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Startup vs. Corporate Life

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41–50 of 83 posts

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#41

Post by existencebox »

nyrulez wrote: post #34
gordaco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diffe…

I think it's more a matter of expectations. I've worked OT non comp places that will still expect you to do hotseat outside of hours, deal with fires, or regularly come in early/stay late "lest you look like a slacker." This often isn't even institutionalized, but just some sort of weird culture that's built up around time spent "looking busy" corresponding in some inane way to being a productive employee. If you're making the choice yourself, fine. But if you're being pressured to work past that boundary, it may be as the parent poster said, a canary, if not for the whole company, but how the company culture will play in concert with your own personal choices/life balance.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#42

Post by analog31 »

bane wrote: post #33

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 opportuni…

This is a nice description. For me, working at a mega-corp is like living in a city. There are people who take my garbage away and keep the barbarians out. I don't have to do those things, so I can focus on what I enjoy: Developing new technologies, for which I'm rewarded. I've set myself up as a sort of entrepreneur living in this city, where I can take on more speculative projects, but at no risk to my own money.

I make damn sure that what I'm taking away is not only money, but also learning, even if it's at some cost to the efficiency of any particular project. And should I ever get into a start-up, I'll benefit from having observed the inner workings of a business from end to end.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#43

Post by happywolf »

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…

Not true at all. You can always look for projects that interest you and start to contribute: browse github and knock yourself out.

For entry level jobs, as long as you can show adequate knowledge in a certain technology, I don't think any employer will care if you get it in a full-time job, or from your personal projects. In fact, I do think a candidate who does personal projects is more attractive because of the initiative and will-power needed to go this path.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#44

Post by meddlepal »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #31
gordaco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly, also some us also enjoy working a lot. I do 60+ hour weeks because the work and results interest me.

That said there is a limit too.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#45

Post by overgard »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #31
gordaco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

35 or 50 hours or whatever is a pretty arbitrary number, I would agree most people have different limits on how long they can work, but I think the larger point is that for intellectual work, more hours don't imply more output. Or at least, not sustainably.

Not at my current employment, but I know there have been jobs where, say, 3:30 would roll around and my brain would pretty much fried for the day, but I felt obligated to stick around for an extra hour and a half because I'd get disapproving stares if I peaced out early. That extra hour and a half the company got of my time as not a useful hour and a half though. Or conversely sometimes I'd stay late because I was engaged with some sort of problem. Either way, the number of hours really had very little to do with my productivity, and trying to "force" it was never particularly useful.

If I were a manager, and I saw a person was treading water, I'd rather them go home and have them come back the next day refreshed, rather then have them stick around being miserable to meet some arbitrary number of hours.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#46

Post by badman_ting »

I have my reservations about the startup world, but the question about risk management is strange. Young people shouldn't necessarily be worrying about that just yet.

Hell, worry about the risk of getting stuck in a situation where 50 hour weeks are "normal" and not a serious failure mode. Companies of all sizes know that young people a) have a lot of energy, and b) are easier to screw over salary-wise.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#47

Post by general_failure »

mabbo wrote: post #3

I chose the corporate path for reasons never mentioned: education. At a fortune 500 company with a high entry bar, i'm surrounded by really damn good developers who mentor me. There are best practices, and explanations behind them. My friend at start ups seem to me to have not had the same further education that I have. Maybe some will figure out all the same things on their own, but it will take longer. Hard to say.…

If you want to be developer for life, your chosen path is better than a startup.

If you are more like technology entrepreneur, start-ups will teach you the other non-tech skill.s

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#48

Post by taway »

happywolf wrote: post #43
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…

Not true at all. You can always look for projects that interest you and start to contribute: browse github and knock yourself out. For entry level jobs, as long as you can show adequate knowledge in a certain technology, I don't think any employer will care if you get it in a full-time job, or from your personal projects. In fact, I do think a candidate who does personal projects is more attractive because of the ini…

Long time lurker, first time poster. While I understand what you are saying, I also understand the fears of the parent. From what I know, in some parts of Europe like Greece, Spain, Portugal there is not much software development going on outside of COTS and I know some people in these countries that get caught on a cycle of jumping from consulting company to consulting company but essentially doing the same kind of job and where 12-14h/day are common. Sometimes even weekends. It can be soul crushing and I doubt that they have any energy or time left for pursuing their own projects/learning new technologies, etc. I don't have first hand experience so I might be wrong but that is what I have heard from about a dozen of people.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#49

Post by dkrich »

overgard wrote: post #18
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…

What always bothered me about companies that ask you to work long hours (long term) isn't even the hours, it's more that it's a canary in the coal mine: it makes it obvious management doesn't know what they're doing. (Or alternatively: that appearance of work is more important to them than actual work. Maybe they're angling for a promotion and trying to impress their boss) I worked at a company for a while where the…

Exactly. And I've found that more often than not that the "we MUST complete this by xx/xx/xxxx or ELSE" mentality stems from some arbitrary date promised for no good reason. The company wasn't going to lose any more money or expose themselves to potential liability. It was just an arbitrary date marked in an MS Project file somewhere.

In situations where deadlines were missed, it ended up being OKAY and nobody really cared a week later. This then turned into a cycle where every deadline was tight and everybody got burned out because you can be sure that a manager who is bad at managing dates once will be bad at managing dates forever.

It seems that a lot of people in management lack good, common sense when managing workloads and deadlines.

Re: Startup vs. Corporate Life

#50

Post by pop45 »

bicx wrote: post #40
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…

Thanks a lot for your comment. It hit home. I don't have many friends or relationships, my family is really small (no siblings or cousins) and I'm far from home, and my life is centered around finishing my deggree and programming/learning new technologies. I feel I don't have anything else, so if I fail at it, I have failed in life.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It gives me some hope which is invaluable as I have very little of it right now.

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