
Ask YC: Internet Startup or Big Powerhouse for a summer internship? - njoubert
Hello YC! I'm a current UC Berkeley computer science student in my junior year (and loving it), and I've been mulling around this question in my mind for the last couple of weeks: Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? I have an offer from each of these categories, the pay is the same, and i'm pretty sure both would be a great working environment. What I'm left to decide is which one to take, especially considering the experience and education I would get in each sphere.<p>I really can't decide, so I'm hoping for some opinions from the hackers here at YC news. Which would you choose?
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brentr
If you have never worked for a major corporation, I would suggest taking the
job at the major corporation. You will have gained real-world experience and
the drive to never work for a major corporation ever again.

I recommend working for a major corporation at the early part of your career
because you will learn that inside a major corporation you are nothing but a
cog in the machine. If you are happy doing that type of work then life for you
is set. If you are not happy doing that type of work, then you now have the
adult-equivalent of "don't touch that!" branded into your soul.

In essence, the only way to know what type of person you are, start-up or big
corporation, is to test the waters at a big corporation. The other way around
doesn't work in my opinion because you need a stable environment in which to
formulate a decision, and a startup would simply have to many unknowns to
formulate the decision properly.

~~~
pg
_You will have gained real-world experience and the drive to never work for a
major corporation ever again._

True, but it seems rather extreme to spend a whole summer to learn that,
especially at this stage in his life.

I suggest working for the smaller company, because you'll probably have more
scope for trying new things, and thus learn more.

~~~
wheels
I guess I kind of feel like this is asking, "Should I play rugby or do
synchronized swimming this summer?" I mean, sure, they're both sports, but
they're completely different games.

I feel like the things I learned in a big and small companies are largely
orthogonal and it's hard to say which is more valuable without knowing what
the original poster is hoping to use that experience for.

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Flemlord
If you go with a Big Powerhouse in a vertical silo, you may learn enough about
the business to create a startup. My first startup was based on my 12-month
experience at an established software company, where I learned the market and
built a better mousetrap that competed with their software.

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Frocer
I have never interned in a startup environment, but I can provide some insight
into what it's like to work for a corporation. I participated in my school's
coop program, which allow me to work at IBM for ~9 months in
programming/design. Working in a corporation is everything you expect: very
slow, process-oriented, very little responsibility. Doesn't matter how hard
you drive your manager for work, it's unlikely you will get anything
substantial unless you take the initiative yourself. I can't say I learned a
lot in terms of hard technical skills (you will learn much more in school),
but I have learned some very valuable soft skills -- how to coordinate work
with others (it's surprisingly difficult when you are only coding a small
piece of work that belongs to something much larger), how to present in front
of senior managers, etc. One of the most valuable lesson I learned is to
comment your code, I remember back in school, my professors tried to drive
that concept into our heads, but I always thought, why do I need to comment
when I know the code by heart? Nothing makes you realize the importance of
comment until when you try to debug someone else's code, and the genius name
variables after his children (serious, no joke).

There are valuable lessons to be learned in a huge corporation. They are
procedures, how to coordinate work, how bureaucracy works, and the most
important lesson I learned is -- I dislike it and I will never want to program
in a big corporation environment.

From what I have heard and read, you will learn much more in a start up
environment. You may not just do programming or design, but you have the
opportunity to get involved with marketing, advertising, etc. But at the same
time, you won't see the picture of what makes corporations successful at what
they do. If I have to do it all over again, I would probably intern at a start
up because there are more learning opportunities. Corporations are very silo-
ed, every department operates on its own and it's very hard for interns to
touch any other pieces of work. (e.g. if you are a programming intern, chances
are you won't have a chance to do marketing as well).

Hope that helps.

~~~
suboptimal
I think in the right sort of corporate environment, a bit of initiative can
give you a lot of opportunities the less-motivated might not have (or want).
You also can learn how to work in a team, and probably have better hours than
your startup counterparts, giving you more time to work on outside projects--
such as your own startup--or in general to just have a life, meet people and
pursue hobbies.

I like having some distance between me and management when I'm working as an
employee, because then it doesn't grate on my nerves that I'm not working on
my own startup while watching someone else run theirs, with the knowledge that
they're using me to make their own dreams come true. I'd rather not see that,
and in a large organization you don't have to because they're somewhere else,
in a different building perhaps, or political appointees, for example.

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nex3
I'm a junior at the University of Washington, and I was faced with similar
decisions last summer and this summer. Last summer, I went with the Big
Powerhouse, and I was pretty disappointed. It wasn't challenging, I wasn't
working on interesting stuff, and I wasn't really learning anything. This
summer, I'm going with the Internet Startup, and all indications seem to be
that it will be a much better time.

Then again, my Big Powerhouse was Microsoft, so that may have had something to
do with it. Even so, you can look at it in terms of the affect you'll have on
the company as a whole. If you're in the Big Powerhouse, you're doing 1/1000th
of the work. If you're in the Internet Startup, you're doing 1/30th. This
means you'll be working on more important (and thus probably more interesting)
stuff.

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carpal
If you want to learn lessons, work at the big company.

If you want to learn skills, work at the small company.

~~~
notauser
Part of the reason this is true is because a big company can afford to make
bigger mistakes without going under, so they are a really great place to
observe systemic errors that you can identify and learn to avoid.

Some examples - indecisive culture, personal perception coloring risk
assessment, acceptance of poor performance. These are fundamental problems
that you get when you gather humans into groups and knowing how to beat them
is critical. In a big company you can see them all while a small company hides
them better out of necessity.

One other thing to consider is that because big companies are able to take
bigger risks they are a good place to get a jump in responsibility early. We
have interns handling projects that would break a startup if they went off
track.

~~~
aneesh
Au contraire! You should be able to get more responsibility at a startup.

Startups don't have room to pay you to work on something that's not mission-
critical. Big companies do.

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RyanGWU82
Last summer I did an internship at, ummm, Steve Jobs's current venture. It
wasn't a good fit for me, but that had nothing to do with the size of the
company. The position simply wasn't a good match for my skills and experience.
I was offered a full-time job as a result of the internship, but since it
wasn't a good match, I turned it down.

That said, my feelings about the internship had little to do with the size of
the company. The perks of a big-company internship were great, and you can
meet a lot of other interesting hackers through a larger internship program.
Also, all my previous jobs were at much smaller companies, so it was great to
experience life at a large tech company first-hand. Life at the large company
wasn't really any different than life at smaller companies.

I would suggest picking the job that interests you the most, based on the team
or the project you'd be working on, and the quality of the individuals you'd
be working with. The most important aspect of an internship should be the work
you do. That will be the most important factor in how much you like it, and
that's what you can show off in future job interviews. Plus, internships often
lead to full-time jobs, and you won't want to make that decision solely based
on the reputation or size of the company.

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nostrademons
Is the big company a "brand name", i.e. something that the general computing
public has heard of? If so, I'd definitely go big-company: it's an additional
credential on your resume that can open doors for future internships or
employment.

Otherwise, it depends a lot on the companies involved and your specific
situation. I agree with other posters that you should, at some point, _try_ a
big company and see if it's right for you before jumping into startups. OTOH,
you'll learn many more skills at a startup, and will probably have a more
exciting time. If you plan to do hobby or open-source programming, a startup
is also more likely to improve your chops.

Something else to consider: at a startup, you'll often have access to the full
existing source code repository, and the tree will be small enough that you
can understand most of it. At a big company, you'll probably be silo'd into a
single project with its own repository, or worse, use no source control at
all. Some of my best programming lessons have come from reading other people's
source code; I got lots of that when I worked for startups, and very little
interning for large companies.

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kingnothing
Personally, I would go with the startup. If I can, I never want to work at a
stereotypical, large corporation. On the other hand, if I did go to the large
company in your situation, it might give me that much more drive to getting my
first product launched as I would have experienced cubicle-land, office
politics, and all of the other things that people complain so much about.

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prakash
Based on the multiple articles I have read (PG, Marc Andreessen), these are
the factors I use in making a decision:

1\. Personal value of a particular experience

2\. Market for the product being built

3\. The people at the company, ideally there are lots of smart people you can
learn from

4\. The product being built

5\. Compensation (Salary + stock + benefits)

Personally, I would pick the startup. If all goes well, I would work a few
hours through the fall and spring as well.

good luck!

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njoubert
Thanks to everyone that replied. My friend made a great comment today when he
pointed out that, for the most part, people go to work at startups so that
they can get in on the ground floor - pull those extra hours and accept less
pay because hopefully you will be able to build the company out into a
moneymaking venture. As an intern, those reasons are absent, since you're
leaving shortly after you start with no stock or any other "i was there
first"goodies anyways.

On the other hand, the web startup is probably more along the lines of what I
would like to be doing long term, and one of the founders is already assuming
a mentorship position - he called me a couple of times, and rather than trying
to push his side, he's giving me some guidance and opinions on how to approach
this kind of decision. This is, naturally, great for a student like me.

Still undecided, but i'll probably make up my mind throughout the night. Thank
you for the candid discussion everyone!

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xirium
If you want to learn about technology then work at the smaller company. If you
want to learn about business processes then work at the larger company.
However, you'd learn more from the smaller company if it only had 7-10 people.
Furthermore, you can learn about technology in your own time. Therefore, I'd
recommend working in the larger company.

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paulgb
I am in a similar situation, so I can't offer you any opinion from experience,
but I'll share the reasoning I used in making my decision:

A large company can afford to hire you as an investment. Most lower-year
students can't offer a whole lot to a company, but to BigCo it's like buying
options in you as a future full-time employee. (Not that you are not obligated
to keep going on full time, but many students will) I've heard many stories of
people spending their summers at the big companies, getting paid well, but
working on things that never saw the light of day.

A small company, on the other hand, can't afford to do that. Any work you do
will have to be important to the company.

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bootload
_"... Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a
reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? ..."_

Internship hey.

It's not real work. If you go to SoftCo it might be a chance to improve an
existing product niche like Flemlord suggests. But if you try a startup (30's
a lot & I'd call this big) you might just see how hard you really have to work
and learn something new as well.

If it was me I'd pick the one that gives you the _"best payoff"_ for working
up-wind in the future.

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njoubert
two responses, two opinions - probably very much in the gist of my question!
good point on both of those though!

A little bit of background - I've already worked at Yahoo! for a year, so I
have an idea of cubicle-land as kingnothing puts it. I do want to point out
that the big company in question is not at all the typical big company.
Without making it _too_ obvious, its one of Steve Jobs' previous ventures...

~~~
kennon
A few years ago, when I was a Cal undergrad, I turned down an internship at
the larger company you're referring to. More specifically, I already accepted
another offer by the time they called me back. I work a few blocks away from
there now, and when I walk by the campus, I sometimes still wonder whether I'd
be in an entirely different branch of the industry if timing on that phone
call had worked out just a little bit differently.

As others have mentioned, the company's size is far less important than the
quality of the people you will be working with directly. This site has a
decidedly strong bias towards do-it-yourself, but to me, the point of an
internship is to acquaint yourself with people who are a few years further
down their career path than you. They've been in your shoes and can help guide
you. Try to figure out which boss or coworker will be a better mentor. You'll
have plenty of opportunities to strike out on your own after you graduate.

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willphipps
It would surely depend on what your longer term goals are. Do you want to set
up your own start up? if so, go for the start up option. Being in a smaller
company also exposes you to a wider area of activities, which can also be a
great advantage, especially if you hope to one day start up your own thing.

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maximilian
My big company internship was really boring and I mostly just read sites like
Hacker News a lot. Make sure the match is right and that they actually need an
intern. Sometimes they just hire you because you want to be hired and you end
up doing mostly nothing.

Thats just my 2 cents though.

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wagnerius
Go startup if you're ambitious, you'll learn much more (more work too)

The big powerhouse will be a nice line on your resume, but most of the time,
nothing more.

~~~
neilc
I think that really depends on the internship. In most cases, it is false that
working for a big company will be "nothing more" than a nice line on your
resume. I've interned at both startups and big corporations, and learned an
enormous amount at both kinds of companies.

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TrevorJ
Seems like the big company can lend you some perspective that might be handy
later on. :-)

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weegee
startup. it will allow you to express yourself more, be yourself, enjoy a more
relaxed and motivated environment. I work at a major corporation that was more
of a startup when I joined and I prefer it the way it was years ago.

