12 ms·

Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

60 points by mohanrajn84 12y ago

bootload 12y ago
"Y Combinator usually invests $120 thousand in its startups, but Altman revealed during the Q-and-A that they have plans for helping startups requiring more money. “We have some news coming on that," different type(s) of startups being funded?
- brudgers 12y ago
  Or just a structure that better accommodates capital intensive business. There are markets where there's no MVP, with the emphasis on viable a couple of people can hack up in a year because the list of minimum necessary attributes is too large. Under the current structure, raising capital can swamp developing a product when the minimum skin is say $12 million even eating ramen. Some businesses require 100 staff and not requiring the founders to sell unrealistic visions of equity turning into wealth compensating for below market salaries is a way to build better company culture when the work demands 35 or 60 people.
- dmritard96 12y ago
  hardware
jgalt212 12y ago
> Students were also encouraged to steer clear of large companies. Maybe because it's cheaper for Sam's YC companies to poach talent from Acme Co. rather than Google or Apple.
zwrose 12y ago
While large companies have their weaknesses, there's also a lot that can be learned working at one for a couple of years out of school before jumping into a startup. Even if the actual role isn't as "fulfilling," there is a lot more access to experience and wisdom that can be a lot harder to come by in a startup environment.
zelos 12y ago
Got to keep the supply of young, cheap, idealistic and naive new developers going somehow ;-) /am a boring developer at a boring big company
- static_noise 12y ago
  How is life having a secure check coming every month?
  - thirdtruck 12y ago
    They're still a happy fantasy, given how easy it is to let go here in the States.
    - UK-AL 12y ago
      The only real security is the amount of cash in your bank account. Startups aren't good at that either, unless you hit the jackpot.
      - thirdtruck 12y ago
        I agree. Straight-up cash provides much more security. Case in point: Think of all the pensioners who discovered that their retirement income -- money taken out of their paycheck -- had vanished into smoke these last several years.
- willyk 12y ago
  It's all a question of fit/priorities, and doing what's best for you at that point in your career/life.
gaius 12y ago
Advice from a VC is offered for their benefit, not yours.
- tonyedgecombe 12y ago
  Not just from VCs, I could have saved my self a lot of anguish if I had realised this when I was younger.
  - arthurjj 12y ago
    "Cui bono" is a popular phrase for a reason
  - graycat 12y ago
    Old advice: "Always look for the hidden agenda".
- smt88 12y ago
  That doesn't mean it's bad advice. Car insurance companies put out ads telling people to wear their seatbelts. It's not because they care what happens to you. If that were the case, other companies would probably have ads like that too. The insurance companies do it because a few million spent on ads that prevent 2 or 3 major accidents could easily save them some money.
rjdagost 12y ago
Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away.
- themartorana 12y ago
  Yup - also, the business experience I gained at a multi-national was invaluable when it came to running my own company - both for some "how the world works" basic understanding (IANAL but can grok B2B contracts like a champ) and a solid grasp of what bad practices don't really hurt a giant corporation with mass and momentum, but could sink a young company very quickly.
- brudgers 12y ago
  I don't disagree about self interest playing a role, consciously or unconsciously. But there is some of the tent revialist's 'true belief' in the sermonizer and most likely many of the audience are 'already saved.' The be startup entrepreneur meme is so prevalent that there could easily have been people in the audience who planned on applying to YC while filling out their MIT application. In other words, I suspect the audience was largely self selected. And in fairness to Altman he wasn't pitching the rainbows and unicorns to people in the middle of the bell curve. MIT students are a cohort statistically more likely to succeed in Silcon Valley tech culture than Alabama bumpkins at cow colleges. But again, I agree there's self interest involved. That's also true for Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft recruitment.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    > "Alabama bumpkins at cow colleges" I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, exactly, but I am sure that I don't like it. We have enough problems with ageism and sexism in this industry, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at regionalism.
vasilipupkin 12y ago
Perhaps I am wrong, but this seems like horrible advice. For example, while working for a big co, you could come across a problem that you want to solve with a startup. If you are a kid just out of college, you probably don't have enough experience to work on anything but a consumer facing startup - and those have very low odds of success, despite a few big unicorns we all know about
- smt88 12y ago
  I don't think you can make a blanket statement about it, but there is a good reason to work for a small company or startup: you get to write more of the stack. At large companies, you often end up working on a tiny piece of a module, and then you work you way up. You don't learn much that way. There are companies that try to give you more control, but no one is going to throw you into the deep end at those companies. That's exactly what you need if you want to turn a bunch of academic training into practical experience.
  - foobarian 12y ago
    > At large companies, you often end up working on a tiny piece of a module, and then you work you way up. You don't learn much that way. At large companies, you end up working on a stack written by someone out of college 10 years ago when the company was a startup, cursing them and wondering wtf they were thinking. :-) Maybe the learning there is a meta-lesson instead of some direct technology. Understanding that a large codebase has a life of its own; how to resist rewriting stuff if it doesn't benefit the business; how to test legacy code; etc.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    I've worked in both. They're different skillsets, and they will both serve you well. At a big company, you write a tiny piece of software that has to fit a number of constraints that have evolved over years. Things like "This has to work in Chinese" and "This has to work in Arabic" and "This can't be O(N^2), you'll burn a million dollars in CPUs" and "This will crash the whole server if something goes wrong" and "This is a race condition. You're going to have a helluva time debugging that" and "Nobody else will be able to read this in a month". It can take you years of trial and error to amass that experience on your own, or you may never if (as is likely) your startup never takes off. If, ten years into your career, all you know how to do is cobble open-source programs together, you have a big problem on your hands. At a startup, you get to build the whole stack yourself. You face problems like "What database should I use to store this data? How can I measure and improve its performance? What's the best front-end technology to deliver the data to the client? How do I setup my build?" So you learn how to, very quickly, get something up and running from nothing. If, ten years into your career, all you know how to do is make little tweaks to already-existing programs, you have a big problem on your hands. You really need both, but I would recommend doing the big company first. (Disclaimer: I did it the other way around, doing startups first.) Why? Because the big company also gives you a brand-name boost and some context about what decision-makers in the industry consider important, which makes it much more likely you'll pick a good startup when you move to do that. While if you screw up in picking an initial startup, it can be very hard to un-do that and qualify yourself for big-company jobs later in life.
outworlder 12y ago
Maybe the 'MIT students' are a different enough population that the advice has to be specifically tailored for them. Somehow, I doubt it. I think the average MIT graduate is just as naive (and inexperienced) as graduates from other universities. If so, then most should join big, established companies. Startup life is not for everyone. Some people might do better (even financially) staying at more stable companies. There's nothing wrong with that.
- rianjs 12y ago
  > Some people might do better (even financially) staying at more stable companies. I would venture to say that MOST people will do better financially if they stay at a large, established company. A new grad might think their 0.05% equity stake will make them rich, but most startups fail, and even the ones that don't are rarely homeruns. Established companies with deep pockets often pay better, and grant their employees RSUs. RSUs are much easier to cash out if the company is publicly traded. I was recently granted a non-trivial pile of RSUs. Enough for a down-payment on a house in the Boston area. That's better than I'm going to do with 99% of startups, and my salary is reflective of a mature company with deep pockets. (Another thing startups often lack.) In many ways it's the best of both worlds. And if I leave? It'll be for another large company (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) that'll make me whole for anything I leave unvested on the table. Good luck with that at a startup--liquidity matters. I'm not alone -- I have friends at Apple and Google. Their RSUs vesting layers are crazy. For one friend, it's 70% of his gross salary, and he's not what we would call "senior management". He'd be stupid to join a startup.
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    well, to be fair, we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great and a small chance of a huge payoff. Not everyone is suited for this sort of thing. But even among those who are, I think they would benefit from working for a big co for some amount of time before embarking on their startup venture
    - 12y ago
digitalzombie 12y ago
Start ups are not for everybody. It's horrible and most of the time they will work you to death because it's a "start up" environment. They will try to get you to invest as much time of your life as possible. Do not trade your life for money. I thought you could learn new skills in start up because they usually are lean in money so you end up wearing multiple hats. That's good until you realize that most of the people that is in charge of technology are full of it. They buy in MongoDB hype or NodeJS hype without fully understanding the trade off. You're better off learning new skills on your own time. If you don't like big company cause of their crazy interview such as Google you can always try medium size companies.
chrisbennet 12y ago
Large companies have more mentorship possibilities but in my experience, small companies are a lot more fun to work for. Would you rather work on a part of a big product or create a complete product yourself/with another engineer?
- rianjs 12y ago
  I can confidently say a few things about working at a big company: - I have created whole products from scratch by myself with my tech lead doing code reviews - I have worked on "legacy" code as well I find both satisfying for different reasons. Legacy code has a bad rep, but "legacy code" should really be called "valuable code", because it has already demonstrated its market value. It has nothing to prove. I've learned things from reading legacy code: little stuff like language features, and bigger stuff like architectural tips. Both are different, both can be rewarding. Greenfield isn't synonymous with better or more fun. I personally enjoy being the commando[1] (with infantry tendencies as well), but the other stuff can be good, too, and we each have different preferences. That said, being the "commando" can be exhausting, and I wouldn't want to do it all the time. [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/
oskarth 12y ago
Are YC biased? Of course they are. That doesn't mean they aren't right. Paul Graham used to think working for a big company for a few years was a good thing [for someone who at some point wants to start a company], but he has since (5-10 years ago) changed his mind. In an essay I wrote a couple years ago I advised graduating seniors to work for a couple years for another company before starting their own. I'd modify that now. Work for another company if you want to, but only for a small one, and if you want to start your own startup, go ahead. (http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html) I encourage you to read the whole essay if you want to understand why they say what they say, rather than cynically dismiss it as bias.
falcolas 12y ago
This is very seductive advice: don't become a cog, become a shining star. Jump right into the role which gives you the responsibility you deserve. Except, CS graduates have no idea what it means to work in a corporate environment. I didn't - I learned about Big-O notation, binary sorts and searches, and lots of algorithms. I didn't learn how to navigate corporate politics, PCI or HIPPA regulations, the reasons security really matters, or how to write software which needs to survive for years past the deadline. Perhaps even worse, recent college graduates going straight to startups are unlikely to find mentors to work alongside; they end up working without safety net, someone who can help soften the impact of their inexperience and facilitate catching bugs when the cost to fix them is 1x, instead of 100x. I didn't know how to take critiques of my code as critiques of my code, not my baby. If they're successful, and their company hires people with experience at growing businesses, their world will be turned upside down as their projects are taken away from them and they are relegated to smaller and smaller roles (or worse, be promoted to management). They will go from being the star to a cog, and many will find it hard to accept; it will slow the company's growth and make the transition more painful than it needs to be. I once had to walk a developer from a 4 year old startup through the hows and whys of separating variables from code. They knew and had experienced the pain points of having hard-coded values everywhere, but were unaware of the best practices and didn't know where to start. I keep saying "cog" as if it's a bad thing. It's really not - the machine can't run without someone filling the role you fill. And yes, you are somewhat replaceable, but you knew this. That replacability is why we can job hop the way we do. And if you're willing to accept this, you can make the most out of it. Learn from your betters, hone your skills by mentoring others, replace yourself with code, and move on to something more challenging. Or, once you have the experience, create/join a startup, understanding what the future holds if you succeed.
lionspaw 12y ago
I'm not someone that drinks the startup koolaid by any means, but I agree with them that working for a large company has very limited value if your goal is to start your own company. I worked for one of the biggest tech companies as a developer, and I learned no real skills in my tenure there. My responsibilities were just so narrowly focused and any knowledge I gained was specific to that codebase, which is not useful at all to potential future work. The sad thing is, the best way to increase efficiency at that job was knowing the existing codebase better. I chose to quit instead.
- hugs 12y ago
  The biggest benefit of a stable paycheck for a few years at a medium-sized or big corp is building your cash reserves. Even if you learn nothing in that job, having 1-2 years of savings in the bank before quitting and starting your startup will give you leverage when dealing with investors early on. You won't need to take angel or VC money to get started.
bsbechtel 12y ago
Not really looking to get into a debate here, but for those being critical of Sam, PG more or less said the same thing (to an MIT audience): http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html
deepGem 12y ago
Actually, does anyone have data on the average student debt of MIT grads. To start a company, Even with a million $ seed, the founders can take home around 80k. Will that be sufficient to afford the monthly debt payments ? This might be a huge factor for grads while making the choice to startup or join a big company. A large company can at least guarantee a consistent loan repayment schedule. It's immensely difficult to start a company with a large debt hanging above your head.
- davmre 12y ago
  I don't know the numbers for MIT specifically, but most top-tier (Ivy-equivalent) private colleges have very generous financial aid, and consequentially very low levels of student debt. It's when you go down to the second tier and below that student debt becomes a serious problem, as lots of schools try to match the Ivy experience but without the benefit of a large old-money endowment to subsidize financial aid.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bane 12y ago
Something I've learned from working at tiny startups (the smallest was 4 people) AND mega corps (the largest had north of 100,000 people) AND everything in between is how to organize differently sized groups of people. I keep hearing about founders who are only good during fast-growth periods, then when the company gets big they have to move on. I think you'll find that most of those founders have no experience working in large organizations and simply don't understand how to organize people at growing scale. They want to hold on to the feel of when the company was exploding and had a 12 person flat org structure. But that's because a 12 person flat org structure is easy. Those people will run themselves, and in a fast growth environment are too busy to play politics and form informal power structures. But now the company is at 100 people, 200 people, 1,000 people. No about of book reading is going to get you prepared for how this company should run. Not all that long ago, I worked at a startup that was under rapid growth, but was struggling to keep head count above 100. A few months in, I realized it's because the founders simply had no clue how to run a company at that size. It turn, it created a bad work environment and turnover was so high that they couldn't even hire their way to growth. I constantly compared it to my own experience, where I ran one task on one program in one company and it grew from 4 to 80 people under me at one point. I learned some hard lessons during that time, but those are lessons I'm able to apply now wherever I go. To me, the growth issues were obvious and easy to fix. To the startup founders they were a continuous enigma, unyielding to their attempts at fixing with increasing benefits packages and lip service. I too finally got tired of the stubborn flailing and eventually left. To cultivate and develop the skills needed to deal with differently sized groups, you have to work in those environments and learn how to do it. Okay, maybe you don't have to, sometimes you can fake it with enough investment money and a good executive recruiter your investors force you to take on. You can hire suits who have that experience as buffer layer, professionals who do have that experience and can handle a big company. That's what Zuck did and that's what lots of successful startups do.
lawnchair_larry 12y ago
Interestingly, even Sam was not really a successful founder. He found success after he was hired by YC.
ninebrows 12y ago
I think joining a startup can help you gain technical knowledge. If a student is motivated money wise right from the college, he/she would definitely opt for big name companies. Ofcourse, this varies across geographies especially in terms of money.
dang 12y ago
PG used to tell students to work for an established company for a while after college, then start a startup later with that experience under their belt. After a few years of YC, he changed that to: if you want to start a startup you should just start a startup. (Pretty sure he still makes an exception for finishing school though.) I don't recall him saying that experience at BigCo was bad, just that it turned out not to prepare people for startups after all, so if a startup is what you want to do then you should just plunge in and figure it out. Experience at BigCo can be a mixed bag. I worked for two years at one, and it took me perhaps 10 years after that before I stopped noticing bad habits in myself that I'd acquired there—and I still wince at the memories. But the experience was valuable in one way: I learned a lot about users and their problems.

60 points by mohanrajn84 12y ago

"Y Combinator usually invests $120 thousand in its startups, but Altman revealed during the Q-and-A that they have plans for helping startups requiring more money. “We have some news coming on that," different type(s) of startups being funded?

brudgers 12y ago
Or just a structure that better accommodates capital intensive business. There are markets where there's no MVP, with the emphasis on viable a couple of people can hack up in a year because the list of minimum necessary attributes is too large. Under the current structure, raising capital can swamp developing a product when the minimum skin is say $12 million even eating ramen. Some businesses require 100 staff and not requiring the founders to sell unrealistic visions of equity turning into wealth compensating for below market salaries is a way to build better company culture when the work demands 35 or 60 people.
dmritard96 12y ago
hardware

jgalt212 12y ago

> Students were also encouraged to steer clear of large companies. Maybe because it's cheaper for Sam's YC companies to poach talent from Acme Co. rather than Google or Apple.

zwrose 12y ago

While large companies have their weaknesses, there's also a lot that can be learned working at one for a couple of years out of school before jumping into a startup. Even if the actual role isn't as "fulfilling," there is a lot more access to experience and wisdom that can be a lot harder to come by in a startup environment.

zelos 12y ago

Got to keep the supply of young, cheap, idealistic and naive new developers going somehow ;-) /am a boring developer at a boring big company

static_noise 12y ago
How is life having a secure check coming every month?
- thirdtruck 12y ago
  They're still a happy fantasy, given how easy it is to let go here in the States.
  - UK-AL 12y ago
    The only real security is the amount of cash in your bank account. Startups aren't good at that either, unless you hit the jackpot.
    - thirdtruck 12y ago
      I agree. Straight-up cash provides much more security. Case in point: Think of all the pensioners who discovered that their retirement income -- money taken out of their paycheck -- had vanished into smoke these last several years.
willyk 12y ago
It's all a question of fit/priorities, and doing what's best for you at that point in your career/life.

gaius 12y ago

Advice from a VC is offered for their benefit, not yours.

tonyedgecombe 12y ago
Not just from VCs, I could have saved my self a lot of anguish if I had realised this when I was younger.
- arthurjj 12y ago
  "Cui bono" is a popular phrase for a reason
- graycat 12y ago
  Old advice: "Always look for the hidden agenda".
smt88 12y ago
That doesn't mean it's bad advice. Car insurance companies put out ads telling people to wear their seatbelts. It's not because they care what happens to you. If that were the case, other companies would probably have ads like that too. The insurance companies do it because a few million spent on ads that prevent 2 or 3 major accidents could easily save them some money.

rjdagost 12y ago

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away.

themartorana 12y ago
Yup - also, the business experience I gained at a multi-national was invaluable when it came to running my own company - both for some "how the world works" basic understanding (IANAL but can grok B2B contracts like a champ) and a solid grasp of what bad practices don't really hurt a giant corporation with mass and momentum, but could sink a young company very quickly.
brudgers 12y ago
I don't disagree about self interest playing a role, consciously or unconsciously. But there is some of the tent revialist's 'true belief' in the sermonizer and most likely many of the audience are 'already saved.' The be startup entrepreneur meme is so prevalent that there could easily have been people in the audience who planned on applying to YC while filling out their MIT application. In other words, I suspect the audience was largely self selected. And in fairness to Altman he wasn't pitching the rainbows and unicorns to people in the middle of the bell curve. MIT students are a cohort statistically more likely to succeed in Silcon Valley tech culture than Alabama bumpkins at cow colleges. But again, I agree there's self interest involved. That's also true for Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft recruitment.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  > "Alabama bumpkins at cow colleges" I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, exactly, but I am sure that I don't like it. We have enough problems with ageism and sexism in this industry, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at regionalism.

vasilipupkin 12y ago

Perhaps I am wrong, but this seems like horrible advice. For example, while working for a big co, you could come across a problem that you want to solve with a startup. If you are a kid just out of college, you probably don't have enough experience to work on anything but a consumer facing startup - and those have very low odds of success, despite a few big unicorns we all know about

smt88 12y ago
I don't think you can make a blanket statement about it, but there is a good reason to work for a small company or startup: you get to write more of the stack. At large companies, you often end up working on a tiny piece of a module, and then you work you way up. You don't learn much that way. There are companies that try to give you more control, but no one is going to throw you into the deep end at those companies. That's exactly what you need if you want to turn a bunch of academic training into practical experience.
- foobarian 12y ago
  > At large companies, you often end up working on a tiny piece of a module, and then you work you way up. You don't learn much that way. At large companies, you end up working on a stack written by someone out of college 10 years ago when the company was a startup, cursing them and wondering wtf they were thinking. :-) Maybe the learning there is a meta-lesson instead of some direct technology. Understanding that a large codebase has a life of its own; how to resist rewriting stuff if it doesn't benefit the business; how to test legacy code; etc.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I've worked in both. They're different skillsets, and they will both serve you well. At a big company, you write a tiny piece of software that has to fit a number of constraints that have evolved over years. Things like "This has to work in Chinese" and "This has to work in Arabic" and "This can't be O(N^2), you'll burn a million dollars in CPUs" and "This will crash the whole server if something goes wrong" and "This is a race condition. You're going to have a helluva time debugging that" and "Nobody else will be able to read this in a month". It can take you years of trial and error to amass that experience on your own, or you may never if (as is likely) your startup never takes off. If, ten years into your career, all you know how to do is cobble open-source programs together, you have a big problem on your hands. At a startup, you get to build the whole stack yourself. You face problems like "What database should I use to store this data? How can I measure and improve its performance? What's the best front-end technology to deliver the data to the client? How do I setup my build?" So you learn how to, very quickly, get something up and running from nothing. If, ten years into your career, all you know how to do is make little tweaks to already-existing programs, you have a big problem on your hands. You really need both, but I would recommend doing the big company first. (Disclaimer: I did it the other way around, doing startups first.) Why? Because the big company also gives you a brand-name boost and some context about what decision-makers in the industry consider important, which makes it much more likely you'll pick a good startup when you move to do that. While if you screw up in picking an initial startup, it can be very hard to un-do that and qualify yourself for big-company jobs later in life.

outworlder 12y ago

Maybe the 'MIT students' are a different enough population that the advice has to be specifically tailored for them. Somehow, I doubt it. I think the average MIT graduate is just as naive (and inexperienced) as graduates from other universities. If so, then most should join big, established companies. Startup life is not for everyone. Some people might do better (even financially) staying at more stable companies. There's nothing wrong with that.

rianjs 12y ago
> Some people might do better (even financially) staying at more stable companies. I would venture to say that MOST people will do better financially if they stay at a large, established company. A new grad might think their 0.05% equity stake will make them rich, but most startups fail, and even the ones that don't are rarely homeruns. Established companies with deep pockets often pay better, and grant their employees RSUs. RSUs are much easier to cash out if the company is publicly traded. I was recently granted a non-trivial pile of RSUs. Enough for a down-payment on a house in the Boston area. That's better than I'm going to do with 99% of startups, and my salary is reflective of a mature company with deep pockets. (Another thing startups often lack.) In many ways it's the best of both worlds. And if I leave? It'll be for another large company (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) that'll make me whole for anything I leave unvested on the table. Good luck with that at a startup--liquidity matters. I'm not alone -- I have friends at Apple and Google. Their RSUs vesting layers are crazy. For one friend, it's 70% of his gross salary, and he's not what we would call "senior management". He'd be stupid to join a startup.
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  well, to be fair, we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great and a small chance of a huge payoff. Not everyone is suited for this sort of thing. But even among those who are, I think they would benefit from working for a big co for some amount of time before embarking on their startup venture
  - 12y ago

digitalzombie 12y ago

Start ups are not for everybody. It's horrible and most of the time they will work you to death because it's a "start up" environment. They will try to get you to invest as much time of your life as possible. Do not trade your life for money. I thought you could learn new skills in start up because they usually are lean in money so you end up wearing multiple hats. That's good until you realize that most of the people that is in charge of technology are full of it. They buy in MongoDB hype or NodeJS hype without fully understanding the trade off. You're better off learning new skills on your own time. If you don't like big company cause of their crazy interview such as Google you can always try medium size companies.

chrisbennet 12y ago

Large companies have more mentorship possibilities but in my experience, small companies are a lot more fun to work for. Would you rather work on a part of a big product or create a complete product yourself/with another engineer?

rianjs 12y ago
I can confidently say a few things about working at a big company: - I have created whole products from scratch by myself with my tech lead doing code reviews - I have worked on "legacy" code as well I find both satisfying for different reasons. Legacy code has a bad rep, but "legacy code" should really be called "valuable code", because it has already demonstrated its market value. It has nothing to prove. I've learned things from reading legacy code: little stuff like language features, and bigger stuff like architectural tips. Both are different, both can be rewarding. Greenfield isn't synonymous with better or more fun. I personally enjoy being the commando[1] (with infantry tendencies as well), but the other stuff can be good, too, and we each have different preferences. That said, being the "commando" can be exhausting, and I wouldn't want to do it all the time. [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/

oskarth 12y ago

Are YC biased? Of course they are. That doesn't mean they aren't right. Paul Graham used to think working for a big company for a few years was a good thing [for someone who at some point wants to start a company], but he has since (5-10 years ago) changed his mind. In an essay I wrote a couple years ago I advised graduating seniors to work for a couple years for another company before starting their own. I'd modify that now. Work for another company if you want to, but only for a small one, and if you want to start your own startup, go ahead. (http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html) I encourage you to read the whole essay if you want to understand why they say what they say, rather than cynically dismiss it as bias.

falcolas 12y ago

This is very seductive advice: don't become a cog, become a shining star. Jump right into the role which gives you the responsibility you deserve. Except, CS graduates have no idea what it means to work in a corporate environment. I didn't - I learned about Big-O notation, binary sorts and searches, and lots of algorithms. I didn't learn how to navigate corporate politics, PCI or HIPPA regulations, the reasons security really matters, or how to write software which needs to survive for years past the deadline. Perhaps even worse, recent college graduates going straight to startups are unlikely to find mentors to work alongside; they end up working without safety net, someone who can help soften the impact of their inexperience and facilitate catching bugs when the cost to fix them is 1x, instead of 100x. I didn't know how to take critiques of my code as critiques of my code, not my baby. If they're successful, and their company hires people with experience at growing businesses, their world will be turned upside down as their projects are taken away from them and they are relegated to smaller and smaller roles (or worse, be promoted to management). They will go from being the star to a cog, and many will find it hard to accept; it will slow the company's growth and make the transition more painful than it needs to be. I once had to walk a developer from a 4 year old startup through the hows and whys of separating variables from code. They knew and had experienced the pain points of having hard-coded values everywhere, but were unaware of the best practices and didn't know where to start. I keep saying "cog" as if it's a bad thing. It's really not - the machine can't run without someone filling the role you fill. And yes, you are somewhat replaceable, but you knew this. That replacability is why we can job hop the way we do. And if you're willing to accept this, you can make the most out of it. Learn from your betters, hone your skills by mentoring others, replace yourself with code, and move on to something more challenging. Or, once you have the experience, create/join a startup, understanding what the future holds if you succeed.

lionspaw 12y ago

I'm not someone that drinks the startup koolaid by any means, but I agree with them that working for a large company has very limited value if your goal is to start your own company. I worked for one of the biggest tech companies as a developer, and I learned no real skills in my tenure there. My responsibilities were just so narrowly focused and any knowledge I gained was specific to that codebase, which is not useful at all to potential future work. The sad thing is, the best way to increase efficiency at that job was knowing the existing codebase better. I chose to quit instead.

hugs 12y ago
The biggest benefit of a stable paycheck for a few years at a medium-sized or big corp is building your cash reserves. Even if you learn nothing in that job, having 1-2 years of savings in the bank before quitting and starting your startup will give you leverage when dealing with investors early on. You won't need to take angel or VC money to get started.

bsbechtel 12y ago

Not really looking to get into a debate here, but for those being critical of Sam, PG more or less said the same thing (to an MIT audience): http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html

deepGem 12y ago

Actually, does anyone have data on the average student debt of MIT grads. To start a company, Even with a million $ seed, the founders can take home around 80k. Will that be sufficient to afford the monthly debt payments ? This might be a huge factor for grads while making the choice to startup or join a big company. A large company can at least guarantee a consistent loan repayment schedule. It's immensely difficult to start a company with a large debt hanging above your head.

davmre 12y ago
I don't know the numbers for MIT specifically, but most top-tier (Ivy-equivalent) private colleges have very generous financial aid, and consequentially very low levels of student debt. It's when you go down to the second tier and below that student debt becomes a serious problem, as lots of schools try to match the Ivy experience but without the benefit of a large old-money endowment to subsidize financial aid.
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bane 12y ago

Something I've learned from working at tiny startups (the smallest was 4 people) AND mega corps (the largest had north of 100,000 people) AND everything in between is how to organize differently sized groups of people. I keep hearing about founders who are only good during fast-growth periods, then when the company gets big they have to move on. I think you'll find that most of those founders have no experience working in large organizations and simply don't understand how to organize people at growing scale. They want to hold on to the feel of when the company was exploding and had a 12 person flat org structure. But that's because a 12 person flat org structure is easy. Those people will run themselves, and in a fast growth environment are too busy to play politics and form informal power structures. But now the company is at 100 people, 200 people, 1,000 people. No about of book reading is going to get you prepared for how this company should run. Not all that long ago, I worked at a startup that was under rapid growth, but was struggling to keep head count above 100. A few months in, I realized it's because the founders simply had no clue how to run a company at that size. It turn, it created a bad work environment and turnover was so high that they couldn't even hire their way to growth. I constantly compared it to my own experience, where I ran one task on one program in one company and it grew from 4 to 80 people under me at one point. I learned some hard lessons during that time, but those are lessons I'm able to apply now wherever I go. To me, the growth issues were obvious and easy to fix. To the startup founders they were a continuous enigma, unyielding to their attempts at fixing with increasing benefits packages and lip service. I too finally got tired of the stubborn flailing and eventually left. To cultivate and develop the skills needed to deal with differently sized groups, you have to work in those environments and learn how to do it. Okay, maybe you don't have to, sometimes you can fake it with enough investment money and a good executive recruiter your investors force you to take on. You can hire suits who have that experience as buffer layer, professionals who do have that experience and can handle a big company. That's what Zuck did and that's what lots of successful startups do.

lawnchair_larry 12y ago

Interestingly, even Sam was not really a successful founder. He found success after he was hired by YC.

ninebrows 12y ago

I think joining a startup can help you gain technical knowledge. If a student is motivated money wise right from the college, he/she would definitely opt for big name companies. Ofcourse, this varies across geographies especially in terms of money.

dang 12y ago

PG used to tell students to work for an established company for a while after college, then start a startup later with that experience under their belt. After a few years of YC, he changed that to: if you want to start a startup you should just start a startup. (Pretty sure he still makes an exception for finishing school though.) I don't recall him saying that experience at BigCo was bad, just that it turned out not to prepare people for startups after all, so if a startup is what you want to do then you should just plunge in and figure it out. Experience at BigCo can be a mixed bag. I worked for two years at one, and it took me perhaps 10 years after that before I stopped noticing bad habits in myself that I'd acquired there—and I still wince at the memories. But the experience was valuable in one way: I learned a lot about users and their problems.