Why Not to Join a Startup After Graduating
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On top of this I really dislike the argument that the skills are transferable from a big company to a small one easily. It seems like a much better argument for going towards something like a small-medium company. In the web space I'd suggest that the plethora of 10-40 person bespoke web dev shops that float around are a very good option for gaining broad skills and being less risky than startups.
People who are interested in startups should join something that looks pretty similar to a startup. People who are interested in making 10 million dollars should join a big company and live cheaply.
Agree on the last point. One need not create a start up to experience working at one.
- talking at tech conferences / local user group (as the OP noted)
- contributing to open source projects
- keeping an interesting blog about a technical topic
and so on...
There are plenty of companies in between "2 guys in a garage hacking" and "giant megacorp". Many of these - even late stage or well funded startups, although the word startup becomes blurry at this point - are big enough to satisfy all five of the author's reasons for joining a big company.
For example, consider a 4 or 5 person engineering team at a well funded startup, or a recently profitable/break-even late stage startup. You can probably specialize in something you're passionate about, have an impressive entry on your resume, make a competitive salary, make relationships, and learn from smart people. In fact, I would argue you'd probably do at least three of these things better at a small company than at a large company. If your ambition is to be a typical career person, then you'll have lots of advancement opportunities if you get in closer to the ground floor. If your ambition is to be an entrepreneur, then you can learn from your bosses, who have already succeeded at what you want to be doing.
As engineers, the market is in our favor at the moment. You don't necessarily need to forfeit equity or ground-floor opportunities for salary and stability.
Let's say you are a founder at a small startup. You are looking for the best talent. Rarely do you have thousands of people knocking at your door asking for a position. You have to go out and look for the best people. You will find yourself in one of three positions:
A) Not finding enough people -- then you have the ability to interview everyone, and any candidate may have a chance of getting in the door.
B) Finding too many people -- then you don't have the bandwidth to interview everyone, and you need some sort of heuristic to decide who to interview first. This is where pedigree comes in.
C) Outsourcing to a third party recruiting firm -- generally, even if you instruct them not to, they will send you candidates with strong pedigrees
In general, I think the issues of "Where should I work?" and "How do I get noticed/hired?" are very separate issues.
The downside of jumping right into the startup game right from school is that your lack of experience in business, networking, fundraising, managing relationships and delivery is going to work against you right away unless your first startup job is with experienced entrepreneurs who will work to bring you up to speed in relation to technology (or biz dev if that's your (current) calling) and teach you everything they know about the business, not just the current business conventions that guide it. Being able to learn the business and identify opportunities is key; until you're able to do that you're just writing aimless code or making cold calls in the hopes of some modicum of success.
I'm not so sure that large companies can, or will provide the type of opportunities that a person who's interests lie in discovery will need in order to find balance in work and life.
The example given here is for someone who finds great value in a very specific subset of a field, but passion can be about a broader goal, such as building a company. Really this argument has to do with subjective values. So I do not see how this would make for a general argument for working at a large comapny.
2. Leverage
It may be true that working at a large company provides as sense of credibility, but this does not address the startup world, which I find to be about the same. Working with a startup is not a lonely task, it involves much more and knowledge of the field, who the competitor are, knowing who else building a company. I'm given a sense of credibility simply because people recognize the startup I am a part of.
3. More Money
Having bootstrapped a company before, I can't say that it is the ideal solution in all cases. Many factors come into play here. I find it very unlikely that a company that is in a highly regulated area or doing some kind of cancer research would be bootstrapped.
The title of this section addresses 'more money'. If you are looking to make the most money there is no faster way of that I know of than building your own company (I could be wrong here, feel free to point something out). It is risk vs. reward. A subject value again.
4. Relationships
Being a natural introvert, it might be easier to develop relationships in a corporate setting. But, I still have people I know from various companies that I can call right up.
5. If you want to start a company, a large company is the best place to learn
I would say the best place to learn is on the spot, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other companies.
There are a few clues saying that the article wasn't meant to be a general argument, but an argument why many people who are attracted to the idea of founding a start-up might be better suited to corporate life.
Nah, if you are looking to maximise your chances of making enough money to retire by the time you're in your late 30s, join an investment bank, not a startup.
Do a startup if you can't imagine doing anything else with your time.
If you work at a large company you need to work for a longer time to have enough cash, relevant knowledge of wide business area (not just something highly focused), and it is a safer choice.
However if you are one of those who like to see change, cannot stand lazy co workers, and are excited about immediate impact of your actions then startups are the place to be. It is riskier, more fun, you get enormous experience in a wide domain which might not directly be related to your work. Whatever be the reason, please do not work in a startup because you think it will do well and you will be a millionaire because of it.
Also regarding: If you are not a cofounder, you will be expected do a lot of different types of work, affording you little time to spend on the particular subfield of interest. I for one know a lot of co-founders who work their asses off and party alongside their employees. This is in my opinion the best part about working for a startup that you will never find in a large organisation. There is no-one who is a "boss". You are a bunch of people who have a passion to make an impact and everyone is focused to make it happen.
A) your spending rate
B) your earning rate
And in general, your earning rate is faster at a company. Again, you have to compensate for selection bias here: not all startups are successful. Even if they are large enough to have employees.
Regarding your comments about little time, I think you are confusing "no free time" with "no free time at work to focus on something else". I'm definitely not arguing that people who work for startups dont have time for partying. Definitely not. All I am saying is that, because the nature and frequency of demands is different, you generally find yourself with more time to explore your own thing at a large firm. And yes, this is coming from a person in finance, so it must be true for other industries as well :)
To my mind what really matters is: do you love what you are doing. Ergo the goal is to figure out: What do I love?
How to do that? By doing internships and gain experience! I did 4 internships at companies from small to huuuge till my graduation. When you, like me, after many internships at companies of different sizes and sectors still have not found a job that you love - then you should think about working at a startup or even founding one.
Well, I don't want to generalize things too much, but when you are a creative mind and have ideas and want to make them real, then a huge company is the worst place to start. They lure with self-fulfilment, but more likely they suck out your potential. The questions you want to ask yourself in the morning should be like: Am I intrinsic motivated to get up now and give my best till midnight+ today?
Since I founded my startup it is the first time in my life that I have this feeling and I wake up in the morning and really can't wait to get to work and get work done.
Achieve that and your decision is made.
As far as internships are concerned, internships at large companies are generally more flexible regarding roles. Some even involve rotations, where you get to see a little bit of everything.
I personally think you should not make this decision on a too much numbers/status/fact basis, but on a very personal or you risk to regret it sooner or later.
If you don't know what you want to specialize in a startup can be a great place. Over the last year I did everything from coding to usability testing to video editing.
At the startup, I worked with really talented engineers who cut their teeth at much larger companies (AOL, Microsoft, financial services firms). Now I've decided to specialize and am heading to a larger company to hone my craft.
However, having an understanding of them is important so it's probably a good place to start. So perhaps I do agree with point 5 but in a different way.