Why I'm working for the man and not doing a startup
fredandrandall.com
fredandrandall.com
Wrote soulless boring enterprise software for a customer I never met, using some of the most ancient development techniques, while having the department boast about innovation and "spearheading engineering excellence" every other day.
Shared buildings with hundreds of other ninetofivers who couldn't care less about the quality of their work, all they wanted was the great health insurance, the chance to get a green card in a decade or two, and the option to buy a nice home in the area for their 2-3 kids. Clock in, clock out, occasionally play office politics for that sweet principal position in 10-15 years. Experienced every agile aberration known to man, including predicting down to the hour every single thing I would be working on, and then have the boss breathe down your neck when you're off. The best part is when he tells you that he cannot "trust you" anymore due to the latest estimate being off by several hours, and you should multi-task more to get things done quicker. How about keeping your reported work hours purposefully low, even if you're working weekends? Your boss will think that you were good enough to get it done in a couple of days, and will promote you over the guy who's honest with his hours. Happened ALL THE TIME.
When I left, the few good friends I had while there asked me what my best memories were after half a decade. Not a single one, everything I enjoyed (including software projects) was outside of work.
If I never have to hold a lowly corporate job again, I'll die a happy man. I'd rather make a third of what I was making there, but at least I'll be proud of the work I'm doing and I will look forward to doing more of that every time I wake up.
Randall, you're in your mid 20s, brother, what is this comfort you are talking about? What do you have to lose? Go fuck up a couple of businesses, give it your best shot, get a few battle scars, and then maybe we'll talk about wanting comfort. You're way too young to settle down, it's sad to see someone like you waste his talents.
Every company is different. Broad generalizations that working for a small/large company will necessarily mean X, Y and Z are likely inaccurate. The key is the ability to be honest to yourself about what you want/need, what you have, and to have the guts to pull the trigger and make changes if necessary.
Yours is a fairly prestigious situation that many would love to be in, but they either got unlucky or simply haven't switched jobs enough times to find one.
I think if my Big Co. jobs were purely corporate IT stuff and not core product development, I would have quickly bailed out.
I can do this for the rest of my life a happy man.
"working at a large company has meant I get to focus solely on the thing I care most about, programming"
There is a difference in just programming and efficient programming. You might be surprised how much time you spend doing unneeded programming that could be done more efficiently.
"plus I get a steady paycheck"
There's almost no risk at a successful startup. I remember people worrying about restructuring or layoffs at the large company... here everyone is too busy solving problems to worry about layoffs.
"It has also allowed me to learn a lot of new and interesting concepts (particularly dealing with scale) that one generally only finds in really large companies."
There are few large corporations where individual programmers actually deal with scale and if they do it's usually using old patterns. The successful startup I work for now has me dealing with(as a team) more 'big data' scale problems than I ever did working at a large corporation. I am also able to use newer technology and design patterns to solve those scale problems where the large corporation already had a standard outdated solution.
Bottom line, you don't have to settle for a large corporation to get job security and challenging problems when many successful startups offer the same benefits. I was a passionless drone working at a large corporation and since moving to SV I have never looked back.
I have been questioning myself for deciding to never work for the man again and your words reassured me.
No amount of money is enough for mediocrity to be forced upon you.
There are plenty of people out there for whom to drop out, stay afloat on savings for a few years, while rolling the startup dice, is simply not conceivable. If I were in that situation and had to take a soul-crushing enterprise job just to be able to afford the right medications, I would probably not enjoy people telling me that "I could do more with my life". If that's the author's situation, then I'm sorry, mine was an inappropriate conclusion. I digress, however, don't think this thread is the correct place to discuss US policy :)
I'm not going to stop hacking on side projects. I'm not going to stop learning new things.
I'm not settling down, I'm just getting started.
That's a myth. While being an employee, there's no stability whatsoever. You can get fired any time - get laid off, become a victim of corporate politics, or get fired for whatever other reason. Just last month, someone I know got fired on the spot after 15 years at a company for not reporting some personal stuff between other employees.. something he wasn't involved with, at all. I'm sure everyone else heard stories of people being thrown out after 10-20-30 years of loyal service to the company for bullshit reasons.
At the same time, when you run a business, you can't ever get fired, and everything depends on you. Whether you make money, or lose money - it's for the most part, your doing (market circumstances nonwithstanding).
That's why running a business is a lot more of a stable job than working for the man.
Yes, accidents can happen to everyone. You can get fired. Your startup can fail. Somehow, startups seem to fail more often than large companies. They fail in slow motion, us at startups fail fast.
I'm pretty sure that on "same or higher income", entrepreneurs have better 1-year odds-- because their incomes are a lot lower.
15 years seems pretty damn stable
Being an employee your job is dependent on somebody else and so they have the power to fire you. But at least while you are there you know that you'll receive a paycheck for the hours you work. (Obviously assuming a reputable company that is not severely struggling or going out of business). So you have the stability of knowing you will get that paycheck.
I think most people feel like they can deal with getting fired and finding a new job. But they don't deal well with the constant, ongoing stress of not knowing if they will get paid from one week to the next.
This is objectively untrue for anyone who takes money from others.
A significant portion of my income as a business owner can get pink slipped at the decision of any one of seven people, and they wouldn't even endure the minimal social awkwardness of pink-slipping me! All they have to do is not respond "Yes" to an email asking for something that I have no socially durable expectation of "yes" from.
Can you explain this further?
One of the issues in any business is how big any customer is as a percentage of sales and that is normally one of the first questions a buyer of any business wants to know. While it's hard to turn down work and generally more efficient to deal with a few big accounts vs. many small accounts that is definitely a risk.
That said I wonder how many people getting hired by a company are fully aware of how large a companies clients are and what would happen to their job if any client left. At least in Patricks case he directly can keep his clients satisfied.
don't think of now...think of when you are 55...and noone will want to hire you because you are too old.
Don't think 55 is going to be a problem? How about 65? Or even 75. People are living longer and longer, the guys who are living up to 100 now, have had to deal with malnutrition and the stress of a world war. So its perfectly normal, to expect that in 50 years, the retirement age will get kicked up to 75.
Do you really want to program at 75? Do you think a 40 year old manager will want to hire a 75 year old programmer? Do you think you'll be able to comfortably retire off your savings?
The idea of retiring off just being a worker bee is gone. There are no more pensions, the social security income is going to get cut eventually...so all you'll have to live off is your personal savings. And whatever savings you make, when you retire, you'll have to severely reduce your lifestyle...just to make sure you don't run out of cash before you kick the bucket
So what do you suggest we do mitigate the risks you mentioned?
Start up lottery : Win big, or win very little/nothing. And end up either too well placed for retirement or none at all.
In some regions this is about as legal as "noone will want to hire you because you aren't white enough".
e.g. in the European Union: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/employment_and_social...
White people aren't going to become black. Vast majority of men aren't going to become women. However we're all going to get old, so it's in lots of people's interest to campaign for ageism laws like that.
I'm an employee in a large enterprise. With a multi-year contract. So getting rid of me without cause is challenging because it is expensive and onerous to do so. Corporate politics is a double-edged sword; it can kill you, but it can also protect you.
In 2008 and 2009, many small business owners and independent consultants got screwed in a major way. I think that I let go of about 30 people in that situation. I also know of companies who lagged payments... that invoice billed on March 1 may not have been paid until the following February. Those folks may not have been "fired", but they were hurt badly. When the client doesn't pay, salaries still need to be paid, taxes collected, etc.
So if you're an at-will employee who is an average performer who doesn't politic well in a company that purges X% of people every year then yeah, you're screwed. But I betcha that mediocre performer probably isn't a good entrepreneur either.
You make it sound as if whatever they didn't report was no big deal "not reporting some personal stuff". Do you really believe that a company would lay off a 15 year employee over something that didn't matter if they were otherwise doing their job?
I would imagine that whatever the "personal stuff" was it was clearly laid out as far as their responsibility to report it and they didn't so they got fired.
Of course I don't know the true facts but it seems that if companies simply laid off employees for arbitrary reasons that wouldn't be to their benefit, right?
Edit: Anticipating the reaction to "arbitrary" I would clarify that I know companies do arbitrary sucky things. I'm just questioning the probability of that happening to someone working for 15 years. Seems that layoffs for business reasons would be much more of an issue.
Oh, yes. "The company" is going to be a different set of people every year. Loyalty means jack shit. Unless your having been there for 15 years is an asset that makes them want to keep you there, you got nothing.
Of course I don't know the true facts but it seems that if companies simply laid off employees for arbitrary reasons that wouldn't be to their benefit, right?
"Companies" don't fire people. People make that decision, and often for really terrible reasons that have nothing to do with job performance.
That's not true. Business failure is harder, for most people, than getting fired.
What is true is that you're better off as a consultant if (a) you're not dependent on a single client, and (b) your clients don't talk to each other. If (a), you can effectively be fired (see: late Season 4, Mad Men). If (b), then you're screwed in the same way and just working a lot harder.
You end up with more experience and with a much larger network, at least if you participate to your local startup scene. At BigCorp, you probably know at most your immediate division. Your world-view is fairly limited, and most of those people are likely not in the position to offer you an opportunity to work with them in the future.
Being forced to build a personal brand is true stability, at least compared to cruising along and hoping you don't get laid off.
If you run your own business, it can be hard to work up to that level of reserve.
This 'at wil'/'can get fired for any reason' stuff is unique to the USA, and is illegal in the EU.
The lesson is that employment rights laws are not some "socialist" horrible laws that will make the public sector fat, but are instead laws that benefit white collar, highly paid professionals like us computer programmers.
Huh.
Maybe this is just a difference in outlook, but if I were forced to log my hours it would probably either send me into a fury or the depths of despair. Actually, more likely, I'd quit. Or be fired. It's happened before.
Yet I have basically no problem having no safety net, and taking responsibility for my employees, millions of dollars, and the fate of the planet.
Weird.
The only discriminating factor I can see is that being forced to log hours makes me feel like a kid unworthy of trust. Any others?
I feel like I've learned something about myself.
A programmer who can't be trusted to control his own time shouldn't be hired in the first place.
I just don't get why people are always complaining about estimates.
Even if you are out to build your home, the estimates given out to you are only going to good enough to win the contract from you. Nothing more.
If you have ever built a home, you would have realized that the project generally went way out of budget and time. You can go back and look at what you had planned and estimated. You will also see that your execution was pretty close to the plan. But a lot of other things went wrong. It rained and all the sand got washed away. The cement company suddenly increased their prices. Something new came in, and suddenly you though a new bath fit was better than the old one. Things slip out of your hand one thing at a time.
Workers get sick, attrition happens and all other sort things go wrong. And this is with things like construction, where not much thinking effort is required.
Programming is more harder, The iterations of analyse, build, test, feedback, analyse... Take time, mistakes happen, you need to read, research etc.
Unless you are a robot and work without any intelligent inputs and outside dependencies. No estimate ever has made sense.
There is a reason it is called a plan and an estimate instead of a fact-sheet and a contract.
I am in a position now where I provide architectural review and software delivery estimation on a full time basis. If we did not provided these estimates the VPs and directors would not have any way of justifying where and when to spend the investors' money to achieve the best return for the company.
IMO, spending someone else's money (read investment) without a plan and estimate should be considered irresponsible.
It literally takes 5-10 minutes a day to log our time. SlimTimer.com makes it really easy.
Anyone who claimed to be "too busy" to log their time was just making an excuse, especially when we saw they weren't too busy to chit-chat throughout the day.
Not coincidentally, the modern workplace is basically a totalitarian dictatorship.
Don't ever stop prospecting for other people and ideas that you could get behind, because when you find them it is magical.
However, I think that if you are operating in an environment like that, with that level of independence and creativity, you almost may as well go a step further and grab at least some element of ownership in what you are doing. It sounds like it would be a pretty small jump.
You mean climb the technical ladder? Because if you're already in a great company environment, that's exactly what the technical ladder is for.
Everything in business is politics if you cannot handle your co-worker jockeying for position prior to performance reviews, good luck dealing with a partner or investor who wants to edge you out of your startup.
One more note, working for a corporation can provide a technical person with a lot opportunity not available at a startup and vice-versa. For instance, at a startup you will not likely get the valuable and lucrative experience removing and replacing a mainframe application that has been a core business system for 30 years. There are hundreds of companies out there at this very minute who are spending hundreds of millions attempting (and struggling with) this very feat. So while RoR and Django developers are a dime a dozen, others are building a skill that commands a premium at fortune 1000 companies across the nation and builds relationships with Sr. Architects, VPs, CIOs, and CTOs to boot.
- Startups can have just as much politics as corps - it really just depends on the actual folks you interact with
- Big corps can have incredibly interesting problems due to their scale and impact while startup work can be exciting because of the progressiveness of it - and in actual practice about 90% of what both groups do is usually pretty boring.
- Soulless work - I've found writing enterprise business software to be pretty much equivalent to building VC-powered social/local image-sharing flavor of the month apps in terms of being personally exciting. Mileage will vary.
Etc. - I could go on. Point being that if you take averages Id say startups are similar to big corps - the problems are just disquised in different packages. The real trick is trying to find unique scenarios/jobs that minimize the crap.
I've had mixed experiences in both sectors, and it doesn't make sense to generalize here.
I've worked in a small-ish department in a large company where we had lots of flexibility with the backing of a large corporate. I've worked in startups with zero creativity and the momentum of a third-world government org. I've also worked in a startup that was run by a maniacal CEO who was so out of touch with engineering that even after 6 years of development the company was unable to scale volumes or make good stuff.
Why I'm working for the man and not doing a startup?
Stability and lack of passion.
Two good reasons, however, not too insightful (subjective).
IMO, That is a narrow view. What is the goal here, start-up or business? If the goal is startup you may find that it never stops trying to start.
There are great established companies to work for and great startups to work for.
There are also terrible established companies to work for and terrible startups to work for.
I would also like to note that at good, established corporations there are two kinds of technical staff. The passionate kind with a decent mix of technical skills, business acumen and communication skills who work hard,are presented with interesting opportunities and are rewarded for their hard work, and the other kind who seam to always be complaining about the corporate environment and how it is holding them back. Often the "other kind" possesses adequate technical skills but has not taken the time to develop the business acumen and communication skills necessary to be proficient in a high-stakes business.
The first type will strive at any business whether established or start-up. The second type will likewise exhibit similar performance no matter the established date stamped on the business's letterhead.
I think it's best to always see yourself as self-employed. You yourself are your product. You can sell your product to a company for 40 hours a week, or you can run a startup (where you still have a boss btw -- they're called "clients" or "users"). Or a mix of both, which is what I do.
There's probably several paths that lead to loss of your "startup" status. Being bought out, going IPO, becoming profitable, being in business 3+ years, etc.
And if you're been in business for 3+ years, but change direction (like from consulting to products as many in the industry do), are you considered a startup again?
Yet, I think you might want to develop more abilities before that so you have better resources and a wider perspective.
People actually work for companies where they "log [...] task estimation hours"? I'm afraid of what throwing up in my mouth on a regular basis will do to my throat. I'll pass.
Here's why your job in a TPS labyrinth isn't stable: your boss might only be sending you the email because his boss made a point of it. It might be a one-off that he thinks about once and never again. Or he might actually care. You just don't know. He might fire you when you stop doing that shit (either because you forget, or get sick of it). He might consider you not to have done any work unless you log it in the system, and you might be too busy actually doing work to log that shit. Or, you might get along great with him and be just fine. If you have decent social skills, you can get a 90% guess at which way things are going to go, but that's far from certainty, and the boss who won't throw you under the bus for his own benefit is very rare.
Big companies are only a better option than any other job (in terms of job security) if they subvert manager-as-SPOF and that's really hard to do. What seems to work (perversely) is bureaucracy and obfuscation: if you make it very, very hard for a manager to bad-mouth reports to the managers they want to transfer under (in large part, this requires transfer talks occurring without the original manager's knowledge) you can actually create a culture in which managers don't hold all the cards.
Big-company vs. startup is a hard question. There are really great parts of big companies, and there are shitty startups. There are even startups that have those kinds of inane processes. The whole gamut exists. But I would rather be eating clay than work at a company where people are micromanaged down to "task estimation hours".