Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

atrium.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#61

Post by sonnyblarney »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #5

The problem with startups has always been a fundamental one, and not really one you can change without redefining what a startup actually is - people try way too hard to start them. Let me explain; it's reported very very often on YC that 90% of startups fail, and while a lot of these points in the article are disguised as separate ideas, they're all part of the same problem being that people want to make something f…

"That process is way easier, the money and infrastructure is already there, and everyone is already neatly on board."

This is rare. Most companies do not have processes for change and innovation, and the only way anything gets done is if the CEO pushes hard for it. Those things are far and few between.

" Well, of course your management is going to be shit."

It's only 'shit' if you assume managements job is to provide clear and detailed plans on how it's going to work out. If you grasp that startups have inherent ambiguity, and that all systems have to be highly adaptive and you'll be 'micro-pivoting' every week, well, then management may not seem so bad, depending on.

Good, thoughtful, professional managers might often fail miserably at a startup. It takes a little bit of experience actually to recognize what makes good leadership in a dynamic situation, because often it's counterintuitive.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#62

Post by sonnyblarney »

lkrubner wrote: post #40

I hope I won't bore people if I repeat a point that I've made before: far more startups die of suicide than homicide. The tendency to self-sabotage, among entrepreneurs, is surprisingly strong. And I’m hardly the only one who has noticed this odd fact. The great business guru Peter Drucker made the point repeatedly. In his 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker includes a long chapter on the tendency of e…

" “The Universe is fundamentally electromagnetic yet non-sentient, and we are sentient but only partly electromagnetic; the Internet is the ultimate harnessing of sentience to the fundamental forces of the Universe. Therefore our software will put you, our customer, in the driver’s seat of real-time conscious human evolution.” "

Ah ah ah shha hshhs ahaha.

That's golden!

I'm sorry that you mightn't have had the life experience to realize how clueless this guy was earlier, but hey - you learned.

Though, sometimes the most offbeat people truly have the greatest things going, it's really hard to tell sometimes. It gets easier with age, I think the 'crazy realists' tend to have deep knowledge of something and focus on an actual problem.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#63

Post by leetcrew »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #60
leetcrew wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cred at parties maybe i'm naive, but if party cred were a serious priority, i would probably have chosen a different career altogether.

When I used to socialize a bit more around SF, there definitely was social cache to being part of a unicorn. Declare that you worked at [Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, Square] and you'd have people wow or talk about how smart you were. There is a huge social capital element here.

ah okay, I always sort of imagined it would be like that in SF. I live in a metro area that is not as tech-oriented. when I tell people I'm a software engineer at parties, the only thing they find impressive is that I actually have a full-time job.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#64

Post by justin »

bradlys wrote: post #41

I get that this is a just a PR piece to attract new talent but I think you're selling a startup short still. Learning is hardly a thing at startups. So many people are incredibly junior and know nothing about the industry or tech to begin with. (I mean, who else would take such low pay?) Yes, you can get to get pushed into unqualified roles and learn from it - depending on who you are. But that's really only at the c…

Good point. I guess I've always taken choosing who you work with for granted. That being said if you join a startup you don't exactly get to choose who you work with any more than if you join a team at a big company.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#65

Post by mr_tristan »

kodablah wrote: post #24

> If you’re seriously considering both options — a traditional company and a startup — here are some points to consider. There are so many definitions of "startup", but given the common one of "VC funded trying to get big", I'd say there's a third company type between these two I dub a "starting-up". It's an early traditional company that's in the black but is not poised to go through the roof or become bloated with…

> It's an early traditional company that's in the black but is not poised to go through the roof or become bloated with employees or ask a ton of its employees

Why not just call these small businesses? If they're in the black, then they can just operate using a traditional business model.

The startup is about _not_ operating traditionally, but, taking a massive risk to do something different, that can _eventually_ get to that traditional model. Usually by way of turning into a publicly traded company. Which many small businesses never will achieve, by the way.

Entrepreneurship doesn't mean you have to go that "insane growth" trajectory. It _can_ just mean "launch a small business". And that small business can just be private for a very long time; there's nothing wrong with it.

Some idiots may have you believe that the "best entrepreneur" creates startups, but that's stupidity at it's finest. IMO the best entrepreneur can create the _right kind_ of operation. There are plenty of examples of private companies that can grow but don't require operating non-traditionally.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#66

Post by jonny_eh »

A big advantage to working at a BigCo is how it looks on your résume, or the "About Us" page of your own future startup.

I've seen so many hiring managers trip over themselves to hire former FANG employees, without knowing anything else about them. It's like graduating from an ivy league school.

There's also way more networking opportunities at big companies, merely because there's so many more people.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#67

Post by wolco »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #23
BowBun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The more I grow, the more I realize it is unrealistic to develop skills in scaling architecture, massive-scale software, etc. with only your own projects. You either need to contribute to large projects, find large projects to hire you, or push for scaling patterns which may be out-of-scope for your current job. This is actually something I've been thinking about lately: how can I train/practice these meaning…

This is a real problem in trying to learn how to scale systems. I love learning about scaling but I've never personally worked on high volume applications, there's only so much you can do by reading stuff or watching tutorials or emulating high volume in your side projects. There's so many x-factors that come into play that you can only learn on the job.

Using services like loader.io I could simulate high traffic. That opened up a new world. I was able to test different configurations under stress to find the setup that performed the best for a specific application. Highly recommend stress or load testing.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#68

Post by jamiepenney »

leetcrew wrote: post #63
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used to socialize a bit more around SF, there definitely was social cache to being part of a unicorn. Declare that you worked at [Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, Square] and you'd have people wow or talk about how smart you were. There is a huge social capital element here.

ah okay, I always sort of imagined it would be like that in SF. I live in a metro area that is not as tech-oriented. when I tell people I'm a software engineer at parties, the only thing they find impressive is that I actually have a full-time job.

I get a lot of "oh yep, you look the type". Ouch.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#69

Post by enraged_camel »

rjeli wrote: post #48
mpodlasin wrote: post #29

It's funny how my experience is exactly reverse. Since I joined startup I learn much less, since we can't afford experimentation and there are no other front end devs here, so I don't get a chance to learn backend stuff, since someone has to do front end part. I also hoped to learn some business stuff, but most of it happens behind closed doors between founders and investors while you code boring crud application.

> most of it happens behind closed doors between founders and investors Lack of transparency is bad. If you care about it, leave. Find a founder who doesn't think they're better than you.

That seems to be quite a leap from “meetings with investors happen behind closed doors” to “the founders think they are better than you.”

There are certain things that should be discussed in the open, and certain things behind closed doors.

Re: Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup

#70

Post by toomanybeersies »

kodablah wrote: post #24

> If you’re seriously considering both options — a traditional company and a startup — here are some points to consider. There are so many definitions of "startup", but given the common one of "VC funded trying to get big", I'd say there's a third company type between these two I dub a "starting-up". It's an early traditional company that's in the black but is not poised to go through the roof or become bloated with…

I was talking to a guy who was a CEO of a company exactly like you describe, and he referred to it as a "stay up". I think the company was about 4 or 5 years old and was growing, but not massively. It was just ticking by nicely, slowly expanding, but not requiring any additional investment.

I think these types of companies are more common than readers here think, they just don't get the same kind of publicity. Often they serve some industry-specific niche, and the founder of the company is non-technical but has a lot of industry specific experience.

Post reply on HN