
Ask HN: Leaving a Job at Big Tech Giants for Startup - sujesh
What does HN think about leaving a posh job at big tech giants for creating a startup?
======
rgbrenner
My entire career has been startups. On average, your startup will be a
failure.

If you want to create one, then it should be for an idea that you really
believe in and that has value. Because you're going to have bad days--lots of
them--and want to quit. And if you don't believe in what you're building, then
you will quit, and it'll all be for nothing. (Plus, if you believe in what
you're building and it fails, you won't regret it later.. you'll at least
appreciate what you learned.)

The fact that you're asking at all, tells me you should probably stay at your
job. If I (a random 3rd party) needs to convince you to do a startup, then
forget it. The idea must not be very compelling--it certainly isn't to you.

And if you're thinking that is the path because you've read a bunch of success
porn.. you're in for a rude awakening.

~~~
yaseer
This.

The probability is that your startup will fail.

However, you would not have failed as an individual if you're passionate about
what you're building, and enjoyed building it, whatever the eventual outcome.

~~~
tfehring
Correction: You will not have made the wrong decision if you enjoyed the
experience enough to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.

------
docker_up
I have a friend who has been at 3 startups in the last 8 years and he regrets
being in the startups immensely, because of how much money he has left on the
table not being at Apple and Google (he was at both previous). He probably
missed out on multi-millions of dollars in stock/RSUs and none of his startups
panned out at all.

So, your mileage may vary.

Me personally I've done both, and I think I prefer a small, public company
where my RSUs are worth something that I can sell. I don't need multi-
millions, but I do need money to survive in the Bay Area.

~~~
taude
I've made more on paper in growth of equity in my home than any of the
startups I've worked at. Granted my first job was at a big tech with options
right out of college, which allowed me the down payment on home, but ever
since....I've been picking the paper losers to work at (or start). I'd have
been way better off (financially) had I just stayed at my big tech company
since college, worked my way up to Senior Management, kept getting stock
grants, bonuses, etc. And now, I'd be getting dividends on all that stock,
too.

However, I've had lot of fun and mostly enjoyed my career being kept on my
toes.

------
randomacct3847
YOLO

I peek at Blind every now and then (and take everything I read with a grain of
salt) but main takeaway is that there are plenty of people at FAANGs who pull
in a good amount of money but are completely miserable because they have
allowed themselves to get wrapped up in a rat race where all they can think of
is their next raise/promotion within some arbitrary leveling system to measure
their self worth against.

Also reminded with how money is not happiness with the crazy story with Jussie
Smollett staging his own hate crime because he was depressed about his salary
of $1m a tv season.

~~~
PakG1
Compare that with the founders who don't make any money and have no big home
runs. Some go bankrupt. But at least they chased the dream. Which would people
prefer? Grass is not always greener on the other side.

------
jovisjoseph
In my personal opinion if you are doing something that risky do it when you
are young. Once you cross a particular age threshold your possibilities of
future pivots back to jobs will be decreased considerably. Especially in the
tech industry ageism does exist. And at a young age you tend to take a more
irrational leap of faiths and to an extent, that's a must for an entrepreneur
in his early stages.

In my own experience, i jumped into the entrepreneurial journey right after my
graduation. Was it a well thought out decision. No of course not. It was a kid
chasing his dreams. All cliches aside sometimes dreams don't feed you. But if
you ask me "do i regret", i would confidently say No. If you choose to be an
entrepreneur, no one or no book in the world can prepare you for the shit that
you are going to face and 60% of the time you'll have bad experiences. So why
choose it over a well-paying job? That's a question you might have to answer.
And that answer will change over time. If you go with it, be prepared for the
following

It not fun (As mainstream media portray it to be). Every morning when you wake
up & your rational mind will ask you why? be prepared with an answer. Embrace
the uncertainty and learn to survive on hope.

And finally, save some money at least to survive for 3 years. Live frugally

~~~
fatnoah
This was roughly my thinking. When I was young, single, and had no
responsibilities, I did the startup route and thrived in the stress,
excitement, and ability to make a big impact. Now that I'm older and have a
kid, a public company with RSUs that I can put a dollar amount on (vs.
options), and some measure of stability are important. When I was 24, I could
find a couch to crash on while getting back on my feet if the job went south.
Now, I'm worrying about college, mortgages, and stability.

------
Scarblac
I like to be at a small corporation (we're about 70 people, 25 of which on the
tech side). We work on things that I think are important, I have real
influence in how everything is done, and it's still a normal job where I don't
have to put in insane hours.

There isn't a binary choice between Big Tech and Startup.

------
throw-away-5000
If your motivation is making multi-millions one day, you're better off buying
a lottery ticket or staying at your FAANG-equivalent job.

I left my large company job 7 years ago to found my own company with a friend.
We initially tried our hand at a saas product then figured out we were too
green at the business side of things to make it work (read we had no idea how
to sell) so moved on to web-dev consulting.

Consulting has been a huge slog, we made every mistake in the book we could
(and learnt from them) so we were making meagre salaries for a number of
years. However we (lucked out and) met some great people who wanted to start
new Saas products with us and could take care of selling and marketing while
we build and product manage.

Now we've made our way back to boostrapped-saas-product-land much wiser than
before. Been at it for a year now so not quite ramen profitable yet. I am poor
AF, my cofounder is poor AF, we are late 30s/early 40s now.

The only reason why we come to work each day is because we have products we
believe in, customers who we want to help and employees who we love (and wish
we could pay more).

This has been made possible by understanding wives and families too who are
happy to scrimp now for a shot at a future they believe in too.

~~~
technics256
I'm in a similar situation. How are you holding up?

~~~
throw-away-5000
Thanks for asking, I'm alright. I used to have this thought process which was
'if I didn't make X metric by Y date, I'd give this all up and go back to
BigCo', well sure enough I've never ever made it but I'm still kicking around.
I had to read a bunch of philosophy particularly on stoicism to get me through
some of the tougher times a couple of years ago.

There's no point in focusing on the money/wealth that I didn't earn over the
years because I took this path and I made a choice to. What matters is the
here and now. That's not to say I don't plan for the future but I boiled it
down to a simple trick to keep me going - is there progress? Is your
trajectory up or down? If up, no matter how small or slow the progress is,
keep grinding away another day/week/month. We're slowly adding customers,
slowly improving our product to be indispensible to our current customers and
getting paid on a monthly basis for it so there's a pin-hole of light at the
end of the tunnel. I've already paddled half way across the ocean, I just have
to keep going on.

~~~
halfjoking
"If I don't make X metric by Y date..."

I've found this to be the most dangerous type of thinking. It's always going
to take longer, go worse and be harder than any of your best estimates. When
you don't meet your dates or metrics, that's when you'll lose your motivation.

The key to keep grinding away relentlessly on a project is to improve habits
and systems for making progress. The creator of Dilbert wrote a great book
about it:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-adams8217-secret-of-
succe...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-adams8217-secret-of-success-
failure-1381639163)

Personally I don't consider myself successful, but because of the advice to
stop making goals I'm failing faster, staying motivated and getting stuff
done. So hopefully eventually it will pay off.

------
a13n
I left Facebook 3.5 years ago to start a startup and I'm quite happy.

Software engineer and founder are two different roles, and it takes time to
transition. Don't expect to be wildly successful in any short period of time.

Launch quickly and try to get users and talk to them. Try to make your first
dollar quickly. This will help you learn about business, marketing, product
market fit.

I believe that starting a bootstrapped SaaS startup minimizes your risk and
maximizes your outcome. It's relatively easy to make money and become
profitable, compared to other kinds of startups. Once you're profitable, it's
hard to die.

Lastly, bring a designer with you from big co (assuming you're an engineer).
People want to use well designed products, and simple UX coverts better.

~~~
xrtgavin
easy to build means easy to replace. is it true?

~~~
a13n
Not in my experience, so far.

------
mswen
Most of us here on HN have done a startup, been an early employee of a startup
or hang out here at least in part because we dream of doing a startup. Given
those biases I think the default is leaning that way.

On the other hand you already appear to be living the alternate dream talked
about often here on HN - good job at a tech giant at least if it is one of the
FANG and not one of the older school tech giants.

My own experiences would indicate that one should not underestimate the
likelihood of market failure. When we say "high risk high reward" many of us
focus much more on the second half of that phrase and discount the first half.
We assume that we are smart enough to avoid the risks and persevere till we
reap the rewards. And, sometimes we are, but often we are not.

Just the other day I ruminated with a friend that I almost certainly would
have been a lot better off financially picking a boring but useful domain and
getting really good at that rather route that I did take. Focusing on R&D,
innovation and a couple of versions of startups. On the other hand I feel like
my life has been pretty interesting.

~~~
zerohp
My experience working at a startup biased me against it. I'm much happier at a
big tech giant.

~~~
ARandomerDude
Totally agree. I'm not at a company known as a "tech company," but it is a
household name. Vastly superior in pay and culture to the startup I worked
for.

------
smattiso
I did this and my advice would be “it depends”. It’s been a mixed bag.
Financially I’m much worse off than I would have been staying at my 300k job
(who knows what it would have grown to now?). I will say the stress of not
knowing what you are doing and questioning yourself can be immense. That being
said perhaps I’m not the best example as I took years off living a hedonistic
lifestyle and truly adopted the YOLO mentality. I consulted here and there. It
was fun but ultimately draining.

The corporate coding lifestyle can be without a doubt an existential mind
fuck. It partially depends on your mindset and job responsibilities though. If
you care about the purpose of your product, you aren’t some product managers
code monkey, and you are making money that isn’t the worst thing.

That being said... FOR ME I have learned that the concept of retirement is a
joke. It’s not all that great and at least for me people feel better having a
meaningful purpose. Even if your purpose is make believe I think it’s
neCessary. So I wonder about the utility of doing something you hate for 30
years just to end up “retired” and miserable anyway. That’s what I’m trying to
do, I don’t want to retire but I don’t want to sit in front of a computer
coding up some app UI for someone else. but I have a family on the way so
we’ll see how it goes.

I think maybe optimize for that purpose you have in mind for yourself rather
than starting a business just for the hell of it. If you are getting paid 500k
by google to prosecute child pornographers that’s likely going to make you
feel better than starting your own 1 man SaaS business running email
marketing....

It depends.

------
anonfounderj
Been at bigco, did a few startups, a couple paid out, most did not.

As an option, I'ld explore a side-hustle first, see if you like doing that
enough before going all-in. Your goal for side-hustle, 20k MRR or gross margin
monthly (ecom). Choose a metric that's real. If you can't hit it on a part
time basis, you probably won't make it on a full time basis (for venture style
startups that is. If you're targeting lifestyle growth levels, you can always
do that part time. So what if it take 3x longer because you spend 2 days a
week instead of 6 on it. ).

Run it like a startup, eg. hire folks, pay for them (out of your salary),
manage them, build out specs/build stuff/etc. Do all the things you would need
to create a startup. Low risk, a little expensive as an experiment, but if you
didn't leave your posh job, you can afford it. eg. it's a 100-200k experiment,
but that's 'ok'. You'ld have certainty.

~~~
technotony
I've seen many many of my friends try the side hustle, and none succeed.
Mostly they burn themselves out from working so many hours and then stuff gets
tough, as it does, and they bail. I think a better approach is to make some
savings and take a sabbatical to test out what it's really like. If your day
job is cushy and unstressful then maybe that's a different story...

~~~
jamisteven
^ This, so true. Lot of people preaching the side hustle who either havent
actually tried it OR have very lax jobs that allow for this kind of thing.

------
DVassallo
If you have savings to cover at least 1.5 years worth of expenses, do it. If
within a year you don’t manage to pull it off, you can always go back. I just
did so myself. 2 weeks ago I left a very cushy job at Amazon making $500K/year
to work for myself. I wrote more about it here:
[https://medium.com/@dvassallo/only-intrinsic-motivation-
last...](https://medium.com/@dvassallo/only-intrinsic-motivation-
lasts-92c0497cf97c)

Don’t bother with people saying you can only do this at a very young age. I’m
35, have 2 small kids (ages 2 and 4), and no household income right now. You
don’t need to risk anything important to try your own thing. I wrote about my
risk taking attitude here: [https://medium.com/@dvassallo/freedom-from-
success-54ca98fd6...](https://medium.com/@dvassallo/freedom-from-
success-54ca98fd6d31)

~~~
jriot
You were making $500k a year, that isn't normal, regardless of what you tell
yourself.

~~~
davidjnelson
His medium post said he was making that while leveled as a senior engineer.

Using levels.fyi and the sde 3 title, it looks like the average for that
position in San Francisco is $482,000/year.

[https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Google/Facebook](https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Google/Facebook)

------
digitalixus
I've seen people speak of how big corporations state-side offer more pay and
packages, and that startups are mostly for the bored looking for new
challenges and make their mark (plus a little gambling of their time that the
startup will make it big).

Can confirm the same situation in Europe (Germany). With that said, I'd advise
against joining a startup. In Germany, even with stereotypically strict laws
favoring the employee, startups are extremely abusive.

\- They will lowball you \- They will lie to you about all the "great perks",
mostly free fruit. Very rarely do they offer stock options and if they do, the
terms designed to screw you over as much as possible (e.g. if the company
doesn't go public or get bought over in 5 years, the value of any options is
zero) \- They expect you to work long hours, disregarding any "work-life
balance" BS stereotypes about the way Europeans work

~~~
wolco
Founders fall in love with there idea and that shades the conversation
creating lies.

------
musiciangames
You may also want to consider the timing in the economic cycle. During the
last recession Paul Graham wrote an essay or post to say that was a good time
to start a venture. IIRC he mentioned plenty of talent available cheaply, not
many competitors in your space... The corollary may be that now is not a good
time to start a venture- shortage of talent at astronomical costs, multiple
competitors in every niche... The current market reminds me a lot of the
dotcom bubble. And the first response saying 'this time it's different', I'm
going straight out to short tech stocks.

------
xiphias2
I would say no to the people who say it's good to have a startup when you're
young. For investing and money compounding the first 5-10 years of your
working life are the most important.

If you want to make a lot of money, I would look at investing (especially
commodities now that stocks/bonds/houses are overvalued) instead of trying a
startup. Most people get rich ($3M+) by investing and letting compounding do
its job.

Doing a startup is risky, investing can be done in a relatively safe way.

If you really want a startup for some non-money related reason, you can do it
when you have money in your bank account.

~~~
ehead
I’m finding this out the hard way. I recently shut down a startup that became
very distant from my interests, and now I’m having trouble finding jobs in my
actual interest area, hardware engineering. I’m no longer a ‘recent grad’ so
my college internships don’t have much weight. I wish I had taken advantage of
the amazing opportunities afforded by being a fresh grad instead of starting
my own thing, and I wish I had had the foresight to not do a startup that
would distract me from my career path.

~~~
xiphias2
I'm sorry for you, I know heavy is the age bias in the industry.

Get a software engineering job at a company thst has hardware engineering as
well, it's usually easier to switch as an insider.

------
PeterBarrett
All of the responses in this thread are vague because your question is vague.

If you have put away enough money to fund your own idea or live salary free
for a year (or amount of time you're comfortable with not earning) then go for
it. If this is just some itch you're looking to scratch try changing team in
your company first and see if you still want to leave.

This question depends on so many variables that you can't possibly expect
someone to give you a clear answer.

------
itin
What matters more than leaving the posh job is to know what you're leaping
into. Will the problem and company you work at be something you want to wake
up and work on for the next 7-10 years? Are the founders people you love
spending every moment of your waking hours with? Are they pleasant when you
disagree with them?

If you have a current opportunity, it would be much easier to compare X with Y
than talking about hypotheticals, so my advice is keep looking around for
opportunities, and once one arrises think hard and then think again and then
take the leap.

In the meantime, focus on becoming a kick-ass coder and/or product person
and/or manager and/or fundraiser and/or marketer because these are all
critical skills for building successful organizations.

I am currently a masters student doing a 4+1 year program in a prestigious
school CS department. I know that if I go work at a big tech company, I will
have no motivation to put in my 110% effort, so that's what influenced my
decision to join a medium-sized startup. Besides, life is too short to be
doing something you don't enjoy.

------
demircancelebi
Validate demand and validate yourself.

Validate demand: You should understand whether you can launch a very crude
version/maybe no product but customers lined up to pay you for your thing
which'll become ready soon and get some validation from the market. If you
can't do this, what makes you think that you can do it after you quit? Stay at
your job if customers are not ready to throw money at you. If you can see
solid demand, you should validate yourself.

Validate yourself: Do you think you are mentally prepared? Do you have enough
savings? You probably have the skills to create a product, but do you have the
skills to create a company? Will you enjoy working on this for the next 5-10
years?

On savings: Do the math for yourself, but in order to be able to work without
financial stress, you should have enough money for = ((number of months you
foresee your startup to take off) x 2.5[correction for you optimism] + 3-6
months[It'll become hard to work stress free and irrational to continue if you
don't have something solid, so better go get a job now]) * (amount you think
you'll need in a month * 1.3-1.5[you are also optimistic about your expenses])

------
jmchuster
It certainly depends on how you're approaching it. If you're thinking it's a
chance to make more money, nope, you're better off making money at your posh
job, or switch to a company focused on maximum payout (e.g. netflix). If
you're passionate about it no matter what and are willing to work through five
years of continuous failure (e.g. airbnb's story), then no need to ask, you're
going to do it no matter what.

However, if you're somewhere in the middle, I think startups are a great
learning experience. Go work at an early-stage startup that will pay you less
than your current job and less than your market rate, but you get to
experience a different style of company and style of work. Or save up money
from your posh job so you can afford to not make money for a year and try
starting your own company for that time. Or just coast a bit at your posh job
and take that extra energy and put it into starting a side business.

~~~
mesid
What's your take on a side business? What kind of thing could it be? And would
it be legal?

------
deepaksurti
Big tech giants also have ton of interesting work to be done, yes the pace may
be slower than what it would be at a startup or if you just go on a
sabbatical. On the flip side, big tech can give you the resources you need to
succeed.

Why don't you find an intersection between your idea or the reason you leave
the big tech and the big tech itself? Then work it out with your manager to
transition to that. It may take time but how different it would be from
working on your idea, pitching it etc?

Why not opt for work of your choice in a big tech giant? Win-Win and even to
win at startup lottery, eventually you need to reach the win-win stage!

------
checkyoursudo
My spouse worked at a ~150 headcount (c round funding) tech startup and hated
it.

She now works for a massive revenue, mid-size firm and ... mostly hates it.

At one time in my life, I worked for a company that would have been considered
a tech giant of its time (one of the 100 most profitable firms in the US at
the time), and it was OK-ish.

My opinion is that I would do it, if I had the opportunity to do it. If you
can afford to take the chance now, then consider taking the chance now. You
never know if you will be able to do it in the future.

------
rb808
Creating a startup is very tough, If you have a great job I'd be careful. If
you can I'd try to do something small as a side project first and see how much
money you can make. A lot of people here are good coders but have no clue
about business, if that is you tread carefully.

It also depends on how much experience you have. If you've been working 1-2
years I'd say no way. 5 years: maybe.

But as others said its good to do when you're young. Combined with living in
Thailand or something sounds great.

~~~
jovisjoseph
The problem here is the dilemma when to go full-time. Its always a tough call.
Compared to a side-project building up a scalable business model is a
different ball game altogether. So brace for that once you go full time
everything changes and without going fulltime you'll probably reach nowhere

~~~
puranjay
What's a good filter for knowing when to go full-time? Covering your monthly
expenses?

I have a consulting business that pays me handsomely. But I also have a side
business that has paid for my monthly expenses the last 3-4 months. Would that
be a good metric to jump ship from consulting and go full-time with the side
hustle?

~~~
jovisjoseph
Yeah, that sounds fair. But there is a small caveat here thou. The income from
side projects are so volatile, sometimes you can't predict on them. You can
only make them stable if you invest enough time on it and study the usage
pattern. And most of the time you'll have to get on full time to get those
metrics. So we will get back to that chicken and egg problem again

------
mattmurdog
Worked in a dozen start ups and all but 2 still stand today. Going from
startup to big tech is hard because there's a process you will need to follow
and the work may not always be exciting. But the pay, bonus, options make up
for it. Going from big tech to start up is easy when you have a nest egg built
up. If you don't it'll be a major struggle and it's not worth it to be honest.

------
arunaugustine
I left a big corp job in Silicon Valley and returned to India to work on a
startup. I must say that even though I am poorer in terms of $ earned or net-
worth, I can honestly say I am happier.

I wrote an article recently about my leap of faith and four pivots. The link
is in my bio.

------
___karim
Depends on the type of person. For some it’s the only way to have a sense of
control over ones own destiny. Others who lack the discipline to always be
selling and pushing forward are better off sticking to their current role.

------
bayesian_horse
My recommendation would be to be very clear on the opportunity-cost, and be
ready to share that burden and risk with an investor.

------
rajacombinator
I think people lazy enough to ask a question like this are not suited to
entrepreneurship.

------
ykevinator
Why is it a binary? Can't you launch and see if there is any interest? You

------
slack3r
If you have to ask, you should probably stay at Big Tech Giant.

