If you have to ask the question, go with Google. If it's a decent engineering position, it's like having Harvard or Oxford/Cambridge on your résumé and will open doors in future.
Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
131–140 of 224 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#132Anyone know how much Google would realistically offer someone with 4 years of presumably irrelevant rails and sql experience?(As in, NOT in ('c++','java','javascript','python')
I'm predicting not much - and I bet they believe a significant part of the "compensation" will be the "privilege" or working at google.
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#133Advice from someone who had a similar choice and went the startup route: choose the Google option. It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs, but you can invest the money now and create a nice start for yourself. There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
It really depends on kind of person OP is, Personally I never want to work at any large corporation especially Google, the benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks for me.
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#134Google (and any MegaCorp) will siphon out any love you have for your profession. Go startup.
Mediocre startup compensation combined with the bay area cost of living and the added work/life imbalance can arguably do the same thing.
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#135[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#136Google. Your expected value for options should usually be $0.
The median is certainly 0.
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#137If you can live on the 1/3 that google is offering, take the google job, save the difference between the two jobs and become really good at Google.
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#138So here are your choices: 1) Work for Google 2) Work for startup for 1/3 the compensation, at least 50% more working hours, and options that have a 95% chance of being worth zero dollars at some point in the future. It seems like the obvious choice would be Google but it also depends on what life stage you're at. If young and just starting out, there's no easier time to take a risk. If you've got a family to support,…
So true. I cant help but be extremely jealous(to a fault) of those that had both options.
Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Google really pay that well?
Yes. Base pay for a very junior hire is $140k - $160k and equity ranges from $250k to $400k or more (vesting over four years, so $62.5k to $100k per year). After annual bonus and raises, for a single person who lives reasonably and has no debt it's about 4-6 years from zero to $1M in the bank.
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Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?
#140Is this one of your first jobs? If it’s early in your career I always recommend taking the big company option. You learn a lot of positive business practices and the culture of large companies early on that will be very helpful in your future, should you decide to start a company going up against or selling to similar companies, you will also bring some of the discipline needed to build a small biz into a large one. My career used the reverse model and it took me a long time to realize the skills I was missing.