6 ms·

Scale matters more than name recognition. If you worked at a 50,000 employee F100, your skills aren't going to be suited for a 10 person startup, and vice versa

Scale matters more than name recognition. If you worked at a 50,000 employee F100, your skills aren't going to be suited for a 10 person startup, and vice versa.

jacquesm 16y ago
Why not?
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Because once you've worked for a 10-person startup, you'd be crazy to go back to working for "the man"
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    What does that have to do with skills? The GGP wrote that your skills are not applicable, not that you'd be crazy (with that I agree).
    - johngalt 16y ago
      Certain problems have to be solved by large teams, and the team dynamic is different when you get into the thousands of people. Contrast that dynamic with a small shop of only a few devs. Disregarding of the technical skillset, they are practically different jobs. If you were interviewing a candidate that had never worked for a startup wouldn't you take that into consideration?
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        > If you were interviewing a candidate that had never worked for a startup wouldn't you take that into consideration? People that apply to a start-up usually do so because it offers them something they can't get elsewhere. Freedom, responsibility and a smaller world. They've self-selected long before they applied because they're usually willing to take a fair sized pay-cut in order to be able to join. That speaks volumes about their motivation and willingness to adapt. If a candidate had never worked for a start-up and didn't throw up any overt red flags if they're the most suitable guy or girl for the job I'd definitely give them a shot at it.
- johngalt 16y ago
  The environment at a large shop is more constraining, and the people are more specialized. You'd go from being a small cog in a very large machine to being the entire machine yourself. At a large shop it's like being in bootcamp, everything is systematized. Transitioning from that to a green field can be a shock when you have become too reliant on the rest of the machine. Conversely someone coming from a startup wont understand working in a large team where progress is more methodical (slower). They will seek to circumvent processes they see as slow or useless. Perhaps they will try to 're-engineer' towards things they are more familiar with. In the process they may cause a net loss for the entire team. In general I'd say its easier to go up than down. If you're used to the functions of a large organization it would be difficult to scale that back (network engineers that can't work without Cisco gear for instance). Someone coming from a startup is likely to be adaptive, and I'd rather have a generalist in a large organization, than a specialist in a small one. Although I'm from an IT background not Dev so YMMV. The limit of my programming is single page perl/python scripts.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    People that have worked in start-ups are very well suited to being trouble-shooters in a large organization, and people that have worked for a big company stand a chance of running a start-up that interfaces / sells to big companies because they can relate to the party on the other side. I'd think that it's a net win to have experience about the other side of the table, and that your skills are actually worth more by having been 'on the other side of the line' for a while.
joshu 16y ago
Horseshit.

Scale matters more than name recognition. If you worked at a 50,000 employee F100, your skills aren't going to be suited for a 10 person startup, and vice versa.

jacquesm 16y ago

Why not?

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Because once you've worked for a 10-person startup, you'd be crazy to go back to working for "the man"
- jacquesm 16y ago
  What does that have to do with skills? The GGP wrote that your skills are not applicable, not that you'd be crazy (with that I agree).
  - johngalt 16y ago
    Certain problems have to be solved by large teams, and the team dynamic is different when you get into the thousands of people. Contrast that dynamic with a small shop of only a few devs. Disregarding of the technical skillset, they are practically different jobs. If you were interviewing a candidate that had never worked for a startup wouldn't you take that into consideration?
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      > If you were interviewing a candidate that had never worked for a startup wouldn't you take that into consideration? People that apply to a start-up usually do so because it offers them something they can't get elsewhere. Freedom, responsibility and a smaller world. They've self-selected long before they applied because they're usually willing to take a fair sized pay-cut in order to be able to join. That speaks volumes about their motivation and willingness to adapt. If a candidate had never worked for a start-up and didn't throw up any overt red flags if they're the most suitable guy or girl for the job I'd definitely give them a shot at it.
johngalt 16y ago
The environment at a large shop is more constraining, and the people are more specialized. You'd go from being a small cog in a very large machine to being the entire machine yourself. At a large shop it's like being in bootcamp, everything is systematized. Transitioning from that to a green field can be a shock when you have become too reliant on the rest of the machine. Conversely someone coming from a startup wont understand working in a large team where progress is more methodical (slower). They will seek to circumvent processes they see as slow or useless. Perhaps they will try to 're-engineer' towards things they are more familiar with. In the process they may cause a net loss for the entire team. In general I'd say its easier to go up than down. If you're used to the functions of a large organization it would be difficult to scale that back (network engineers that can't work without Cisco gear for instance). Someone coming from a startup is likely to be adaptive, and I'd rather have a generalist in a large organization, than a specialist in a small one. Although I'm from an IT background not Dev so YMMV. The limit of my programming is single page perl/python scripts.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  People that have worked in start-ups are very well suited to being trouble-shooters in a large organization, and people that have worked for a big company stand a chance of running a start-up that interfaces / sells to big companies because they can relate to the party on the other side. I'd think that it's a net win to have experience about the other side of the table, and that your skills are actually worth more by having been 'on the other side of the line' for a while.

joshu 16y ago

Horseshit.