Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

Politics.

You better brush up on your social engineering, learn when to smile and when not to, and watch your back. Rationality and intelligence will not get you far on their own, because the game isn't about who's the smartest or who has the best ideas, it's about leverage, prejudices, cliques, "prestige", and ultimately money.

Remember you're there to play with some toys, occasionally commit code, and get that sweet money.

Some counter experiences, just based on my own annecdata.

> * You, the individual, are not important. The product is important, the department that delivers the product is less important, the teams that comprise the department are less important than that, and so on. Again, accept the reality and just relax.

Working at startups I have never felt less important as an individual. The product is #1 and I only exist as a cog in the machine to produce that product and make the founders money. In a big company I was encouraged to pursue professional development, my professional goals and dreams were catered for and I felt like I could make personal progression.

> * Expect insufficient test automation, lots of regression, and plenty of repetition. Also expect everybody to be an expert that is in a hurry and things in a unique way. Just be patient, politely nod, and just relax.

Again, opposite experience, startups don't have time for test automation whereas big companies generally do.

> * If you don’t like being bored and are highly risk adverse you might find the big company life highly depressing.

I'm often bored at my startup though never lacking for work. It's just that the work can often be monotonous work because the startup doesn't have time to automate it or hire someone to do it. At a startup, its rare that you're encouraged to explore something new that might not work out. There's just not the time or budget.

300 is already pretty big. I went from 20 years where by far my largest company was 16 people, to Microsoft, and I'm pretty happy.

The biggest transition for me was the amount of cross org digging and asking and such required. So much is constantly in Flux, and internal integration points are often poorly documented or have apis based off protocols from a decade ago, or whatever else. You spend most of your time doing that, figuring out how to integrate with various old, half supported systems, getting pushback that the integration won't be supportable, etc.

This is in strong contrast with a small company where you are generally working with public, well documented tools, and everyone you work with shares the same goal.

That said, I'm happy now that I have gotten used to it. The scale of things you work on is much greater.

One thing I'll say is don't sell yourself short by taking a job at the low end of where you think you should be and telling yourself that you can work your way up. I made this mistake when I was unemployed but not desperate. Your project could be canceled or there can be blockers or reorgs or whatever else that keeps you back. So wait for the offer that you want.

I worked in small company (50-100 employees) and lead team of 7 people before. After company went down, I joined as IC in big corps. Few things mentioned below might not be relevant to your position. But adding them for every one. Not all orgs are same, so take this with pinch of salt.

- Relax, don't boil the ocean. (This is first advice given to me by one of the director after raising concerns over dev practices being followed)

- Learn presentation skills. Charts are important. Executives don't understand technical language but only charts.

- Stay humble but be political. Avoid heated arguments. Give logical choices to people and let them choose instead of proving them wrong. Make sure to get all discussions on mail. So if later blame game starts, you will be saved.

- In such orgs, some folk stays for decades. They don't care about product or team. Deal carefully with them. But then again you can find some real gems with decades of specialist experience. Learn from them as much as possible.

- Learn proprietary technologies. Most of time such techs are not available for individuals or very pricy.

- Get certifications. Big corps provide very expensive certifications with huge discounts. (But before working on them make sure there arn't any traps. E.g. In my org, you had to stay for atleast a year after finishing certifications or pay back)

- Understand KPI well. (e.g. In startup, you may get appraisal on working hard in weekends and shipping. But in megacorps, that won't happen. You may get some praise but not appraisal)

- If you want recognition, try to conduct department wide technical sessions. People will respect you in (those never ending) meetings.

- Don't invest your emotions in projects. Sometimes they get scrapped quarterly.

- Welcome to world of VMs. Organizations are tuned for operations not for engineering. (I miss my Linux)

- Even though your performance is good, you can get canned. Layoffs are done based on budget not on performance. Keep an eye on Gartner index. Also manager plays key role in almost all decisions. So think once before messing with him/her.

- And last but not least. Don't go in comfort zone. Always keep an eye on market & opportunities.

Not everyone you meet has good intentions for you, your projects or the company.