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Top differences between working for startups and corporations

blog.startupcvs.com

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Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations

#11

Post by Mengue »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #3

I 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 wo…

Thanks a lot for your comment.

Having worked for both, large corporations (Google, GE, BCG) as well as startups between 3 and 300 employees, we are purely speaking from our own experiences (as mentioned on the bottom of the article).

Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations

#13

Post by Mengue »

gesman wrote: post #4

Agree 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…

Thanks a lot for the additional points.

Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations

#18

Post by vkjv »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #3

I 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 wo…

This. Although, in my experience it's more relative to team size than company size. I work on a fairly small engineering team within a large apparel company and it seems to match the bullet points for start-ups more closely.

Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations

#19

Post by GFischer »

gesman wrote: post #4

Agree 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…

"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."

That one irks me no end, but it's in my experience true. Also, in smaller companies, "title inflation" is a thing, I've seen companies you can get named whichever job title you prefer in exchange for a lower or no raise in salary.

And afterwards, said employees spin their "inflated" job title into a better job at large corp. (which they usually are qualified to do, but they have a leg vs equally qualified internal employees with a lesser title).

Edit: my experience applies mainly to NON software large corps., which have less ways to gauge the skill levels of internal employees in IT. Also applies to the government sector (same as credentials and certifications).

Re: Top differences between working for startups and corporations

#20

Post by barrkel »

I've found startup life to be less initiative-based than my previous corporate life.

In B2B startup, features are driven by sales and post-sale support, and sales / keeping the biggest customers happy (for later upsell) is of paramount importance. We have far more potential features to build than we have people to work on them, so prioritization is done from the top down and can change depending on the sales landscape. Thus I have very little discretion over what I do on a day to day basis, and there are people asking me to do things every day. Initiative isn't actually necessary, unless you want to improve things in ways that management etc. can't see.

Whereas in corporate life, I owned a little corner of the product, and when given a strategic initiative, I came up with feature suggestions that made our customers' and my team's life / lives easier. I had more strategic responsibility, and although the direct risk of my failure was lower, my work had larger impact because it got delivered to far more people - a mature organization has far more customers, if it's healthy.

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