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Why you should join a big company first

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Re: Why you should join a big company first

#51

Post by bmj1 »

namenotrequired wrote: post #36
bmj1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point - I find the long meetings aren't such a difficult thing to avoid - but certainly politics and unnecessary process have no place in a startup. The other big lesson I learnt, the hidden cost of complexity, and importance of keeping things simple (I don't think you can get this until you meet the real world): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331082 (just submitted to HN, realised it hadn't been sha…

It had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914209 :)

apologies - well it was a damn good article :)

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#52

Post by avsbst »

mjn wrote: post #27
nostromo wrote: post #24

This attitude is Seattle's m.o. and I think it's unfortunate. Recently I was talking with a CS advisor at the UW, my alma mater, and "corporate first, startup later" seems to be their default advice to students. His advice gave me the impression the UW was now a staging ground for Microsoft and Google lifers. Contrast this with Stanford's embracing of early entrepreneurship and risk-taking, and you get a sense for wh…

I'd be interested in some numbers as far as Stanford goes. If we restrict it to students who don't come from already well-off families who can backstop a risky career (say, look at students from families making <$100k/yr), what proportion get a salaried job right out of school? I would be surprised if it's <90%.

2011-2012 Salary Survey from the Stanford Computer Forum

CS/EE Undergrads

Data: I received 135 responses which described 380 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups.

Salary offers ranged from $65,500 to $92,000. The average salary offer was $79,360. The median salary offer was $ 78,750.

About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $10,000 with an average of $3,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 with an average of $5,700. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 2 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The average student who replied to the survey all had some job experience, nearly all of it through summer internships and averaged 3 summer of work. Location, scope of work, salary/benefits, environment/culture, company were the important factors in accepting the offers for the undergrads.

CS/EE Masters

Data: I received 150 responses which described 345 job offers. 94% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 6% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 15% of the job offers were from start-ups.

Salary offers ranged from $70,000 to $105,300. The average salary offer was $98,246. The median salary offer was $87,650.

About 78% of students were offered stock options. About 66% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 43% were offered relocation assistance and there others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $3,000 to $8,000 with an average of $2,500. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $35,000 with an average of $6,325. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The Masters had a little more summer experience than the undergraduates, an average of 3 summer internships.

Like the undergrads, location, scope of work, company, and salary/benefits, and environment/culture seem to be the important factors for the MS grads.

CS/EE PhD's

Data: I received 30 responses which described 75 job offers. 80% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 20% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 30% of the job offers were from start-ups. 5% of the job offers were from a university.

Salary offers ranged from $133,250 to $146,980. The average salary offer was $143,083. The median salary offer was $140,115.

About 50% of students were offered stock options. About 50% of students were offered signing bonuses. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $19,500 with an average of $7,200. Relocation assistance ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 with an average of $6,500. However, they may not have reported on all the benefits they received. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.

Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The PhDs had about the same amount of summer experience as the Masters, an average of 2 summer internships and with the exception of 2 full-time experience.

Like the undergraduates and masters, location, company, environment/culture, salary/benefits, scope of work seem to be the important factors when it came to accepting their job offer.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#53

Post by kangaroo5383 »

Joining a big company has many benefits such as being able to see what leads to bureaucracy in order to avoid it, meet at least one awful manager so you will never be like that person, meet at least one amazing mentor and grow, and learn see beyond appearance to recognize truly skilled/smart people vs. overconfident fakers. I think many of these skills are necessary for building a successful company and the relationships formed at these companies are invaluable.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#54

Post by ivv »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #44
ivv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joining, not launching, a start-up is what the article's author is actually comparing to a corp job: "Should I join Microsoft or a startup?" Financially and over the long term, a stable well-paid job early in one's career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time.

a stable well-paid job early in one's career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time. And yet you won't get rich. The chances of getting rich as an employee of a startup are admittedly small, but nonzero.

The chances of you getting rich (say, hitting $1M) by accumulating some capital from your corp job and then using it to pick the right stocks on the market are probably greater than working at a start-up with a sub-1% equity and a reduced pay and waiting for the big exit, which in this case would have to be well in the over $100M territory.

Working at a start-up obviously has its non-monetary benefits over other forms of employment, but getting rich, on average, is probably not one of them.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#55

Post by rybosome »

unono wrote: post #33
pg wrote: post #13

I used to advise people to go work for an existing company for a few years before trying to start their own, but I now think that was bad advice. It's true that you learn things working for a big company, but you learn more, faster, starting your own. A lot of people we've funded have said they wished they'd quit their corporate job sooner. I don't remember any saying they wished they'd stayed in it longer. The one p…

As usual, PG is 100% right, fighting for us hackers. The article, and others like it, are nefarious corporate PR pieces put out by Microsoft, Google, Apple and others designed to trick us into not realizing the tremendous power we now hold. With the advent of internet,, the transaction costs that first led to the corporation have almost disappeared. This is 'The Age Of The Virtual Corporation'. Work for The Man and y…

At first I thought this was satire, so bizarre was the vitriol against big corp.

I work at one of the big "nefarious corporate" companies, and my life is incredibly happy; I'm proud of getting a job here and proud of the work I do. More importantly, I have time and money to travel, play music, live a healthier lifestyle and generally enjoy life outside of (and in addition to) work. Who gives a shit if "The Man" is getting rich off my work? I don't envy what he has. Being able to afford a Lotus wouldn't make me nearly as happy as spending time with my wife.

If you feel compelled to pursue a startup because it's your passion, that's wonderful...but doing so with the expectation of riches is unrealistic, statistically speaking. Plus, growth in wealth is proven not to linearly increase happiness.

EDIT: But who am I to tell you how you (or anyone) how to live their life? If that's your path, then by all means pursue it.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#56

Post by stephencanon »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #44
ivv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joining, not launching, a start-up is what the article's author is actually comparing to a corp job: "Should I join Microsoft or a startup?" Financially and over the long term, a stable well-paid job early in one's career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time.

a stable well-paid job early in one's career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time. And yet you won't get rich. The chances of getting rich as an employee of a startup are admittedly small, but nonzero.

Smart, hardworking people (the same people who might succeed with a startup) can absolutely get rich (in the "don't really need to worry about money" sense, not in the "absurd conspicuous consumption" sense) working for $BIGCORP in their 20s.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#57

Post by unono »

rybosome wrote: post #55
unono wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, PG is 100% right, fighting for us hackers. The article, and others like it, are nefarious corporate PR pieces put out by Microsoft, Google, Apple and others designed to trick us into not realizing the tremendous power we now hold. With the advent of internet,, the transaction costs that first led to the corporation have almost disappeared. This is 'The Age Of The Virtual Corporation'. Work for The Man and y…

At first I thought this was satire, so bizarre was the vitriol against big corp. I work at one of the big "nefarious corporate" companies, and my life is incredibly happy; I'm proud of getting a job here and proud of the work I do. More importantly, I have time and money to travel, play music, live a healthier lifestyle and generally enjoy life outside of (and in addition to) work. Who gives a shit if "The Man" is ge…

I'm not even that concerned about getting rich. It's more about doing exactly what I want, when I want, and making a big impact (in terms of helping people) - without giving the billionaires any more power and money.

As Jesus said - It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

I'm an atheist, but there's a solid truth in that saying. If you can't make a living on your own, it's OK to join that corp, but otherwise, it's the modern version of dealing with the devil.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#58

Post by eropple »

ojbyrne wrote: post #6

This is clearly from a business perspective. But if you're an engineer, I personally think that working for a big _software_ company early in your career is important. It's just plain easy to work on software in a small company because you don't have legacy code, existing products, existing customers, existing practices. Also you have no real way to judge whether your code is good or bad until its come under the glar…

Agreed. I'm glad I left TripAdvisor when I did, but what I learned there was incredibly valuable. Working with very, very good people and learning from them early on has proven to be a really big long-term benefit.

But I fucked off to a small medical-software company that I could work at while making video games, I have no taste for the work-for-my-social-startup-so-I-can-buy-a-Lotus world.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#59

Post by nostrademons »

seldo wrote: post #11
bmj1 wrote: post #4

This really resonated with me, I was one of those cocky, over-achieving kids who thought I could start a company fresh out of college. Instead, I've worked in Product for 26 months and learnt some really good skills: how to write real requirements, how to manage expectations (up and down), how to negotiate, how to measure and to focus on moving the needle, how to build a GTM plan and execute against it, how to deal w…

You do learn lots of good things at companies, but you can also learn bad habits -- you can acquire a predilection for long meetings, acquire a taste for political point-scoring over (more difficult, less fun) compromise, and a default position of creating process over improving communication. Those things are survival skills at a big company, but very bad for small ones. The trick is to identify which of the skills…

Are those really survival skills at a big company? I make a point about skipping meetings that aren't specifically scheduled with me (many other top engineers at my employer do), I get basically nowhere without compromise, and I usually prefer to disseminate information rather than create process.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#60

Post by [deleted] »

stephencanon wrote: post #56
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a stable well-paid job early in one's career combined with low expenses (no kids, no mortgage, often no car and cheap health insurance) results in a larger lump of money accruing compound interest over a longer period of time. And yet you won't get rich. The chances of getting rich as an employee of a startup are admittedly small, but nonzero.

Smart, hardworking people (the same people who might succeed with a startup) can absolutely get rich (in the "don't really need to worry about money" sense, not in the "absurd conspicuous consumption" sense) working for $BIGCORP in their 20s.

[deleted]
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