3 ms·

Bigger paycheck, better benefits, better job security, less and more predictable hours, access to amazing tech.

kristopolous 12y ago
Oh yes, what I call the "family argument" (work rules are different if you have a spouse and kid). I always forget about that one. Makes perfect sense. Sorry about that - it was pretty obvious.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  You also have the time budget to do things correctly, unlike start ups.
  - zem 12y ago
    that was definitely one of my motivations for joining a large company.
    - kristopolous 12y ago
      I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but does that honestly come through? I routinely turn down offers from the big players because I imagine once I'm in, it's going to be like the movie Brazil. I've worked for three large companies as a non-contractor - and I mean maybe I just didn't have the right title but I found the following (in all three): * I was prohibited from working on broken things that I was capable of fixing but I wasn't assigned to - even if nobody else was addressing them ... Almost as if there's some internal taxonomy model which strictly defines my role as X and only X. Having things lay broken is so frustrating to me. * Pointing out that projects are on a steady course for derailment and failure was discouraged. Recommending any fix whatsoever was completely a prohibitive. * Questions like "what does the client want?" or "Can I ask the client a question" always came back with things like "That's not your job". * Proposals to big payoffs for small LOEs that would substantially improve the project always got shot down. Probably because the "from" field of the email was wrong. * Creativity, innovation, and working on big new problems was incredibly discouraged. The concept that I have more than just one ability appears either cognitively impossible or structurally incompatible. I got a nice paycheck - the work was relatively stable and secure, and everything was running smoothly --- but I was completely wasting years of my life. On the contrary, all the small companies I've worked for have been the exact opposite. It's not that I necessary want to do contract negotiations and SOW writeups, but it gives clarity and purpose that I was just unable to get from the larger firms. I mean again, maybe it's because my resume doesn't say "PhD, Stanford" on it - I don't know. Has your experience been dramatically different?
      - freehunter 12y ago
        >I was prohibited from working on broken things that I was capable of fixing but I wasn't assigned to - even if nobody else was addressing them Coming from the other side, that's frustrating to me too. I was working with a broken tool that the vendor wanted $200,000 to fix. I hacked together a shell script over the course of a few weeks that eased my pain, but required I work in a Linux virtual machine. I would have loved to port it to something that works on Windows like Python, but it was just glue over awk and sed and trim, and I have no idea how to replace those in any other language. But you know who did have that knowledge? Our resident programmer. But every time I brought it up to the boss that he should work on it and get it running on Windows, the answer was "he has more important things to do, and if he has time to work on your side project, he needs more work to do". Literally. And in the next breath, the boss said "we need that script to follow our programming practices" aka Windows and Java. I'm not a damn programmer! But we do have one on the team!
        mahyarm 12y ago
        Don't bring it up to the boss, he was probably trying protect his 'human resource turf' to meet his goals. He is evaluated on the performance & management of his team and your request was probably against that evaluation. Try talking to the programmer directly or maybe his boss and bring it up in a 'for the entire company' way.
      - zem 12y ago
        i can't speak for all big companies, but i'm happy at google, and a large part of that is that everyone i work with cares about doing things the right way, and is willing to budget the time to do so. for another datapoint, my girlfriend works at salesforce, and she is not just supported but encouraged to work on innovative projects and big new problems. when i was working at startups one of my largest sources of stress was having to constantly rush shoddy products out of the door because people were obsessed with beating some real or hypothetical competitor to market, never mind that any clients we did get to install our products either gave up early or tied us up with loads of support issues that we again had to fix on a quick-release, ad-hoc basis rather than systematically and correctly. incidentally my resume says "phd dropout", so if the lack of a big-name university on your phd makes you disinclined to apply to places like google or salesforce, you should at least reconsider. in my experience these companies care a lot less about that sort of branding than they possibly did in the past.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  Startups are stressful whether you have a family or not. It's understanding why someone wouldn't want to be involved. For better or worse, if you're not interested in making waves, bigger companies usually offer nicer work environment for their employees. There's less stress, less drama, and more comfort. Emotions are much milder and perks are much more significant.

Oh yes, what I call the "family argument" (work rules are different if you have a spouse and kid). I always forget about that one. Makes perfect sense. Sorry about that - it was pretty obvious.

mahyarm 12y ago
You also have the time budget to do things correctly, unlike start ups.
- zem 12y ago
  that was definitely one of my motivations for joining a large company.
  - kristopolous 12y ago
    I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but does that honestly come through? I routinely turn down offers from the big players because I imagine once I'm in, it's going to be like the movie Brazil. I've worked for three large companies as a non-contractor - and I mean maybe I just didn't have the right title but I found the following (in all three): * I was prohibited from working on broken things that I was capable of fixing but I wasn't assigned to - even if nobody else was addressing them ... Almost as if there's some internal taxonomy model which strictly defines my role as X and only X. Having things lay broken is so frustrating to me. * Pointing out that projects are on a steady course for derailment and failure was discouraged. Recommending any fix whatsoever was completely a prohibitive. * Questions like "what does the client want?" or "Can I ask the client a question" always came back with things like "That's not your job". * Proposals to big payoffs for small LOEs that would substantially improve the project always got shot down. Probably because the "from" field of the email was wrong. * Creativity, innovation, and working on big new problems was incredibly discouraged. The concept that I have more than just one ability appears either cognitively impossible or structurally incompatible. I got a nice paycheck - the work was relatively stable and secure, and everything was running smoothly --- but I was completely wasting years of my life. On the contrary, all the small companies I've worked for have been the exact opposite. It's not that I necessary want to do contract negotiations and SOW writeups, but it gives clarity and purpose that I was just unable to get from the larger firms. I mean again, maybe it's because my resume doesn't say "PhD, Stanford" on it - I don't know. Has your experience been dramatically different?
    - freehunter 12y ago
      >I was prohibited from working on broken things that I was capable of fixing but I wasn't assigned to - even if nobody else was addressing them Coming from the other side, that's frustrating to me too. I was working with a broken tool that the vendor wanted $200,000 to fix. I hacked together a shell script over the course of a few weeks that eased my pain, but required I work in a Linux virtual machine. I would have loved to port it to something that works on Windows like Python, but it was just glue over awk and sed and trim, and I have no idea how to replace those in any other language. But you know who did have that knowledge? Our resident programmer. But every time I brought it up to the boss that he should work on it and get it running on Windows, the answer was "he has more important things to do, and if he has time to work on your side project, he needs more work to do". Literally. And in the next breath, the boss said "we need that script to follow our programming practices" aka Windows and Java. I'm not a damn programmer! But we do have one on the team!
      - mahyarm 12y ago
        Don't bring it up to the boss, he was probably trying protect his 'human resource turf' to meet his goals. He is evaluated on the performance & management of his team and your request was probably against that evaluation. Try talking to the programmer directly or maybe his boss and bring it up in a 'for the entire company' way.
    - zem 12y ago
      i can't speak for all big companies, but i'm happy at google, and a large part of that is that everyone i work with cares about doing things the right way, and is willing to budget the time to do so. for another datapoint, my girlfriend works at salesforce, and she is not just supported but encouraged to work on innovative projects and big new problems. when i was working at startups one of my largest sources of stress was having to constantly rush shoddy products out of the door because people were obsessed with beating some real or hypothetical competitor to market, never mind that any clients we did get to install our products either gave up early or tied us up with loads of support issues that we again had to fix on a quick-release, ad-hoc basis rather than systematically and correctly. incidentally my resume says "phd dropout", so if the lack of a big-name university on your phd makes you disinclined to apply to places like google or salesforce, you should at least reconsider. in my experience these companies care a lot less about that sort of branding than they possibly did in the past.
cookiecaper 12y ago
Startups are stressful whether you have a family or not. It's understanding why someone wouldn't want to be involved. For better or worse, if you're not interested in making waves, bigger companies usually offer nicer work environment for their employees. There's less stress, less drama, and more comfort. Emotions are much milder and perks are much more significant.