
Ask HN: Should I join a biotech startup as the first engineer? - always_left
Hey,
So just like the title says.
About me: I&#x27;m a junior developer. I&#x27;ve worked at 2 startups before, both building the main backend infrastructure, usually with a small team to start with. First time 3, second time 4. I’m pretty familiar with scaling a company to suit certain needs. 4 YOE total.<p>Company: The company is a biotech company that deals with image processing.<p>My concern: I would be the first engineer. They have a lot of technical debt, they&#x27;ve been very hacky with the process and just doing things that are not quite scalable. I would be the first engineer for about the first year, so not any mentorship.<p>Despite this, I’m interested because I think this is a space that I am not familiar with but have a lot of interest in. I was very upfront that I will definitely be slow, they are just happy to have anyone on the team. I’m relatively young so I’d really like to take a risk like such, but do you think it would be better to continue to build YOE at a big company? Just, I’m not sure if I would get an opportunity like this again. I like the idea of being “uncomfortable” and challenging myself.  tl;dr: With 4 YOE should I join a biotech startup as the first software engineer?
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chrisbennet
If you can afford it, I would consider it strongly. You realize you won't get
any "magic beans" [money from stock] but you will learn a lot. I develop image
processing software (among other things) and I find it a very interesting
field.

 _" They have a lot of technical debt, they've been very hacky with the
process and just doing things that are not quite scalable. "_ They have a name
for this: "fast paced" :-)

