Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
I believe in what the startup does but they are at very early stages and the salary they offer is 1/3 of what Google offers but I get about 6% options over 4 years.
So it may surprise you that I'd recommend taking the Google offer! In my mind, there's no way to lose choosing Google. If it turns out that you love Google, awesome – you can have a great and well-compensated career there. And if it turns out you don't enjoy that kind of shop (like me), your career possibilities will be far wider after a tour of duty at Google than they are right now, including within startups. Google as a resume item will continue paying dividends for as long as it maintains its reputation for engineering excellence.
This advice is based on my personal experience – it's almost certain that I wouldn't be in my current role if I hadn't had Google on my resume when I applied. And my current responsibilities, experience and income far exceed what I could have expected on the alternative trajectory at an early-stage startup, unless its growth happened to have exploded while I was there.
To be clear, I don't recommend that anyone join Google with the intention of leaving in less than a year. Even though I wasn't particularly enjoying myself, I was planning on staying for ~18 months to pay back Google's investment in my training. In the end though I changed my mind and left earlier because an opportunity came up that was simply too good to refuse.
Also did you have to return the pre-tax amounts or the post-tax amounts?
Obviously you wouldn't pay tax on the amount you return, so it's not really an important distinction.
And if I recall, if your income increases a significant amount, you aren't penalized for underpaying estimated taxes, so there's ways to "protect" yourself (and also to not overpay).
But making your taxes correct is your responsibility, not your employers. Why would your company reimburse you for taxes that you don't owe?
[1]: For example, when I was interning, the "trick" was to set yourself as having some large number of dependents in the payroll tool. The tools assumed a year long employment, but as a fixed-term employee, you would owe significantly fewer taxes than the estimation. Careful massaging of the number of dependents was a knob you could turn to make your estimated taxes more in line with your actual taxes. This was, according to people I asked, legal as long as it wasn't being done fraudulently.
2. Sometimes it does come up (including while interviewing for my current job), and someone will ask me why I left so soon. I just tell the truth, which is that I liked my coworkers and the perks but didn't particularly enjoy the big-company atmosphere. Most people I talk to working in startups can identify with that and don't hold it against me. Of course, if I had a string of several companies that I worked at for less than a year each, I'm sure that would be interpreted differently. But that's not the case.
2. 4 years is a lot of time to spend at a company for a high probability of making 6% of zero.
3. If you're an employee at a startup, you're in the wrong job. You're much better off being a founder.
4. Equity is a way to be paid less and to be fired in the first year if you haven't vested anything.
5. Who are you going to sell your equity shares to? It's not necessarily a free market in the startup world.
6. Big companies aren't just the only type of company to be soulless. Wait till you see a small company try to screw it's employees out of equity.
Or VC investor with preferred shares that will guarantee you get paid first N-times your original investment (before unaware engineers will see a penny).
Founders and investors still often stand to make millions even while engineers get zero.
I.e.: don't be a sucker.
I concur with assuming equity will be 0. Dilution is real and almost all startups fold. Counting on equity is unwise and dangerous.
As for the rest of your commentary, I’d say startups are great because you get a better ability to shape your experience. I’ve now been employee: 21, 7, and 1 at respective startups. While I’ve seen poor management, I’ve not seen evil management.
As for opportunities, they are what you make them to be. There is always room for leadership at small startups, for instance. If that is a path the OP cares about, it is an intruiging option.
All that said, at 3x the salary google is hard to say no to even over a 1-2 year span.
I do believe if VC's really believed that they were making the world a better place, they would insist that employees shared in the wealth that was being created.
On one hand, the Valley is an amazing economic engine, on the other, it's an amazing place of inequality where people making $70k can't afford to live there. If that's the future, the Valley needs to do better, rather than insisting that people need to live in houses smaller than shipping containers.
You need to figure out what your goals are. We can't answer for you because we don't know what you want.
If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google. In 10 years you'll be earning 500k per year, and have put away a ton of cash too. Financially, if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely. At google you can guarantee you make $1m.
There are some good reasons to choose a startup:
1) you want the work environment of the startup. Less politics, less optimizing for career advancement, much closer to the customer and the decisions.
2) You want to learn. At a startup, you'll get to do everything. I'm assuming you're an engineer, so you'll get to do backend, frontend, ML, scaling, infra, etc. But you also get to do things like customer support, sales, marketing, etc, which are very valuable skills to learn and understand.
3) You want to do a startup yourself. Seeing how a startup works, and learning the hard lessons of how it doesn't, makes a huge difference if you ever want to start one later.
There are also other good reasons to go to google: you'll get to operate at a scale that a startup wont (that's a plus and a minus), you'll automatically have tons of customers for whatever you build, etc, etc.
Decide on your goals and what to optimize for, and only then can people help you choose.
1) Somewhat true, it's definitely the case initially but you'll see politics develop if the company gets above 15-20 employees.
2) You'll half ass everything. It's nice to get exposure if you don't know what you're interested in yet but it will be hard to go deep in any subject. If you're doing ML the startup will probably have no data, process and infrastructure for you to be effective. At Google they have all the data you can dream of, 1000s of people to label things if you need them, unlimited hardware and tooling to run and manage experiments.
3) You'll learn a lot more about functional organizations at Google than as an early engineer at a startup. You'll also come out with a network and resume that will make raising money and hiring a lot easier.
My main point was to focus on goals. There's no point arguing any of these points without a focus on what OP wants from their career.
if the startup is the next facebook, sure. But usually an employee doesn't make 10 million, even for 100 million dollar(+) acquisitions. Founders do, but that is a different game.
I'm somewhat bothered by your comment about money:
> If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google.
I find this disingenuous, as money is also a big reason why people do startups, both the employees and the founders. The founders could have chosen to implement their idea inside Google or wherever (with an army of marketing, virtually unlimited funding as long as the idea is working out, and all forms of support to bolster the team and the product), but the founder passed on that in order to reap the huge rewards that come with owning a successful company. Or, in order to have "personal" control (inasmuch as you can have that when you still have investors, a Board, and an indifferent target audience).
Sure, there are _some_ founders whose vision genuinely doesn't fit inside any FANG... but those are the exception. For most visions, the best possible way to realize them is inside BigCo.
Also, the promise of a Google-sized payday is hinted at to employees ("Join us... we think this is a Google-sized opportunity" is a common thing founders say). Even your own statement ("you _might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely") embodies the dream and the challenge presented to a prospective employee who's ready for a big risk, to put their guarantees and expected-outcomes on the line for that sweet $10m.
The prospective employee probably doesn't realize that the founders who are pitching them on .01% still hold 60% between the two of them, and a different class of shares. The prospective doesn't realize that there is only an infinitesimally, vanishingly small likelihood they'll make even close to what they'll make at the big company.
But even when the employees make very little, the founders still have a good path to making bank, in the case of even a minor acquisition or an acquihire.
1) Most startup code is hot garbage.
2) High caliber engineering practices rub off on you. - Surrounding yourself with talent and writing software is the best way to be good at what you do. Being in a small startup, that is almost certainly not going to happen. The numbers just don't allow for it.
3) Don't underestimate the draw of a major player like Google on your resume. - Before working for one of these companies, my LinkedIn mailbox would get maybe one or two messages a year from recruiters. Now my problem is making sure to politely decline all of the messages I get in a timely fashion.
4) A hefty sign-on bonus, HEALTH INSURANCE, and in most cases bonuses or stock offerings normally come as part of the deal with a Google offer. - Do you want a house, car, education, children, retirement? If you answer yes to any of these, a company like Google will give you a great financial foundation to work from so that once you've established yourself you can take more calculated risks with a much better safety net.
There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
Just like any other successful company that does something interesting and has been around more than a couple of years.
Borg is Kubernetes, flume is externally available as Google Cloud Dataflow (it's basically Apache Beam), Tensorflow is open source, many of Google's internal java libraries and tools are available externally (Guava, Guice, Dagger), and absl (c++ common libraries) are also available externally.
More importantly, assuming you land on a team with strong software engineering culture (this is likely, but admittedly not guaranteed, even at Google), the general skills you pick up for software design, planning, testing, etc. are transferable anywhere.
That said, all of this applies mostly to software engineers. If you're applying for an SRE position, then I've heard the experience is less transferable, but it's not something I could comment on first hand.
When I left Google for a startup, all the tools I took for granted didn't exist. But because I knew how things could and should work, I was able to apply open source and commercially available tools to improve software development practices at my new employer.
Also, Google's best tools are increasingly open-source.
Do you think they are more talented than other companies, like, say, Amazon?
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Amazon isn't really particularly good at any of these, so you'll tend to find more talent at places that do better. Facebook and Google both have better compensation and from what I've heard from friends (who've also had experience with Amazon), both also have a better working environment.
Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.
And typically yeah... that's true. You don't really want arrogant people on your team, unless they're super productive and share their knowledge freely.
Startups can't pay BigCo wages because they don't have the money to. They have to leverage other, harder-to-value benefits which BigCo generally can't offer.
Increased responsibility, fewer "rules" on how to execute, more tightly focused mission are a few.
Naturally this differs company to company and there are always bad actors.
The compensation equation works out differently for each individual. Not everyone should work at a startup.
I read parent's comment to be more about highlighting the expectations mismatch that occurs sometimes when candidates aren't willing to make compromises and then blame the startup for being "too stingy".
I've seen this mismatch occur on both sides of the table. Startups have a harder time hiring due to as they need to seek people willing to forgo direct compensation in exchange for these harder-to-value benefits. Startups need to stay self-aware they'll have a harder time hiring since the candidate pool is smaller.
Candidates applying to startups also need to temper their salary expectations. If you want to join a startup, especially pre-Series C, and you're not willing to compromise on direct compensation, then prepare for a harder time. The employer pool is much smaller and you're not likely to get the most out of working at a startup if salary is a top priority.
Every industry has small low income employers and big titans with deep pockets. The big take most of the high quality talent by offering high salaries, and the small compete for the scraps with niche offerings.
Only in software does being the former seem to be some moral crime. Like if you're not as good as a place to work at as google you're meant to put "we're fairly shit. B- tier candidates at best please" on your hiring page.
Does it ding investors for return driven thinking, or does it happily takes checks from people so crass as to care about money?
Look, employment is a business contract. Business is about making money.
Whenever I hear about an employer that doesn't want employees who want to get paid a fair market value, I just assume the bosses and owners are the greedy ones which exploit their employees emotions in order to under pay them.
For my current job, I was able to use my big company experience and contacts to skip the phone screen at least.
I would be leery of hiring from Google. I would need to be convinced that the candidate strongly rejects Google's culture.
This is good advice in general
Life finds a way. -2008 joeb
(Being real, this is good advice. Find the lowest-cost digs you can get; stay flexible, lease; don't get involved with securities you can't unload. Remember that you're on a 5-year plan.)
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
While it's true that you may not have many options for your first team (unless you are already a domain expert, in which case you may get funneled into your domain), if you are performing well for your current team, it is extremely easy to move around.
I say this a a Googler who was originally slotted into a team that was fun but not what I was really into. I swapped teams a couple of times and found something much better for me.
I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience at Google. It is a large company, so I don't doubt that there are dusty corners with bad management. But I've seen a pretty broad cross-section of the company and find most of it to be quite great in terms of mobility.
You need to stay ~12 months in your initial team; if your performance rating is bad (non-trivial chance of that after 1st year), no other team would ever touch you and you'll be slowly driven out (rare exceptions happen). 18 months used to be average stay of a Googler inside company. If you are out of luck with your team/boss, you are done internally, and this happened to many clever developers. You'd also have to get used to usual corporate CYA, internal politics and all the fun that comes along, with many developers barely doing anything but excelling in those "soft" metrics. Smaller chance of that in a startup with strong pre-selection, a mission and personal relationships, if it has solid funding.
Still, I would strongly recommend accepting the offer. Despite the drawbacks it's a great learning experience.
But since you are thinking about joining a start-up, I assume you are not preparing to stay at Google until you retire, one last suggestion. Prepare for an exit strategy already basically from day one. Not to take it negative at being with Google. Just be aware that this is not your last job in your life.
You forgot to factor in the blatant age discrimination in most startups.
OP could build a nice nest egg at Google, but have a severe lack of free time + not be working on "interesting" work, and come out of it financially stable but unable to compete with fresh out of college grads with no lives, willing to work 24/7 and who have all the time in the world to mess around with the latest and "greatest" new foo
I think OP could work at Google and have a promising career start, while taking on the risk of working on slightly-less-interesting projects.
At the same time, OP could work at this startup and make a bucketload of money through equity while working on fascinating projects. But the work could also be boring API stitching. Or the hours could be really long, and OP might have no outside life.
They're both good options. But back to the point I was originally trying to make: it's not like OP is going to work at Google and then never get hired by a startup again. In fact, working at Google is such a positive signal on a resume that it might actually make it easier to work at startups in the future.
If the startup can only offer you 1/3 the pay, we can infer that their equity isn't worth very much, or investors would have given them more money.
So you believe in the startup. That's great. It's great to believe in writing good software. It's wrong that someone would want to exploit that for their own gain. It very strongly sounds like what you're being offered is a pittance. Don't sell your dreams for that little, because someone that will offer you so little for your dreams isn't worth working for.
It gets confusing because of stock lettering and such.
L3 is what college grads start at right?
Edit: corrected my comment (thought figures were salary, but they're total comp)
Source: I read blind more than HN. Also, the title says total compensation.
Google, on the other hand, will provide a different kind of education. You'll generally learn the same amount of information but it will be more specialized and the pace will generally be slower (which can be a good thing). There will be less pressure on "getting something done and working" and more pressure on "doing the right thing". These two characteristics are often directly opposed which is why a lot of people who like startups say they hated Google and vice versa. The negative in that being if you spend several years specializing in a very bespoke part of Google, you won't be any more prepared to either join a startup or start your own -- the only way to get startup experience is to work for one. In fact, although people may respect that you've worked at Google, in my experience ex-Googlers aren't an assured success as startup employees and are no better as founders than someone coming from any of the other large companies. It can be a shell-shock coming from Google where there is a lot of support to join a startup where there is no support and you must loosen your standards and understand where you can and cannot cut corners. Also those people who make excellent early stage startup employees often don't survive the transition to behemoth tech company.
Difference in my case was that the startup actually paid well too. In the long run though it was not worth it.
The first startup I was working failed within a year even though from the outside it looked like it was going for the stars. The second one, kind of stagnated.. reached a ramen profitability but is far from hockey-stick growth everyone would like to see. I'm looking to change jobs now but noone cares if you're doing the best job in a company noone ever heard of. In the meantime my friends working for Big Corps make careers, and while they are being given responsibilities much slower their personal growth seems more.. robust. Well known names really open you many doors.
If you manage to find a successful startup, that will become a unicorn, great for you, this is probably one of the best things that can happen to a person. But it's bloody hard to know beforehand. For me going forward it's either my own startup or working for a well-known name that people will recognize.
Consider only the job, what would make you happy. Would it be super cool, super distruptive, super inovative? The perspective of the future is worth the risk? Then choose the startup.
But if you are on this for the money, or if you care about risk, choose Google.
Take what Google offers as a baseline. Convert the difference per year to stock at a realistic valuation (as in, if you were a VC what would you give). Compare it, factoring in the strike price (so at a strike price of 0 you will be offered 6%/4 per year..)
Perhaps throw in a 20% rebate for "more fun job", but then again remember that the "VC valuation" of the stock is what VCs with a lot more capability for risk than you, so perhaps you want a 20% risk penalty (or more!)
"But the startup cannot afford to pay market". No, but they should compensate through sufficient ownership. Otherwise you will just be working hard to try to make someone else rich.
You don't say what stage it is, current valuation etc which is very important here.
My brother left a good job for a promising start up last year. Without getting into detail he wound up quitting a few weeks before they closed up shop. It started out great but quickly fizzled out due to the lack lack of a cohesive goal. It's a high risk that he took and lost. Now he's looking for work again. He regrets the decision.
YMMV but Google is a guarantee and a great resume stuffer.
If you're more senior I suggest picking the job where you will learn the most. My personal experience is that wider experience is better than deeper experience in a fast changing world.
While I didn’t have a Google offer, I had a Lockheed offer and that was always a company I really liked growing up (also former Marine). It was a difficult choice for me as well, but I chose Lockheed and I have zero regrets. I learned a lot about large organizations and got to work with a huge team of very smart people. Many of which who very directly mentored me. I worked there for two years + 3 years previously for internships.
When the startup bug became irresistible, I knew it was time and went and co-founded DataRank with some friends. The Lockheed experience helped me in the sense that it “validated” me, much like Google on your resume will certainly validate you.
In regards to money: When I finally went the startup root I made 1/4 my salary and had zero benefits for the first 1.5 years. If you’re passionate enough about it you won’t really care about that 1/3 salary (for a while at least). Then I bumped my salary to 1/3 my previous salary! It wasn’t until after 2 years when my salary returned to 80% my previous salary. Eventually a surpassed my previous salary, then double and tripled it, and now I optimize more for doing what I love.
1. The equity sounds all good and well, but you need to know the intentions of the founder — would they every consider selling or doing an IPO. If not, your shares will have zero value.
2. What space is the startup in? Do they have a technology where they are both building a moat and growing at a rate where they will be around in 5-10 years?
3. Can you live on 1/3 of what Google is offering you?
If you believe your startup is the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX or Pinterest I would say join that. The thing about these mega-companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon) is that they aren't going anywhere and if you made it through the interview already, I'm sure you can do it again. These mega-companies are filled with brilliant people so you will definitely learn a lot about running projects at scale. They are also filled with bureaucracy (unless you're on a skunk works team with no budget) which sucks if you're the type of person that likes to move quickly.
In my opinion, a great startup beats any mega-company any day of the week.
I was up with the startup for 6 months, it was not a good fit for me and I lost faith in the company quickly. A recruiter reached out to me from Google while I was there to follow up. I did not need to re-interview and they brought me in since I was still in the system as an accepted candidate (I think this stands for one year). so I got to experience the best of both worlds. I’m still at google 2 years later, I can echo the sentiments of it opening up many more doors
Being an early employee at a startup is usually not worth it.
1) Work for Google
2) Work for startup for 1/3 the compensation, at least 50% more working hours, and options that have a 95% chance of being worth zero dollars at some point in the future.
It seems like the obvious choice would be Google but it also depends on what life stage you're at. If young and just starting out, there's no easier time to take a risk. If you've got a family to support, maybe the sure bet is a better way to go. Plus, if you're gonna take a risk later in life, you should take that risk on yourself not on someone else (i.e. start your own company).
Google has good work/life balance?
I worked in both and met both kinds of people in both kinds of environment. There are many factors at play, but I think the most significant is your uncertainty tolerance and excitement appetite:
- Startups are more chaotic but more exciting.
- Corps will be more boring but will pay better and offer less uncertainty.
Do you want adventure, high risk of failure, and being able to live with yourself, even if it means struggling sometimes? Choose the startup.
a bit too dramatic?
on what conditions can you turn that into something you can spend?
there is usually a good reason people offer magic beans instead of cold hard cash... an 99% of the time it is because they are less valuable, and possibly valueless (even if the company does well the requirements to cash in will often be prohibitive)
Take the money, training, and network. You’ll be well positioned to join or found any number of interesting startups.
Go with Google.
The startup could fail and lead to some other amazing opportunity or you going back to Google with a better job. The startup could succeed and be career defining. The startup could fail and be a waste of time. Google job could be career defining. Google could end up destroying your passion for your job, but make it extremely hard to leave, so you'll be trapped doing work that doesn't mean much for some of the best years of your life.
There's no way of knowing, and no right or wrong decisions when the goal is undefined.
Some comments here point out that only large organisations have the infrastructure required to really pull off certain fields, e.g. ML. Agreed, but surely this is field/interest dependent. I think most fields can be supported well by a start-up environment.
Consider the productivity. Some of the best engineering and commercial achievements were done on a tight budget - see the history of ARM, Microsoft, etc. I can vouch for how demanding, educating, and satisfying it is to work in a closely knit engineering team towards a common goal, with everyone around you pulling their weight and having their talents 100% utilised. There is no room for slackers in a small organisation - you will not have any useless colleagues, no wasted time, no pointless tasks. Your skills will expand in every direction - and not just in technical fields (although you will probably need to dabble in a range of these).
Consider the share options. 6% is a lot. Have they raised any money? Find out. Imagine they've raised £0.5m for 20% (a small angel round). That values your 6% at £150,000 today. If they raise a Series A of £2m for another 20% in a few years' time, your shares will be simultaneously diluted by the newly-issued shares but also stepped up in value. Now your options are worth £0.48m. By the time you exercise your options, you'll probably be a millionaire. This isn't trivial, and it's a typical conservative trajectory. Of course, you need to consider the 6% offer as an investor would - do you think the business is going to succeed? If not, go to Google. If you think it will, why turn down that transient opportunity?
Consider the transferability of the skills you will develop. If you work for a large org you will focus on one field, probably. You may become renowned for that. If you want to work in a start-up later, you need to find the one that suits, and they better be able to afford your specialist skills. If you work for a start-up now, you will develop broad skills and a huge amount of experience solving multiple challenges. Your engineering confidence will be immense and this will be recognised by employers. A very capable generalist who can be trusted to learn whatever is needed to solve tomorrow's challenge is every engineering employer's dream.
Do you want to be an anonymous cog in a corporate machine, or do you want to be a genuinely valued member of a team that is producing something new and valuable, that is creating its own culture, its own processes, its own market?
https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/
I would also add that working at a startup gets harder and harder the bigger your monthly expenses are, so the earlier you can try that the better (source: I am in my 40s and recently left a startup that I believe in because of financial and family reasons).
In all seriousness, promising startups are few and far between. If you find one (aligned with your interests), by all means jump on it :)
How do you know if a startup is super promising?
i) Check out their source of funding. If super reputable VCs => Good signal.
ii) Check out their attrition. If it's a revolving door, don't go there.
iii) Check out the employees. Best startups tend to have highly credentialed employees (e.g. formerly very successful startup founders).
iv) Is the startup on a continuous growth trajectory? Best startups are on one without much setback. Again, multiple setbacks => Don't go there.
v) I wouldn't bet on the specific idea or the problem being solved. Who would've guessed Facebook, Uber, Airbnb would be massive hits purely based on the idea? Betting on momentum (e.g. user growth) and/or the team is somewhat easier to measure and understand.
vi) Where do you see yourself (and the startup) in 2, 3, 5 years if you join? Will you gain skills and reputation highly relevant to your next steps? How big is the addressable market (and potential market value) of the startup?
It's best to make a list of factors you care about (money, location etc). Rank each option by each factor. Add things up in the end.
These are the rules that I personally follow. Best of luck!
That said, companies like this are few and far between. Especially now, apparently with most startup companies opting in early for venture capital or angel investor funding, which dilutes both your opportunity for equity and say in the company. And honestly, there are a lot of dumb ideas out there. Also, if you're relatively new to the industry, you probably don't have the ability to recognize the right startup opportunity.
In most cases, it's better to start off at a big company and learn the ropes, and when you think you've done that, take your time watching for the startup opportunity, and then make that move. In the long run, though, no one really is going to look out for you. With these two steps under your belt, you'll have the background to be your own founder one day.
If you want to have fun it depends on how the fit is between what you will do at both places, then pick then one that seems most suitable.
The number I came up with: 25% for return (doubles historical return of S&P 500; most decent funds are in 15% territory over last 10 years), worth about $750,000 in four years. So you'd need about a $13M exit at that point. (Obviously whether your pay returns to market, or you continue to be paid the startup rate, affects this, as does an exit before you are fully vested)
Additionally the startup would have to be run by people whose abilities to run the business in all of its aspects I trust 100%.
If the pay is 1/3, financially the only logical option is Google.
It's hard to even say for sure without knowing what the startup is working on, but I would probably choose the startup because I think Google's tracking is creepy and unethical, I don't like big corporations, and the extra money isn't important to me.
Edit: Think I misunderstood. My regular salary will be about that much total in 4 years.
This will significantly impact on your ability to succeed and on your happiness.
(Most of) People don’t leave companies, they leave their bosses/managers.
If you want to do the startup thing go ahead. You will have more stress and less money at the end of it compared to Google but Google will still be there to hire you at the end.
Source: ex googler
Adding to that mix is non-technical people trumpeting ex-google/insert some other massive company on their profiles/pitches; it just doesn't mean that much.
Oh, you handled frontline customer service/ad sales/some other mundane role for Google? So what?
Getting in to Google was once a sign of something. I don't see it as a high signal filter anymore.
In 2012 I graduated from college and was deciding pretty much exactly this. I interviewed at Google and got an offer, and had to decide between that and the startup life. I ended up going with Google. My immediate thought process centered around money because I had substantial debts from university, so while I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, startups were kind of out of the question.
In the end, I'm glad I made the choice I did. Here are some observations about Google in particular, but I expect they extend to some degree to other organizations:
* Google places a lot of focus on development. The job ladder explicitly stresses growth, which places expectations on engineers to grow their abilities throughout their early careers. Equally important, it places pressure on managers to grow those same engineers: directors treat teams full of people whose performance evaluations aren't rising and who aren't getting promoted as a major red flag when evaluating the team's manager. I was consistently pushed to do more and bigger projects, and my work and abilities have flourished as a result.
* There's more than one way to "do things right" in engineering, but in my opinion Google's particular style nails it. Code reviews are mandatory. Rigorous testing is compulsory. Regular refactoring is held in high regard. Production environments are sacrosanct. SLAs and SLOs are explicitly made clear. SREs rule over the engineers, not vice versa. Detailed design documents are (at least in my org) mandatory. Postmortems are also mandatory. You literally can't even go to the bathroom without seeing a pro-tip about how to improve your project. Working in this environment for years teaches you to produce high quality work at a fast pace.
* As a result of all this, recruiters looove Google engineers. During the few times over the years when I considered letting myself get poached, I was being offered either extremely high-paying senior engineer positions at established companies, or high-ranking technical leadership roles at younger companies. Six years of developing my technical and leadership skills have paid off, and I'm convinced I'm more valuable now than I would have been if I had gone to a startup.
* This is my personal view on early-stage startups, and you don't mention your experience level, so it might not apply to you, but: keep out of reach out children. When you're staring down the barrel of a three month runway, you don't have time to learn, from scratch, how to solve technical problems and somehow foster an engineering culture that's going to pay dividends down the line as the company grows. Better to learn your trade in a safe and stable environment and then apply it to building a new organization once you're confident in it.
Finally, an anecdote about money. Graduating from an Ivy, I naturally had many trust funder friends who weren't aware of how broke I was and asked, to my face, "why would someone as sharp as you go to such a boring company." They went off and joined startups, took piles of equity in exchange for smaller salaries, and went off confident in their fortunes. Then, one by one, over the course of the next five years or so, they all requested referrals to join Google when they companies failed. I happy obliged, but I don't think a single one made it through the interview process. Meanwhile all this time I've been sitting pretty on a nontrivial-but-not-life-changing pile of cash, taking on ever more interesting projects, with a resume that companies salivate over.
As always, take my experience with a grain of salt, but that's just my view on things.
1. If Google has offered you a position now, they absolutely will offer you a position later. You wouldn't be burning any bridges, especially if you choose a startup over them. 2. It'll be a lot easier going from a startup to Google, than from the comforts (and money) of Google to a startup.
Just make a contract with yourself to save 2/3 of salary each month.
More savings and more experience puts you in a lot better position to do a startup later at your terms, as a co-founder or similar.
Early employee in startup is really the worst of all worlds.
Where are you in your career? How big is your network?
Life is a "marathon rather than a sprint." Consider both the immediate pay-off and your long term ambition.
If you are in your twenties and aspire to build a great company in the future the answer is different than if you are in your thirties and have a family to support!
Being at Google is the safe easy money and will most likely work out better than your startup from an odds perspective. However, you'll be a cog in a very large company whereas the startup you'll probably be able to have a huge impact in (presumably if you're getting 6% in options, that's like first/second engineer there or you're an exec).
If this is your first job one thing to consider is that having worked at Google definitely is a good spot on your resume, recruiters like it, you'll get reached out to by lots of other recruiters, it'll be super easy to find another job which can honestly be more challenging if you just have no name failed startups on your resume.
There is probably also more potential for title advancement at the new startup also vs. google.
In my mind Google is a lot of sure money and you get to have a small impact on something with potentially huge impact to the world/people/whatever
Small startups are a very small chance of some amount of money on the levels of (car, house, fuck you) and you get to have a large impact on something that may or may not have any discernible external impact.
You'll be gold-plating your resume. Also, knowing several people who have worked at Google for years now, it's the only tech company I've heard of that seems to take an active interest in a software engineers actual career and growth.
If you feel like the startup is doing something unbelievable and you want to be onboard, go with them.
Google will still be around in a few years, and if you got an offer from them now you are likely to be able to get one again in the future.
You're (presumably) young. Take risks, you have little downside.
You'll work yourself into the ground at the startup, but you'll learn more in a year than you will being code monkey #20005 at Google.
I'd take offer with more cash in the pockets vs. promise of bright future for current sacrifice.
%% of startup shares is what they want you to believe in. What you haven't been told is that your shares can and will be diluted via new investors coming in who will buy more "preferred" shares without telling you. Preferred shares will allow new investors to get paid X times of their original investment before you see any penny at a potential exit (in case it will ever happen).
In startup world it evolves in a frequent and predictable disappointing outcomes for "unaware" engineers and holders of regular, non-preferred "options".
Take cash, save it and invest it in your own, future startup.
If you're interested in hearing more about the difference in cultures, and how that will feel after some time, feel free to reply with a place I can contact you privately.
Besides, working for startups is much better experience when you have a strong financial backbone. And promising startups aren't going anywhere.
I am bias as worked at Google but left for startup world and would never go back. The Google name can open pretty much any doors
They could claim it was your performance, your motivation, conflict with the team or anything else really if they were ever pressed to give a reason.
1. Really stupid things can happen, even with established startups. We lost our 401k and may possibly lose our healthcare (although that is looking more promising) when our HR/Ops manager went on extended leave and their replacement is still struggling with the basics. This isn't due to a lack of funds, but rather the new person being disorganized and ignoring emails from Zenefits. When I joined we were a well oiled machine, but we were dependent on one person, and things fell apart quite quickly after they took leave.
2. People are still people. No matter how much say you have, your startup will make a bad hire, most likely many. This happens at all companies, but startups particularly struggle with finding decent candidates at early to mid stages. The difference is, that with a startup having a bad employee can make work significantly worse without any proper recourse. Even if you hire great people, you may find that the startup you joined is culturally different 6 months to a year later. Things change fast, and for many things go from great to awful within the span of 3 months.
3. When it comes to bad hires and politics, the most common complaint at large companies is that the only people who get promoted are those that are friends with the manager, etc. That is an issue no doubt, but at startups everyone is expected to be friends, and the role between boss and friend is even more blurred. We have a legitimately bad employee (caught her twice rebasing her PRs after reviews, so changes could not be tracked between commits, in which she responded to review comments by adding carriage returns so github showed that the code changed and therefore hid the comments), but there is no proper path to reporting this, and bringing up these issues are extremely taboo on my team, especially because she is now close friends with our boss (they meetup during vacations). Sure, this happens at large companies, but I cannot move teams or even refer to a standard to we can stop this from happening. Honestly, it hurts the most because the whole point of a startup is that you care about the product and team, so when this happens it just becomes a low paid job since you lose the culture of trust.
There is a lot of good that comes with startups, but I will be honest, unless you are starting your own, or are young and are looking to be best friends/party with your coworkers and make your job a lifestyle, it usually is not worth it.
edit I wanted to add one more point: The startup I was at previously gave me 1% of shares. Things were not working out well, and our CEO sold for an acquisition hire in which he made ~$1.5 million, and I would have made ~$36k after vesting for 3 more years. Literally, with the acquisition hire signing bonus and new salary, I would have made less than I do now from just switching jobs than if I stayed.
1. Is it a real startup doing real/cutting edge technology work ( aka cybersecurity, data, etc )? Will you be working on cutting edge development work?
2. Are you young with little to no responsibility ( aka no wife, kids, etc )
3. Do you believe the startup has a shot?
4. Do you respect and get along with the founders. And do they respect and get along with you.
If all the above is yes, then you may not earn as much initially, but you will most definitely learn a lot more than at google and you may be able to retire in your 20s rather than 50s if everything works out. If not, then you will be able to leverage the skill you picked up to get another job easily. Caveat being you do real development work in a real software startup.
If you are a single digit employee at a startup with a good relationship with the founders, not only will learn a lot technically and technologically, you will also learn about angel investing, VC funding, etc. You might even get to tag along to see what the hubbub is all about.
If it is a real startup, then the risks are higher but the upside is also higher. With google, you will get stability and name recognition, but you are still ultimately a corporate grunt and have to deal with burnout. Keep in mind google has extremely high turnover rates ( I believe the median tenure for a google employee is only 1 year ).
I'm predicting not much - and I bet they believe a significant part of the "compensation" will be the "privilege" or working at google.
6% options is about average for a co-founder-level tech lead at a very small company.
You have to be realistic about your expectations for equity. It is more likely the company gets acquired than goes IPO. If the company gets acquired for $100M, then you may bring home around $4M post tax.
What is the company's competitive advantage? Usually, especially in AI/ML, it is the people already working there. Who is working there that will be smarter and more experienced than you that you can learn from?
Or will you be the chief cook and bottle washer?
Even if true, the fact that there are a lot of gullible young tech leads driving this average down is no good reason that the poster should be equally gullible.
Do the startup thing when it can be your thing. "First employee" is really the worst of all worlds.
Worst case: You spend a few years working ~5 hours per week (or a few months per year), and spend the rest of your time just enjoying life and doing whatever you want. You can work on your own ideas and have full creative freedom, even if most of your ideas don't work out.
As an adult you start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. Children have their decisions taken for them.
If you take the decision of going with the startup it will be one of the worst experiences in your life. If will be daunting, it will be taking risks every single day. At the same time, you will be making a contribution. Even if you fail you will learn things you will never learn in Google. If you success you will be free with freedom few things will ever give you.
If you go with Google you will be safe, isolated of the mundane problems most people have and you will be able to focus immensely on very interesting problems sharing your time with some of the smartest people on earth. On the other hand your creative and independent muscle will almost disappear, atrophied by not using it, as the big organization takes the load from your shoulders. Over time, it will make your shoulders less strong.
The decision is yours to make. Write down on a paper what your values and priorities are in your life and how each decision will affect them.
Will you be able to work on problems interesting to you or you think are important, with people you like and enjoy working with? Nobody can answer the question for you but Google and a startup are going to offer wildly different answers to that question. That's the aspect I would focus on. Everyone in this thread who is telling you they can predict the net effect on your finances or your reputation or future career options after a few years give themselves too much credit.
And hell, in my own experience going through a failed startup has actually had an equally positive impact on my life as another I co-founded which was more successful. Don't let people fool you into thinking that walking away from a failed startup where you learned and grew as a person is somehow a worse outcome than spending your years in a job that is more "secure" but with a narrower breadth of skill development or ownership over your work.