
Why I'm working for the man and not doing a startup - RandallBrown
http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2012/04/01/why-im-working-for-the-man-and-not-doing-a-startup/
======
BadassFractal
After working for several years in a similar environment to the one the author
is in right now, I had the exact opposite experience.

Wrote soulless boring enterprise software for a customer I never met, using
some of the most ancient development techniques, while having the department
boast about innovation and "spearheading engineering excellence" every other
day.

Shared buildings with hundreds of other ninetofivers who couldn't care less
about the quality of their work, all they wanted was the great health
insurance, the chance to get a green card in a decade or two, and the option
to buy a nice home in the area for their 2-3 kids. Clock in, clock out,
occasionally play office politics for that sweet principal position in 10-15
years. Experienced every agile aberration known to man, including predicting
down to the hour every single thing I would be working on, and then have the
boss breathe down your neck when you're off. The best part is when he tells
you that he cannot "trust you" anymore due to the latest estimate being off by
several hours, and you should multi-task more to get things done quicker. How
about keeping your reported work hours purposefully low, even if you're
working weekends? Your boss will think that you were good enough to get it
done in a couple of days, and will promote you over the guy who's honest with
his hours. Happened ALL THE TIME.

When I left, the few good friends I had while there asked me what my best
memories were after half a decade. Not a single one, everything I enjoyed
(including software projects) was outside of work.

If I never have to hold a lowly corporate job again, I'll die a happy man. I'd
rather make a third of what I was making there, but at least I'll be proud of
the work I'm doing and I will look forward to doing more of that every time I
wake up.

Randall, you're in your mid 20s, brother, what is this comfort you are talking
about? What do you have to lose? Go fuck up a couple of businesses, give it
your best shot, get a few battle scars, and then maybe we'll talk about
wanting comfort. You're way too young to settle down, it's sad to see someone
like you waste his talents.

~~~
nodemaker
Thanks for that.

I have been questioning myself for deciding to never work for the man again
and your words reassured me.

No amount of money is enough for mediocrity to be forced upon you.

~~~
BadassFractal
I try to be very conscious and grateful of the fact that mine is a privileged
position. I do not (yet?) have severe pre-existing conditions, children, or a
sick spouse that would pretty much force me to have to find a corporate job
with the right kind of health insurance. There are some things that were under
my control, such as making sure my partner was on the same page with not
wanting to have children and was ok with having a very humble lifestyle, but
there are thousands of other variables which are pure luck.

There are plenty of people out there for whom to drop out, stay afloat on
savings for a few years, while rolling the startup dice, is simply not
conceivable. If I were in that situation and had to take a soul-crushing
enterprise job just to be able to afford the right medications, I would
probably not enjoy people telling me that "I could do more with my life". If
that's the author's situation, then I'm sorry, mine was an inappropriate
conclusion. I digress, however, don't think this thread is the correct place
to discuss US policy :)

------
zavulon
"Stability is a huge benefit of a regular full time job"

That's a myth. While being an employee, there's no stability whatsoever. You
can get fired any time - get laid off, become a victim of corporate politics,
or get fired for whatever other reason. Just last month, someone I know got
fired on the spot after 15 years at a company for not reporting some personal
stuff between other employees.. something he wasn't involved with, at all. I'm
sure everyone else heard stories of people being thrown out after 10-20-30
years of loyal service to the company for bullshit reasons.

At the same time, when you run a business, you can't ever get fired, and
everything depends on you. Whether you make money, or lose money - it's for
the most part, your doing (market circumstances nonwithstanding).

That's why running a business is a lot more of a stable job than working for
the man.

~~~
patio11
"When you run a business, you can never get fired"

This is objectively untrue for anyone who takes money from others.

A significant portion of my income as a business owner can get pink slipped at
the decision of any one of seven people, and they wouldn't even endure the
minimal social awkwardness of pink-slipping me! All they have to do is not
respond "Yes" to an email asking for something that I have no socially durable
expectation of "yes" from.

~~~
AznHisoka
If you also run an online startup, chances are you rely on SEO or search
engine marketing. If Google bans your Adwords account, or penalizes you to
oblivion, I'll say that's pretty much the equivalent of getting fired.

~~~
jaredmck
True story, although once you're spending enough on AdWords you'd have to do
some pretty egregious stuff to get your AdWords account banned (and to some
extent you're much less likely to get a major, lasting ban in organic search).

------
DaniFong
"But what about all the stupid stuff you have to deal with when you work for
the man? That stuff just isn’t that important. If I forget to log my task
estimation hours my manager might send me an email. If I forgot to pay my
companies electric bill the consequences are a little more severe."

Huh.

Maybe this is just a difference in outlook, but if I were forced to log my
hours it would probably either send me into a fury or the depths of despair.
Actually, more likely, I'd quit. Or be fired. It's happened before.

Yet I have basically no problem having no safety net, and taking
responsibility for my employees, millions of dollars, and the fate of the
planet.

Weird.

The only discriminating factor I can see is that being forced to log hours
makes me feel like a kid unworthy of trust. Any others?

I feel like I've learned something about myself.

~~~
RandallBrown
I was talking about doing estimations for tasks. It's a pretty normal "agile"
thing to do. There's no trust issues, it's just a project management thing.

~~~
michaelochurch
It's still a ridiculous waste of time. It makes work about gaming the system
and your boss (is it better to underestimate so he lets you do what you want,
or overestimate so you don't get yelled at later?) rather than moving forward
and getting shit done. It's inane, stupid stuff designed to make unimportant
people feel important.

A programmer who can't be trusted to control his own time shouldn't be hired
in the first place.

~~~
imechura
I personally would not want a builder to home build a home with my money
without a time and cost estimate. This is not about startups or established
companies. If you don;t know what needs to happen for your vision to come to
fruition and how much it is going to cost then you are leaving a lot chance.

I just don't get why people are always complaining about estimates.

~~~
kamaal
Because they don't work.

Even if you are out to build your home, the estimates given out to you are
only going to good enough to win the contract from you. Nothing more.

If you have ever built a home, you would have realized that the project
generally went way out of budget and time. You can go back and look at what
you had planned and estimated. You will also see that your execution was
pretty close to the plan. But a lot of other things went wrong. It rained and
all the sand got washed away. The cement company suddenly increased their
prices. Something new came in, and suddenly you though a new bath fit was
better than the old one. Things slip out of your hand one thing at a time.

Workers get sick, attrition happens and all other sort things go wrong. And
this is with things like construction, where not much thinking effort is
required.

Programming is more harder, The iterations of analyse, build, test, feedback,
analyse... Take time, mistakes happen, you need to read, research etc.

Unless you are a robot and work without any intelligent inputs and outside
dependencies. No estimate ever has made sense.

~~~
imechura
I think your point lends itself more to a general misunderstanding of the
purpose of planning and estimation rather a lack of value in the process.

There is a reason it is called a plan and an estimate instead of a fact-sheet
and a contract.

I am in a position now where I provide architectural review and software
delivery estimation on a full time basis. If we did not provided these
estimates the VPs and directors would not have any way of justifying where and
when to spend the investors' money to achieve the best return for the company.

IMO, spending someone else's money (read investment) without a plan and
estimate should be considered irresponsible.

------
dmor
You say that you know if you worked on someone else's idea you wouldn't be
able to find the passion to sustain you. I would challenge you on that - how
can you be so sure? I joined Twilio very early and it wasn't my idea. However,
I took my passion for making software developers happy (and my even more
fundamental professional passion for helping people be productive) and
connected it with their specific idea. I never would have thought of Twilio,
but I'm so happy to be part of making it exist.

Don't ever stop prospecting for other people and ideas that you could get
behind, because when you find them it is magical.

------
benjaminwootton
_If_ you can find a good company and a day job where you have lots of freedom
and control, potential to build something great, minimum corporate politics,
and the ability to concentrate on building interesting stuff, that does indeed
sound fantastic and in some ways more tempting than a startup.

However, I think that if you are operating in an environment like that, with
that level of independence and creativity, you almost may as well go a step
further and grab at least some element of ownership in what you are doing. It
sounds like it would be a pretty small jump.

~~~
sliverstorm
_However, I think that if you are operating in an environment like that, with
that level of independence and creativity, you almost may as well go a step
further and grab at least some element of ownership in what you are doing._

You mean climb the technical ladder? Because if you're already in a great
company environment, that's exactly what the technical ladder is for.

------
imechura
I often hear people complaining about "corporate politics". What do people
think that really means? As if you won't have politics in your startup, with
your V.Cs, clients, partners and competitors.

Everything in business is politics if you cannot handle your co-worker
jockeying for position prior to performance reviews, good luck dealing with a
partner or investor who wants to edge you out of your startup.

One more note, working for a corporation can provide a technical person with a
lot opportunity not available at a startup and vice-versa. For instance, at a
startup you will not likely get the valuable and lucrative experience removing
and replacing a mainframe application that has been a core business system for
30 years. There are hundreds of companies out there at this very minute who
are spending hundreds of millions attempting (and struggling with) this very
feat. So while RoR and Django developers are a dime a dozen, others are
building a skill that commands a premium at fortune 1000 companies across the
nation and builds relationships with Sr. Architects, VPs, CIOs, and CTOs to
boot.

------
moocow01
Eh - I know there are an endless number of conversations on here about
startups vs. corporate jobs but I'd say the conversation is way too generic to
be at all meaningful. Ive flip-flopped from startups to corps and places in
between. There is the same shit (or potential for shit) everywhere just in
different packages.

\- Startups can have just as much politics as corps - it really just depends
on the actual folks you interact with

\- Big corps can have incredibly interesting problems due to their scale and
impact while startup work can be exciting because of the progressiveness of it
- and in actual practice about 90% of what both groups do is usually pretty
boring.

\- Soulless work - I've found writing enterprise business software to be
pretty much equivalent to building VC-powered social/local image-sharing
flavor of the month apps in terms of being personally exciting. Mileage will
vary.

Etc. - I could go on. Point being that if you take averages Id say startups
are similar to big corps - the problems are just disquised in different
packages. The real trick is trying to find unique scenarios/jobs that minimize
the crap.

------
korginator
Did we ever stop to think this is just one person's point of view that's
completely influenced by his personality, and that you could be 100% the
opposite, before passing summary judgments for and against the poor guy?

I've had mixed experiences in both sectors, and it doesn't make sense to
generalize here.

I've worked in a small-ish department in a large company where we had lots of
flexibility with the backing of a large corporate. I've worked in startups
with zero creativity and the momentum of a third-world government org. I've
also worked in a startup that was run by a maniacal CEO who was so out of
touch with engineering that even after 6 years of development the company was
unable to scale volumes or make good stuff.

------
mmj48
Minified:

    
    
      Why I'm working for the man and not doing a startup?
      Stability and lack of passion.
    

\---

Two good reasons, however, not too insightful (subjective).

~~~
imechura
lack of passion...

IMO, That is a narrow view. What is the goal here, start-up or business? If
the goal is startup you may find that it never stops trying to start.

There are great established companies to work for and great startups to work
for.

There are also terrible established companies to work for and terrible
startups to work for.

I would also like to note that at good, established corporations there are two
kinds of technical staff. The passionate kind with a decent mix of technical
skills, business acumen and communication skills who work hard,are presented
with interesting opportunities and are rewarded for their hard work, and the
other kind who seam to always be complaining about the corporate environment
and how it is holding them back. Often the "other kind" possesses adequate
technical skills but has not taken the time to develop the business acumen and
communication skills necessary to be proficient in a high-stakes business.

The first type will strive at any business whether established or start-up.
The second type will likewise exhibit similar performance no matter the
established date stamped on the business's letterhead.

~~~
mmj48
Are you replying to me or the article?

------
jonmb
It really all depends on what you feel happy doing. There's no one-size-fits
all. Some people are meant for startups, some aren't.

I think it's best to always see yourself as self-employed. You yourself are
your product. You can sell your product to a company for 40 hours a week, or
you can run a startup (where you still have a boss btw -- they're called
"clients" or "users"). Or a mix of both, which is what I do.

------
AshleysBrain
Microsoft was a startup once. When does a startup transition in to being "the
man"?

~~~
jakejake
I don't know at what point you become "the man" but it's an interesting
question at what point you are no longer considered a startup.

There's probably several paths that lead to loss of your "startup" status.
Being bought out, going IPO, becoming profitable, being in business 3+ years,
etc.

~~~
randomdata
> being in business 3+ years

And if you're been in business for 3+ years, but change direction (like from
consulting to products as many in the industry do), are you considered a
startup again?

~~~
jakejake
Good question. 3 years was an arbitrary number. Maybe you could say that
you're a startup as long as you're still relying on venture capital?

------
tucif
You can also start without an idea, if what you really want is creating a
startup. <http://www.ycombinator.com/noidea.html>

Yet, I think you might want to develop more abilities before that so you have
better resources and a wider perspective.

------
cageface
The real sweet spot I think is a company of about 200-300 people. It's big
enough to provide real stability but not big enough to develop a lot of the
pathologies of bigger companies.

~~~
rdouble
That's actually the worst size. There are all the pathologies of a startup
combined with all the pathologies of a bigger company.

------
michaelochurch
_But what about all the stupid stuff you have to deal with when you work for
the man? That stuff just isn’t that important. If I forget to log my task
estimation hours my manager might send me an email._

People actually work for companies where they "log [...] task estimation
hours"? I'm afraid of what throwing up in my mouth on a regular basis will do
to my throat. I'll pass.

Here's why your job in a TPS labyrinth _isn't_ stable: your boss might only be
sending you the email because his boss made a point of it. It might be a one-
off that he thinks about once and never again. Or he might actually care. You
just don't know. He might fire you when you stop doing that shit (either
because you forget, or get sick of it). He might consider you not to have done
any work unless you log it in the system, and you might be too busy actually
_doing_ work to log that shit. Or, you might get along great with him and be
just fine. If you have decent social skills, you can get a 90% guess at which
way things are going to go, but that's far from certainty, and the boss who
won't throw you under the bus for his own benefit is very rare.

Big companies are only a better option than any other job (in terms of job
security) if they subvert manager-as-SPOF and that's really hard to do. What
seems to work (perversely) is bureaucracy and obfuscation: if you make it
very, very hard for a manager to bad-mouth reports to the managers they want
to transfer under (in large part, this requires transfer talks occurring
without the original manager's knowledge) you can actually create a culture in
which managers don't hold all the cards.

Big-company vs. startup is a hard question. There are really great _parts_ of
big companies, and there are shitty startups. There are even startups that
have those kinds of inane processes. The whole gamut exists. But I would
rather be eating clay than work at a company where people are micromanaged
down to "task estimation hours".

~~~
RandallBrown
By task estimation hours I simply meant estimating how long tasks will take.
It's a pretty normal part of most software development practices. I don't work
at a TPS labyrinth.

------
kbronson
Most unsubstantial article ever, with 69 upvotes and counting.

------
briandear
Cool shit? Working for Microsoft? I must have missed something.

