs to get out of its parents basement and spread out more. Why not open offices at major universities?
• __Joker 17y ago
  Not I think. He anybody has ideas and/or dreams and believe in himself he would have pursued it anyway. Now if you have some doubts then obviously go for the safer option. And may be as nfnaaron points out may be they are gaining experience.