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Why you should join a big company first
- pdenya 13y agoI believe big companies are a good route for most devs early in their careers but most of the bullet points about why big companies are helpful are only applicable for senior team members. For junior people almost all of these would be faster/easier to accomplish at a startup where you've negotiated for more salary/less equity.
- dicroce 13y agoCouldn't agree with this more. I worked at startups first, and I think I would have been much better off getting a decent amount of experience under my belt first.
- bmj1 13y agoThis really resonated with me, I was one of those cocky, over-achieving kids who thought I could start a company fresh out of college. Instead, I've worked in Product for 26 months and learnt some really good skills: how to write real requirements, how to manage expectations (up and down), how to negotiate, how to measure and to focus on moving the needle, how to build a GTM plan and execute against it, how to deal with fireman issues, how to develop with a SOA, the list goes on. And picked up a bunch of payments industry expertise along the way. I'm still determined to start my own business, but definitely a hell-of-a-lot more confident in my chances of success.
- seldo 13y agoYou do learn lots of good things at companies, but you can also learn bad habits -- you can acquire a predilection for long meetings, acquire a taste for political point-scoring over (more difficult, less fun) compromise, and a default position of creating process over improving communication. Those things are survival skills at a big company, but very bad for small ones. The trick is to identify which of the skills you're picking up are good or bad and using them appropriately when you strike out on your own.
- bmj1 13y agoExcellent point - I find the long meetings aren't such a difficult thing to avoid - but certainly politics and unnecessary process have no place in a startup. The other big lesson I learnt, the hidden cost of complexity, and importance of keeping things simple (I don't think you can get this until you meet the real world): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331082 (just submitted to HN, realised it hadn't been shared yet)
- namenotrequired 13y agoIt had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914209 :)
- bmj1 13y agoapologies - well it was a damn good article :)
- namenotrequired 13y agoCertainly!
- nostrademons 13y agoAre those really survival skills at a big company? I make a point about skipping meetings that aren't specifically scheduled with me (many other top engineers at my employer do), I get basically nowhere without compromise, and I usually prefer to disseminate information rather than create process.
- peter_l_downs 13y agoThe article opens with the question: > “Should I join Microsoft or a startup?” but really seems to answer the question: > "Should I join Microsoft or start a startup" which is really very different.
- avolcano 13y agoYeah, I was a bit confused by what the author meant. I can see it not being a good idea to start your own startup super early for the reasons the author lists. I don't think there's anything wrong with joining a growing startup early on, though.
- yulaow 13y agoExactly I suggest to change the title cause it is misleading.
- nostrademons 13y agoI think his audience is people who already know they want to start a startup, but aren't sure about when. And as someone who worked for 2 startups, founded one, ended up at a big company, and hope that there will eventually be another startup in my life: I agree with him. I learned a lot working for a big company, and had I known that when I started out, I probably would've been much more effective at evaluating the startup opportunities that were available to me. Having a couple years at Google or Microsoft on your resume doesn't hurt you when you're doing your own thing, and can give you a bunch of experiences that you simply can't get when you're bouncing around between startups.
- null_ptr 13y agoWhat would you say is the minimum number of years you should "put in", without looking like a job hopper?
- nostrademons 13y agoIt's heavily dependent on what you want to get out of it. From a resume POV, you want to show that you fully exploit the opportunities that are available to you, and yet also will seek out new opportunities if there are no more opportunities available to you. How long that translates to depends on how many opportunities are available to you. I would say that if you're looking for technical skills, those max out at about 18 months. If you're looking to develop leadership, sales (as an engineer) or soft skills, plan on staying a minimum of 4 years, because it takes 2 years or so before people recognize that you have the technical skills to be worth listening to, and then another couple years to actually develop the soft skills. Persistence is another hard one: if you're trying to develop persistence, you need to get put on an ambitious project, and then you need to stick it out until the moonshot succeeds, which frequently takes 3ish years. Soft intrapersonal skills like recognizing your own blind spots and learning how to compensate for them are really hard: many people will never develop these skills, but if you do it usually takes being put on a project that's outside of your comfort zone, and then seeking therapy to deal with the anxiety and avoidance this creates, which usually takes all the time required to develop the skills above plus a year or so.
- ojbyrne 13y agoThis is clearly from a business perspective. But if you're an engineer, I personally think that working for a big _software_ company early in your career is important. It's just plain easy to work on software in a small company because you don't have legacy code, existing products, existing customers, existing practices. Also you have no real way to judge whether your code is good or bad until its come under the glare of experienced engineers. Also, people shouldn't take any of Robert Scoble's advice.
- eropple 13y agoAgreed. I'm glad I left TripAdvisor when I did, but what I learned there was incredibly valuable. Working with very, very good people and learning from them early on has proven to be a really big long-term benefit. But I fucked off to a small medical-software company that I could work at while making video games, I have no taste for the work-for-my-social-startup-so-I-can-buy-a-Lotus world.
- Steko 13y agoGreat article, but as usual I'm put off by how the headline frames this as universal advice, a practice that's reached epidemic proportions in blogging. If this comment were a post on my blog, I might call it "Shooting people who frame their advice as universal and why you need to do it"
- dsugarman 13y agoif you aren't willing to take risk right out of college, not even a midlife crisis will be enough to motivate you to build something great
- pg 13y agoI used to advise people to go work for an existing company for a few years before trying to start their own, but I now think that was bad advice. It's true that you learn things working for a big company, but you learn more, faster, starting your own. A lot of people we've funded have said they wished they'd quit their corporate job sooner. I don't remember any saying they wished they'd stayed in it longer. The one point in this article that's valid is the last one. Startups take over your life. So if you want to focus on other things besides work, you're better off with a regular job than trying to start a startup.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ktd 13y ago>A lot of people we've funded have said they wished they'd quit their corporate job sooner. I don't remember any saying they wished they'd stayed in it longer. I feel like the fact that you funded these people constitutes a very significant selection effect here.
- nostrademons 13y agoYou're getting a biased sample at YC, because everybody who wishes they'd stayed at their corporate job longer stays at the corporate job. Or they wash out and go back to corporate life before applying to YC, or you sense their lack of passion for their startup at the interview stage and don't let them in. Corporate life, after all, is the "default" choice, the one that doesn't take any particular decision to make. If I had to advise people, I'd say "It's time to do a startup when you have more trouble concentrating on your job because you're distracted by your startup idea than you have trouble concentrating on your startup because you're distracted by your job." That comes at different times for different people, and it's not uncommon for someone to bounce between the two of them multiple times during their lifetime. Above all, I don't think it's a binary choice: it's silly to think in terms of "I'm a startup person" or "I'm a big company person", you should evaluate every opportunity available to you on its own merits rather than relying on your preconceptions of what you think it'll be like.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
- kemiller 13y agoYep. If I had it to do over, I'd do it that way. The options are better now, though. 15 years ago, if you wanted a big software company you had Microsoft, and, uh... Sun? Oracle? Now you have Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, not to mention the in-betweeners like Square, Dropbox, and Github. It's an incredible time to be starting off in Software. Unless you're sitting on the idea of the century (hint: probably not) it's not a bad idea to accumulate up cash, pay off debt, and build a great network.
- rlu 13y agoHow many employees does Square have?
- vincentstorme 13y agoA friend of my works at Square, I believe he said there were 600ish in the office here in San Francisco
- sergiosgc 13y agoThe time window for playing the startup game is very short. Fresh out of college you don't have as many financial responsibilities as a few years down the road. Take that financial freedom as a license to risk working at or launching a startup. You won't be able to do it when you have a mortgage, two kids to feed and clothe, and college savings on the horizon.
- mrkurt 13y agoSure you can! You can arguably do it better. :)
- dasil003 13y agoIf you learn to save and manage your money intelligently instead of getting on the consumer treadmill as soon as you score a real job then you'll be in great shape to start later. You'll have savings, connections and experience.
- ktd 13y agoNot everyone has a mortgage and kids later on in life.
- Apocryphon 13y agoWhat really is a startup, these days? A handful of hackers in a garage or a co-working space? Somewhere established but still youthful and fresh- Path? Square? Quora? Someplace much older but with a sense of dynamism and a startup ethos- Google? Apple?
- Domenic_S 13y agoIf there's a chance your paycheck won't clear, it's a startup. /I kid, I kid. Sort of.
- jaredsohn 13y agoIf you work at a startup with a decent runway worth of funding, this should never be an issue.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThis is a good metric.
- jaredsohn 13y agohttp://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
- bippi 13y agoI don't know that startup vs. big matters as much as small vs. big. If you can work for a profitable small company where you matter and you wear many many hats, you will be far better prepared to make an impact on your own if/when you do start your own company.
- nostromo 13y agoThis attitude is Seattle's m.o. and I think it's unfortunate. Recently I was talking with a CS advisor at the UW, my alma mater, and "corporate first, startup later" seems to be their default advice to students. His advice gave me the impression the UW was now a staging ground for Microsoft and Google lifers. Contrast this with Stanford's embracing of early entrepreneurship and risk-taking, and you get a sense for what makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley.
- mjn 13y agoI'd be interested in some numbers as far as Stanford goes. If we restrict it to students who don't come from already well-off families who can backstop a risky career (say, look at students from families making <$100k/yr), what proportion get a salaried job right out of school? I would be surprised if it's <90%.
- avsbst 13y ago2011-2012 Salary Survey from the Stanford Computer Forum CS/EE Undergrads Data: I received 135 responses which described 380 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups. Salary offers ranged from $65,500 to $92,000. The average salary offer was $79,360. The median salary offer was $ 78,750. About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $10,000 with an average of $3,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 with an average of $5,700. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values. Students who replied averaged about 2 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The average student who replied to the survey all had some job experience, nearly all of it through summer internships and averaged 3 summer of work. Location, scope of work, salary/benefits, environment/culture, company were the important factors in accepting the offers for the undergrads. CS/EE Masters Data: I received 150 responses which described 345 job offers. 94% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 6% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 15% of the job offers were from start-ups. Salary offers ranged from $70,000 to $105,300. The average salary offer was $98,246. The median salary offer was $87,650. About 78% of students were offered stock options. About 66% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 43% were offered relocation assistance and there others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $8,000 with an average of $2,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $35,000 with an average of $6,325. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values. Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The Masters had a little more summer experience than the undergraduates, an average of 3 summer internships. Like the undergrads, location, scope of work, company, and salary/benefits, and environment/culture seem to be the important factors for the MS grads. CS/EE PhD's Data: I received 30 responses which described 75 job offers. 80% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 20% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 30% of the job offers were from start-ups. 5% of the job offers were from a university. Salary offers ranged from $133,250 to $146,980. The average salary offer was $143,083. The median salary offer was $140,115. About 50% of students were offered stock options. About 50% of students were offered signing bonuses. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $19,500 with an average of $7,200. Relocation assistance ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 with an average of $6,500. However, they may not have reported on all the benefits they received. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values. Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The PhDs had about the same amount of summer experience as the Masters, an average of 2 summer internships and with the exception of 2 full-time experience. Like the undergraduates and masters, location, company, environment/culture, salary/benefits, scope of work seem to be the important factors when it came to accepting their job offer.
- null_ptr 13y agoI think more and more young talented developers choose to work for small cool companies or even attempt to start their own, instead of choosing to be a cog at a corporate giant. And this probably has the giants worried. It's true that corporate experience is useful, but it can also cause depression and frustration, seeing your youth fleeting while you implement inconsequential features and fix trivial defects in a mammoth project you couldn't possibly be more emotionally detached from. Get out as soon as it makes sense and not a moment later.
- beachstartup 13y agothe experience i had in large-company life (ages 21-25) gave me the confidence to dump a large amount of personal money into my startup. if i didn't know it was possible to make decent money at such an early age, i would have been scared to death. to me it was no big deal. in retrospect it was a pretty brave/risky thing to do, but it didn't feel like it at the time. money came, money went. simple as that. to a certain extent, i feel the same way now. if everything went to hell tomorrow, i could just get a job and probably earn in the neighborhood of $150k/year on salary. we, the founders, have 100% ownership of our company, which is profitable and growing at approximately 75-100% a year. 5 years spent in megacorp life versus seeking funding and giving up ownership was well worth it.
- wil421 13y agoRecently I graduated from college and decided to go for a big multinational company with employees all over the globe and customers also. The reasons I chose to do so are similar to the ones the author chose. Some drawbacks so far are the politics it takes to get a project going and the maze of people in a large corporation. Many times it takes several meetings just to find the right person to answer a question. Also having to interface with people around the globe to get sign off on things pose a time zone conflict and more hours are wasted. Sometimes the answers to the problems that I face are not known to one side of the business because they have no idea how the other side does things. There are massive silos of information and systems that make it harder to navigate than a smaller shop.
- parris 13y agoI feel like getting a job at a larger company as an engineer is easier than getting a job at a startup anyways. Sure when you start your own thing there are no rules, but any startup with a couple senior engineers that have had to train up some employees from scratch know how much work it is. If you are joining a large company then you have a better opportunity to learn from more people. Your support base is larger. Side note: who can you actually hire within your network if you join/start a startup? I thought I knew people, but every time I've ever asked if anyone wants a referral for (enter reputable startup brand here using awesome tech) I get no responses among my network. Every good engineer I know right now actually has a job that they like.
- kangaroo5383 13y agoJoining a big company has many benefits such as being able to see what leads to bureaucracy in order to avoid it, meet at least one awful manager so you will never be like that person, meet at least one amazing mentor and grow, and learn see beyond appearance to recognize truly skilled/smart people vs. overconfident fakers. I think many of these skills are necessary for building a successful company and the relationships formed at these companies are invaluable.
- Ologn 13y ago> You learn how (and how not) to run your own business—on someone else’s dime. I have worked everywhere from startups where I was hired employee #1 to Fortune 50 companies. Odds are your own business will start small. You learn about how to run your own business when you sit 20 feet from the CEO and the sales team and finance and HR and marketing etc. You don't learn as much about how to run a company when you are the company's 104th Java programmer in that particular city. Maybe at a big company you learn about their particular, complex procedure that it takes to change one line of production code.