Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 224 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#31

Post by zerr »

jhillyerd wrote: post #20
gnomeduck wrote: post #7

Advice from someone who had a similar choice and went the startup route: choose the Google option. It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs, but you can invest the money now and create a nice start for yourself. There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.

Google is also a very good learning opportunity; there is lots of training available to employees, you will be working with very talented people, and will get to see how the planet-scale dogfood is made first hand.

I've heard that many things are arcane in-house proprietary stuff, not easily transferable knowledge/experience.

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#32

Post by hevi_jos »

That is a personal question. Nobody can choose for you. Nobody. Not your parents, or your partner,or people on hacker news, it is you.

As an adult you start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. Children have their decisions taken for them.

If you take the decision of going with the startup it will be one of the worst experiences in your life. If will be daunting, it will be taking risks every single day. At the same time, you will be making a contribution. Even if you fail you will learn things you will never learn in Google. If you success you will be free with freedom few things will ever give you.

If you go with Google you will be safe, isolated of the mundane problems most people have and you will be able to focus immensely on very interesting problems sharing your time with some of the smartest people on earth. On the other hand your creative and independent muscle will almost disappear, atrophied by not using it, as the big organization takes the load from your shoulders. Over time, it will make your shoulders less strong.

The decision is yours to make. Write down on a paper what your values and priorities are in your life and how each decision will affect them.

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#34

Post by dagss »

drmrwh wrote: post #14

If you're young, choose the startup. Say things work out: great! Say things don't work out: you'll have had an interesting experience, and can then go work for Google. 1. If Google has offered you a position now, they absolutely will offer you a position later. You wouldn't be burning any bridges, especially if you choose a startup over them. 2. It'll be a lot easier going from a startup to Google, than from the comf…

Lack of self-control really is a bad reason to choose one over the other.

Just make a contract with yourself to save 2/3 of salary each month.

More savings and more experience puts you in a lot better position to do a startup later at your terms, as a co-founder or similar.

Early employee in startup is really the worst of all worlds.

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#35

Post by refulgentis »

zerr wrote: post #31
jhillyerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also a very good learning opportunity; there is lots of training available to employees, you will be working with very talented people, and will get to see how the planet-scale dogfood is made first hand.

I've heard that many things are arcane in-house proprietary stuff, not easily transferable knowledge/experience.

Put another way, you'll learn much more about how to identify and work with talented people on difficult projects at Google than at a startup. At a startup you're worried about how you'll pack a bologna sandwich for lunch tomorrow, at Google you're a sous chef for a 5 star banquet hall in NYC.

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#36

Post by lfowles »

zerr wrote: post #29
gnomeduck wrote: post #7

Advice from someone who had a similar choice and went the startup route: choose the Google option. It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs, but you can invest the money now and create a nice start for yourself. There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.

> It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.

It means they get far enough to have those whiteboard riddler interviews.

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#39

Post by PopeDotNinja »

When you say the startup in promising, do it have any momentum or traction at all? Are they making money, scaling like crazy, anything like that? Any upward tick in momentum can turn into a big pile of money super fast. And if you like the people with whom you interviewed, you could have a lot of fun working with them in close quarters. You'll (maybe? I don't really know) never have an experience like growing a startup at Google, and working at a big company can be the opposite of exciting. Google's probably a great employer. So you wanna be fat & happy or sit on a rocket & aim for space?

Re: Ask HN: How do I choose between a job offer from Google and a promising startup?

#40

Post by mav3rick »

zerr wrote: post #31
jhillyerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also a very good learning opportunity; there is lots of training available to employees, you will be working with very talented people, and will get to see how the planet-scale dogfood is made first hand.

I've heard that many things are arcane in-house proprietary stuff, not easily transferable knowledge/experience.

That is not true. No matter the shit Google gets on HN it's a tremendous place to learn and grow. All the large scale systems you see now were first invented at Google and now are replicated at Facebook etc.. The code reviews alone will make you a better programmer and working with senior people will give you an appreciation for designing complex systems. It's a great place to work IMO.
Post reply on HN