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Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

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Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#21

Post by loopbit »

thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

I wish I could. Cost of living, taxes, benefits... even the "culture" of the country (for lack of a better word) all play a role, but when you are working in a distributed team for an american corp in a different country and see how different the salaries are even between team members doing the same job, it hurts.

BTW, I think you'll find it difficult to find a fresh out of college job that pays you 38K€ in most of europe.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#22

Post by encoderer »

vinceguidry wrote: post #5

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where working in a startup could be seen as any way superior to working at an established business is in Silicon Valley, where enormous amounts of VC money come together to create a modern Rome. Certainly we need Rome, the modern world wouldn't have existed without…

The phrase for your mentality is "early majority". You share that taste with ~35% of the population.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#23

Post by snakka »

jzwinck wrote: post #12
herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I went about it the opposite way, and can definitely recommend that as well: big company first, then small. The big company experience shows you a ton of things, like how to interview, build, and deploy at scale. The small company can benefit from your ability to bring order to chaos, develop tools which are obvious in any big company but strangely missing from every small one, and more. Maybe it doesn't matter which…

I can also recommend this. The big company has a good starter program and lots of resources to learn and draw inspiration from. Also you get to touch such massive amounts of code and technologies. Of course it depends on the company, yet I think it will benefit you to switch job after a year.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#24

Post by hyperpape »

thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

I think there's also a geographical issue. New grads can't expect to earn $90k where I live (Raleigh), though $40k would be quite low.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#25

Post by wh-uws »

vinceguidry wrote: post #5

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where working in a startup could be seen as any way superior to working at an established business is in Silicon Valley, where enormous amounts of VC money come together to create a modern Rome. Certainly we need Rome, the modern world wouldn't have existed without…

You're lucky. The drive is both a gift and a curse.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#26

Post by sbierwagen »

hacknat wrote: post #11

When it comes to compensation I think it's pretty clear that Big Companies win. You don't even need to point to Google, Facebook, etc to make this point. However, his argument becomes truly hand-wavey and spurious when it comes to the interesting work part. Of course some of the most interesting tech papers are coming out of Google, that doesn't mean anything for the average Google employee. Also, in his, argument, h…

You did a greenfield implementation of a compiler?

Why?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#27

Post by vonmoltke »

vinceguidry wrote: post #16
jerf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't necessarily an either/or proposition. Between remote offices, remote work, or local startups, you can live in $NOT_SV and pick certain elements of the SV lifestyle that you may appreciate. You don't get full unrestrained choice, but, well, you never do anyhow, so shrug . Tech workers can still have it better than most could even dream of.

Remote work is one of those Roman ideas that I just can't bring myself to be interested enough in to try. Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? Give me a regular desk and let me see my coworkers in person every day. Besides, from what I've gathered from the job postings here, SV startups mostly don't hire remote workers. You're expected to move to Rome. Local…

> Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school?

That actually sounds awesome to me. I know I'm unusual, though.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#28

Post by carlivar »

jzwinck wrote: post #12
herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I went about it the opposite way, and can definitely recommend that as well: big company first, then small. The big company experience shows you a ton of things, like how to interview, build, and deploy at scale. The small company can benefit from your ability to bring order to chaos, develop tools which are obvious in any big company but strangely missing from every small one, and more. Maybe it doesn't matter which…

What I like about "big before small" is that while you can't replicate what the big company does, you can selectively adopt certain "big company lessons, tools, processes" at a startup. At a big company, you also may gain a view into how scale works to understand where your changes at a startup will have the most bang for your buck.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#29

Post by jerf »

jzwinck wrote: post #15
jerf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but a year's a bit tight. You may want to give yourself an option of another 6-12 months, if your job is still rotating through things and changing enough that you're not pigeonholed yet. I'm not sure I could put into words why, but I'd look much more favorably on two years rather than one if I was looking at your future resume. Flip side, I'd also add an option at months three and six to ask myself whether…

> another 6-12 months, if your job is still rotating through things and changing enough that you're not pigeonholed yet This reads as if you're advocating against ever becoming an expert in anything. A few months is nothing--if the domain is difficult you're barely up to speed.

In the context we're discussing, we're explicitly taking a job to sample many things.

Given the recent specialization in programming (web backend v. frontend, "mobile", devops, etc.), which is a continuing trend from previous decades, this seems sensible. I advocate for a T shape in skills, but before you pick what you go deep in, get somewhat established in the wide. Fresh out of school you just can't have the width yet to know what you want to and should go deep in yet, not even if you've had a job the whole time.

Actually, I suppose I ought to raise that up as my true point: Go a bit wide before you select what to go deep in. Try not to just float into something without thought. Width should emphasize learning things that have demonstrated staying power, but you want to go deep on something that you expect has future power. It probably shouldn't be the current hottest fad tech, but the current hottest fad tech is probably at least in the area of a good future choice; it's more interesting why the current fad is a fad than the specific fad. If you do go for something that became super hot in the last 6 months to a year, try to figure out how to leverage that into learning about fundamentals even so. There's ways at both big companies and startups to succeed and fail by this metric.

Of course, on the flip side, you don't have to get it perfectly correct. You can't go deep in everything all the time, but "pi-shaped" Π is feasible in addition to T-shaped too. (That's capital pi, for those who may not have seen it before.)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#30

Post by seattle_spring »

thesimon wrote: post #18

Tangential to this article, but >pay outside of the US is often much lower for reasons that don’t really make sense to me). Can someone explain why salaries in for example Europe are so much less? Out of uni salary for example seems to be around 38k in Europe, whereas in US everything under 90k seems very low. Just the difference in purchase power and costs?

I would trade my high salary for 6+ weeks of vacation and free healthcare.
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