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Counterpoint: Running a startup means working 18 hour days trying a bunch of stuff that probably won't work and if it does then you end up in a job you don't li

by dkasper 16y ago

Counterpoint: Running a startup means working 18 hour days trying a bunch of stuff that probably won't work and if it does then you end up in a job you don't like. Growing a business means helping something along that will have lasting value. Just depends what type of person you are; making a blanket statement that growing a business is boring is actually pretty narrow minded. (Disclaimer: I work at a startup, love it, and will probably work at or start another startup in the future)

jacquesm 16y ago
> I work at a startup, love it, and will probably work at or start another startup in the future Doesn't that sort of prove my point though? Why not stick around and grow it then? Isn't the 'what kind of person you are' part the whole point of what I wrote ? Some people are good at creation and the work that comes with that small team where you can wear a whole bunch of hats, they thrive in that environment, but they find that it is much harder to maintain that attitude in larger companies. Suddenly there are procedures and forms to be filled out and all kinds of corporate stuff that will drag you down. You can only work on weekdays, you have to work between 9 and 5 (hey, I'm a night person), and so on. I remember that when working for a large corporation (bank) early on in my career after I switched to the IT department someone came up to me and asked me not to work so hard because I made some of the others on the team look bad. They were actually trying to slow me down, can you imagine that sort of thing in a start-up? I'd work for any start-up that has a technically challenging idea, even without pay if the idea was worthwhile enough in my opinion, but I'd have a really hard time joining up with some 200 employee company that does the same thing, or hanging around if the idea was received well by the market and the company needed growing to that level. Sooner or later your tech days are over and you'll find yourself to be a 'manager', and not everybody is cut out to be one. The choice then is to hang on to the start-up that you helped found and manage people or to hang on and be managed by some guy hired two years after you founded the thing. I'd rather move on at that stage. In the past this has led to school friends of mine that had also gone in to programming to be hired by start-ups that I helped found, 20 years on and they're still working there. I could have never done that, compared to what I've seen in the last 20 years that sounds like being tied to the same disneyland ride for two decades.

by dkasper 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

> I work at a startup, love it, and will probably work at or start another startup in the future Doesn't that sort of prove my point though? Why not stick around and grow it then? Isn't the 'what kind of person you are' part the whole point of what I wrote ? Some people are good at creation and the work that comes with that small team where you can wear a whole bunch of hats, they thrive in that environment, but they find that it is much harder to maintain that attitude in larger companies. Suddenly there are procedures and forms to be filled out and all kinds of corporate stuff that will drag you down. You can only work on weekdays, you have to work between 9 and 5 (hey, I'm a night person), and so on. I remember that when working for a large corporation (bank) early on in my career after I switched to the IT department someone came up to me and asked me not to work so hard because I made some of the others on the team look bad. They were actually trying to slow me down, can you imagine that sort of thing in a start-up? I'd work for any start-up that has a technically challenging idea, even without pay if the idea was worthwhile enough in my opinion, but I'd have a really hard time joining up with some 200 employee company that does the same thing, or hanging around if the idea was received well by the market and the company needed growing to that level. Sooner or later your tech days are over and you'll find yourself to be a 'manager', and not everybody is cut out to be one. The choice then is to hang on to the start-up that you helped found and manage people or to hang on and be managed by some guy hired two years after you founded the thing. I'd rather move on at that stage. In the past this has led to school friends of mine that had also gone in to programming to be hired by start-ups that I helped found, 20 years on and they're still working there. I could have never done that, compared to what I've seen in the last 20 years that sounds like being tied to the same disneyland ride for two decades.