
Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies - mohanrajn84
http://tech.mit.edu/V135/N7/startup.html
======
vasilipupkin
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
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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.

------
zelos
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
How is life having a secure check coming every month?

~~~
thirdtruck
They're still a happy fantasy, given how easy it is to let go here in the
States.

~~~
UK-AL
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
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.

------
falcolas
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.

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

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Not just from VCs, I could have saved my self a lot of anguish if I had
realised this when I was younger.

~~~
arthurjj
"Cui bono" is a popular phrase for a reason

------
oskarth
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.

------
jgalt212
> 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.

------
outworlder
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
> 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.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Getting hired by Google / Apple / Facebook isn't exactly easy.

If you don't have the required credentials, getting into the startup world
suddenly seems more appealing I think.

~~~
frankchn
Yes, but we are talking about MIT students. It shouldn't be too hard for them
to get hired by one of the big 4 or 5 companies.

------
dang
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.

------
digitalzombie
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.

------
zwrose
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.

------
bane
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.

------
lionspaw
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
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.

------
deepGem
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
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.

------
bsbechtel
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)

------
ninebrows
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.

------
bootload
_" 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
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.

------
chrisbennet
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
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/)

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

------
rjdagost
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.

~~~
throwawaytime
_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._

Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't
have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years.

The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical.
It's really crummy to see Sam Altman, one of the nicest and most genuine
people, dumped on here just because nobody here knows him.

I know him. Or I did, once. He's not the type of person you describe. Just the
opposite: what sets Sam apart is how much he believes in you. You generally
don't find it elsewhere in the world. It's rare for your own parents to
believe in you in the way Sam does. So why go to a big company where they
definitely won't believe in you or let you forge your own opportunities? And
yes, you're right, you can spend years climbing the modern equivalent of the
corporate ladder in order to get people to believe in you and let you take a
risk. But:

 _in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at
a well known and well respected company._

Empirically, you're wrong about that. There are now over a thousand YC alums
who prove you don't need it.

Sam is saying, "If you want to do a startup, here's what works on average."
Nothing more.

~~~
rjdagost
Sam isn’t getting dumped on. It’s a simple fact that his best interests don’t
necessarily coincide with your typical college student’s best interests. In my
experience, on average you will be better off working at Google for 5 years
than by starting a startup with overwhelmingly low odds of success. At BigCo
you will make more money, get better benefits, and you’ll probably have more
free time as well. After a few years you will probably have more financial
security and more name-brand recognition than if you had spent a few years in
the trenches at a start-up (which in all likelihood won’t even exist at the
end of this 5 year window). That doesn’t mean that everyone should try to work
at a big company but your typical software engineer will be better off in the
process.

As far as Zuckerberg, Drew Houston, and other big winners in the startup game,
well, you might as well interview lottery winners for their secrets of
success. No doubt these guys are very smart and hardworking, but so are the
far more numerous legions of startups that fail.

