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Big Companies vs. Startups (2015)
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoThere's only big money in meaningful ownership, which is not afforded to startup employees who are merely workers with a pittance of low liquidation preference shares far down on the cap table. And the TC "startup haircut" is a reality distortion field that makes me avoid 99.998% of startups in an employment arrangement because they want something for nothing in addition to being unlikely to survive. The truth is startups must compete with FAANG and other businesses for talent.
- spencerchubb 2y agoMy favorite idea from this post is that you can have a big impact on the company at a small startup, but you can have a bigger impact on the world at a big company. Moving the needle a little bit has a big impact
- sharkweek 2y agoDrastically missed this point when I thought I’d be able to make a huge impact at a small startup. Relative, maybe true. But now I work at a pretty big company after multiple startups, and if I improve any key metric by like 1% it’s a massive, massive impact financially (and selfishly sounds way better as an anecdote on my resume). Have enjoyed both worlds for what they are, but I definitely didn’t understand this when I was earlier in my career.
- Aeolun 2y agoMaybe, but improving something by 50% in a startup feels much better to me than improving it by 1% in a large company, even if the absolute number is ultimately higher.
- johnbakerlawyer 2y agoI'd love to join a startup if it weren't for the layoffs and the inability to get a new engineering job even if you didn't lose yours. I hate working on Windows and .NET with a passion.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoI've seen just as many layoffs at big tech because someone randomly decided X*0.9 was the proper number of employees as I've seen from startup volatility. The equity is better in big tech though.
- stackskipton 2y agoAs SRE who deals with a ton of .Net, many companies are moving to .Net Core on Linux. It's slow process but it's getting there.
- worik 2y ago> many companies are moving to .Net Core on Linux Why? Is it to port windows software to Linux? Is anybody starting software on Linux using .Net?
- cjblomqvist 2y agoAs an indication. Azure have more Linux machines running .NET than Windows machines.
- neonsunset 2y agoBecause .NET is just a superior platform especially for back-ends. It has been open-source and platform-agnostic for 8 years already.
- worik 2y ago> Because .NET is just a superior platform especially for back-ends. Superior to what?
- stackskipton 2y ago>Why? Is it to port windows software to Linux? Most of software was web-based software but ran on Windows Server because it was only platform to support .Net Framework. Once we migrated to .Net Core and could run it on Linux, we did so because .Net on Linux is faster and free. >Is anybody starting software on Linux using .Net? I mean, all greenfield for day job stuff is done now in Linux. We have several ASP.Net Services that hosted 100% on Kubernetes. I also helped out with friend startup which is using React + .Net REST API backend, runs using Docker Compose on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
- parpfish 2y ago> When I look at conferences where I find a high percentage of the papers compelling, the stuff I find to be the most interesting is pretty evenly split between big companies and academia, with the (very) occasional paper by a startup. This says less about who does interesting work and more about who publishes papers as part of their job.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoCouldn’t agree more. I’ve done loads lot interesting work at startups, but never had the time to formalize and publish it.
- parpfish 2y agoif you come up with a cool idea at a startup, you actually get to implement it. if you come up with a cool idea at a big company, you can write a paper about it and hope it gets on a 5-year roadmap.
- drewda 2y agoOr if you are at a big company and come up with an extremely hypothetical idea that includes generic enough sounding claims to potentially cover cool ideas that a startup may one day actually solve and implement, you can work with an IP lawyer to file a patent and get a plaque and/or a modest cash bonus as the reward for expanding the big company's IP portfolio.
- worik 2y agoMakes it *much* less interesting.
- rz2k 2y agoHow about informal treatises? There are a couple smart, incredibly creative people who regularly get front page here with their latest project, it does stealth for a year or a couple years, then it's later followed by an "incredible journey " announcement. Anyway, is the impression that Bell Labs was great, but not good enough for the quality of the people who built much of what we are using today, right? Maybe the bureaucracy, as well as the free time that doesn't exist in a fast moving startup, was part of the equation.
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- ankitdce 2y agoBackground: I've worked on all side of this spectrum, left Google 10 years ago and have been working in startups since then. And now founder of a startup. I agree that from a financial outcome perspective, the odds of making big in startups may not be in your favor. "Interesting work" perspective may need a bit more color. No matter if you work in a big tech or startup - majority of the work is very mundane. Even if you are working on the coolest AI big-tech or startup, you are probably not doing "exciting cutting edge" work most of the time! This is probably also why folks who join a startup looking for exciting work get bored quickly with the day-today mundaneness. Eventually what matters from the interesting work perspective is to understand what part of the work truly gives you joy - what makes you excited about getting off the bed and do great work - even the mundane one. The motivation could be - seeing your product being used by millions of users, solving a hard problem, sharing your research with the world, having a great work-life balance, or getting rich. Understanding that can help answer the question on what is right place for you. One challenge I've found in big-tech is that even if the company is doing amazing work, not everyone gets an opportunity to work on the most exciting projects.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoIn happy to do maintenance tasks at a startup for an application I built with care. It’s my baby and I want to take care of it.
- ditonal 2y agoI’m only excited to work on a product that’s my baby but by my definition , startups that I’m not la founder /exec of can’t offer that. A stranger can’t tell me how to dress my baby. So if CEO overrides me on how my product looks it’s not my baby. If you have a baby, you don’t hyper focus on just one aspect of raising it. But even the tiniest startups rarely let engineers do things like work on marketing and customer development, so it’s not my baby. A baby can only be taken away from you in extreme circumstances of neglect. But a startup job can lay me off at any time so it’s not my baby. For me the only real job that fulfills this desire is bootstrapped founder. Being a startup employee is more like being a nanny than a parent.
- __lbracket__ 2y agoAlso in a startup, you'll gain the transferrable skill of sucking VC dick while doing a one-handed hand-stand.
- batshit_beaver 2y agoYou'd think, but this is actually no longer true since the pandemic. Most startups are remote-friendly, but being remote removes a lot of the networking opportunities that used to be part of the startup experience. I feel like being an fte at a startup is an even worse proposition than before.
- robertclaus 2y agoFor most junior folks I meet, I recommend starting their career at a big company rather than a startup. In my experience, the dysfunctions at big companies are too much process (which you can still learn from) whereas the dysfunctions at startups are often a lack of process (functionally unknown unknowns). I've found it's much easier to solve process issues at a startup after working at a big company than vice versa.
- jongjong 2y agoIMO, startups rarely have a process issue. They have a management issue. Process is bureaucracy. It adds no value but it helps to minimize the harms of over hiring which is something all big companies do in their quest for job creation.
- dijksterhuis 2y agoI dunno. In my experience, it depends. Like, $PREVIOUS_COMPANY was a small shop. Not many customers, not many users. Handful of customer product deployments. Even so, releases/deploys were broken most of the time. First thing I did after I got responsibility was add dev/staging with an automated and clearly documented release process from PR -> Prod, including steps for QA etc. Nothing stupidly onerous. Customers complaints stopped almost overnight. People internally knew what to expect when it came to changes being released. People could see when things were released and where etc. People knew why their work might not be propagated out yet. Higher ups knew why things might take longer and why that was beneficial. We could also break down some very simple stats about how deployments/releases were going based on git tags. Applying the limitations of a process can be useful when things have been going wrong, repeatedly, in exactly the same way. However… there were absolutely cases where adding a process didn’t make sense and would have just been adding a process for adding a process sake. For example, ee didn’t need tickets for every PR. If it was a ten minute fix just do it and explain it in the PR, that’s good enough.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoI think it all depends on your manager, obviously. I’ve had good managers and mentors at startups. I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoI have mostly seen people getting what they were getting in cash+stock in big company as cash in a startup or a little bit less. As someone who has worked in companies of all the sizes, this post is not only incorrect but also written with a intention. The only thing that's true is working in average startup is quite worse than working in average big company. But even then, it definitely becomes clear in a year or two and you can leave it. On a long enough horizon, it doesn't matter if you get bit less earning for a year.
- bjornsing 2y agoDepressing to realize that ten years later opportunities like these are still nowhere to be seen in Europe… (Yes, I know, you can make decent money working for Google in Zurich. But that’s an absolutely tiny fraction of the European job market.)
- Aeolun 2y agoAverage salaries have risen meteorically in the past 10 years though. Now instead of €45k per year you can expect to earn €90k!
- bandrami 2y agoThere's almost no amount of money that would get me to work for a company larger than Dunbar's number. We all have our preferences, and mine are very clear here.
- chse_cake 2y agoI joined the startup I work for because it’s exciting and not because it will be valuable ( statistically it’s a lottery ticket ). We have a small team and the problems we solve are very complex and challenging. the kind of things I can do here, exposed me to learnings and knowledge I would never get from a bigger company. Big tech derisks most problems they solve because of specialized people helping solve specific problems but your opportunities to learn things across the spectrum are lower. But milage may vary. I work for a startup where everyone is really experienced/wise and have worked in big tech too. But choosing and finding a good startup is a lot more work then cracking LC and working at a big tech company.
- bcstyle 2y agofor one, assuming it takes 5 yrs after graduation for an average engineer to reach senior at a tier-1 company (esp. Google) is simply untrue in today's environment. Besides the point that promotion is highly dependent on manager, team, org and timing (think about reorgs and project cancellation/deprioritizations), the average timeline for promotion nowadays takes longer than a few years ago.
- calderwoodra 2y agoYou're just wrong, at least w.r.t. Google. Folks who are good and destined for senior in 4 years do not wait for a good manager/team/project - they seek them out and take their career into their own hands.
- bcstyle 2y agodidn't I put "average" in the comment already? (and to be fair, this is the group the post was talking about when making the calculation). I know and have helped some brilliant engs at google reach l5 with much shorter time frame, but it's not the norm. given you seem to be from google, there are various stats w.r.t promotion timeline that offers more insights about the average case internally
- DeathArrow 2y ago>pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don't really make sense to me It doesn't make sense to me, too. Isn't market and competition global?
- BirdieNZ 2y agoNo, even in 2024. I'm in New Zealand; there are a handful of big tech companies here, and they all offer compensation approximately the same (maybe on the upper end) as other New Zealand tech companies. There aren't that many remote jobs for US companies, and often they're also trying to save money by offshoring. Why don't the local NZ tech companies offer more, though? Mostly because they don't have the same scale, so the revenue per employee is much lower. FAANG (as in, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) make something like $1.5-$3 million USD per (white collar) employee (excluding Amazon warehouse workers). Compare this to some well-known NZ tech companies (some of which even operate internationally!) Xero has revenue per employee of ~$150k USD. Pushpay maybe $200k USD revenue per employee. Datacom has revenue per employee of ~$130k USD. It would bankrupt these companies to offer anything like what FAANG can offer, because they simply don't have the scale and revenue per employee to do so. Tech companies specifically have the rare ability to hugely leverage relatively few employees into huge revenue due to scaling, but only if you actually manage to scale. Most tech companies (probably even ones in the USA) don't have the kind of global scale and presence of the big tech companies.
- DeathArrow 2y agoBeside earnings, I'd be thinking about other things when working somewhere: - the culture of the place and the vibe - how boring / interesting is the work - would I be able to work on things / with technologies that interests me - would I be able to level up in that company - would I be able to learn new things or I will stagnate - how a position at company X will impact my future employment - would it allow me to build useful connection And probably there's much more but I don't remember now.
- aayushdutt 2y agoPaste this in the browser console to make it readable: $('body').style = `background: rgb(33, 33, 33); width: 57vw; margin: auto; line-height: 1.5; font-family: sans-serif; color: #f1f1f1; font-size: 18px;`
- throway_whisblo 2y ago[dead]