The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
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Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#2I started out my career at Fidelity Investments too! And after a couple of years, moved into the startup space.
I agree with many points here - you learn infinitely more quickly, you work infinitely harder, and this has given me business and engineering acumen far greater than had I stayed at Fidelity.
I will disagree with the overall tone that, when we are young, salary is less important. It is certainly true that many of us have fewer financial obligations, besides perhaps student debt and rent.
But I would always advise against joining a startup at significantly below market rate just for the equity. Even as a 1st or 2nd employee, you can only control the direction of the company so much, you're working just as hard as the founders, but the upside is a fraction of what it is for them.
(Let's also remember that you're typically not granted stock, but stock options. So if you have student debt, join a startup as a customer experience associate, you may not even be able to afford to exercise all of them when you leave!)
If I had gotten a job at Google after graduating (let's say I had applied and gotten in) my starting salary would have been higher, and that would have served as an anchor point for all future salary negotiations - for the rest of my life! I've probably left ~100k on the table over the past 5 years due to this alone.
Today, I still have few financial obligations, but wouldn't take an appreciably lower salary for any company until I start my own. I have enough experience now to be able to negotiate that kind of deal, but if I were to do it again, I would try to be a little smarter about this point as well.
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#3> My 20-year-old self didn’t consider joining a startup—or founding one—as a career option, but I hope you will.
I would think that the startup environment, and the job environment in general, is much different in 2015 than in 1993, which puts the framing analysis as a post-rationalization that's essentially comparing apple-and-oranges.
> And lastly, you will probably have to work long hours. But that wouldn’t have mattered to me in my 20s.
Isn't one of the primary criticisms of modern startups that they abuse naive fresh-out-of-college graduates?
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#4[deleted]
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#5I started out my career at Fidelity Investments too! And after a couple of years, moved into the startup space. I agree with many points here - you learn infinitely more quickly, you work infinitely harder, and this has given me business and engineering acumen far greater than had I stayed at Fidelity. I will disagree with the overall tone that, when we are young, salary is less important. It is certainly true that m…
Fido is a great shop and 100K is relatively cheap for that important of a lesson... and of course we shouldn't ask too many what-ifs.
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#6This site is so busy it almost reminds me of a tabloid:
- three signup buttons (top-right and top-left, and the bottom of the article)
- permanent left overlay
- permanent double overlay on the top, including 9 'share' links
- red banner at the top for the latest campaign
- popular linkbait articles with pictures along the left side
- self-advertisement in the middle of the article
- giant modal signup popup after about 10 seconds of activity -- "Are you Prepared for Your Next Interview?"
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#7I've been doing some heavy investigation to how (and where) I should start my career in terms of maximizing learning. I have friends who will be working at Microsoft, and other friends who criticize said 'Microsoft' friends, saying that they won't learn much. Others say you learn the [most] at big companies, and a small minority say that start-ups are the way to go when you're early in your career.
I wonder what advice Jessica (and the HN community) would have for people like me, as I imagine there are a lot of people like me visiting HN.
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#8> My 20-year-old self didn’t consider joining a startup—or founding one—as a career option, but I hope you will. I would think that the startup environment, and the job environment in general, is much different in 2015 than in 1993 , which puts the framing analysis as a post-rationalization that's essentially comparing apple-and-oranges. > And lastly, you will probably have to work long hours. But that wouldn’t have…
and they wont be recruiting eng lit grads in the main
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#9The risk of a startup has moved from investors to founders and now from founders to employees.
Investors diversify their investments to minimize the risk. They don't really care if a particular startup they invested in will fail. They have tons of other investments...
Now with this new generation of "entrepreneurs" who start five startup at a time, they are not too afraid of startup failure either. They did diversify their risk too!
The only one who really loses when a startup fails is the employee who bought promises of "learning a lot" or "probably getting rich" and compromised his/her income and lifestyle.
It's very hard to find a startup that is like early Google where everyone is firmly believing they are doing something huge and everybody is all-in the company.
Re: The Career Path I Didn’t Consider, But Should Have
#10She says:
"There are a lot more startups today, and you can in effect become an early investor in one by going to work for it."
It's important to remember that she means this for one very particular industry, and she is talking about a very particular kind of startup. Overall, there has been a steady decline in the number of startups during the last 30 years:
https://www.fedinprint.org/items/fednsr/707.html
"The first observation is the steady decline in the firm entry rate over the last thirty years, and the second is the gradual shift of employment from younger to older firms over the same period. Both observations hold across industries and geographies."
The great era of starting a new business in the USA was several decades ago. It is much more difficult to do so now, and that is perhaps part of the reason why there are less entrepreneurs now, and less new companies being founded.