Startup vs. Corporate Life

Startup vs. Corporate Life
blog.lawnstarter.com

My friend at start ups seem to me to have not had the same further education that I have. Maybe some will figure out all the same things on their own, but it will take longer. Hard to say. Some of them at 27 are the 'senior developer'.

Personally I have experience in #2, and it was a three-year old start-up. The experience was awful.

First, I was all on my own, I was told I would wear a lot of hats and would learn a tonne. The reality was I googled a lot, and just copied and pasted the solutions and code snippets off Internet and hoped those would work well enough to meet my need. Take a look at stackoverflow and you will understand what I meant. To make this really concrete, say setting up a server. Before VMs were more popular, I would need to actually get a Dell (bcos it was cheapest, period), removed the Windows, installed Linux, then the fun began: apache, postfix, mysql, spamassassin, etc etc. Do you have time to thumb through each of the excellent documents? We are not even starting to code!!!! On top of that, I also needed to do powerpoint (we had to use Windows because those VCs we met loved Windows), helped to proof-read the product specs to make sure it wouldn't promised anything that would take even Microsoft 80 years to build, and clear the thrash before I left office.

Second, as an employee I didn't have much say on the product design, and technical roadmap, this is especially true if you are someone who is fresh from school, I joined with 6 years of professional experience, but still I didn't have much say on the product features. I was just the guy who did the implementation specified by the biz guy (the CEO), nothing more. I also thought it could be this particular company was fucked up, however talking to engineers from other companies reviewed this phenomena is far from unique.

This kind of work is not much fun if you have a tight deadline and changing requirements from the sales (usually the CEO), especially the one who peddles the products doesn't have a technical background. On top of that, you are most probably doing so many things that you will not likely to have time and energy to sit down and run through the work that you have done.

Make no mistake, I am not saying corporate life is good (I am now working for a US MNC), it has its own set of shit, that I will leave for other day to bitch about

Most people in corporate life are expected to look busy when they aren’t, and put up the appearance of working long hours.

There are plenty of larger companies you can work for where this isn't true.

I'm on my second startup (started at age 23), both of which I was unfortunately the most senior, and at times, the only developer.

There are often times that I wish I had a more established structure around me to facilitate learning the lessons it takes you a while to learn on your own.

That said, before I was in a startup, I also found that I sometimes had a habit of asking too many questions of more senior guys at my mid-sized company. The negative side of this is that not going through the paces of learning those things on my own, I started to feel like I was missing out on developing the critical thinking skills that it takes to learn those things on my own. I was skeptical that I wouldn't be able to move into a role with nobody else to lean on all the time.

After being the most senior guy at a startup for a few years (except for the occasional times when I've contracted with people who have 5+ years more experience), it's helped me develop the problem solving skills that I'm not sure I would have with a resource working right next to me. The lessons are harder won, but sometimes it can be more satisfying to come up with that continuing education on your own (and, well, with the help of the internet).