Top differences between working for startups and corporations
blog.startupcvs.com
Top differences between working for startups and corporations
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#2Blimey, that was hard to read. Also a couple of points were only relevant to the USA.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#3I always trust sites dedicated to getting people jobs at startups to tell the honest truth about what it's like to work at a startup.
I work for a large corporation, and almost every single negative thing listed here is false. The main one that's not (and I'm not sure this is even really a negative) is the high risk/low upside - I'll be quite comfortable here, but I'll never be pulling down millions in a year as I would if I struck it rich with a startup I owned. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure only a few dozen people actually make millions from startups.
Oh, and "essential vs. substitutable" - everyone is substitutable. It doesn't matter if you're employee #2 or employee #10002, you're replaceable. Actually, that one amusingly contradicts the generalist vs specialist one - you would think specialists that know the domain would be a lot harder to replace than the "generalist" who's spinning up the world's 8 billionth MEAN stack, but then that would require the source to have a little self-awareness.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#4Agree with "brand recognition" - its a serious advantage for employees of large corp.
Large corps are vulnerable to losing top talent because they usually can't match market due to strict internal hierarchy policies. Quicker way to get promoted at large corp - prove your skills, leave on good terms, gain visibility and titles elsewhere and then re-join large corp at a much higher position.
Regulations:
Large corps are much stricter regulated and this adds to your responsibilities to do boring stuff.
Permissions:
Large corps spending lots of resources for reinventing and improving systems of access controls and permissions as well as sets of exceptions to such systems.
Average worker age:
20+ something for startup, 40-50+ something for corps.
Accessibility of top management:
Startup: you knock the door and talk to the guy, Large corp: you send email to C*O of large corp and get no reply not because he is busy, but because his secretary pre-filtered emails and discarded yours.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#5Agree with "brand recognition" - its a serious advantage for employees of large corp. Large corps are vulnerable to losing top talent because they usually can't match market due to strict internal hierarchy policies. Quicker way to get promoted at large corp - prove your skills, leave on good terms, gain visibility and titles elsewhere and then re-join large corp at a much higher position. Regulations: Large corps ar…
you didn't work for a competitive software corp. did you? to me, all three are wrong.
-Regulations? if you are good, you can do anything you want. you are powerful. regulations are there to stop dreamers. dreamers are stopped in startup world a lot harsher. -Permissions? only around %2 of employees work on that. actually less. do you think those kind of systems are worth the effort? (works! done.) -Avg worker age? this is simply not true. the acquihires we had, were older than my -corp- team avg.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#6Agree with "brand recognition" - its a serious advantage for employees of large corp. Large corps are vulnerable to losing top talent because they usually can't match market due to strict internal hierarchy policies. Quicker way to get promoted at large corp - prove your skills, leave on good terms, gain visibility and titles elsewhere and then re-join large corp at a much higher position. Regulations: Large corps ar…
you didn't work for a competitive software corp. did you? to me, all three are wrong. -Regulations? if you are good, you can do anything you want. you are powerful. regulations are there to stop dreamers. dreamers are stopped in startup world a lot harsher. -Permissions? only around %2 of employees work on that. actually less. do you think those kind of systems are worth the effort? (works! done.) -Avg worker age? th…
I worked at both, but there are perhaps exceptions.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
you didn't work for a competitive software corp. did you? to me, all three are wrong. -Regulations? if you are good, you can do anything you want. you are powerful. regulations are there to stop dreamers. dreamers are stopped in startup world a lot harsher. -Permissions? only around %2 of employees work on that. actually less. do you think those kind of systems are worth the effort? (works! done.) -Avg worker age? th…
I worked at both, but there are perhaps exceptions.
Me too, but corp culture perhaps changes as fast as software development practices change.
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#8good read
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#9Blimey, that was hard to read. Also a couple of points were only relevant to the USA.
So sorry, we have no designers and had to improvise :D
Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations
#10I find that in many of the companies I've worked for (non-startups), I end up getting the startup boxes while being paid and appreciated at the corporation level. In my case, and likely for many others, staying in corporations is a waste of talent and drive (and world benefit).