I am graduating from college soon. My eventual goal is to start my own company. I think I should work at a small (Specifically, I would like to know what all you think is the best preparation for starting something on my own.
I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
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Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#2So you want to work at a small company and you want to know whether working at a small company is a good way to do it? Yes, I'd say so.
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#3You'll learn a lot more at a small company as you get / have to wear many hats in your role. The many roles you play will prepare to better for your own business
In a large company everyone is very specialized so you won't really get to step outside your role too much
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#4I think both have their good points. Smaller companies allow more freedom and a wider range of experience. If you pick the wrong small company you'll pick up bad habits (what's version control? backups? testing?). I didn't have a software engineering degree, so wasn't aware of some of the things I was doing wrong (or missing) until I spent some time in bigger companies.
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#5Working in a small company, you'll have an opportunity to do more if you take the initiative. Some days you might be doing things outside of your job maybe you have to deal with a client, or have to be part of a sales presentation, or take part in high level meetings.
Of course you also have to be extra careful not to get comfortable since all companies (especially smaller/older companies) can get comfortable with their employees. There may be dinosaurs who just aren't very good at what they're supposed to be doing. Make sure to not limit your knowledge because of them or be hindered by them.
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#6[deleted]
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#7I have worked at both small and large. Eventually, I co-founded a company that was mildly successful. Small companies are better place to learn lots of skills, take risks, and be noticed. Large companies are rather hard to do anything with scope outside your group, and sometimes tasks like getting hardware seem impossible in a timely manner.
My opinion, go small, then when you are a bit older try a larger company. Try both and see for yourself. GL.
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#8I have worked at both small and large. Eventually, I co-founded a company that was mildly successful. Small companies are better place to learn lots of skills, take risks, and be noticed. Large companies are rather hard to do anything with scope outside your group, and sometimes tasks like getting hardware seem impossible in a timely manner. My opinion, go small, then when you are a bit older try a larger company. Tr…
...and sometimes tasks like getting hardware seem impossible in a timely manner.
This is a good point. There's a lot of red tape at big companies and sometimes doing the simplest things (e.g. setting up an Apache server) can be made into maddeningly bureaucratic operations (fill out the support ticket -> X -> Y...)
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#9I think your parents is right on this, either Google/Facebook are great places to start off your career, not to mention it's a good place to learn how they iterate, how they go about their product development, especially in such a large (and yet fairly agile) company. Think of it as a learning pad.
Also, there's nothing stopping you from working on your idea right now. Once your idea turns profitable, you can explore the other possibilities; hiring, working on it full time, etc.
Re: I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company?
#10As a whole big companies are machines for turning energetic, scrappy, visionary people into sluggish, overspending, risk-averse, reliable cogs.
Don't even work at a startup unless you need to. You're more likely to succeed by repeatedly starting your own companies than any other path.