Ask YC: Internet Startup or Big Powerhouse for a summer internship? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Internet Startup or Big Powerhouse for a summer internship?

21 pointsnjoubert35 comments

Hello YC! I'm a current UC Berkeley computer science student in my junior year (and loving it), and I've been mulling around this question in my mind for the last couple of weeks: Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? I have an offer from each of these categories, the pay is the same, and i'm pretty sure both would be a great working environment. What I'm left to decide is which one to take, especially considering the experience and education I would get in each sphere.

I really can't decide, so I'm hoping for some opinions from the hackers here at YC news. Which would you choose?

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If you have never worked for a major corporation, I would suggest taking the job at the major corporation. You will have gained real-world experience and the drive to never work for a major corporation ever again.

I recommend working for a major corporation at the early part of your career because you will learn that inside a major corporation you are nothing but a cog in the machine. If you are happy doing that type of work then life for you is set. If you are not happy doing that type of work, then you now have the adult-equivalent of "don't touch that!" branded into your soul.

In essence, the only way to know what type of person you are, start-up or big corporation, is to test the waters at a big corporation. The other way around doesn't work in my opinion because you need a stable environment in which to formulate a decision, and a startup would simply have to many unknowns to formulate the decision properly.

"It depends."

Taking a contrarian point of view, at the major corporation you might find yourself on a smaller team not unlike a startup, with supportive management, opportunities to work on diverse projects and a clear path for career growth and advancement.

I worked at a company with several thousand employees that was much like the above. I bailed after a few months to go back to doing my own thing, but in retrospect it would have been a great company to continue working for. Several managers asked me to stay, not because I'm Mr. Wonderful but rather because they genuinely cared about keeping people on-board. One day after I left I had a voicemail from someone at the company, and I never returned the call because I figured it was some HR flack doing a survey or something. I later looked up the person's name and learned it was the Senior VP--that's how much they cared about losing an employee.

I also worked at a small startup that kept us working 7 days a week, including holidays, for several months, then made a bad deal and dumped us all.

"It depends."

"because you will learn that inside a major corporation you are nothing but a cog in the machine"

I bet you'll learn a helluva lot more than that.

I'm not sure why there's such a negative undercurrent in this forum regarding larger organizations. Maybe negative experiences, maybe just heresay. Of course, the culture will be very different from a startup. But there's lots of good stuff, too.

I've worked in quite a few large companies, but now mostly small ones. Invariably, one of my small clients runs into an issue that none of their 30 employees has ever encountered before. So they try to figure it out. Until I say, "Here's how you do that..." Am I a genius? No. I've just seen the exact same thing handled very well in several large companies. Also (invariably), one of my small clients has to hire a manager of <you name it> who has vast experience in a large company. They always bring solutions to lots of problems that no one has ever imagined there.

Don't discount a large organization. It may be weighed down by its size, but you'll be able to witness LOTS of interesting stuff that you'll see nowhere else.

I'd be glad to list a few of the other things I have learned while working for large corporations.

(Lesson 1) Inside a large corporation, progress is impeded not by the intellect or imagination but by bureaucracy.

(Lesson 2) Corporations will stab you in the back. I experienced my first layoff when I was 23. I accepted a position in July of 2006 and was told in September of 2006 that my job would be gone in February of 2007.

Brent, from your own profile:

"After working for several miserable years in the banking and investment industries as a trust analyst and an equity trader..."

Sorry you have had such negative experiences with large organizations (although in that industry, I'm not surprised). Welcome to the hacker's life. I sure expect that this career will go a lot better for you that that one.

My experience is obviously very different from yours. I have worked in many large and small companies, and each has had its own pros and cons. I have seen some of the coolest technology in very large organizations and have also seen the worst office politics you can imagine in 20 person companies.

I understand you sourness; just try to not let your negative experience turn into a false generalization that could limit opportunities for yourself or others.

It could be because this is a rather self-selecting group. People who'd be happy at a large organization tend not to spend all their time on startups.

I interned at a large (~6000 employee) company in high school, and a mid-size (~150 employee) company as a freshman in college. I found that the people there were generally happy - quite a bit happier than the average person in the startups I've worked at, actually. I also found that I would not be happy at a big corporation. I did well enough at my projects, found the work itself reasonably interesting, but it was not fulfilling in the sense that I could do it for a long period of time and not regret the time spent on it.

I interned at Yahoo's research lab for 11 months last year, and it gave me some idea of a BIG high-tech company. Yes, I did experience quite a bit of the bureaucracy and sluggish speed of large corporations, but this was minimal compared to the fun I had, especially with the group of people I met and worked with.

I'm specifically thinking in terms of future opportunities. Would you, as a hiring manager, be more interested in a candidate with obvious experience at well known names in the industry, or at startups that, possibly, no longer exist when the person comes around to interview with you?

All other things being equal, the big "brand name" company is better. Seeing Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft on a resume is a big green flag saying to take another look, something that a small company won't get you.

Again, that's all other things being equal - if the line item is "Yahoo Inc. - Performed performance testing and bugfixes on the company's intranet calendar" vs. "Defunct Startup Inc. - Designed and built the entire UI of our company's sole product", the startup candidate is more appealing, because they've done more. (That was roughly the difference in responsibilities between my big-company internship and small-company internship, BTW; though the big company is a lot less well-known than Yahoo.) Of course, this requires that the company you're applying to gets few enough applications that they can actually read each one, instead of just skimming for keywords and places of employment. That's perhaps another reason why startup-people tend to keep working in startups, and big-company people tend to keep working in big companies.

Another factor: there's diminishing returns in brand recognition. If you've already got Yahoo on your resume, I'll be taking another look anyway, and so you don't get much additional benefit from having Google as well. Meanwhile, if there's another candidate who also has Yahoo but also had significant responsibilities at a startup, I'd probably give the position to him, because he has a bigger breadth of experience.

(At my last employer, one of the parts of my resume that my boss picked out as particularly good was that I had a really wide variety of experience - I'd previously done desktop UIs, I'd done websites, I'd done build automation & testing, I'd done network programming, and I'd done Intranet calendars and such.)

You will have gained real-world experience and the drive to never work for a major corporation ever again.

True, but it seems rather extreme to spend a whole summer to learn that, especially at this stage in his life.

I suggest working for the smaller company, because you'll probably have more scope for trying new things, and thus learn more.

If my guess at what this "big" company's identity is is correct.... The standard advice that is true for google/msft/oracle/yahoo/etc doesn't apply.

I guess I kind of feel like this is asking, "Should I play rugby or do synchronized swimming this summer?" I mean, sure, they're both sports, but they're completely different games.

I feel like the things I learned in a big and small companies are largely orthogonal and it's hard to say which is more valuable without knowing what the original poster is hoping to use that experience for.

If you go with a Big Powerhouse in a vertical silo, you may learn enough about the business to create a startup. My first startup was based on my 12-month experience at an established software company, where I learned the market and built a better mousetrap that competed with their software.

I have never interned in a startup environment, but I can provide some insight into what it's like to work for a corporation. I participated in my school's coop program, which allow me to work at IBM for ~9 months in programming/design. Working in a corporation is everything you expect: very slow, process-oriented, very little responsibility. Doesn't matter how hard you drive your manager for work, it's unlikely you will get anything substantial unless you take the initiative yourself. I can't say I learned a lot in terms of hard technical skills (you will learn much more in school), but I have learned some very valuable soft skills -- how to coordinate work with others (it's surprisingly difficult when you are only coding a small piece of work that belongs to something much larger), how to present in front of senior managers, etc. One of the most valuable lesson I learned is to comment your code, I remember back in school, my professors tried to drive that concept into our heads, but I always thought, why do I need to comment when I know the code by heart? Nothing makes you realize the importance of comment until when you try to debug someone else's code, and the genius name variables after his children (serious, no joke).

There are valuable lessons to be learned in a huge corporation. They are procedures, how to coordinate work, how bureaucracy works, and the most important lesson I learned is -- I dislike it and I will never want to program in a big corporation environment.

From what I have heard and read, you will learn much more in a start up environment. You may not just do programming or design, but you have the opportunity to get involved with marketing, advertising, etc. But at the same time, you won't see the picture of what makes corporations successful at what they do. If I have to do it all over again, I would probably intern at a start up because there are more learning opportunities. Corporations are very silo-ed, every department operates on its own and it's very hard for interns to touch any other pieces of work. (e.g. if you are a programming intern, chances are you won't have a chance to do marketing as well).

Hope that helps.

I think in the right sort of corporate environment, a bit of initiative can give you a lot of opportunities the less-motivated might not have (or want). You also can learn how to work in a team, and probably have better hours than your startup counterparts, giving you more time to work on outside projects--such as your own startup--or in general to just have a life, meet people and pursue hobbies.

I like having some distance between me and management when I'm working as an employee, because then it doesn't grate on my nerves that I'm not working on my own startup while watching someone else run theirs, with the knowledge that they're using me to make their own dreams come true. I'd rather not see that, and in a large organization you don't have to because they're somewhere else, in a different building perhaps, or political appointees, for example.

I'm a junior at the University of Washington, and I was faced with similar decisions last summer and this summer. Last summer, I went with the Big Powerhouse, and I was pretty disappointed. It wasn't challenging, I wasn't working on interesting stuff, and I wasn't really learning anything. This summer, I'm going with the Internet Startup, and all indications seem to be that it will be a much better time.

Then again, my Big Powerhouse was Microsoft, so that may have had something to do with it. Even so, you can look at it in terms of the affect you'll have on the company as a whole. If you're in the Big Powerhouse, you're doing 1/1000th of the work. If you're in the Internet Startup, you're doing 1/30th. This means you'll be working on more important (and thus probably more interesting) stuff.

If you want to learn lessons, work at the big company.

If you want to learn skills, work at the small company.

Part of the reason this is true is because a big company can afford to make bigger mistakes without going under, so they are a really great place to observe systemic errors that you can identify and learn to avoid.

Some examples - indecisive culture, personal perception coloring risk assessment, acceptance of poor performance. These are fundamental problems that you get when you gather humans into groups and knowing how to beat them is critical. In a big company you can see them all while a small company hides them better out of necessity.

One other thing to consider is that because big companies are able to take bigger risks they are a good place to get a jump in responsibility early. We have interns handling projects that would break a startup if they went off track.

Au contraire! You should be able to get more responsibility at a startup.

Startups don't have room to pay you to work on something that's not mission-critical. Big companies do.

Last summer I did an internship at, ummm, Steve Jobs's current venture. It wasn't a good fit for me, but that had nothing to do with the size of the company. The position simply wasn't a good match for my skills and experience. I was offered a full-time job as a result of the internship, but since it wasn't a good match, I turned it down.

That said, my feelings about the internship had little to do with the size of the company. The perks of a big-company internship were great, and you can meet a lot of other interesting hackers through a larger internship program. Also, all my previous jobs were at much smaller companies, so it was great to experience life at a large tech company first-hand. Life at the large company wasn't really any different than life at smaller companies.

I would suggest picking the job that interests you the most, based on the team or the project you'd be working on, and the quality of the individuals you'd be working with. The most important aspect of an internship should be the work you do. That will be the most important factor in how much you like it, and that's what you can show off in future job interviews. Plus, internships often lead to full-time jobs, and you won't want to make that decision solely based on the reputation or size of the company.

Is the big company a "brand name", i.e. something that the general computing public has heard of? If so, I'd definitely go big-company: it's an additional credential on your resume that can open doors for future internships or employment.

Otherwise, it depends a lot on the companies involved and your specific situation. I agree with other posters that you should, at some point, try a big company and see if it's right for you before jumping into startups. OTOH, you'll learn many more skills at a startup, and will probably have a more exciting time. If you plan to do hobby or open-source programming, a startup is also more likely to improve your chops.

Something else to consider: at a startup, you'll often have access to the full existing source code repository, and the tree will be small enough that you can understand most of it. At a big company, you'll probably be silo'd into a single project with its own repository, or worse, use no source control at all. Some of my best programming lessons have come from reading other people's source code; I got lots of that when I worked for startups, and very little interning for large companies.

Personally, I would go with the startup. If I can, I never want to work at a stereotypical, large corporation. On the other hand, if I did go to the large company in your situation, it might give me that much more drive to getting my first product launched as I would have experienced cubicle-land, office politics, and all of the other things that people complain so much about.

Based on the multiple articles I have read (PG, Marc Andreessen), these are the factors I use in making a decision:

1. Personal value of a particular experience

2. Market for the product being built

3. The people at the company, ideally there are lots of smart people you can learn from

4. The product being built

5. Compensation (Salary + stock + benefits)

Personally, I would pick the startup. If all goes well, I would work a few hours through the fall and spring as well.

good luck!

Thanks to everyone that replied. My friend made a great comment today when he pointed out that, for the most part, people go to work at startups so that they can get in on the ground floor - pull those extra hours and accept less pay because hopefully you will be able to build the company out into a moneymaking venture. As an intern, those reasons are absent, since you're leaving shortly after you start with no stock or any other "i was there first"goodies anyways.

On the other hand, the web startup is probably more along the lines of what I would like to be doing long term, and one of the founders is already assuming a mentorship position - he called me a couple of times, and rather than trying to push his side, he's giving me some guidance and opinions on how to approach this kind of decision. This is, naturally, great for a student like me.

Still undecided, but i'll probably make up my mind throughout the night. Thank you for the candid discussion everyone!

If you want to learn about technology then work at the smaller company. If you want to learn about business processes then work at the larger company. However, you'd learn more from the smaller company if it only had 7-10 people. Furthermore, you can learn about technology in your own time. Therefore, I'd recommend working in the larger company.

I am in a similar situation, so I can't offer you any opinion from experience, but I'll share the reasoning I used in making my decision:

A large company can afford to hire you as an investment. Most lower-year students can't offer a whole lot to a company, but to BigCo it's like buying options in you as a future full-time employee. (Not that you are not obligated to keep going on full time, but many students will) I've heard many stories of people spending their summers at the big companies, getting paid well, but working on things that never saw the light of day.

A small company, on the other hand, can't afford to do that. Any work you do will have to be important to the company.

"... Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? ..."

Internship hey.

It's not real work. If you go to SoftCo it might be a chance to improve an existing product niche like Flemlord suggests. But if you try a startup (30's a lot & I'd call this big) you might just see how hard you really have to work and learn something new as well.

If it was me I'd pick the one that gives you the "best payoff" for working up-wind in the future.

two responses, two opinions - probably very much in the gist of my question! good point on both of those though!

A little bit of background - I've already worked at Yahoo! for a year, so I have an idea of cubicle-land as kingnothing puts it. I do want to point out that the big company in question is not at all the typical big company. Without making it _too_ obvious, its one of Steve Jobs' previous ventures...

@njoubert - could you email me please? I'm about 120% certain I can help you a lot w/ this decision. Email is in my profile.

A few years ago, when I was a Cal undergrad, I turned down an internship at the larger company you're referring to. More specifically, I already accepted another offer by the time they called me back. I work a few blocks away from there now, and when I walk by the campus, I sometimes still wonder whether I'd be in an entirely different branch of the industry if timing on that phone call had worked out just a little bit differently.

As others have mentioned, the company's size is far less important than the quality of the people you will be working with directly. This site has a decidedly strong bias towards do-it-yourself, but to me, the point of an internship is to acquaint yourself with people who are a few years further down their career path than you. They've been in your shoes and can help guide you. Try to figure out which boss or coworker will be a better mentor. You'll have plenty of opportunities to strike out on your own after you graduate.

It would surely depend on what your longer term goals are. Do you want to set up your own start up? if so, go for the start up option. Being in a smaller company also exposes you to a wider area of activities, which can also be a great advantage, especially if you hope to one day start up your own thing.

My big company internship was really boring and I mostly just read sites like Hacker News a lot. Make sure the match is right and that they actually need an intern. Sometimes they just hire you because you want to be hired and you end up doing mostly nothing.

Thats just my 2 cents though.

Go startup if you're ambitious, you'll learn much more (more work too)

The big powerhouse will be a nice line on your resume, but most of the time, nothing more.

I think that really depends on the internship. In most cases, it is false that working for a big company will be "nothing more" than a nice line on your resume. I've interned at both startups and big corporations, and learned an enormous amount at both kinds of companies.

Seems like the big company can lend you some perspective that might be handy later on. :-)

startup. it will allow you to express yourself more, be yourself, enjoy a more relaxed and motivated environment. I work at a major corporation that was more of a startup when I joined and I prefer it the way it was years ago.

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