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Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

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Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#21

Post by tharne »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #10

I've worked at small companies for 10 years, large companies for 5... and IMO you're not missing anything. After switching back to a small company it's a big relief, much of the big company "experience" is learning to deal with tons of bullshit. Small companies have their own problems to deal with, but to me they feel like actual problems... a lot of big company stuff is kind of corporate theatrics. Maybe it's necess…

Big $CORP employee here. This is a pretty solid take in the parent comment. Big companies offer good pay and advancement opportunities. But, that does come with a heavy dose of corporate theatrics and organizational bullshit. At small companies, on the other hand, your options to advance may be more limited, and if you don't like the job you're in, you can't always jump to a different part of the company the way you could at a big $CORP. Like anything else, it's a tradeoff.

My advice to OP would be to simply try it out. If you see a job at a big company that interests you, go for it. You'll quickly see whether you like working for a big company or not. I never thought I'd enjoy working for a large company, but I gave it a try and I like it very much, corporate BS notwithstanding.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#22

Post by uptime »

Me: older self taught startup guy who transferred to a large edu a few years ago.

Not all large co’s act as a monolith. Some allow smaller depts to run their own shop while having access to their resources. This could be bad in terms of learning ‘the right way’ but that’s what interviews are for - to ask them questions too!

You really want to care about the mission of the large co though.

If you find one you like, get in touch with their recruiters, show them your resume and ask point blank if it needs restructuring to make it through their weedout filters. You bring things to the table that don’t always fit in the boxes.

Also widen the scope in terms of how senior you want to go if the co promotes well from within.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#23

Post by mrkentutbabi »

My FOMO is that my life is wasted being a corporate cog in a machine and has to come to office to work daily warming seat while I can do my job in 4 hrs of work.

But then I need the money of a big corpo (read: FAANG pay-band) to one day have a financial independence and dream of creating my own startup where I can go work remotely at my cheap COL (cost of living) country and be near my families, solving real problems than just another dating/ecommerce/social media/investing/real estate eque app.

Yeah, a lot of the startups these days also focusing on those dating/ecommerce/social media/investing/real estate business, which I don't find any enjoyment in.

So, why not just work and slave away at big corpo earning FAANG pays.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#24

Post by jeffbee »

If you only work at startups you may never really know what the real industry best practices are. The people who are best on any given topic have a tendency to keep it a secret, so you're not necessarily going to be able to learn it outside of direct experience. Startups will often choose the expedient and obvious path to shipping that MVP, even when that pattern has known problems. Of course you can choose an innovative startup and get the opposite experience, but you'd have to choose it carefully and probably on the basis of personal relationships to be sure.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#25

Post by lotsofpulp »

nnoitra wrote: post #12

30s is indeed a painful age to reach. There's a reason many celebs have checked out at 28/29. 30s is so depressing that no matter what you achieve it's like well it's expected or it's so late so no one is impressed. - Made a great company. Big deal, he's in his 30s. - Cured cancer. Pfft. Einsted redefined relativity at 26. - Booked a trip somewhere. Checking off yet another goal off of the bucketlist. - Built a great…

Perhaps you should hang out with different people.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#26

Post by [deleted] »

nnoitra wrote: post #12

30s is indeed a painful age to reach. There's a reason many celebs have checked out at 28/29. 30s is so depressing that no matter what you achieve it's like well it's expected or it's so late so no one is impressed. - Made a great company. Big deal, he's in his 30s. - Cured cancer. Pfft. Einsted redefined relativity at 26. - Booked a trip somewhere. Checking off yet another goal off of the bucketlist. - Built a great…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#27

Post by domk »

I started my career in a startup and had a similar FOMO, always thinking that the big corps have figured out all these problems we were struggling with, hoping I can one day learn to how.

Then I joined one and had an eye opening experience - it's not true at all. They might have better tooling (although that's not even always the case), and they might have better established ways to do things, but the engineers aren't any better than at a startup and they deal with the same problems as you.

A lot of work at large corps is "patchworking", and a lot of code is pretty awful and won't teach you "the right way" to do anything. Like anywhere else, there's a lot of v1 code that doesn't get substantially improved after it's shipped because the team has moved on to something else. There can be a lot of churn where code gets moved between teams, rewritten and discarded as priorities change and people come and go. Only a minority of core systems get the benefit of being iterated on and evolved over a long period of time.

I believe that the best way to learn how to do things right is to make mistakes yourself and learn from them. Work on a single project long enough so that you don't just write the v1, but also the v2 and v3 and v4 that make you see the mistakes you previously made and let you figure out how to fix them.

Startups can be a good place to do that, because unlike in a bigger place, you might actually be given the scope and responsibility to do that even as a junior engineer.

You are right that maintaining things is a good way to learn, but you could equally spend 3 years moving on from one new micro service to another as the roadmap priorities change every 6 months, with very little opportunity to spend some time with your own code and learn from it.

If you've worked at 3 different places in 3 years, you might not have seen the benefits yet, but if you try to stay and work on something for long enough, you'll learn a ton.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#28

Post by sasawpg »

I have experience working at a small "start-up" (3-5 people), medium (50-100) and large (10k+).

The small company gave me the confidence and experience to dig myself out of most situations and turned me into a "jack of all trades, master of none" (much like you describe yourself).

The medium company was a consulting firm so I got to work with other companies of varying sizes (including government organizations). Having worked multiple roles for a number of organizations, I gained the breadth but not depth. I was exposed to internal policies and workings of these organizations without having to actually switch jobs that many times.

When I joined the large company I brought with me the benefit and knowledge of having worked with multiple orgs, which is something that was lacking at the time for the teams I worked with. Having worked here a few years, I've gained invaluable knowledge I wouldn't have gotten at small firms. Being a large global organization I get to work with vastly different cultures and experiences, all of which is an overall benefit to me.

Having a variety of experience will make you well rounded. You will have positive and negative takeaways which you can apply in your future roles. And who knows, you may actually enjoy the large corporate life.

Is the grass greener at big companies? It entirely depends on what you are looking for and your personality. Is it valuable? Absolutely. Anyone who says otherwise is closing themselves off to invaluable experience.

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#29

Post by throwaway413 »

I worked as a self taught software engineer for over the last decade starting from junior and climbing my way to seniority at small startups, some where I was the first engineering hire, some where I was employee #30-50. Last year for the first time I made the jump to BigCo for the first time. I am seriously loving it. People are more professional. Surprisingly diversity is higher IMO - startups can easily become culture fit clubs as they try to build a brand.

Here’s my ranking

1) working at YOUR OWN startup/for yourself

2) working at big co

3) working at a startup owned by someone else

Re: Ask HN: FOMO by working in startups only vs. Big companies

#30

Post by haney »

I had a serious sense of FOMO after working at startups throughout my 20s. In my early 30s I joined a FAANG company and absolutely hated it, left FAANG after a year and came back to startups. There are some really interesting processes that these companies use, but the problems that they have aren't broadly applicable to startups so it's not so much about "the right way" as it is about "their way". However, if you really want to try it there's very little downside. I found it pretty easy to jump from a FAANG back into startups and now I can sell "that I've seen both sides" when interviewing / managing.
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