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Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

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Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#61

Post by devonkim »

aantix wrote: post #54
devonkim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of difficult to have start-ups hire juniors because they desperately need people to be productive and so I'd caution that start-ups that accept junior coders straight out of school may not be the kind of start-ups that give the kind of experience that's desirable even for a year. Instead of recommending what people should go after college for their first job, I'll recommend what people should not do: 1. Wor…

If you take a startup job out of school, make sure that they embrace pair programming. Work for a Pivotal Labs. Work for an Andres Camacho. Work for a Chad Fowler. Or an Ernie Miller. Find the leaders that understand all programmers need training (especially around process and coding standards). Sell that on your passion and that you want to become good _quickly_.

Pivotal is pretty awesome, definitely on my list of "seems cool, bro" companies. A lot of the criticisms I've heard hardly are a concern for me because everything I've known is that they're so busy coding they're hardly able to mess around taking submissions from others outside the company.

And to be a little cheeky, Pivotal (compared to Pivotal Labs, not the same but still) is nowhere near a "start-up" company by most definitions. They're planning for an IPO and are pulling in many millions in revenue like Cloudera and HortonWorks, it's hardly possible to keep these plans from being kept under wraps.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#62

Post by superuser2 »

herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

When you graduate from school with debt and no savings it is a good idea to maximize your initial salary. You can live on ~70% of it while building yourself a financial cushion for a while. Then, if you want to go to a startup later, you are in a better position to handle the risk of its failure and already used to spending less money. (Or you can stay with big companies and get a nice lifestyle boost after your emergency fund is established.)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#63

Post by mikekchar »

loopbit wrote: post #45
djhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3k€ per month + holiday extra or bonuses sounds pretty standard for most office work after any university degree (so by default MSc in Europe), I'd say 3.5 to 4 is reasonable with engineering, business, finance, etc. 4-5 in law, 5-7 in medicine.

Good luck finding a entry-level job, any entry level job in Spain that pays you more than 900€ per month in Spain, Italy, Portugal... even France and maybe, Germany (although I have less information there). From what I see, you might get 2-2.5K€ per month in the rest of Europe. Ireland and UK are, AFAIK, where the highest salaries in IT are and even there you are going to get 2-3K€ per month at most. Most lawyers I k…

I did quite a lot of research on salaries in the London area 2 years ago. Starting wage for a programmer out of school was around 3-3.5K€ per month. Some places paid up to 4K per month (90th percentile). 25th% percentile was 2.5K€ per month. I have heard that starting wages have gone up a bit in the last few years. Your numbers for the UK are more typical outside of London, though.

Of course nothing like Bay area salaries, even though London is ridiculously expensive. Some Googling seems to indicate that the cost of living in SF is about 25% higher than London, so real earnings are quite a bit higher there for programmers it seems.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#64

Post by stanleydrew »

ljk wrote: post #58
stanleydrew wrote: post #55

I don't want to criticize too harshly, because I do think this analysis is generally good (if slightly unoriginal). The problem is that these analyses always focus on how you, as a prospective employee, can extract the most value from the world. Optimizing cash vs equity or arbitraging location or whatever. You can see it seep through all over the place in the language used. Sometimes it's subtle: > I’ve told that an…

aka "ask not what your world can do for you, ask what you can do for your world"!

More-or-less yeah. You'll have a much better time in life with this worldview I think.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#65

Post by s73v3r »

jzwinck wrote: post #15
jerf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but a year's a bit tight. You may want to give yourself an option of another 6-12 months, if your job is still rotating through things and changing enough that you're not pigeonholed yet. I'm not sure I could put into words why, but I'd look much more favorably on two years rather than one if I was looking at your future resume. Flip side, I'd also add an option at months three and six to ask myself whether…

> another 6-12 months, if your job is still rotating through things and changing enough that you're not pigeonholed yet This reads as if you're advocating against ever becoming an expert in anything. A few months is nothing--if the domain is difficult you're barely up to speed.

Well remember, the pigeonholed part is in terms of the crap work.

And I would say that in your first several years, you really don't want to be an "expert" in anything, cause you likely haven't had exposure to enough different things.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#66

Post by LukeHoersten »

I prefer to work for smaller companies because of the way work and responsibility are divided. At large companies I've worked for, work gets divided into much smaller chunks so each developer is working on a very small sliver of the total product. At a smaller company, your typically solving a smaller, more focused problem as a group, but also, you get a much bigger chunk of the work as a developer. It's easier to have ownership over a whole project. It's why the term "full-stack developer" is so common in the startup world and basically unused in the enterprise/corporate world. Of course all of this lies on a gradient of headcount vs. total workload so I'm sure there are great counter examples out there.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#67

Post by aeturnum »

For money:

Work at whatever job meets your financial needs, everything else is gravy. This will be hardest at the start, but as you gain seniority, you'll have increasing freedom to work where you want. All things being equal, established companies will pay better. Save money, but don't take jobs you hate to save more money - it's not worth the equity.

For work:

If you know what you want to work on and can get a job in an established company, do that. Established companies are much more likely to actually have you work on what they hired you to work on. They are also much more likely to continue the project you were hired for. There are exceptions, but generally you will have much greater resources available to you. Your work may never see the light of day, or may only be used internally, but you'll walk away with a lot of experience on a specific area.

If you don't know what you want to work on or you like working a little bit on a lot of things, work for a startup. Especially for junior roles, there is enormous flex in terms of what you'll actually work on from day to day. This is not limited to programming, but includes all branches of tech work: architecting, service monitoring and setup, marketing, etc. The downside is that it can be hard for you to explain, in a substantive way, the amount of work you did during this time. The upside is that you learn a lot and get a feel for many things.

As for future options - startups will give you many shallow options, working at a big company will give you lucrative & focused options. If you work only in one area, understand that you are betting on that 'kind' of work to continue into the future. The more experience you have, the more value you have in that market. The value in that is entirely dependent on the value the market puts on your skills. You can often pivot, but it can be difficult. Keep that in mind when looking at future work.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#68

Post by bigcothrowa »

charleslmunger wrote: post #17
exstudent2 wrote: post #2

I don't think you can go into a company as large as Google and expect your salary to double in five years. HR will have set limits to how much of a raise you can get in any given year and even with promotions you would be very unlikely to see that kind of bump. I also don't think the middling programmers he mentions would hit the 250k year mark. Orthogonal to the point of the article, but the only time you can really…

Counterexample: I was hired straight out of school at a big company 2 1/2 years ago, at slightly more than the author describes (100k and change salary, ~100k equity over four years, 15% bonus target). I've been promoted twice, and my income over the next year will hit the double mark for total compensation. I've been promoted faster than most, but my numbers stretched over a 5 year timespan still work out.

I think the important distinction is that the author claims to be discussing the low-end or at least middle, but your example is in fact significantly-better-than-average.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#69

Post by pyrrhotech »

The median income for full time workers in the US is about 40k, not 30k. Also I don't personally know anyone who makes $250k cash comp, and I know people at google and facebook and a handful of other "big corps". I have a friend who's close tho, around $230k at google after 6 years. You can't count the appreciation of the stock on the RSUs

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#70

Post by manyxcxi »

herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I believe the inverse, I think most kids out of school should start at a (good) large company, they have the resources and framework to provide all kinds of career training you'd never get from startups or small companies. Mentors, leadership training, technical skills training, much bigger budgets, and a smaller group of tasks that someone is expected to perform. The pace is likely more deliberate, if not even boring, and that is good. As a newcomer you'll get a front row seat into what processes really work (code reviews, source control [yes, I still run into old/new people who don't use/believe in it], documentation, etc.) and you will be able to see how not having them can be detrimental in the future.

Starting off in a startup will lead to little support and a cowboy attitude, what the world needs more of is people who know when to cowboy, and cowboy with purpose rather than using 'just get shit done' as an excuse for a lack of standards and quality.

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