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Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

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Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#21

Post by m12k »

onion2k wrote: post #16
jarjoura wrote: post #14

I don't know, because I'm an engineer, but what I learned from Apple, was not the work I was doing, but it was from being surrounded by such brilliance. I would go to lunch (or dinner) with the guy who wrote the javascript engine. Or pop into the office, during a beer bash, of the engineer who wrote the original UIScrollView and pick his brain about why they did things a certain way. The actual day to day work though…

At a company like Apple, I gained skills adding a feature to an existing product. At a startup, I gained skills building a product from nothing but an idea. Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. H…

I started my career in a startup, then did a two year stint in an established company and I'm now back in another startup. I got significantly better at reading code and debugging at the bigger company, but I didn't enjoy being a small cog in a big machine as much. I think it's good for people to get some experience with both - but I don't see why the order is important. I would argue that a startup, if it's successful, will soon enough grow big, so you can get to try both that way, and if it crashes and burns, an established company is a great place to land when things get chaotic (and in my case, to cool my feet and get my bearings before jumping into the next startup adventure).

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#22

Post by onion2k »

sown wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a company like Apple, I gained skills adding a feature to an existing product. At a startup, I gained skills building a product from nothing but an idea. Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. H…

> Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. But guess who gets the glory? :(

Not you, but it's not you regardless of where you work if you're an employee. Glory comes from public recognition of your work. If that's what you're looking for, start something yourself. Or contribute to an open source project. Or write a book. Do something that will have your name put on it.

If you're working for someone else, and it's their name on the product, ignore glory and insist on money.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#23

Post by mahyarm »

facetube wrote: post #15
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

This should really be "8 reasons to turn down that startup job as your first job" as most of the bullet points are really only geared towards someone in or leaving college. This should be obvious from the website's name but without context it took me a minute before I realized. That being said the #7 point of "The world needs fixing, not disrupting" seems to lose sight of what disruption really is and conflates it wi…

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time…

Your an employee with cancer, and your for profit insurance still deny's your insurance, you quickly run out of paid and unpaid leave through the FMLA and your still up shit creek with cancer. The employee designation doesn't seem much better as far as I know.

The real problem are laws that try to offload welfare to employers when it should be paid through a govt. tax system.

You have to take whatever IC income you get and divide it by 1.4 to get the equivalent pay as an employee after benefits.

How is it like for people with no savings on medicaid or mediCAL?

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#24

Post by manigandham »

sown wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a company like Apple, I gained skills adding a feature to an existing product. At a startup, I gained skills building a product from nothing but an idea. Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. H…

> Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. But guess who gets the glory? :(

If you want the glory, you're either in the wrong position or the wrong industry.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#25

Post by eropple »

guelo wrote: post #13

At a startup you'll have way more responsibility and be making decisions at a much higher level than at bigcorp. You'll learn way more, move much faster, wear more hats. It's not even close. That mentor will put you on some narrow meaningless tasks, especially if you have some talent because then he'll be afraid of you. I'd advise the opposite, go startup when you're young and have less to risk and more to prove. If…

I consult for companies from ten-person startups to a few thousand employees, and, from my perspective, it's all the same thing. While everybody pretends their particular organization size and type is supreme, it all comes out in the wash. Sure, startups move marginally faster. The time for reflection and self-analysis is lesser and most people seem to get less out of what they do, learn less from their mistakes, have generally poorer leadership that can't devote the time to helping more inexperienced employees learn the lessons they should learn from those mistakes and help them grow both as practitioners of a craft and as human beings.

And I'm gonna be honest: the assumption that a mentor has fear-based motives for ensuring that your work has greater benefits than the risk it poses is so utterly unrelated to reality in the general case, so monstrously projective and in itself pathologically fear-based, that I have trouble believing somebody would state it in good faith as such a universality. (To the newbie: your highly-self-regarded work is risky. Unknown commodities are always risky. If you are not analyzing your actions as a leader through the lens of risk, you are a bad leader. Many startups don't do this. They have bad leaders, too. But the understanding of and formalization of this is not something taught to entry-level employees at that move-fast-die-fast startup, because all too often, nobody else knows about it either.)

This is not to say that there are not startups where one can learn and thrive, because obviously they exist in some proportion. I would say, and the failure rates of startups and the it-was-my-first-job candidates I've seen ejected from the crashing wrecks strongly push me in this direction, that it certainly seems significantly harder to learn how to be directed and effective (as opposed to thrashy and high-effort) in such an environment. But it's certainly possible. Nor would I say that there isn't a very good time to leave a big company--I bailed two years to the day and probably stayed six months longer than I needed to in order to be a good engineer rather than a good coder.

But there is no generalization that holds, in either direction, as universally as your post asserts, and the assumption of such is foolish.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#26

Post by enra »

I think this rings somewhat true designers. However like any advice, it's very generalized and won't necessarily apply.

I definitely learned a lot working as a freelancer and in a agency solving different kinds of problems. The startup problem set is usually narrow with variety of random things. Many startups are also not that willing to actually invest in design (time or money wise), and it might not even make sense since they are just trying not to die.

Many startups are not also not founded by designers, and won't really understand design which also makes it harder to learn or practice good design. (As devs, think about a startup founded by sales MBAs and try to teach them good dev practices and make them understand what it is the value in it.)

I've also never worked at a startup where I could see someone as my design mentor. Most of the time, you will just have to figure things out by yourself.

I'd still say that you learn a lot at a startup, and it can be a good place for junior or more senior designers. It's about creating and nurturing one overall experience and product and learning as you go. To do and learn good design, as a junior design, the team you're joining matters a lot, as a senior designer, the management matters a lot.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#27

Post by unabst »

Let's not forget for whom we work.

Replace the word startup with "that one inspired guy trying really really hard to accomplish something awesome who's personally asking you for help" and I think the post reads a bit differently. Like, do you buy their vision and feel the awesome vibes there? This rules out #5 and #6 and #8 as motivation. With what's on the line at startups, I doubt you'd even get an offer if they didn't think you were ready. This rules out #1 through #4.

Reason #7 seems more to me as reason for than against working for a startup. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google... aren't places to go either to "solve real problems" as a designer.

Or am I missing something?

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#28

Post by gedrap »

guelo wrote: post #13

At a startup you'll have way more responsibility and be making decisions at a much higher level than at bigcorp. You'll learn way more, move much faster, wear more hats. It's not even close. That mentor will put you on some narrow meaningless tasks, especially if you have some talent because then he'll be afraid of you. I'd advise the opposite, go startup when you're young and have less to risk and more to prove. If…

>>> You'll learn way more, move much faster, wear more hats.

That's true. However, you lose the 'have you thought about doing it in X way?' 'would have never thought of that' thing. There are advantages in wearing more hats but you absolutely must make sure that you constantly get some ideas from outside (blogs, friends, books, etc).

>>> if you have some talent because then he'll be afraid of you

If one engineer is afraid of other, that's an indicator of a toxic workplace. If it's the senior who's afraid because of someone much less experienced... He's probably not that senior anyway and definitely not a good mentor.

>>> If you have the energy and the talent you can run circles around the big guys.

It's not all black and white. Both have their pros and cons, as simple as that.

Re: Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job

#30

Post by facetube »

mahyarm wrote: post #23
facetube wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time…

Your an employee with cancer, and your for profit insurance still deny's your insurance, you quickly run out of paid and unpaid leave through the FMLA and your still up shit creek with cancer. The employee designation doesn't seem much better as far as I know. The real problem are laws that try to offload welfare to employers when it should be paid through a govt. tax system. You have to take whatever IC income you g…

Being an employee in the US can, in some cases, help preserve both your job and your employer-facilitated health insurance while you're sick. The company needs to have 50 or more employees for it to apply, IIRC, and you need to have worked there for at least a year. There are slightly more generous laws in some states. It's quite close to nothing, but still slightly better than nothing.

I definitely agree that employment (or lack thereof) should have nothing to do with health care.

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