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Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

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Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#41

Post by baby »

throwawaytime wrote: post #32
rjdagost wrote: post #8

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hir…

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years. The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical. It's really crummy to se…

> Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years.

A dozen is not a lot. If you understand statistics. I'm not saying you are wrong but you don't have a convincing point.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#42

Post by hnnewguy »

throwawaytime wrote: post #32
rjdagost wrote: post #8

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hir…

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years. The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical. It's really crummy to se…

>Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years.

Outliers. It's all well and good to strive to do the same, but it isn't going to happen for the vast majority of people. And how can you presume what they would've done after going to work?

>Empirically, you're wrong about that. There are now over a thousand YC alums who prove you don't need it.

The business world is much, much larger than those 1000 alum. They are a drop in the bucket.

Where is all your data on the failures?

I have no qualms with the incubator industry, but I think most people have it backwards: the best path for most people is getting work experience first. For a few driven people with good ideas, head to start up world.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#43

Post by deepGem »

Actually, does anyone have data on the average student debt of MIT grads. To start a company, Even with a million $ seed, the founders can take home around 80k. Will that be sufficient to afford the monthly debt payments ? This might be a huge factor for grads while making the choice to startup or join a big company. A large company can at least guarantee a consistent loan repayment schedule. It's immensely difficult to start a company with a large debt hanging above your head.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#44

Post by Alex3917 »

throwawaytime wrote: post #32
rjdagost wrote: post #8

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hir…

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years. The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical. It's really crummy to se…

> It's really crummy to see Sam Altman, one of the nicest and most genuine people, dumped on here just because nobody here knows him.

Agree completely on Sam. Wanted to add though that assuming most people on HN have done a startup at one point and 90% of them have failed, then at this point a significant portion of the community may see themselves as having been burned by YC's advice. Or it may just be the fact that the majority of the community no longer grew up reading Slashdot, or at least no longer identifies with that set of values and beliefs. Or maybe the commenters just aren't representative of everyone else.

I'm not sure what's actually the case, but clearly ten years ago the idea that working for large corporation sucked was kind of the raison d'etre of the community, whereas judging by the comments that seems to no longer be the case. Similarly, one of the most upvoted submissions this weekend was a talk making fun of pg & lisp.

Regardless of what exactly is going on, it seems like there is a mismatch between YC's messaging and the community that has been revealing itself over the last several months.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#45

Post by davmre »

deepGem wrote: post #43

Actually, does anyone have data on the average student debt of MIT grads. To start a company, Even with a million $ seed, the founders can take home around 80k. Will that be sufficient to afford the monthly debt payments ? This might be a huge factor for grads while making the choice to startup or join a big company. A large company can at least guarantee a consistent loan repayment schedule. It's immensely difficult…

I don't know the numbers for MIT specifically, but most top-tier (Ivy-equivalent) private colleges have very generous financial aid, and consequentially very low levels of student debt.

It's when you go down to the second tier and below that student debt becomes a serious problem, as lots of schools try to match the Ivy experience but without the benefit of a large old-money endowment to subsidize financial aid.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#46

Post by rianjs »

chrisbennet wrote: post #24

Large companies have more mentorship possibilities but in my experience, small companies are a lot more fun to work for. Would you rather work on a part of a big product or create a complete product yourself/with another engineer?

I can confidently say a few things about working at a big company:

- I have created whole products from scratch by myself with my tech lead doing code reviews

- I have worked on "legacy" code as well

I find both satisfying for different reasons. Legacy code has a bad rep, but "legacy code" should really be called "valuable code", because it has already demonstrated its market value. It has nothing to prove. I've learned things from reading legacy code: little stuff like language features, and bigger stuff like architectural tips.

Both are different, both can be rewarding. Greenfield isn't synonymous with better or more fun. I personally enjoy being the commando[1] (with infantry tendencies as well), but the other stuff can be good, too, and we each have different preferences. That said, being the "commando" can be exhausting, and I wouldn't want to do it all the time.

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#47

Post by vasilipupkin »

rianjs wrote: post #37
vasilipupkin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, to be fair, we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great and a small chance of a huge payoff. Not everyone is suited for this sort of thing. But even among those who are, I think they would benefit from working for a big co for some amount of time before embarking on their startup venture

> we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great I object to your phrasing (though not your thesis), because it's the type of phrasing used for other forms of hero worship: police, firefighters, military personnel, etc. It's the kind of wording used by star-struck wannabes, to be frank. I also object to your use of "great", because I think that--with f…

I understand what you are saying, but Sam Altman wasn't talking just to a general audience. He was talking to MIT students in this case. So, that's a collection of probably highly capable, hard working and intelligent individuals - and some of them will go on to build great things. So, while it sounds gooey, it's probably not terribly off the mark. In any case, you and I are in agreement on the main point here. Big Cos offer highly valuable experience

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#48

Post by rjdagost »

throwawaytime wrote: post #32
rjdagost wrote: post #8

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hir…

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years. The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical. It's really crummy to se…

Sam isn’t getting dumped on. It’s a simple fact that his best interests don’t necessarily coincide with your typical college student’s best interests. In my experience, on average you will be better off working at Google for 5 years than by starting a startup with overwhelmingly low odds of success. At BigCo you will make more money, get better benefits, and you’ll probably have more free time as well. After a few years you will probably have more financial security and more name-brand recognition than if you had spent a few years in the trenches at a start-up (which in all likelihood won’t even exist at the end of this 5 year window). That doesn’t mean that everyone should try to work at a big company but your typical software engineer will be better off in the process.

As far as Zuckerberg, Drew Houston, and other big winners in the startup game, well, you might as well interview lottery winners for their secrets of success. No doubt these guys are very smart and hardworking, but so are the far more numerous legions of startups that fail.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#49

Post by bane »

Something I've learned from working at tiny startups (the smallest was 4 people) AND mega corps (the largest had north of 100,000 people) AND everything in between is how to organize differently sized groups of people.

I keep hearing about founders who are only good during fast-growth periods, then when the company gets big they have to move on. I think you'll find that most of those founders have no experience working in large organizations and simply don't understand how to organize people at growing scale. They want to hold on to the feel of when the company was exploding and had a 12 person flat org structure.

But that's because a 12 person flat org structure is easy. Those people will run themselves, and in a fast growth environment are too busy to play politics and form informal power structures.

But now the company is at 100 people, 200 people, 1,000 people. No about of book reading is going to get you prepared for how this company should run.

Not all that long ago, I worked at a startup that was under rapid growth, but was struggling to keep head count above 100. A few months in, I realized it's because the founders simply had no clue how to run a company at that size. It turn, it created a bad work environment and turnover was so high that they couldn't even hire their way to growth.

I constantly compared it to my own experience, where I ran one task on one program in one company and it grew from 4 to 80 people under me at one point. I learned some hard lessons during that time, but those are lessons I'm able to apply now wherever I go. To me, the growth issues were obvious and easy to fix. To the startup founders they were a continuous enigma, unyielding to their attempts at fixing with increasing benefits packages and lip service. I too finally got tired of the stubborn flailing and eventually left.

To cultivate and develop the skills needed to deal with differently sized groups, you have to work in those environments and learn how to do it.

Okay, maybe you don't have to, sometimes you can fake it with enough investment money and a good executive recruiter your investors force you to take on. You can hire suits who have that experience as buffer layer, professionals who do have that experience and can handle a big company. That's what Zuck did and that's what lots of successful startups do.

Re: Y Combinator partners tell MIT students to steer clear of big-name companies

#50

Post by snowwrestler »

throwawaytime wrote: post #32
rjdagost wrote: post #8

Sam is obviously not a disinterested party here. Don't join a big company- start a new investment for him to participate in or join one of his existing investments and help to make it a success. But in my experience nothing opens doors for you like having solid experience at a well known and well respected company. If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hir…

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. Like Zuck? Drew Houston? It's easy to rattle off a dozen names who wouldn't have started their company if they'd worked at a big company for 5 years. The correct answer is "figure out what works for you." And stop being cynical. It's really crummy to se…

> So why go to a big company where they definitely won't believe in you or let you forge your own opportunities?

Do you think that big companies really don't believe in their employees? Is there some "don't believe" switch that gets triggered after the head count gets above a certain level? How do you think big companies come up with new products or services, or improve existing ones?

Does this sound like a company that does not believe in its employees?

http://www.wired.com/2013/06/facebook-hhvm-saga/

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