

How employable is a startup partner with no corporate experience - xster

I'm a 24 year old and just graduated as an electrical engineer. I currently have an opportunity to join a startup as a partner. I believe the experience will be valuable to me but if I leave the startup in 2 years for whichever reason, would I be left poor and unemployable or just poor?<p>Does being a VP at 24 for a tiny company make me more desirable for a IBM/Accenture type of company? Do I get a jump start for a managerial role or do I start from the beginning like a new grad at 55k$?
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Alex63
I was a senior manager in Accenture's consulting practice (left in 2002), and
still work in the consulting industry. You could probably contact an Accenture
recruiter to get an "official" answer. The following is just my opinion.

If you currently have what it takes to get hired by Accenture, doing a couple
of years at a startup is probably not going to hurt your chances of being
hired later, but it probably _won't_ help you get much of a "jump start". The
early years at Accenture focus on "acculturating" you to the consulting life
(and specifically in how Accenture does things). Most of the big consultancies
follow this approach, as a consistent approach is a key success factor for
them (much the same reason why the military gives everyone the same basic
training). In some cases the big consultancies _will_ hire someone in at a
senior level, but typically this is for people with industry-recognized
expertise.

BTW, my advice would be to take the start-up role, unless you need the steady
income of a corporate job (e.g., you already have a family to support). You
won't have the same kind of freedom in the future. I still wish I'd tried to
interview at Microsoft when I graduated in '85, rather than taking the safe
path in IT.

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xster
Thanks for the info. The "acculturation" part was particularly enlightening

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Alex63
I hope that doesn't sound too sinister. My wife used to refer to it as "the
brainwashing". The reality is that Accenture needs to quickly bring together
large teams of people who have not previously worked together, and make them
productive as quickly as possible. One way to facilitate that is to ensure
that they have a common language and understanding of how projects are run.

I don't know if they still do it, but throughout my tenure at Accenture new
hires were sent for an initial training course at the firm's St. Charles
campus. The course was traditionally 3 weeks long, and in addition to teaching
basic programming to those who had no prior experience (many Accenture hires
are not CS or engineering students), it gave new staff some experience with
how Accenture runs projects. After the course, new "analysts" are assigned to
their first project. The first couple of years as an analyst tend to be "in
the trenches" type work, as people don't really have much industry experience.
After a couple of years as an analyst you become a "consultant", and start to
get more authority and responsibility. It typically takes about 5 years to
make it to "manager", at which point you start to get real authority within
project teams. From there, career path's vary. I don't know what the current
stats are, but during my tenure I would estimate that about 1 out of every 10
hires actually stayed with the firm to the senior manager level.

