Working for a startup makes less sense

A. Why are we comparing an employee situation at a FAANG company with what should be a co-founder situation? If someone is an engineer that can make something happen at a startup, they should probably be a co-founder rather than an employee.

B. Why are tech center startups trying to hire coders of a certain skill level that will be incredibly expensive due to local competition? If a startup is looking for skilled coders to implement the vision of the co-founding engineers that can make things happen, then there are plenty of remote coders in non-tech-center areas that will do a bang up job for a reasonable price. Note that many of these remote coders don’t want to or cannot come to a tech center. I assume that this is an issue because many/most startups are not good at hiring, on-boarding, managing people, managing remote workers, etc.

C. Related to issue B, why play the micro-equity game with coders at all when they should either be co-founders or they (as remote workers) can be paid a satisfactory wage without equity bait?

D. Why is this conversation comparing a job with (relatively speaking) a lot of hierarchy and politics at a FAANG with a job that should have a flat structure and a great deal of autonomy? These jobs cater to two different groups of people — the ones who like the former probably won’t like the latter, and the opposite is true as well. There are subtle sides to this (e.g., do your time at a FAANG to develop a network), but many people who succeed at startups are not folks you want working at a large company — they will go nuts, and they will drive the people around them crazy.

This whole conversation is bizarre to me. I think there are three relatively simple choices:

1. Take a company job if you’re a company person — that is, someone who likes structure and hierarchy. It might not be trendy to admit it, but many/most elite school grads fall into this category.

2. If you prefer things like autonomy, being close to the customer, and being a generalist, then go to a startup. Plan on leaving once it hits a certain size.

3. If you have a plan for an alternate path that includes both, then go for it — specialist work at FAANG, FAANG then startup founder, startup employee then startup founder, etc. Just know what you’re getting into, because it can be awfully tough to walk away from $300k annual comp as a 25 yo.

Most people I’ve known clearly fall into one of these categories barring some sort of life-changing event.

My friend, I've been building software professionally for big companies and small since 2001.

There were never days where there was a unicorn every month or two.

At the large tech companies, with a lot less risk and higher salaries.

Serious question: how many software companies have something that a billion people have used?

It's a pretty special industry, for sure. But the odds of it happening are basically zero. I see how selling the dream makes for a good story for young and hungry startup founders to passionately change the world and (cynically) end up as a failed bet in someone else's portfolio.

But it's a bit disingenuous to make it sound like it's commonplace.

I got lucky that the public techs both had the largest stock growth in their history while I worked there.

All the money I ever made was at the public companies. I also learned a lot of cool, very specialized skills and got to do a lot of “ohhh so cool” type stuff.

Almost all of the knowledge I learned that allowed me to be successful at the big companies I learned at the startups, and most of the friends I made at work that I still talk to were at startups.

Both environments offer something unique.

I usually tell young people to start at a big company with a well known mentorship program and then quickly move to a startup to learn a bunch of practical skills.

But YMMV.