If you are exceptionally unlucky and you decide to not work at this major tech company and then your friend who pitched the startup can't come through. You are doubly in trouble (can't go back and don't have a job) not to mention a partially transferred visa.
The smart thing to do is to take the job at the Major Tech corp, spend a couple of years saving some money and learning what you can, and then joining your friend with the startup if they still look like a viable offer. That strategy maximizes your future value. You have additional work experience, your friend knows that you will stick with your word even when you might not want to, and you will have a bit more knowledge of how well your friend can put together a startup or not.
The tech community has fairly high mobility; people move from job to job through out their career. Often times they will segregate into an even more exclusive sub-community be it 'networking person' or 'security person' or 'language person' etc.
Companies spend a lot of time and money recruiting, training, and evaluating their engineers. These engineers are the "secret" to the success or failure of a company's efforts to execute against their vision and plans so companies spend time and effort to understanding as much as they can about engineers. And when they can't understand enough they count on 'sourcers' or 'recruiters' to understand as much as possible about the engineers.
As I have worked at companies, both large and small, and built up companies from nothing to something. Every single one has encouraged employees to refer their friends knowing that good engineers know other good engineers, and they know bad engineers as well.
As a result of these forces, what emerges for any given industry, is a sort of ranking and rating system for pretty much every participant. There may be six degrees of freedom between any two people in the world, but between two engineers in the same specialty? It often seems it is often 2 or at most 3 degrees. As a result there is a giant sort of collective knowledge about people in the space after they have been in the space for a few years.
Now consider what a company is going through when hiring. The manager may have had to argue with their management to get a hiring requisition 'approved'. They probably interviewed many candidates and had group meetings with the interviewers over plusses and minuses, skills and deficits. They winnowed that set of candidates down to a preferred choice and made them an offer. Which the candidate accepted. It's a successful process and probably the manger tells the team the good news and everyone is looking forward to having some additional help with the project. If the recruiter/hiring person is on contract they are excited because they are looking at anywhere from 10 to 25% of this new hires annual salary as compensation for getting them hired. Perhaps one of the employees in the group made a referral and they are excited that they might be getting a referral bonus.
Now the new employee calls them up and says "Sorry I got a better deal elsewhere so I won't be joining you after all."
The expectations are dashed, the hiring process has to be reset to the initial square, perhaps a strong alternate choice has been missed because when they didn't get the offer they accepted an offer somewhere else. And the recruiter isn't getting their big payday after all.
This lays down a lot more 'hurt' than young engineers can really appreciate early on. And that 'hurt' can, and will, affect their future chances. Is it black balling? Yes? No? Maybe? It is a natural consequence of people being let down they lose trust. The manager, the recruiter, the other members of the team that interviewed this person, all of them now are a walking and talking 'negative signal.' And they will be for possibly several years to come. And since the community is generally more interconnected than you might imagine it is, the chance that at your next job change this event will come out and have an effect. A good team would bring it up and ask about it, but many teams (especially ones where there are many choices) might just move on to a different candidate.
I agree with the other commenter - to people reading, this does not apply in many places. Maybe in massive bureaucratic old-school tech firms, but not younger ones like Airbnb etc.
It is completely legit to see it differently and to have a completely different experience. All I can relate is what I have seen in the last 25 years in the Bay Area. Having seen the effect in action early in my career (both people opting out after they said they would and other sorts of moves which affected relationships) I sought to understand it and came to my current appreciation of the various points of view.
Before I posted I had checked in with a friend of mine who is a contract recruiter and they seemed to feel my understanding of the situation was both correct and that this effect is fairly universal. It doesn't mean that it is of course. The next time you have a chance to talk with someone, in a safe and informal matter, who is in the hiring 'food chain' of something you consider "good" startup, ask them what they think. Nothing feeds a discussion like good data.
- A sentence indicating you're withdrawing your acceptance of the offer.
- One or two sentences explaining you have an unforeseen unique opportunity. No need for great detail.
- One or two sentences thanking them for their consideration, and hope for future opportunities together.
That's really all there is to it. A professional company that values it's people will understand that these things happen in life and will not hold any thing against you.
New boss was pissed, but it was the right call for me (and I couldn't have done it any earlier).
In your case, I'd give careful thought to the visa issue; I wouldn't sweat it on behalf of the major tech company at all. They've no doubt had worse behavior from candidates and they'll survive the loss. You probably won't be blackballed at that company, but do expect a question about it if you do decide to apply later.
Let's go over the points...
Your friend pitched a startup idea. Based on your wording, it sounds like it is more an idea than an actual company. Either way, unless your friend's startup has the legal resources to sponsor a H1B visa and the financial capability to pay you a prevailing wage, you run the risk of not being able to transfer your visa. The government agency can reject your visa transfer, as well.
By declining the offer, you are putting yourself in jeopardy of losing your ability to work in the country.
I assume you are not married, but for the sake of this response, let's assume you are. What would your wife think about this? Don't be so selfish, imagine that others would be affected.
You are assuming that you will be able to work at the startup legally (H1B transfer). I don't believe you can assume this. Does your friend even know what is involved in sponsoring a H1B? Major tech companies have dedicated departments for managing the H1B process for their employees.
Good luck!
Visa issues even pre-trump were hard.
Does your friend have funding?
Does your friend have market validation?
What will happen to you personally if the startup fails - like so many do?
The more time and money they spend on you before you tell them, the angrier they'll be. They may already have grounds to sue you, although I've never heard of a company doing that in such a situation.
Otherwise you may risk losing both, and have to return to your country of origin and start all over again.
I went to the new place with a huge gift basket and apologized and explained that I wouldn't be starting after all because I got a counter offer I couldn't turn down. They looked stunned. I left. I worked at the old place another several years and ended up rising to Director of Operations before leaving to work on my own company. I still feel bad about it but it was the right decision overall.