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Comment by ryanSrich | Hacker News Reader

Pro (from my personal perspective, YMMV): You get to work on something that will actually see the light of day. For me, there's nothing worse than being this tiny little cog in the machine that comes into work from 9-5 and produces something so microscopic that you question your importance at all. Working at a startup means you have to pull your weight, wear many hats, and get shit done. This also means you can climb the later and get noticed much easier. It also means you can't slack off and fuck around all day. Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it, getting into work late and leaving early. etc. That life, that cushiness is just not for me.

Cons: As others have said, the pay is always going to be lower. The stock options are, in most cases, always going to be worth $0.

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Huh, I really had the opposite feeling when I went to work for a big company instead of a startup.

Both startups I worked for never had serious traction and both shut down as failed. We worked so hard to create really cool products, but there just was not the demand for what we made. Cool software with no users.

Now, I work for a huge company. My work gets deployed to tens of thousands of servers, and I know that people use and need what we make (because they pay us a lot of money). I can tell people who I work for and they know who it is, and I can point to things they do in their daily lives that my work touches.

I feel like I have a much bigger real-world impact at my current big company than the startups.

> Both startups I worked for never had serious traction and both shut down as failed

I think this is the big difference. When you're working for a startup that literally can't keep up with demand (such as the one I work for now), it's an entirely different animal.

Right, but in reality more startups are like the ones I worked for than like the one you work for. Most startups fail.

Although, given that both of our stories are just anecdotes, the advice might come down to "Work for a good company that does valuable things that make a difference to people"...

> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it

Working at a BigCorp(tm) right now, this is somewhat of a false statement imo, at least for us. Being in such a standardised place, it is very hard a lot of times to find new inspiration for technologies to adopt and things like conferences or meetups are the perfect opportunity to network and hear about how people make use of new things. Usually, we don't really get much time to explore new technologies as capacity is always planned for our current workloads. That's why I love being able to go to a conference every few months (this year it'll be 4 for me) to be able to bring some things back into my team that might be interesting to us.

We get the time approved for conferences, but not to explore things "while at work".

This obviously differs from company to company but that's my experience at my current one so far.

Yeah, and I didn't mean to slam conferences. I enjoy going to conferences and find the well regarded ones beneficial (especially ones offering workshops and certifications).

My point was more about the token conference goer.

I have an acquaintance that has given the same talk at 13 different conferences over the last 12 months. I don't know how that benefits him or the company. He's also on twitter literally all day. I just don't get it (as I hypocritically type this out on HN).

There’s certainly career value to being a “celebrity programmer” of sorts and it can be a signaling thing for the employer and hiring pipeleine.

Are you really saying that you don't get how presenting to multiple conferences benefits the presenter, or the company he works for? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

From my perspective it seems that there's tremendous benefit in becoming known by thousands as an expert in a particular topic and in having the skill to present that material to others.

> For me, there's nothing worse than being this tiny little cog in the machine that comes into work from 9-5 and produces something so microscopic that you question your importance at all

See, I'm the opposite. I couldn't care less about the importance of my work. I work for one reason and one reason only: to fund my life. I just want to put in my eight hours a day, draw a paycheck, and then go home and have fun.

And I honestly like the idea of being anonymous. I just want to blend into the background and not be noticed, and I couldn't care less about climbing the ladder because my career is the least important thing in my life.

> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it, getting into work late and leaving early.

Honestly, that sounds like paradise to me. I'm pretty satisfied with my current job, but if I wasn't I'd definitely be asking you for the names of some of those companies.

> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things

Obviously that is not universally true: All the things that do see the light of day, some small, some big, are done by actual employees of a big corporation. Maybe you will not be working on them all the time, but chances are good that you will at least get the opportunity to have a public, meaningful impact.

Just as an anecdote, when I interned at Google long ago, I got to work on a public feature in Google Maps. It was a great feeling to directly work on something that anyone could potentially use, and see even just a few public reactions.

That experience probably set my path on favoring working at big corporations, because I knew I could do meaningful things there if I position myself correctly, whereas startups seemed much more like a big gamble (which by itself is probably an exaggeration also).

Just yesterday I spoke to someone at another big corporation who proudly proclaimed that people clapped at the mentioning of their own feature, when it was unveiled as part of a bigger announcement. YMMV.

Agreed. I always think of the greek word "arete", which (as I understand it) means roughly achieving excellence and living up to your potential.

I'm currently at a big co (though not really a "tech" one, so can't speak to FAANG) and can relate to many of these. I can def see the attraction in taking less money in order to have a better shot at achieving excellence.

> they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it, getting into work late and leaving early. etc.

uuuh, do you have any links I can follow to apply for a job like that?

https://careers.google.com/

Keep looking, most jobs at BigCorp are designed to make sure everyone is easily replaceable, which means positions can't have too much responsibility, else the person couldn't be easily replaced. It's like the very definition of ITIL.

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