Ask HN: What are the big differences working at a startup, bigco, old smallco? - aniijbod
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dalfonso
BigCo:

-Better pay, benefits, stock options

-More organized in all regards (sprints, HR, ramp up, training, etc.)

-More "name recognition" e.g. when you tell people where you work, they immediately know/are familiar with the company

-Hours will usually be between 40-60 per week

-Not often mentioned, but with so many people, you're more likely to make "work friends"

-Siloed into your specific role - if there's a new technology or idea you want to implement, there's usually a few levels of approvals you need to go through

-Can feel like you're just a small cog in a big machine

Startup (not "established startup" e.g. multiple rounds of funding):

-Immediate impact -- you're usually defining the direction of whatever you're working on

-You get a chance to "wear many hats" i.e. work on various different projects/tasks

-If there's any equity/options, there's a possibility these become lucrative (although I would assume this is unlikely)

-Usually your hours are more flexible

-Can get "lonely" if the team is small

-Pay is usually below market or if you're a founder...nonexistent

-Can have long hours e.g. 80 hour weeks

SmallCo:

The middle ground of the two. Almost all the pros and cons of the above, but
just not as extreme. For example, HR is usually more organized than a startup,
but not as organized as a BigCo. Or, you have more of an impact on the product
than at a BigCo, but less than at a startup.

~~~
hoborama
Slightly off-topic, but I can't believe the long hours you guys in the USA
work as standard. In the UK, most jobs these days are 37.5 hours. Only a few
do 40.

Of course there may be (rare) occasions where you need to work overtime, but
40-60 hours on a regular basis seems crazy. 80 hours is insane. People here
simply wouldn't do it. I doubt anyone gets any more productive beyond around
30 hours a week.

~~~
abalashov
Keep in mind that hours don't necessarily translate to productivity.

But yes, Americans work a lot of hours, and in the white collar professions
this is especially the cultural norm. Living at the office or being tied to
one's computer at home 24/7 (or both) are pretty typical.

~~~
jacobr
Does this require a stay-at-home partner? I don't know how I would ever be
able to handle my daily life, stuff like cooking, laundry, sleeping, errands,
going to the hairdresser, working out, hanging out with my partner... and I
didn't even mention the kids!

~~~
abalashov
It generally does. The exception would be very well-compensated people in the
corporate world who can afford au pairs and nannies, and, effectively, the
modern equivalent of household servants. This is how the Sheryl Sandbergs of
the world "lean in" and "do it all" — lots and lots of hired help. There is no
other way.

I am not rich, and I ended up the single dad of a two year-old recently. So I
am still trying to figure that puzzle for myself. Fortunately, I do have the
flexibility of being self-employed, but on the other hand, if I don't work
(long hours), neither I nor my son will have much to live on.

------
caseysoftware
One of the big differences is generalization vs specialization.

If you're at a big company, odds are there is someone for every task that
needs to be done. It's not just that someone can pick it up but I mean it's a
part of their job description. If you're looking for mentorship from a
specialist, it's great.

At a smaller company, the same tasks have to be done but odds are whoever is
available with some basic aptitude (or willingness to learn) can pick it up.
You'll end up with a broader range of experience. If you demonstrate skill (or
at least competence+enthusiasm), you're likely to do it again because most
likely it needs to be done.

~~~
Top19
Went from a 120,000 person company to a 12 person company and this is so true.

If you’ve got great leadership, a small company can be an incredibly fun,
almost artistic like experience to work at. A

That being said I really enjoyed my time at Bigco. It teaches you a ton about
bureaucracy, the inevitable issues large groups of humans has, there is a
built in social network, lots of legal protections, etc.

~~~
ellius
There’s a good line in “Accidental Empires” about how, in large companies,
appearances and ability to work within the system are more important than
actual ability with regard to advancement. In startups, _there is no system_ ,
which is what makes it “so damn fun.” I think that’s right, but the flip side
is that a big sturdy business has theoretically figured out an angle that they
can exploit into the ground in the market, and you can learn a ton by seeing
how they do that, how various subgroups within the company navigate the larger
system, et al. So both definitely have their benefits from an educational
perspective, although I definitely think smaller in general tends to be more
fun because of how much you can shape your surroundings and see immediate
feedback in changes to the system. But fun isn’t necessarily the most
important thing always.

~~~
late2part
It is my opinion that Cringeley is a fraud. He did a kickstarter and
completely failed to deliver.

Separately if you live your life in service to a bohemeth, learning
nonreproducible skills in maneuvering their bureaucracy you are likely to have
a miserable pointless career.

There’s so much more actual learning and effective transferable skill and
power in working to achieve things versus serving an internal bureaucracy that
rent seeks.

I’m reminded of the John Boyd line: “Do you want to be somebody, or do
something?” Winning the respect of your incestuous peers is hollow outside in
the real World if you don’t actually deliver real effective results. But so
many of these B-Ark people do so well at big companies with minimal actual
Skills other than sucking up and dodging blame.

~~~
ellius
I don’t have strong feelings about Cringley. He admits in the book he
basically wrote an industry gossip mag, so I took the whole thing with a grain
of salt and just tried to enjoy it.

That said, I think your other comments are correct but somewhat miss the
point. Certain types of work you can pretty much only be exposed to within a
large company that can muster the required volume of funds / expertise /
reputation. And learning to corral diverse groups of people with competing
needs and priorities is pretty much the definition of a transferrable skill.

One example from my own life: I’ve bounced around financial institutions
(mostly banks and credit card companies) for the last several years. To
continue building the skills I’m interested in, I need a better understanding
of the internals of big banks. It’s simply much more difficult for me to try
to learn those things in a small company or startup, unless I can get one of
the few spots available in a company like Monzo, which would require me to not
only get the position but move away from my friends / family / etc. (And then
I’m still looking at a small company’s new vision of how a thing should work
rather than seeing how it actually works in most situations today.) There are
always tradeoffs, and sometimes a big company will have positions that are
better suited to your current goals.

------
apohn
A lot of great answers!

Don't forget the majority of bigcos are not software companies. These are
companies like Ford, GM, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, etc. Basically, these
companies use software as part of their business, but are not fundamentally
software companies.

The worst jobs I've ever had was being a software person in one of these non-
software companies. Few of the positives (e.g. having a great set of great
senior software people and practices to learn from) existed, but certainly all
of the negatives did. At one of them (I didn't last long there) there was
constant talk of us "Being agile like startups" which meant that people did a
lot of useless work just so Directors with minimal/no software background
could generate 100s of slides to demonstrate how agile and entrepreneurial
their groups were.

If you want to work in software and want the positives of a bigco, work for a
bigco software company. If not in a software company, in the technology org of
a bicgo that actually sees software as a core strength and not just a cost
center or value-add.

~~~
abalashov
Very good points!

In addition to that, there is a third species of company that seems to be
especially common in my industry (telecom): the nominal tech company. This is
a company whose business model theoretically makes big engineering demands; it
may not be a software company per se, but operating and gluing together tech
is unquestionably the core mission behind its products and services. Yet,
instead it's an overwhelmingly sales-driven company that mostly just pays lip
service to engineering.

This type of company is insidiously bad for an engineering career because it
has the outward appearance of being tech-focused. It's only with time that you
realise that 80% of the staff hold management titles and do little but parry
e-mail and hold meetings, that there are 20 VPs (in a company of a few hundred
or a few thousand) who are usually on golf junkets, and the agenda is set
mostly by blinged-out, testosterone-amped sales execs and the MBA frat boys
who supposedly run sophisticated development and infrastructure groups. A
tell-tale sign of such companies is that underneath ten layers of
"management", you'll find three H1-Bs stuck somewhere in the back, sharing a
cube, who are the only ones in the company who actually know anything about
the technology. They are critical to the company, but because of their
indentured H1-B status, the company is equally critical to them.

In the short term, working for such companies can be really cool. They usually
have severe problems retaining serious engineering talent, so if you walk in
there with substantial skills, they'll think you walk on water when you bang
out a few lines of Bash or Python for basic housekeeping tasks. But you'll
soon notice very high churn, or, at the other extreme, lots of people who have
been there 10-20 years and have become deeply entrenched maintenance
specialists in the company's internal systems and processes. This looks like
tech work to them and others, but robs them of portable marketable skills. The
moment they are laid off, they'll find that the world has moved on and that
they have vanishingly little to offer other employers.

------
delinka
Can we get "Ask HN" prepended to this? I was completely confused when this
headline didn't navigate to a blog post.

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mathattack
I'm going to frame this a little different... More as the difference between a
high growth startup, a big public company, and a small stable company.

The large public company aims for predictability. They thrive based on
economies of scale, which are achieved through standards. They work a lot on
systems. Decisions frequently seem irrational, because things that look good
in a unit get sacrificed for the benefit of the whole. Depending on the
company, compensation can be better. Benefits usually are. (Google outpays YC,
but Walmart may not outpay a small retailer) There is a long gap between idea
and impact, but the impact can be huge. (One person can help a big company cut
$20mm in costs - if the PE is 20, that's $400mm in enterprise value) But you
may spend months fighting petty battles. Bigger companies tend to be more cost
focused. Hours tend to be more predictable. If you're a superstar, you can
usually stay employed even if there are ups and downs. (Big companies have
layoffs, but the top 10% can usually find work elsewhere inside)

In high growth startups you have a lot of autonomy to make decisions. The
distance between idea and implementation is very small. The energy and urgency
is much higher, even on things that may seem small. Compensation is much more
equity based. Hours are much less predictable. You can do a fantastic job and
still get fired if the company implodes.

Small stable companies are usually family businesses, and frequently run as
such. You get treated well by the owners, but you'll never be one of them.
Benefits can be good, though overall comp will not be outstanding. They can be
very friendly places to work, where everyone knows everyone.

------
maxxxxx
My recommendation is to do both in your career. Working at a big company can
teach you how to work with a lot of stakeholders, big teams, management and
often working with mature stuff. It comes often at the price of bureaucracy
and a "can't do" attitude. You may also feel underchallenged. In a small
company you learn how do things in a more direct way and often have more
flexibility.

Both are good things to experience.

~~~
randiantech
Exactly my experience after working several years for many big corporations
and startups. I would add that might expect much worst work-life balance as a
foreign developer working for an american startup.

------
twunde
bigco - There's going to be a fair amount of project management and process
(which is absolutely needed). Part of the learning curve will be learning how
to effectively work across teams/departments. Also you will probably see a
reorg/layoff at some point. It won't be as bad as you imagine. Expect at least
some training and formal learning opportunities.

old smallco/startup - Can be very ad-hoc. Someone needs a new computer? Run to
the store. Some things you might expect may be missing such as HR or tech
support. You may not receive much if any training.

startup - Generally longer hours, generally exciting as you're creating
something new. product, client launches.

------
lvoudour
My previous job was at a company that fluctuated between 15-25 people, not
exactly a startup so you can call it "old smallco". My current job is at a
company of 4-5 thousand with multiple offices in different countries. My
experience is as follows

Pros of "smallco":

\- Felt like a family business, friendly atmosphere, great relationship with
everyone

\- You get to do things outside your job spec and consequently acquire a broad
range of skills

\- Design freedom, your input is never dismissed/ignored

\- "Vertical" knowledge of the product (design, manufacturing, testing),
familiarity with every component even if completely unrelated to your skills

\- Virtually no bureaucracy, very small time-to-fix (from identifying a
problem to deploying the fix)

\- Never boring

Cons:

\- Job insecurity. The company can basically go under any day

\- Salary is not amazing, raises are infrequent and small

\- At some point you are basically the expert in your domain. This means
there's none more experienced than you to teach you new things or give you
some great insight

\- No rigorous process, minimal documentation, you basically end up hacking
together stuff as you go

Pros of bigger company:

\- Higher job security, better salary, benefits and career opportunities

\- Better process, your work is more organized

\- Plenty of people around you that can help you learn and advance your skills

Cons:

\- Little freedom to design, you need to stay in your "lane", improvisation is
a no-no. This is not bad per se, it's just not as exciting

\- Months go by and you still don't know 1/4 of the people on your floor.
Relationships are more formal

\- Bureaucracy is sometimes infuriating. Need another chair? send an e-mail to
the correct department, wait a day or two. Need to use your favorite text
editor instead of the company standard? You need approval from your manager.

Never worked in a behemoth like google, ms, intel,etc. but I expect the
pros/cons to be even more accentuated.

------
arikrak
Big companies are a safer bet. The company should be around in a few years,
they have established best practices, good compensation, normal hours
(~40/week). Even if one later deiced to work at a small company, it helps to
have gained the experience and credential of working at the big company first.

------
trjordan
Other comments have good observations about big vs small.

One of the main markers of a startup is there tends to be One Big Challenge to
get the company to The Next Level (generally talked about as a funding round,
but that's just a convenience). Initially you're finding product / market fit,
then you're figuring out a scalable go-to-market, then you're scaling the
product, then you're launching a new product, etc.

It's weird to go through one of these transitions, because you'll need to
change your focus pretty drastically. Sometimes you'll feel sidelined, because
your department isn't the one primarily on the hook. If you're figuring out
how to build a sales team, engineering gets chill and potentially complacent.
The most successful startups have leaders that paint a clear picture that gets
all departments working autonomously towards the same goal.

This is different than a smallco, because without a war chest of cash, your
options are more limited. Because cash flow dictates the cadence of the
business, and that's never going to change. This can feel more stable, but
does mean you'll have to occasionally make hard choices that delay a valuable
project or work on something outside your speciality.

------
billrobertson42
If in Smallco or startco, you have toxic co-workers you have toxic or
politically aggressive co-workers, you'd better be very savvy on how to deal
with them because you can't avoid them. In bigco, it's easier to isolate
yourself from politics because you may have co-workers who are more willing to
deal with them so you don't have to.

------
kcorbitt
Here are some thoughts I wrote up recently comparing my previous work at
Google to my current role at YC, written from the perspective of an
individual-contributor software developer:
[https://corbt.com/posts/2017/10/28/small-companies-and-
the-p...](https://corbt.com/posts/2017/10/28/small-companies-and-the-
presumption-of-competence.html)

Both workplaces are great, and while I'm personally happier at YC I could see
the decision going the other way for somebody with different preferences.

------
rrhyne
Generalized personal observations: Stability: startup, small company, bigco
Pay:smallco,startup,bigco Personal growth: bigco,smallco,startup Technical
growth:bigco,smallco,startup Hassle:bigco,smallco,startup

------
khazhou
Piling on...

BigCo: constant criticism and "evaluation" of your performance. Emphasis on
meeting whatever deadline was decided internally. Lots of people on your
project who you don't know what they do.

~~~
apohn
>Emphasis on meeting whatever deadline was decided internally. Lots of people
on your project who you don't know what they do.

The most important defense against this is your manager, who can keep your
team away from projects with nonsense deadlines and goals. That's why, when
you take any job, you need a good manager and hopefully your manager's manager
is good as well. Otherwise all the foolishness from above will roll down to
you.

If the entire division is full of these kind of nonsense projects, chances are
the good managers will leave. Don't work at these places unless you have no
choice.

------
gorbachev
Here's something I've noticed when working at a big company. It's extremely
easy to get vendors talking to you. They will always call you back. It's
actually kind of a big deal, if solutions from third parties can offer
significant benefits to what you're working on and you have budget to spend.

The flip side is that they always call you. You can't stop them calling you,
even after you've told them multiple times you're interested.

------
viach
I think this is an artificial separation. There are only 2 kind of companies -
those which make money and those which don't. For real experience , imho, I
would suggest to work for the 1st.

~~~
spraak
I think you're misunderstanding the question. This is like someone asked what
is the difference between beer, wine, and hard alcohol and your reply is
"there are only two kinds of drinks: those that get you drunk and those that
don't". Duh. They want to know more about the experience of the types, not to
be dismissed.

~~~
viach
My point is, using your analogy, you can get drunk with all 3, but what
matters is people you are drinking with.

------
bane
Over 20 years in the workforce, here's my notions from working for:

3 big-corps (over 30,000 employees each)

\- Huge well organized career ladder

\- lots of corporate resources for growing a career

\- more possible to change jobs without changing companies, usually through
changes in divisions

\- good places to move up title-wise between smaller companies

\- work tends to be more specialized, you'll end up doing really only one kind
of work and if you want to do something else you need to change jobs
internally

\- less flexibility and personal touches

\- benefits are usually pretty good

\- you will be not much more than a number to the higher organizational units
in the company

\- can get you positioned to work on hugely impactful work that will affect
millions of people

\- time to impact can be very long...

\- tend to be very bottom-line focused and conservative

\- lots of processes and procedures

\- as a performer, lower stress, as you move up management ranks gets medium
stressed

\- may be a dozen or more layers between the lowest employee and the CEO

\- hiring and recruiting is a well oiled machine

\- these companies decide where they want to be and simply put muscle behind
to make it happen

1 med-corp (< 2,000 employees)

\- definitely some aspects of working for a big-corp, mostly bureaucratic
nonsense

\- they're trying _really_ hard to become a big-co so more flexibility and
risk taking is possible

\- jobs tend to be less specialized in some cases

\- less opportunity to move around, but you'll also find that these are the
places with 20+ year employees

\- tend to have better benefits in order to attract talent from big-co, but
can't always match on pay (often in denial about the state of the market)

\- feels like several small-corps (~100) in practice due to divisional
structure, even the lowest employee is only 5-6 steps from the CEO

\- most tasks are 1-5 people deep, so if one person isn't good, they can
usually scrounge up another person who can take it on

\- recruiting is functional, but thin

\- growth desires can sometimes get in the way of sustaining operations

1 small-corp (~100)

\- I didn't actually have a good experience at this place, so I may be colored
by it

\- there's often more people available to take on specialized tasks, but still
lots of multi-hat wearing

\- most tasks are 1 person deep, so if they aren't good, the entire company
feels it and grinds to a halt

\- very easy to get overwhelmed picking up slack for less capable staff

\- everybody knows everybody

\- organizational "feel" will be deeply linked to the personality of the
C-level execs, they'll know you by name and have a reputation for you in their
mind

\- a good size to put behind one major product push, or 5-6 small ones, but
might be too few people to handle

\- are often in the middle of huge growth which means everything is in chaos

6 tiny-cos (<20 staff)

\- imagine every kind of job there is, welcome to doing all of them, often at
once

\- in terms of professional capacity, I grew the most in these kind of
companies (while career titles grew the most in big-corps)

\- if you have a good team, can be extremely rewarding

\- better than 90% chance that things will go bust and you'll experience hours
and stress unlike anything you can imagine

\- everybody is customer support and sales

\- absolutely no room not to pull your own weight

\- company direction is dictated almost entirely by the capabilities of just a
handful of core people...who may not even be the C-levels or founders

\- work should be very focused on getting an MVP out the door and getting
initial customers, then moving up to the next size

\- often are getting ready to grow very fast which can be very tough

\- everything is always in chaos, but you have huge impact on the company
almost every day

\- I love working in these places, but can't do them back to back, the stress
is crippling

~~~
apohn
>feels like several small-corps (~100) in practice due to divisional
structure, even the lowest employee is only 5-6 steps from the CEO.

I worked for a med-corp (~3000 people) that was like this because they had
spent 10 years growing by acquiring other companies, but had done a poor job
of really integrating all these disparate products/teams.

One of the best parts of that job was that every org was very different. Some
were legacy products that ran on maintenance revenue and technical support.
Others were fast paced and were focused on the product/engineering team
improving the product. Some orgs had "hero" culture where people would rather
put out a fire than prevent it.

I met lots of different people, got to see and work with a lot of different
perspectives, and learned a lot. As you said, there were plenty of great
people with 10+ years of experience who were 10X multipliers on my own
education.

The company eventually paid for their inability to integrate these products
and teams by getting acquired by a private equity firm. It was fun while it
lasted!

------
SmellTheGlove
I'm not exactly a prolific poster, but if you look at my post history, you can
probably get some additional insight on the BigCo situation especially non-
tech. One thing I'd like to talk about is the bureaucracy in big companies,
which is often criticized but actually has some rationality to it:

To some, the bureaucracy seems like a byzantine game with unwritten rules
designed to have you fail, but it's actually a lot simpler and far less
nefarious than that. What it really comes down to is that BigCo has a lot of
leaders aligned across a lot of functions, and getting large, impactful things
that HN-types like to do will generally require buy-in across multiple leaders
and their managers. You have to get good at building consensus to get buy-in,
and that means thinking very hard about your ideas and the value proposition
to the organization as a whole, but then also to the individual stakeholders.
Critical thinking and analytic skills are very important for sure, but you
need some measure of emotional intelligence and soft skills to see things
through. This still matters in a smaller org, but bigger companies tend to get
proportionately more top-heavy, and that means more people to influence to get
a big idea through.

I've said this on HN before, that it's been my experience that startups and
smaller companies take a dim view of big company talent. I'd challenge that,
as people who have been successful in getting big things done in a big company
likely had to overcome a lot to do it, and that's a set of skills you want as
you start to grow and scale.

With all of that said, I'm leaving my management post with a BigCo at the end
of this month to join an established startup, hopefully to help them scale the
sorts of processes that I'm good at - and is probably at best a lateral in
terms of my current level. I've always wanted to try it, and I figure in my
mid 30's it's now or never, and somehow I've convinced my family that we
should go 2500 miles west to the Bay Area to do it. This isn't to say one is
better than the other, but I'm absolutely certain that the variety of
experience will make me a better leader going forward. Some of the best advice
I ever heard (from a former CFO and current board member of a BigCo), which I
will pass on here, is to take advantage of opportunities that will broaden
your horizons and make you an overall better leader - even if that opportunity
might not have the same "prestige" in its level, job title or brand
recognition. There's a lot of competition as we progress in our careers, and
sometimes being that person who has "done that" versus some vague exposure in
a prior management rotation, will get you ahead. Try on a few different hats,
see what fits.

------
donald_knuth
From the personal growth perspective;

Bigco can mean being constantly surrounded by experts and having to compete
with more experienced coworkers to get the fun projects or extra
responsibility that make a job rewarding. It can also mean lots of easy
learning from well experienced coworkers.

Smallco can mean less expert coworkers to learn from but lots of room to grow
and lots of experience gained from extra responsibility.

