Startup vs. Corporate Life • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#31

Post by throwaway5752 » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:22 PM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #28

seldo wrote: post #17

> People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don’t see it. From people I’ve talked to, I’d say 50 hour weeks are average. That’s about what you see in corporate America these days. I think only in America would somebody say 50 hour weeks don't count as working you hard. Also, the average US working week is 35 hours, 37 in "information" industries: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm The fact is…

I came to say exactly this. 50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy if your job is intellectually demanding. I've worked in one startup, another one on the process of becoming a small corp (i.e., already adopting process in a much serious scale) and a corp. The best by far, if you value your life outside…

"50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy"

I feel badly for you that you've been at jobs that have made you feel that way. I've worked 50ish hours for a long time, generally in jobs I enjoy and in compensation structures that rewarded me for do intellectually stimulating work.

But 50 hours a week is hardly crazy. Do whatever works for you, but I want to combat this strange myth that nobody can be productive after 35 hours a week. It's obviously false from my experience (and I would guess the experience of many, many people on HN).

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#32

Post by throwaway5752 » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #13

This article misses some of the very good reasons to work at a Megacorp in terms of job security. I know, I know, it's one of those things that developers of our generation have been taught not to care about. "No job is secure", right? The truth is, startups are much less secure, have in many cases serious problems in terms of future opportunities. And most importantly - despite saying "the job market is great, you c…

Regarding tptacek - 2001 was by far and away the worse tech job market of the last 20 years.

There are advantages to the job security that either approach offers. If you can be a successful and well-referenced member of multiple startups, then you are a known quantity for groups trying to start a company. Also, your skills are more likely to be closer to the cutting edge and in greater demand.

Finding that next job in startups is always going to get tougher as you get into your 30s and 40s and your salary is more expensive. So corporate jobs have the edge as far as having a clear-cut 40 year career path at the same place. But you risk falling into a middle management trap... I wouldn't really want to be job hunting after spending 20 years as a front line manager at IBM, for instance (although that would be a lucrative 20 year career).

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#33

Post by bane » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:34 PM UTC

Depending on how you count things, I've been part of 5 startups and 3 megacorps (none smaller than 40,000 employees) (plus a couple regular old mom and pop small businesses when I was young).

If I can draw any conclusions, I liked the megacorp work much more while I liked the small business work environment more. I've spent about twice as much time in startups and small businesses despite having significant opportunities in the corporate world.

In the small business (startup or mom & pop) everybody is pulling their weight or they're gone. But the work, especially the startup, tends to be lots of "getting set up and doing things for the first time". You want to solve your customer's problems, but first you have to set up this or that server, or get the dev team using some new code profiler, or building up the QA team from scratch. It's a long walk before you can really start attending to customer issues directly because there are so many issues internally to work out. However, your individual contributions can make or break a company, your impact locally can be huge. That's really rewarding.

At a corporate job, the problems you get presented with are bigger and often very interesting, you work for a 1,000 pound gorilla who can (in theory) throw lots of weight and maturity behind solving it. The biggest projects I've ever worked on were at these kinds of places. You won't ever really have a big impact on the company, but you might participate in having a big impact on the world. At the end of the day, the single most rewarding things I've ever done have been while getting a paycheck from a megacorp. However, there's tons of dead weight you have to deal with. Bad employees get masked over by the size of the organization and work they aren't doing simply gets shifted onto one of the other nameless drones there.

If you want to be rewarded on both levels, don't think of the megacorp as the company you work for, think of the program or project as the "company" and try to get put on lean, thinly staffed, high risk projects. Your impact will be to the project, and it'll be huge, but the corporation will bring huge and interesting problems to you to work on.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#34

Post by nyrulez » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:35 PM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #28

seldo wrote: post #17

> People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don’t see it. From people I’ve talked to, I’d say 50 hour weeks are average. That’s about what you see in corporate America these days. I think only in America would somebody say 50 hour weeks don't count as working you hard. Also, the average US working week is 35 hours, 37 in "information" industries: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm The fact is…

I came to say exactly this. 50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy if your job is intellectually demanding. I've worked in one startup, another one on the process of becoming a small corp (i.e., already adopting process in a much serious scale) and a corp. The best by far, if you value your life outside…

Wow, sentiments about this differ very strongly in Europe vs. the US. What if the employer isn't asking you to work extra, but the person is amibitious and interested in the work he is doing and ends up working 50-60 hours without it getting in the way? To suggest that beyond 35 hours is non productive sounds ridiculous to me as a hypothesis. I would think it varies for every individual. Different folks can run different distances without getting overly exhausted. It is very similar for intellectual or creative work and even more so for technical work.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#35

Post by sanderjd » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:39 PM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #24

tomphoolery wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups might force you to leave because they die, but giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for. This is more of a general note than anything else (as in, not just programmers), but many of my friends who have taken corporate jobs have ended up leaving them for something else, like a startup or consulting shop, because while the pay was great, the work was boring and the cu…

> giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for Some might be. Some are great fun to work at.

Which ones? How do you evaluate it before you get there?

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#36

Post by rquantz » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #24

tomphoolery wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups might force you to leave because they die, but giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for. This is more of a general note than anything else (as in, not just programmers), but many of my friends who have taken corporate jobs have ended up leaving them for something else, like a startup or consulting shop, because while the pay was great, the work was boring and the cu…

> giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for Some might be. Some are great fun to work at.

I'd love a list of big corporations that are actually great to work for. It seems like Google is in this camp (I know, not for everyone, but it seems like most people have positive experiences there), maybe Facebook. I hear mixed things about Microsoft. What are the top ten BigCorps to work at as a developer?

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#37

Post by analog31 » Sat, May 31, 2014, 3:15 PM UTC

jader201 wrote: post #22

When does a startup stop being a startup? When they reach a certain age, or reach a certain revenue, or when they go public/get acquired? I know there is probably a more technical definition, but when do they cross that line in real terms as it relates to the risks and pains of working at a startup, like this article mentions?

A couple features of start-ups:

1. Many-hat-wearing. People adapt to the jobs that need to get done, and there is little or no supervisory hierarchy.

2. Possibility of exponential growth.

I'd say if both of those things vanish, then it's either because the business failed, or stopped being a start-up and is now a mature business.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#38

Post by happywolf » Sat, May 31, 2014, 3:17 PM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #24

tomphoolery wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups might force you to leave because they die, but giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for. This is more of a general note than anything else (as in, not just programmers), but many of my friends who have taken corporate jobs have ended up leaving them for something else, like a startup or consulting shop, because while the pay was great, the work was boring and the cu…

> giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for Some might be. Some are great fun to work at.

Even within a company, this is largely a function of what your project is, and how your boss treats you. If the project is challenging, new (no historical shit to clean up) and your boss takes good care of you, yes, great fun it is

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#39

Post by h1karu » Sat, May 31, 2014, 3:18 PM UTC

> People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don’t see it. From people I’ve talked to, I’d say 50 hour weeks are average. That’s about what you see in corporate America these days.

If you're working at an early stage startup then in general nobody should "work you" at all, rather you'll work yourself 60+hours a week because you ACTUALLY HAVE SIGNIFICANT EQUITY in the company and therefor you want to see it grow quickly.

In a corporate environment you don't have any "skin in the game" so to speak so there's no incentive to push yourself.

If you're working at an early stage startup and you don't have significant equity then you're doing it wrong.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#40

Post by bicx » Sat, May 31, 2014, 3:19 PM UTC

pop45 wrote: post #19

I'm just finishing my MSc and I feel so lost and hopeless. I just started to evaluate my options to enter the job market. I'm not sure what is corporate life like for a software engineer in the US but in my country I'm finding out that it has more to do with requirement analysis, evaluating the best COTS (things like Microsoft NAV, SAP, TIBCO seem to be common) for the client and then configuring and deploying it. Ma…

It may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I would urge you to seek meaning in your life in something more fundamental than your career. Once you find your identity in something more important (God, family, relationships... don't hate, HN ;) ), it's actually easier to make an objective decision about what to do for a living. It makes it easier to take intermediate steps (unfulfilling in the short-term) between what's available and what the future may hold. I would even dare to say that it makes you more adventurous in your career because failure in your career no longer equals failure in life. You are not your code.

The perfect job isn't always on your doorstep, and it doesn't define the rest of your future. For my first job after school, I was writing enterprise APIs in old, deprecated languages for a large insurance company, and I had the same fears you do. However, I am now working at a cutting-edge startup writing Android apps. They were smart enough to see potential in me rather than a collection of acronyms and technologies on my resume. Working hard is important no matter where you are. Showing genuine interest in the startup is also huge.