11–20 of 83 posts
Also I find most start-ups to be very conservative in employment arrangement. Option to work remotely or part time is usually deal breaker. In corporation it is norm after you establish yourself.
But I think best career is to build lifestyle business. Get a few customers, some products and just keep incrementally extending it for decade+.
I've made a career at them so far, both avoiding the corporate culture and the start-up culture, while gaining the tight-nit teams, stability and learning challenges.
Examples include agencies that have developers, smaller development shops, bootstrapped product companies and more that I'm not thinking of at the moment.
The truth is, startups are much less secure, have in many cases serious problems in terms of future opportunities. And most importantly - despite saying "the job market is great, you can always find another job", this is just historically false.
Please, read what Patrick Mckenzie has to say on the matter here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611848
And Thomas Ptacek's writing on this as well here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612575
"When Sonicity failed in 2001, I had a track record as a lead developer on a successful, well-reviewed enterprise product, the lead engineering role at an ISP that might still have been among Chicago's most popular, and research publications at least one of which has a cite record that a lot of ACM journal submissions would envy. Not to mention, I had cofounded a company that had raised a significant amount of money. I was living in San Francisco at the time. I had to move to Ann Arbor to find my next job."
This article misses some of the very good reasons to work at a Megacorp in terms of job security. I know, I know, it's one of those things that developers of our generation have been taught not to care about. "No job is secure", right? The truth is, startups are much less secure, have in many cases serious problems in terms of future opportunities. And most importantly - despite saying "the job market is great, you c…
It's all a trade-off. You trade the fun of constant change for possibly better, but definitely more reliable, compensation. That is, until your company starts downsizing because someone up top bought 1 too many Ferraris.
If they are a sophomore I would say, startup hands down. As a sophomore I would assume they don't have any experience, or any risk, or any real need for money. It easier to do a startup at that point in life. They will find if they love it or hate it. It's better to test the waters then, instead of after college when they have real risks, a real need for money (house, spouse, kids, etc)
Me personally, I founded my first startup my junior year of college, which lead to co-founding a second startup while in grad school. Both startups had little to no profit. There were weeks where I easily put in 40-60 hours+ a week in along with a full time engineering course load. And yes, I still maintained a social life and remained active in campus organizations.
Post-graduation, I'm on my 3rd 'corporate' job. My current job and previous employment were with publicly listed, multinational companies who decided to start innovation centers/incubators...not only build their next generation of products, but in-source everything back to the US.
I also think it's a fallacy to generalize the work, and people in startup vs corporate life. My first employer, I ran circles around most of the developers, and had to be there 8 hours a day...I rarely worked more than 8. My 2nd job, I was the least senior of all the hires and everyone ran circles around me. My current one, I'm in the middle of the pack as far as experience, and hours are reasonable.
tl;dr While in college do a startup.
I think only in America would somebody say 50 hour weeks don't count as working you hard. Also, the average US working week is 35 hours, 37 in "information" industries:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
The fact is that past 35 hours most people just aren't very productive, and a startup asking you to work 50 hours is going to get just as much "busy-looking" time as a corporate job asking you to do the same. Don't work at any job that expects you to work 50-60 hour weeks. Those companies are unhappy places.
> People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don’t see it. From people I’ve talked to, I’d say 50 hour weeks are average. That’s about what you see in corporate America these days. I think only in America would somebody say 50 hour weeks don't count as working you hard. Also, the average US working week is 35 hours, 37 in "information" industries: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm The fact is…
I worked at a company for a while where the solution to any deadline was either to work longer hours or to throw more people at it. (They called it "swarming"). I'm pretty sure not a single executive there had read the mythical man month, or they would have realized how insane that was. You can't just brute force problems that require creativity.
Maybe with some ABAP in the way and in some cases some J2EE/WSDL/SOAP or C#/.NET webservices to interact with it. It looks like it's almost impossible to escape this kind of work here, the main employers are outsourcing/consulting companies like Accenture, etc.
I fear that if I go this way I will never be able to escape because I will be gaining experience in this areas and my career will be stuck in this world.
I won't be touching anything like Python, Ruby, Scala, RabbitMQ, Redis or any other technology that might be used by companies were someday I would like to work for, and do real development/engineering.
I'm sorry for my ramblings, I just feel so lost and depressed and would like to get it off of my chest before I explode, and maybe find some advice and guidance from you guys.
A few straw men in this article. 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.
Read more carefully. "Of course, this will vary from company to company. Facetime wasn’t valued at the big company I worked at, for instance."