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Main reason: it's more fun. I could be a cog in a giant corporate machine, or I can have a measurable impact where I work. I can stay in my lane and do my spe

by lkbm 6y ago

Main reason: it's more fun. I could be a cog in a giant corporate machine, or I can have a measurable impact where I work. I can stay in my lane and do my specific job tasks, or I can run around putting out fires and helping wherever help is needed. I mindlessly build the specific design product handed me, or I can guide my own work in accordance to the needs of our customers and the business. I can follow policy and fill out forms when making any decision, or I can just do what's right because who has time to write policies and look over approval forms? tbf, tech is relatively good at a lot of these. As I understand it, Facebook gives a fair bit of latitude to engineers, and Google used to be famous for their 20% time. But the longer a company exists, and the bigger it gets, the more bureaucracy and controlling it'll get. Every big disaster means a new policy on how to prevent future disasters. I think pg wrote an essay stating that the most valuable skill in an early startup employee is "helpfulness" (maybe not though -- cursory search didn't find it). You do what needs to be done. This is roughly your "wear many hats" point, but more than just different technologies, and not just being new. If you just want to have a well-defined, steady, sane-every-day job, a startup is terrible. If you every want to say "that's my job", a start-up is terrible. If you're the sort of person people will come to for help with whatever comes up (and enjoy being that), start-ups can be great.

episteme 6y ago
I'm not sure you can say the startup impact is measurable either. You certainly can't measure it by monetary value. Mindlessly building what is handed to you is a culture problem and not a company size problem. Some startups have less freedom than some corporations but both usually grant more freedom to more senior people. You can still 'wear many hats' at some mega corps too, if the company only has 'engineer' as a title then you are expected to basically do 'everything' . The team you are on will decide what the balance is though. I think all of what you said could apply to both sizes of the companies.
vlunkr 6y ago
Both of these comments make good points, but are two ends of a false dichotomy. Not every startup is going to have horrible work/life balance, and not every job at a big company is going to be boring and soul crushing. And there are all sorts of jobs in the middle and to the side of this spectrum.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I'd even say it's more specific to the individual and not just the job. I have a boring, soul crushing job, but to someone else it might be their dream.
bquinlan 6y ago
>I could be a cog in a giant corporate machine, or I can have a measurable impact where I work. I think that point can support working for either a big company or a small company depending on what type of impact you are looking for. I've worked for startups in the past and have had a huge impact on the startup but almost no impact on the outside world because the startups just weren't tackling very visible problems. Now I work for Google and I have basically zero impact on Google i.e. basically nothing that I can do will ever move the dial in terms of Google's revenue, etc. But I've worked on several projects that have had a big impact outside of Google. For example, I was on a small team (3 people) that developed the Python 2.7 runtime for App Engine (this was a while ago) and I was on another small team that implemented the server-side infrastructure for the Google Home. I also developed the screensaver for Chromecast - which is a tiny tiny project - but still millions of people love it.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  > I think that point can support working for either a big company or a small company depending on what type of impact you are looking for. For a lot of people, "I want to have an impact where I work" is more about their own ego and sense of importance than about impact on other people's lives. This is not a value judgment, by the way - wanting to feel like more than just another faceless disposable drone is a valid desire.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Avoiding the alienation of labor, as Marx might put it.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    I'd argue that people conflate "having an impact" with "creating a product" rather than "having an impact" with having visible prestige. I used to think the former, but not after having experience interacting with people who want to be middle managers of middle managers. Those people want power and mostly don't care about impacting anything outside revenue increases that can be easily tied back to their name.
ping_pong 6y ago
It's a lot of fun until the company gets acquired and you get $80k for your 4 years of hard work, and the founders get $50M. Source: happened to me with a YC startup.
- GFischer 6y ago
  80k is a lot of money, but this must suck, especially if you feel like you were an integral part of the company's succcess - some German researchers found that compensation perception is more on "fairness" than the actual numbers, if you'd made 80k and the founders 200k, maybe you'd have been OK with it.
  - Peaches4Rent 6y ago
    I know research is good, but you really don't need research to figure that out. You don't want to feel screwed over
moron4hire 6y ago
Everything you're talking about is really just small companies, not startups at all. Go to work for an established, profitable, small company. Make a good salary and have a fulfilling career.
rpastuszak 6y ago
> Main reason: it's more fun. Agreed, although things can get much less fun once you end up burned out. I think this Tweet does a decent job at describing the tradeoffs/challenges: > Typical designer mid-career crisis. > > * You want to stay hands on > * You want a relaxed, low stress environment doing “meaningful work” > * You want to maximise your earning potential > > The majority of roles you see force you to pick just two. Source: https://twitter.com/andybudd/status/1204458288118714370 https://twitter.com/andybudd/status/1204458288118714370 --- Minor digression: now, not all startups are completely hectic, option-fueled sweatshops. I'm talking about the default picture that comes to my mind when I hear this word. The most successful small startups I know are quite the opposite in fact. Well, I guess having an actual market, solving a real problem is important. (OK, "scale-ups" are the f*cking worst still as you end up with chaos and inability to get work done).
alecbenzer 6y ago
Been at 2 series A/B startups for the past ~3.5 years. It was a really fun 3-6 months followed by 3 very not fun years. My N is low, they were both non-Bay (NYC) startups, maybe some startups are fun, maybe I'm really bad at picking startups, but I think a startup's culture is often as much or more of a crapshoot than the startup's business. Was at Google before, and it was fun for only a bit as well, but definitely not as actively non-fun as my last 3 years has been.
perl4ever 6y ago
>If you're the sort of person people will come to for help with whatever comes up (and enjoy being that), start-ups can be great That's kind of odd from my perspective, because that's exactly my niche, and yet, my very first job was at a startup (of about 3 people besides me), where I was a rapidly jettisoned cog, and every since I've gone to progressively bigger and more bureaucratic organizations while seeking, I guess, less definition of my role.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> it's more fun I recommend everyone spend some part of their career in a 1 to 20-person shop, a 20 to 200-person shop and a 2,000+ person shop. (I don’t have experience in 200 to 2,000.) They are vastly different work environments. I thought I was a 1 to 20 guy; I’m not. I want enough structure to let me specialise without letting bureaucracy get in the way. Twenty to ~two hundred. Start-ups are fun, but they’re also stressful. If you get unlucky, they can also leave you materially less wealthy than you could have been with more stability.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by lkbm 6y ago

episteme 6y ago

I'm not sure you can say the startup impact is measurable either. You certainly can't measure it by monetary value. Mindlessly building what is handed to you is a culture problem and not a company size problem. Some startups have less freedom than some corporations but both usually grant more freedom to more senior people. You can still 'wear many hats' at some mega corps too, if the company only has 'engineer' as a title then you are expected to basically do 'everything' . The team you are on will decide what the balance is though. I think all of what you said could apply to both sizes of the companies.

vlunkr 6y ago

Both of these comments make good points, but are two ends of a false dichotomy. Not every startup is going to have horrible work/life balance, and not every job at a big company is going to be boring and soul crushing. And there are all sorts of jobs in the middle and to the side of this spectrum.

giantg2 6y ago
I'd even say it's more specific to the individual and not just the job. I have a boring, soul crushing job, but to someone else it might be their dream.

bquinlan 6y ago

>I could be a cog in a giant corporate machine, or I can have a measurable impact where I work. I think that point can support working for either a big company or a small company depending on what type of impact you are looking for. I've worked for startups in the past and have had a huge impact on the startup but almost no impact on the outside world because the startups just weren't tackling very visible problems. Now I work for Google and I have basically zero impact on Google i.e. basically nothing that I can do will ever move the dial in terms of Google's revenue, etc. But I've worked on several projects that have had a big impact outside of Google. For example, I was on a small team (3 people) that developed the Python 2.7 runtime for App Engine (this was a while ago) and I was on another small team that implemented the server-side infrastructure for the Google Home. I also developed the screensaver for Chromecast - which is a tiny tiny project - but still millions of people love it.

filleduchaos 6y ago
> I think that point can support working for either a big company or a small company depending on what type of impact you are looking for. For a lot of people, "I want to have an impact where I work" is more about their own ego and sense of importance than about impact on other people's lives. This is not a value judgment, by the way - wanting to feel like more than just another faceless disposable drone is a valid desire.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Avoiding the alienation of labor, as Marx might put it.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  I'd argue that people conflate "having an impact" with "creating a product" rather than "having an impact" with having visible prestige. I used to think the former, but not after having experience interacting with people who want to be middle managers of middle managers. Those people want power and mostly don't care about impacting anything outside revenue increases that can be easily tied back to their name.

ping_pong 6y ago

It's a lot of fun until the company gets acquired and you get $80k for your 4 years of hard work, and the founders get $50M. Source: happened to me with a YC startup.

GFischer 6y ago
80k is a lot of money, but this must suck, especially if you feel like you were an integral part of the company's succcess - some German researchers found that compensation perception is more on "fairness" than the actual numbers, if you'd made 80k and the founders 200k, maybe you'd have been OK with it.
- Peaches4Rent 6y ago
  I know research is good, but you really don't need research to figure that out. You don't want to feel screwed over

moron4hire 6y ago

Everything you're talking about is really just small companies, not startups at all. Go to work for an established, profitable, small company. Make a good salary and have a fulfilling career.

rpastuszak 6y ago

> Main reason: it's more fun. Agreed, although things can get much less fun once you end up burned out. I think this Tweet does a decent job at describing the tradeoffs/challenges: > Typical designer mid-career crisis. > > * You want to stay hands on > * You want a relaxed, low stress environment doing “meaningful work” > * You want to maximise your earning potential > > The majority of roles you see force you to pick just two. Source: https://twitter.com/andybudd/status/1204458288118714370 https://twitter.com/andybudd/status/1204458288118714370 --- Minor digression: now, not all startups are completely hectic, option-fueled sweatshops. I'm talking about the default picture that comes to my mind when I hear this word. The most successful small startups I know are quite the opposite in fact. Well, I guess having an actual market, solving a real problem is important. (OK, "scale-ups" are the f*cking worst still as you end up with chaos and inability to get work done).

alecbenzer 6y ago

Been at 2 series A/B startups for the past ~3.5 years. It was a really fun 3-6 months followed by 3 very not fun years. My N is low, they were both non-Bay (NYC) startups, maybe some startups are fun, maybe I'm really bad at picking startups, but I think a startup's culture is often as much or more of a crapshoot than the startup's business. Was at Google before, and it was fun for only a bit as well, but definitely not as actively non-fun as my last 3 years has been.

perl4ever 6y ago

>If you're the sort of person people will come to for help with whatever comes up (and enjoy being that), start-ups can be great That's kind of odd from my perspective, because that's exactly my niche, and yet, my very first job was at a startup (of about 3 people besides me), where I was a rapidly jettisoned cog, and every since I've gone to progressively bigger and more bureaucratic organizations while seeking, I guess, less definition of my role.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> it's more fun I recommend everyone spend some part of their career in a 1 to 20-person shop, a 20 to 200-person shop and a 2,000+ person shop. (I don’t have experience in 200 to 2,000.) They are vastly different work environments. I thought I was a 1 to 20 guy; I’m not. I want enough structure to let me specialise without letting bureaucracy get in the way. Twenty to ~two hundred. Start-ups are fun, but they’re also stressful. If you get unlucky, they can also leave you materially less wealthy than you could have been with more stability.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]