3 ms·

Deciding between soul-leeching BigCos and life-consuming start-ups is a false dichotomy. There are thousands of companies in the valley that fall between these

Deciding between soul-leeching BigCos and life-consuming start-ups is a false dichotomy. There are thousands of companies in the valley that fall between these two extremes. Companies with 50-500 employees, most of which you probably never heard of. True, there's no fame and glory working for them. If you're a vain person, not being able to reply "at this hip startup" or "at Google" when people ask you where you work can be a blow to one's ego. But those medium sized companies pay market rate, and most of them put a reasonable workload on you. I'm at one of those companies, and there are times where I feel a bit like a second rate developer, but I work less than 40 hours a week, and I still get my six figure salary, plus 20+ days of vacation that I can actually take.

michaelochurch 14y ago
I'm starting to think that the solution is to let VC-istan rot and focus on the mid-growth space: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macleod-17-building-the-future-and-financing-lifestyle-businesses/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macle... Size isn't the big issue. The reason VC-istan jobs tend to be so rotten is that the companies are red-ocean marketing experiments and technology is a sideshow. It's hard to grow at the 200%/year rate that "ooh, shiny" VCs expect without shitting all over your culture. Mid-growth (10 to 40% per year) is the future. What's the best way to find those 20-100 person mid-growth startups? I'm looking for machine learning and functional programming, but I'm old enough (29) that I don't give a third of a rat's ass about "prestige" or "hipness". Here's my observation: companies tend either to be r-strategic or K-selective (in the evolutionary biology sense). The mid-growth, quality-oriented companies are K-strategists. The get-big-or-die gambits and the MegaCorps are r-stragetists. Now, the major problem in marketing yourself to the mid-growth K-strategists is that they hire slowly, meaning that you need to be an exact match for a role they need right now. There isn't the aspirational "draw in talent and figure out what to do with it later" hiring of r-strategists. I don't think the mid-growth economy is fleshed out enough to provide the job security of VC-istan disposable-company job-hopping.

michaelochurch 14y ago

I'm starting to think that the solution is to let VC-istan rot and focus on the mid-growth space: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macleod-17-building-the-future-and-financing-lifestyle-businesses/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macle... Size isn't the big issue. The reason VC-istan jobs tend to be so rotten is that the companies are red-ocean marketing experiments and technology is a sideshow. It's hard to grow at the 200%/year rate that "ooh, shiny" VCs expect without shitting all over your culture. Mid-growth (10 to 40% per year) is the future. What's the best way to find those 20-100 person mid-growth startups? I'm looking for machine learning and functional programming, but I'm old enough (29) that I don't give a third of a rat's ass about "prestige" or "hipness". Here's my observation: companies tend either to be r-strategic or K-selective (in the evolutionary biology sense). The mid-growth, quality-oriented companies are K-strategists. The get-big-or-die gambits and the MegaCorps are r-stragetists. Now, the major problem in marketing yourself to the mid-growth K-strategists is that they hire slowly, meaning that you need to be an exact match for a role they need right now. There isn't the aspirational "draw in talent and figure out what to do with it later" hiring of r-strategists. I don't think the mid-growth economy is fleshed out enough to provide the job security of VC-istan disposable-company job-hopping.