Why you should join a big company first

I believe big companies are a good route for most devs early in their careers but most of the bullet points about why big companies are helpful are only applicable for senior team members. For junior people almost all of these would be faster/easier to accomplish at a startup where you've negotiated for more salary/less equity.

This really resonated with me, I was one of those cocky, over-achieving kids who thought I could start a company fresh out of college.

Instead, I've worked in Product for 26 months and learnt some really good skills: how to write real requirements, how to manage expectations (up and down), how to negotiate, how to measure and to focus on moving the needle, how to build a GTM plan and execute against it, how to deal with fireman issues, how to develop with a SOA, the list goes on.

And picked up a bunch of payments industry expertise along the way.

I'm still determined to start my own business, but definitely a hell-of-a-lot more confident in my chances of success.

This is clearly from a business perspective.

But if you're an engineer, I personally think that working for a big _software_ company early in your career is important. It's just plain easy to work on software in a small company because you don't have legacy code, existing products, existing customers, existing practices. Also you have no real way to judge whether your code is good or bad until its come under the glare of experienced engineers.

Also, people shouldn't take any of Robert Scoble's advice.

Yeah, I was a bit confused by what the author meant.

I can see it not being a good idea to start your own startup super early for the reasons the author lists. I don't think there's anything wrong with joining a growing startup early on, though.

if you aren't willing to take risk right out of college, not even a midlife crisis will be enough to motivate you to build something great