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Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

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Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#31

Post by alain94040 »

thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

There is a huge difference between companies where software is the product (Google, Microsoft, Silicon Valley startups), and companies where software supports a business that has nothing to do with software (most IT jobs).

When software is the product, you tend to consider your software developers as money makers and pay them better. When you think of your engineers as a necessary evil to sell other stuff, you tend to pay them as little as possible.

Europe is full of the second scenario. That's the problem.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#32

Post by jerf »

vinceguidry wrote: post #16
jerf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't necessarily an either/or proposition. Between remote offices, remote work, or local startups, you can live in $NOT_SV and pick certain elements of the SV lifestyle that you may appreciate. You don't get full unrestrained choice, but, well, you never do anyhow, so shrug . Tech workers can still have it better than most could even dream of.

Remote work is one of those Roman ideas that I just can't bring myself to be interested enough in to try. Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? Give me a regular desk and let me see my coworkers in person every day. Besides, from what I've gathered from the job postings here, SV startups mostly don't hire remote workers. You're expected to move to Rome. Local…

I'd submit that what you have there isn't that what I've said is wrong, but that what you've "picked and chosen" from the SV lifestyle is nearly the null set. That's fine for you, no sarcasm, I am glad you are happy and I have no great love for SV myself, but it doesn't make my point wrong.

Me, I live in the Midwest and work in a quite substantial local office of a SV-based company that is now midsized. I get the job I want (in particular I want to work in a place where programmers are the core value providers of the company, not a cost-center afterthought, which is what is generally true of the other companies where I live), in the place I want, because I do not want to live in SV, and do appreciate being near family. Granted my choices are less, but I only really need one job "right now" and enough fallback that I have choices; I do not need thousands and thousands of options.

I know it can be done. I know it's not an either/or, because I have in my hands an existence proof of something that is not either/or.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#33

Post by wahsd »

matwood wrote: post #19
exstudent2 wrote: post #2

I don't think you can go into a company as large as Google and expect your salary to double in five years. HR will have set limits to how much of a raise you can get in any given year and even with promotions you would be very unlikely to see that kind of bump. I also don't think the middling programmers he mentions would hit the 250k year mark. Orthogonal to the point of the article, but the only time you can really…

Usually the number is total comp, salary + stock. So maybe $150k/year salary and $100k in stock that vests over X years with more possibly added. At that point, ~%10 raise/year would get someone close to $250k. I assume someone would have to bust their butt for a 10%, but it is not an unheard of number.

10% salary increases through internal pay increases? That sounds quite unheard of. Maybe if you constantly gun for internal promotions that everyone else is gunning for, but that still leaves everyone else behind that is going to get marginal increases at best.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#34

Post by thebigcoguy »

herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I recommend opposite as well but look for things like Leadership Development Programs in JPMC,WF,CITI etc... you get well rounded experience in 2/3 years and then you can decide to stick around or move.. Or work in big company and contribute to open source. There is lot to learn with big companies and if you can solve their problem you can solve small company problems as well but all small companies will get tired and have to behave like big corp to continue.. start up momentum is not sustainable beyond 3/4 years. Once you hit about 15000 people then you start having all kind of issues so better know how to manage that or seeing that will give you idea how to segment your company.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#35

Post by czbond »

jzwinck wrote: post #12
herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I went about it the opposite way, and can definitely recommend that as well: big company first, then small. The big company experience shows you a ton of things, like how to interview, build, and deploy at scale. The small company can benefit from your ability to bring order to chaos, develop tools which are obvious in any big company but strangely missing from every small one, and more. Maybe it doesn't matter which…

Agreed - I actually worked at a big 4 consulting firm - and it made me considerably more disciplined, and structured over my peers. I can solve problems more clearly, succinctly, and focus on critical path which comes from pressured client work.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#36

Post by vinceguidry »

encoderer wrote: post #22
vinceguidry wrote: post #5

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where working in a startup could be seen as any way superior to working at an established business is in Silicon Valley, where enormous amounts of VC money come together to create a modern Rome. Certainly we need Rome, the modern world wouldn't have existed without…

The phrase for your mentality is "early majority". You share that taste with ~35% of the population.

I'm hardly Rome-free. America is the Rome of the world, technology is the Rome of America's economy. Programming is the Rome of technology. Ruby is the Rome of programming. (that last one is debatable)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#37

Post by Ocerge »

seattle_spring wrote: post #30
thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

I would trade my high salary for 6+ weeks of vacation and free healthcare.

Yup. I don't even have that large a salary for a software engineer ($75k in Portland OR, which is plenty for a 26 y/o, kidless, single male), but I'd take half if it meant I wouldn't be as chained to the desk as I am now.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#38

Post by djhn »

loopbit wrote: post #21
thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

I wish I could. Cost of living, taxes, benefits... even the "culture" of the country (for lack of a better word) all play a role, but when you are working in a distributed team for an american corp in a different country and see how different the salaries are even between team members doing the same job, it hurts. BTW, I think you'll find it difficult to find a fresh out of college job that pays you 38K€ in most of e…

3k€ per month + holiday extra or bonuses sounds pretty standard for most office work after any university degree (so by default MSc in Europe), I'd say 3.5 to 4 is reasonable with engineering, business, finance, etc. 4-5 in law, 5-7 in medicine.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#39

Post by loopbit »

vinceguidry wrote: post #5

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where working in a startup could be seen as any way superior to working at an established business is in Silicon Valley, where enormous amounts of VC money come together to create a modern Rome. Certainly we need Rome, the modern world wouldn't have existed without…

Actually, as an European (as in, in a completely different environment than SV), I'd recommend the opposite with a small tweak, add "small company" to the startup meaning.

Most big companies I've worked with in Europe have horrible new employee training package or no training at all. I haven't worked in a single one that took fresh out of college types and allowed them to work in different departments. The most common scenario when a new graduate gets hired into a team doing X is to throw him in, get whatever documentation the team has, even maybe someone to ask questions and the expectation is that he will do X for the next few years.

Opposed to this is the environment in a small company/startup, where you'll be forced to do a bit of everything and even lend a hand with stuff that is not your job at all. You'll have the chance to see different technologies, see the whole process end to end AND then, decide what you want to do.

BTW, is salary that important for people starting their careers? Salary advancement yes, even what salaries you might expect with 2/5/10 years of experience, of course. But for a first job? Does it matter that much?

My first salary was crap (600€/month in the year 98), but allowed me to work in multiple environments (web, databases, sysadmin, embedded system...) and when the time came to look for a new place, allowed me more freedom to choose what I wanted to do (the biggest problem I had finding a job, in the middle of the .com crisis, was convincing employers that, yes, I had indeed worked with all those technologies in 'only' 2.5 years). I multiplied by 5 my salary with that second job, which was a more than decent salary in the country at the time.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#40

Post by devonkim »

herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

It's kind of difficult to have start-ups hire juniors because they desperately need people to be productive and so I'd caution that start-ups that accept junior coders straight out of school may not be the kind of start-ups that give the kind of experience that's desirable even for a year.

Instead of recommending what people should go after college for their first job, I'll recommend what people should not do:

1. Work for a consulting / contracting company that has companies people don't like to work directly for. This is probably the worst arrangement of bureaucracy possible because you have the maximum possible layers of management overhead combined with business incentives to keep your compensation and impact upon the business as little as possible. Working for a web development shop that has big customers doesn't count here IMO because your work as an engineer is largely unchanged regardless of your customer paying you $2000 or $200k.

2. Work in corporate IT. These are high-turnover positions for many reasons. It seems like there's a lot of money in it, but it's mostly going to those that sell software to these places. People are miserable enough in F500 companies as it is, this is probably among the worst places for combination of stress, pay, and career mobility.

3. Work in a non-software company. A company whose business doesn't take its software seriously invariably treats its software and IT resources as cost centers meant to get maximum cost savings for as little money as possible via opex reduction and will, ironically, likely fail to make bigger expenditures required to keep costs (and really, wasting time) lower.

Being around non-motivated people in a demoralized environment is a great way to kill any starting career and learning what the signs of these organizational attributes are have important for avoiding really bad career moves.

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