12 ms·

Not exactly a unique experience, but my .05 - I started of at a startup with a "lol just do it" attitude to whatever the problem was. Worked 12 hours a day a lo

Not exactly a unique experience, but my .05 - I started of at a startup with a "lol just do it" attitude to whatever the problem was. Worked 12 hours a day a lot, was stressed out all the time, didn't have a life, got calls at odd hours to deploy...but, if I didn't have that experience, I wouldn't have grown nearly as fast. Got to see all aspects of the products and the consequences of the decisions we made early on. Learned more in a year than in the last 3 at corp/consulting jobs. Then again, maybe it was noob gainz and I made at least a third less than I would have at a corp job. Not sure if going back to a startup would be nearly as beneficial in terms of "levelling up." Seems like the game now is to grind whiteboard before I get too old for Google. A friend grew from junior developer to director of IT at that startup, so there's that aspect as well, though I have also seen a number of startups hire leadership outside.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
> Worked 12 hours a day a lot, was stressed out all the time, didn't have a life, got calls at odd hours to deploy...but, if I didn't have that experience, I wouldn't have grown nearly as fast. Congrats on using the opportunity to grow in an abusive role. It should not be normalized is the point.
- brootstrap 8y ago
  On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time. If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I would grind 12 hours days, but also had lots of freedom. Remote work, unlimited days off etc. Sure at sometimes you get burnt out but you are a sponge soaking up everything you can. now i'm 28 with wife and kids, no overtime for me. I still work extremely hard and lazer focused, but i show up at 7:30-8am and leave at 4 everyday :p
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? Because you're normalizing abusive workplace practices. Need I explain further? It's not right, it's not okay, and if you tolerate it, you do a disservice to your colleagues. Maybe you don't care, that's fine. But when you say "What's wrong?" I will point out that it is not to be commended or supported. If your employer encourages, supports, or allows this sort of behavior to exist, I hope you find yourself on the business end of a lawsuit.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      It seems like what's wrong is if it's not telegraphed that this is expected beforehand. We're all adults here and should be able to make informed decisions about how we want to live. Some of us want a lot of pressure and to not sit around bored wondering what to do with our lives. When I was in grad school, 100 hour weeks and working 100 days straight was the norm. Also I made 25k a year. And I loved it, because I loved doing science and I got to be paid to do what I loved. And also, it's maybe worth mentioning that your experiments don't give a damn about labor laws. There really are some important societally beneficial things that simply won't get done if there aren't crazy fuckers like me around (not necessarily the projects I happened to work on, they all turned out to be crap) Honestly what made me mad was that there were a lot of kids who got out of college, and went to grad school because they didn't know what to do next and nobody told them how crazy grad school was. These jokers depressed the asking price for a grad school salary.
  - goobynight 8y ago
    It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though. Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on my own hard problems. They're easy to create. I definitely had more responsibility, did more coding, and felt more energy at a startup than a big corp though. Pay and nearly everything else was shit in comparison. If someone did 10-12 hour regularly on my current team, we'd be pissed. It would set a new normal and management would think they could start replacing people until they get 10 of those guys that are willing to sit here half the day.
mdorazio 8y ago
FWIW, I've worked with a lot of entry-level people at normal companies over the years and would estimate that noob gainz are 30-50% higher in startup land for the first 1-2 years of career, maybe 10-20% higher the next two, then flat or actually lower than corporate thereafter. I think it comes down to 1) startups pile a lot more responsibility onto their young hires than normal companies are comfortable with + 2) startups have a lot higher tolerance for failure + 3) small companies in general don't have headcount for specialized roles, so everyone has to level up in multiple areas.
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  I've worked at two startups, then a BigCo, and now another startup. The wearing of many hats was definitely a leveling-up experience, but I felt that I plateaued in just the way you describe. Equity from both of those first two startups is now worth zero. In my years at BigCo I worked with engineers who have 10-20 years more experience than I do. Often felt like the dumbest guy in the room. I learned a ton. No comparison. But I would never have gotten the job there without my previous startup experience. And without that experience I'm not sure I would even have been able to learn from my BigCo co-workers so successfully. I got tired of corporate politics and a high traffic commute, so now I'm happily back in startup land.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    I feel similarly; I started my career at a BigCo, didn't get much out of it, joined a fairly young company, with (1) more responsibility than someone of my tenure should reasonably have due to (2) high tolerance for failure and (3) they didn't have headcount for the specialized role I was doing. Going back to a BigCo, the experience there was utterly invaluable. I realized that my first go round I had absolutely no idea what I should even be trying to get out of it. This time's different. There's huge value to getting the lay of the land.
  - twic 8y ago
    I think there's a similar dynamic with consulting - ThoughtWorks / Pivotal Labs type places. You get shunted around between many different projects, there are never enough people, so there are opportunities to take more responsibilities, and things are often a bit fluid, because a consultancy coming in tends to (should!) crack the organisation a bit. There are downsides to all of that, but it's also a way of getting wider faster, if not getting a lot deeper.
dasil003 8y ago
FANG is undisputably the best risk-adjusted compensation return for a programmer, and they're up there in terms of working with super smart colleagues, and therefore they have a high floor, compared to say a startup that goes nowhere with the blind leading the blind, but the ceiling is also constrained by what projects you're working on. In terms of raw software engineering development there's probably no substitute for joining early in a hypergrowth scenario, because you'll have to solve way more problems in an efficient way, and understand the direct impact on the business in a way that is totally obscured when you come into a massive corporation with thousands of engineers. It's likely company growth will outpace your personal growth (hence the outside hires), but even so you will get challenged in ways that just don't exist in large, stable companies.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Though at F and G there is the cost of having to rationalize working for an organization that is evil.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Nobody ever said that about the As!!
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      I'm pretty certain I've heard Amazon described as "evil". Apple are less objectionable, but I'm sure there are some things that somebody wouldn't like.
      - pnw_hazor 8y ago
        It seems Amazon's evilness mostly stems from their reputation for how they treat their employees - not how they treat their customers. My weak sauce rationalization re Amazon is that I wouldn't work there (I love hearing the big sigh from recruiters when I ask if the client they are hiring for is Amazon.) Others who choose to work there do so voluntarily. They haven choosen their own pain. In my mind this is different than using your PhDs to build dark patterns to trick consumers, survelience tech to monetize people, using that surveillance information and neuroscience to manipulate people, and so on. edit: to add -- I forgot about Apple, since I stopped buying their stuff a few years ago. At least they see that privacy protection may have some value in the marketplace.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I can attest to this as well. I can't recommend this to anyone else, but personally I'm glad I went through it. I had one hellish week where I was so nervous I couldn't eat. Slept 2 hours a night and lost 5 pounds in one week. Employees shouldn't be treated like that, and I will never work at a place like that again, but I am a dramatically stronger engineer because of those experiences.
enjo 8y ago
"A friend grew from junior developer to director of IT at that startup, so there's that aspect as well, though I have also seen a number of startups hire leadership outside." This was the main benefit I got from a startup, but that also required winning something of a startup lottery. I was at a company that went from two to 200+ engineers. I was able to grow into the tech lead of the entire thing. That put me into a leadership track at a relatively young age at larger companies. Which has been great. Financially, however, I suspect I would have been better off working at a FAANG from day 1, even being a very early and key employee for a company that exited at 9 figures. Still I now know how fortunate I was. At my current gig we routinely hire startup "tech leads" for non leadership roles. They're probably generally thought of as a tier below a mid level IC coming out of a FAANG company. Startups are a huge gamble. It worked out for me but even the inflated titles are only valuable if the company itself proves to be a winner.
- retiredcoder 8y ago
  The matching start-up TL to mid-level FAANG seems fair to my observations.
econner 8y ago
"Seems like the game now is to grind whiteboard before I get too old for Google." the sad reality of this industry...

toomuchtodo 8y ago

> Worked 12 hours a day a lot, was stressed out all the time, didn't have a life, got calls at odd hours to deploy...but, if I didn't have that experience, I wouldn't have grown nearly as fast. Congrats on using the opportunity to grow in an abusive role. It should not be normalized is the point.

brootstrap 8y ago
On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time. If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I would grind 12 hours days, but also had lots of freedom. Remote work, unlimited days off etc. Sure at sometimes you get burnt out but you are a sponge soaking up everything you can. now i'm 28 with wife and kids, no overtime for me. I still work extremely hard and lazer focused, but i show up at 7:30-8am and leave at 4 everyday :p
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  > What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? Because you're normalizing abusive workplace practices. Need I explain further? It's not right, it's not okay, and if you tolerate it, you do a disservice to your colleagues. Maybe you don't care, that's fine. But when you say "What's wrong?" I will point out that it is not to be commended or supported. If your employer encourages, supports, or allows this sort of behavior to exist, I hope you find yourself on the business end of a lawsuit.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    It seems like what's wrong is if it's not telegraphed that this is expected beforehand. We're all adults here and should be able to make informed decisions about how we want to live. Some of us want a lot of pressure and to not sit around bored wondering what to do with our lives. When I was in grad school, 100 hour weeks and working 100 days straight was the norm. Also I made 25k a year. And I loved it, because I loved doing science and I got to be paid to do what I loved. And also, it's maybe worth mentioning that your experiments don't give a damn about labor laws. There really are some important societally beneficial things that simply won't get done if there aren't crazy fuckers like me around (not necessarily the projects I happened to work on, they all turned out to be crap) Honestly what made me mad was that there were a lot of kids who got out of college, and went to grad school because they didn't know what to do next and nobody told them how crazy grad school was. These jokers depressed the asking price for a grad school salary.
- goobynight 8y ago
  It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though. Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on my own hard problems. They're easy to create. I definitely had more responsibility, did more coding, and felt more energy at a startup than a big corp though. Pay and nearly everything else was shit in comparison. If someone did 10-12 hour regularly on my current team, we'd be pissed. It would set a new normal and management would think they could start replacing people until they get 10 of those guys that are willing to sit here half the day.

mdorazio 8y ago

FWIW, I've worked with a lot of entry-level people at normal companies over the years and would estimate that noob gainz are 30-50% higher in startup land for the first 1-2 years of career, maybe 10-20% higher the next two, then flat or actually lower than corporate thereafter. I think it comes down to 1) startups pile a lot more responsibility onto their young hires than normal companies are comfortable with + 2) startups have a lot higher tolerance for failure + 3) small companies in general don't have headcount for specialized roles, so everyone has to level up in multiple areas.

jpm_sd 8y ago
I've worked at two startups, then a BigCo, and now another startup. The wearing of many hats was definitely a leveling-up experience, but I felt that I plateaued in just the way you describe. Equity from both of those first two startups is now worth zero. In my years at BigCo I worked with engineers who have 10-20 years more experience than I do. Often felt like the dumbest guy in the room. I learned a ton. No comparison. But I would never have gotten the job there without my previous startup experience. And without that experience I'm not sure I would even have been able to learn from my BigCo co-workers so successfully. I got tired of corporate politics and a high traffic commute, so now I'm happily back in startup land.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  I feel similarly; I started my career at a BigCo, didn't get much out of it, joined a fairly young company, with (1) more responsibility than someone of my tenure should reasonably have due to (2) high tolerance for failure and (3) they didn't have headcount for the specialized role I was doing. Going back to a BigCo, the experience there was utterly invaluable. I realized that my first go round I had absolutely no idea what I should even be trying to get out of it. This time's different. There's huge value to getting the lay of the land.
- twic 8y ago
  I think there's a similar dynamic with consulting - ThoughtWorks / Pivotal Labs type places. You get shunted around between many different projects, there are never enough people, so there are opportunities to take more responsibilities, and things are often a bit fluid, because a consultancy coming in tends to (should!) crack the organisation a bit. There are downsides to all of that, but it's also a way of getting wider faster, if not getting a lot deeper.

dasil003 8y ago

FANG is undisputably the best risk-adjusted compensation return for a programmer, and they're up there in terms of working with super smart colleagues, and therefore they have a high floor, compared to say a startup that goes nowhere with the blind leading the blind, but the ceiling is also constrained by what projects you're working on. In terms of raw software engineering development there's probably no substitute for joining early in a hypergrowth scenario, because you'll have to solve way more problems in an efficient way, and understand the direct impact on the business in a way that is totally obscured when you come into a massive corporation with thousands of engineers. It's likely company growth will outpace your personal growth (hence the outside hires), but even so you will get challenged in ways that just don't exist in large, stable companies.

pnw_hazor 8y ago
Though at F and G there is the cost of having to rationalize working for an organization that is evil.
- dnautics 8y ago
  Nobody ever said that about the As!!
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I'm pretty certain I've heard Amazon described as "evil". Apple are less objectionable, but I'm sure there are some things that somebody wouldn't like.
    - pnw_hazor 8y ago
      It seems Amazon's evilness mostly stems from their reputation for how they treat their employees - not how they treat their customers. My weak sauce rationalization re Amazon is that I wouldn't work there (I love hearing the big sigh from recruiters when I ask if the client they are hiring for is Amazon.) Others who choose to work there do so voluntarily. They haven choosen their own pain. In my mind this is different than using your PhDs to build dark patterns to trick consumers, survelience tech to monetize people, using that surveillance information and neuroscience to manipulate people, and so on. edit: to add -- I forgot about Apple, since I stopped buying their stuff a few years ago. At least they see that privacy protection may have some value in the marketplace.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

I can attest to this as well. I can't recommend this to anyone else, but personally I'm glad I went through it. I had one hellish week where I was so nervous I couldn't eat. Slept 2 hours a night and lost 5 pounds in one week. Employees shouldn't be treated like that, and I will never work at a place like that again, but I am a dramatically stronger engineer because of those experiences.

enjo 8y ago

"A friend grew from junior developer to director of IT at that startup, so there's that aspect as well, though I have also seen a number of startups hire leadership outside." This was the main benefit I got from a startup, but that also required winning something of a startup lottery. I was at a company that went from two to 200+ engineers. I was able to grow into the tech lead of the entire thing. That put me into a leadership track at a relatively young age at larger companies. Which has been great. Financially, however, I suspect I would have been better off working at a FAANG from day 1, even being a very early and key employee for a company that exited at 9 figures. Still I now know how fortunate I was. At my current gig we routinely hire startup "tech leads" for non leadership roles. They're probably generally thought of as a tier below a mid level IC coming out of a FAANG company. Startups are a huge gamble. It worked out for me but even the inflated titles are only valuable if the company itself proves to be a winner.

retiredcoder 8y ago
The matching start-up TL to mid-level FAANG seems fair to my observations.

econner 8y ago

"Seems like the game now is to grind whiteboard before I get too old for Google." the sad reality of this industry...