
Why you should join a big company first - bmj1
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/kids-startup-hype/
======
pg
I used to advise people to go work for an existing company for a few years
before trying to start their own, but I now think that was bad advice. It's
true that you learn things working for a big company, but you learn more,
faster, starting your own.

A lot of people we've funded have said they wished they'd quit their corporate
job sooner. I don't remember any saying they wished they'd stayed in it
longer.

The one point in this article that's valid is the last one. Startups take over
your life. So if you want to focus on other things besides work, you're better
off with a regular job than trying to start a startup.

~~~
mrmaddog
What are your thoughts on joining a big company vs joining a startup (as
opposed to starting a company yourself)? On average, it seems one would still
learn faster and be able to take on many new roles as an employee at a
startup, but an employe also is in a chaotic world that he or she doesn't
completely control (and often working with incomplete information).

Do you think this trade-off is worth it? And, since I'm guessing you lean
towards 'yes' on that question, do you think there are different questions a
prospective startup-employee should ask as opposed to the questions a
potential investor in the startup would ask?

~~~
ivv
Joining, not launching, a start-up is what the article's author is actually
comparing to a corp job: "Should I join Microsoft or a startup?"

Financially and over the long term, a stable well-paid job early in one's
career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and
cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound
interest over a longer period of time.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_a stable well-paid job early in one 's career combined with low expenses (no
kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a
larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time._

And yet you won't get rich. The chances of getting rich as an employee of a
startup are admittedly small, but nonzero.

~~~
stephencanon
Smart, hardworking people (the same people who might succeed with a startup)
can absolutely get rich (in the "don't really need to worry about money"
sense, not in the "absurd conspicuous consumption" sense) working for $BIGCORP
in their 20s.

~~~
sillysaurus2
How, and over what timeframe?

~~~
tptacek
Define a target (say, 1MM), a realistic interest rate, and head over to any
compounding growth goal calculator; it'll tell you how much you need to set
aside over 10-15 years to hit that target.

To compare meaningfully to startup careers, you need to factor in the premium
you pay to work at a startup (in reduced wages) and the very low odds of any
given startup making its employee equity liquid.

Generally, the difference between the BigCo path to 1MM and the startup path
is that, barring dramatic changes in the nature of our industry (which changes
would also confound the startup comparison), the BigCo path is reasonably
contingent only on your execution. You can fire on all cylinders in every
startup you work at and never end up in the money.

~~~
the_watcher
It all depends on the startup. Don't go work for a startup just because it's a
startup. You're better off at BigCo. But if you really believe in the startup,
and they'll give you meaningful equity and compensation that is enough for
your lifestyle, and you want the responsibility, I'd lean towards the startup.
Again, the key here is that you really believe in the startup. There aren't
many that you can honestly say that about early enough to make the
compensation difference worth it.

Also, depending on your life phase, presence of employer-paid health insurance
should be seriously considered.

~~~
tptacek
What's "meaningful equity"? 1% of 0 is the same as 50% of 0.

~~~
the_watcher
That's part of my point. My main point is that you should only do a startup if
you truly believe in it (and you should realistically assess this before
accepting, as hard as it may be). I think the biggest point of these articles
is "don't join a startup for joining a startup's sake." That said, I like to
think joining Dropbox or Google while a student and they are startups would
have made sense (even discounting hindsight being 20/20, sorry for using these
two, but they were the best examples I could come up with) if you were an avid
user of either or had the opportunity to meet Larry/Sergey. Meaningful equity
to me is enough that if it hits, you at least have enough money to spend a few
years doing what you want. My main point is, there are some startups worth
joining. But don't join a startup because working at a startup is "better."

I personally love working at the startup I work at, although we are later
stage and moving out of the startup phase (I get paid market, and have solid
insurance).

------
peter_l_downs
The article opens with the question:

    
    
        > “Should I join Microsoft or a startup?”
    

but really seems to answer the question:

    
    
        > "Should I join Microsoft or start a startup"
    

which is really very different.

~~~
nostrademons
I think his audience is people who already know they want to start a startup,
but aren't sure about _when_.

And as someone who worked for 2 startups, founded one, ended up at a big
company, and hope that there will eventually be another startup in my life: I
agree with him. I learned _a lot_ working for a big company, and had I known
that when I started out, I probably would've been much more effective at
evaluating the startup opportunities that were available to me. Having a
couple years at Google or Microsoft on your resume doesn't hurt you when
you're doing your own thing, and can give you a bunch of experiences that you
simply can't get when you're bouncing around between startups.

~~~
null_ptr
What would you say is the minimum number of years you should "put in", without
looking like a job hopper?

~~~
nostrademons
It's heavily dependent on what you want to get out of it. From a resume POV,
you want to show that you fully exploit the opportunities that are available
to you, and yet also will seek out new opportunities if there are no more
opportunities available to you. How long that translates to depends on how
many opportunities are available to you.

I would say that if you're looking for technical skills, those max out at
about 18 months. If you're looking to develop leadership, sales (as an
engineer) or soft skills, plan on staying a minimum of 4 years, because it
takes 2 years or so before people recognize that you have the technical skills
to be worth listening to, and then another couple years to actually develop
the soft skills. Persistence is another hard one: if you're trying to develop
persistence, you need to get put on an ambitious project, and then you need to
stick it out until the moonshot succeeds, which frequently takes 3ish years.
Soft intrapersonal skills like recognizing your own blind spots and learning
how to compensate for them are _really_ hard: many people will _never_ develop
these skills, but if you do it usually takes being put on a project that's
outside of your comfort zone, and then seeking therapy to deal with the
anxiety and avoidance this creates, which usually takes all the time required
to develop the skills above plus a year or so.

------
bmj1
This really resonated with me, I was one of those cocky, over-achieving kids
who thought I could start a company fresh out of college.

Instead, I've worked in Product for 26 months and learnt some really good
skills: how to write real requirements, how to manage expectations (up and
down), how to negotiate, how to measure and to focus on moving the needle, how
to build a GTM plan and execute against it, how to deal with fireman issues,
how to develop with a SOA, the list goes on.

And picked up a bunch of payments industry expertise along the way.

I'm still determined to start my own business, but definitely a hell-of-a-lot
more confident in my chances of success.

~~~
seldo
You do learn lots of good things at companies, but you can also learn bad
habits -- you can acquire a predilection for long meetings, acquire a taste
for political point-scoring over (more difficult, less fun) compromise, and a
default position of creating process over improving communication. Those
things are survival skills at a big company, but very bad for small ones. The
trick is to identify which of the skills you're picking up are good or bad and
using them appropriately when you strike out on your own.

~~~
bmj1
Excellent point - I find the long meetings aren't such a difficult thing to
avoid - but certainly politics and unnecessary process have no place in a
startup.

The other big lesson I learnt, the hidden cost of complexity, and importance
of keeping things simple (I don't think you can get this until you meet the
real world):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331082)
(just submitted to HN, realised it hadn't been shared yet)

~~~
namenotrequired
It had:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914209)
:)

~~~
bmj1
apologies - well it was a damn good article :)

~~~
namenotrequired
Certainly!

------
nostromo
This attitude is Seattle's m.o. and I think it's unfortunate.

Recently I was talking with a CS advisor at the UW, my alma mater, and
"corporate first, startup later" seems to be their default advice to students.
His advice gave me the impression the UW was now a staging ground for
Microsoft and Google lifers. Contrast this with Stanford's embracing of early
entrepreneurship and risk-taking, and you get a sense for what makes Silicon
Valley Silicon Valley.

~~~
mjn
I'd be interested in some numbers as far as Stanford goes. If we restrict it
to students who don't come from already well-off families who can backstop a
risky career (say, look at students from families making <$100k/yr), what
proportion get a salaried job right out of school? I would be surprised if
it's <90%.

~~~
avsbst
2011-2012 Salary Survey from the Stanford Computer Forum

CS/EE Undergrads

Data: I received 135 responses which described 380 job offers. 95% of the job
offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and
East Coast. _10% of the job offers were from start-ups._

Salary offers ranged from $65,500 to $92,000. The average salary offer was
$79,360. The median salary offer was $ 78,750.

About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were
offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and
there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not
apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $10,000 with an
average of $3,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 with an average of
$5,700. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options
offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 2 job offers. However, students may not
have reported on all the offers they received. The average student who replied
to the survey all had some job experience, nearly all of it through summer
internships and averaged 3 summer of work. Location, scope of work,
salary/benefits, environment/culture, company were the important factors in
accepting the offers for the undergrads.

CS/EE Masters

Data: I received 150 responses which described 345 job offers. 94% of the job
offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 6% were in the Midwest and East
Coast. _15% of the job offers were from start-ups._

Salary offers ranged from $70,000 to $105,300. The average salary offer was
$98,246. The median salary offer was $87,650.

About 78% of students were offered stock options. About 66% of students were
offered signing bonuses. And about 43% were offered relocation assistance and
there others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply
to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $8,000 with an average of
$2,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $35,000 with an average of $6,325. I did
not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by
companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not
have reported on all the offers they received. The Masters had a little more
summer experience than the undergraduates, an average of 3 summer internships.

Like the undergrads, location, scope of work, company, and salary/benefits,
and environment/culture seem to be the important factors for the MS grads.

CS/EE PhD's

Data: I received 30 responses which described 75 job offers. 80% of the job
offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 20% were in the Midwest and
East Coast. _30% of the job offers were from start-ups._ 5% of the job offers
were from a university.

Salary offers ranged from $133,250 to $146,980. The average salary offer was
$143,083. The median salary offer was $140,115.

About 50% of students were offered stock options. About 50% of students were
offered signing bonuses. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $19,500 with an average
of $7,200. Relocation assistance ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 with an average
of $6,500. However, they may not have reported on all the benefits they
received. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options
offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not
have reported on all the offers they received. The PhDs had about the same
amount of summer experience as the Masters, an average of 2 summer internships
and with the exception of 2 full-time experience.

Like the undergraduates and masters, location, company, environment/culture,
salary/benefits, scope of work seem to be the important factors when it came
to accepting their job offer.

------
kemiller
Yep. If I had it to do over, I'd do it that way. The options are better now,
though. 15 years ago, if you wanted a big software company you had Microsoft,
and, uh... Sun? Oracle? Now you have Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon,
Facebook, not to mention the in-betweeners like Square, Dropbox, and Github.
It's an incredible time to be starting off in Software. Unless you're sitting
on the idea of the century (hint: probably not) it's not a bad idea to
accumulate up cash, pay off debt, and build a great network.

~~~
rlu
How many employees does Square have?

~~~
vincentstorme
A friend of my works at Square, I believe he said there were 600ish in the
office here in San Francisco

------
ojbyrne
This is clearly from a business perspective.

But if you're an engineer, I personally think that working for a big
_software_ company early in your career is important. It's just plain easy to
work on software in a small company because you don't have legacy code,
existing products, existing customers, existing practices. Also you have no
real way to judge whether your code is good or bad until its come under the
glare of experienced engineers.

Also, people shouldn't take any of Robert Scoble's advice.

~~~
eropple
Agreed. I'm glad I left TripAdvisor when I did, but what I learned there was
incredibly valuable. Working with very, very good people and learning from
them early on has proven to be a really big long-term benefit.

But I fucked off to a small medical-software company that I could work at
while making video games, I have no taste for the work-for-my-social-startup-
so-I-can-buy-a-Lotus world.

~~~
null_ptr
So do you make the games for fun, or do you plan to switch to them fulltime in
the future?

~~~
eropple
I'd like to make them full-time, but unless I move to the hinterlands or
something I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay my rent on them.

------
pdenya
I believe big companies are a good route for most devs early in their careers
but most of the bullet points about why big companies are helpful are only
applicable for senior team members. For junior people almost all of these
would be faster/easier to accomplish at a startup where you've negotiated for
more salary/less equity.

------
Ologn
> You learn how (and how not) to run your own business—on someone else’s dime.

I have worked everywhere from startups where I was hired employee #1 to
Fortune 50 companies. Odds are your own business will start small. You learn
about how to run your own business when you sit 20 feet from the CEO and the
sales team and finance and HR and marketing etc. You don't learn as much about
how to run a company when you are the company's 104th Java programmer in that
particular city. Maybe at a big company you learn about their particular,
complex procedure that it takes to change one line of production code.

------
dicroce
Couldn't agree with this more. I worked at startups first, and I think I would
have been much better off getting a decent amount of experience under my belt
first.

------
wil421
Recently I graduated from college and decided to go for a big multinational
company with employees all over the globe and customers also. The reasons I
chose to do so are similar to the ones the author chose.

Some drawbacks so far are the politics it takes to get a project going and the
maze of people in a large corporation. Many times it takes several meetings
just to find the right person to answer a question. Also having to interface
with people around the globe to get sign off on things pose a time zone
conflict and more hours are wasted.

Sometimes the answers to the problems that I face are not known to one side of
the business because they have no idea how the other side does things. There
are massive silos of information and systems that make it harder to navigate
than a smaller shop.

------
parris
I feel like getting a job at a larger company as an engineer is easier than
getting a job at a startup anyways. Sure when you start your own thing there
are no rules, but any startup with a couple senior engineers that have had to
train up some employees from scratch know how much work it is. If you are
joining a large company then you have a better opportunity to learn from more
people. Your support base is larger.

Side note: who can you actually hire within your network if you join/start a
startup? I thought I knew people, but every time I've ever asked if anyone
wants a referral for (enter reputable startup brand here using awesome tech) I
get no responses among my network. Every good engineer I know right now
actually has a job that they like.

------
beachstartup
the experience i had in large-company life (ages 21-25) gave me the confidence
to dump a large amount of personal money into my startup. if i didn't know it
was possible to make decent money at such an early age, i would have been
scared to death. to me it was no big deal.

in retrospect it was a pretty brave/risky thing to do, but it didn't feel like
it at the time. money came, money went. simple as that.

to a certain extent, i feel the same way now. if everything went to hell
tomorrow, i could just get a job and probably earn in the neighborhood of
$150k/year on salary.

we, the founders, have 100% ownership of our company, which is profitable and
growing at approximately 75-100% a year.

5 years spent in megacorp life versus seeking funding and giving up ownership
was well worth it.

------
dsugarman
if you aren't willing to take risk right out of college, not even a midlife
crisis will be enough to motivate you to build something great

------
null_ptr
I think more and more young talented developers choose to work for small cool
companies or even attempt to start their own, instead of choosing to be a cog
at a corporate giant. And this probably has the giants worried.

It's true that corporate experience is useful, but it can also cause
depression and frustration, seeing your youth fleeting while you implement
inconsequential features and fix trivial defects in a mammoth project you
couldn't possibly be more emotionally detached from.

Get out as soon as it makes sense and not a moment later.

------
kangaroo5383
Joining a big company has many benefits such as being able to see what leads
to bureaucracy in order to avoid it, meet at least one awful manager so you
will never be like that person, meet at least one amazing mentor and grow, and
learn see beyond appearance to recognize truly skilled/smart people vs.
overconfident fakers. I think many of these skills are necessary for building
a successful company and the relationships formed at these companies are
invaluable.

------
sergiosgc
The time window for playing the startup game is very short. Fresh out of
college you don't have as many financial responsibilities as a few years down
the road. Take that financial freedom as a license to risk working at or
launching a startup.

You won't be able to do it when you have a mortgage, two kids to feed and
clothe, and college savings on the horizon.

~~~
dasil003
If you learn to save and manage your money intelligently instead of getting on
the consumer treadmill as soon as you score a real job then you'll be in great
shape to start later. You'll have savings, connections and experience.

------
Steko
Great article, but as usual I'm put off by how the headline frames this as
universal advice, a practice that's reached epidemic proportions in blogging.
If this comment were a post on my blog, I might call it "Shooting people who
frame their advice as universal and why you need to do it"

------
bippi
I don't know that startup vs. big matters as much as small vs. big. If you can
work for a profitable small company where you matter and you wear many many
hats, you will be far better prepared to make an impact on your own if/when
you do start your own company.

------
Apocryphon
What really is a startup, these days? A handful of hackers in a garage or a
co-working space? Somewhere established but still youthful and fresh- Path?
Square? Quora? Someplace much older but with a sense of dynamism and a startup
ethos- Google? Apple?

~~~
Domenic_S
If there's a chance your paycheck won't clear, it's a startup.

/I kid, I kid. Sort of.

~~~
jaredsohn
If you work at a startup with a decent runway worth of funding, this should
never be an issue.

