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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

#61

Post by null_ptr »

nostrademons wrote: post #17
peter_l_downs wrote: post #5

The article opens with the question: > “Should I join Microsoft or a startup?” but really seems to answer the question: > "Should I join Microsoft or start a startup" which is really very different.

I think his audience is people who already know they want to start a startup, but aren't sure about when . And as someone who worked for 2 startups, founded one, ended up at a big company, and hope that there will eventually be another startup in my life: I agree with him. I learned a lot working for a big company, and had I known that when I started out, I probably would've been much more effective at evaluating the…

What would you say is the minimum number of years you should "put in", without looking like a job hopper?

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#62

Post by null_ptr »

eropple wrote: post #58
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.

So do you make the games for fun, or do you plan to switch to them fulltime in the future?

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#63

Post by nostrademons »

null_ptr wrote: post #61
nostrademons wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his audience is people who already know they want to start a startup, but aren't sure about when . And as someone who worked for 2 startups, founded one, ended up at a big company, and hope that there will eventually be another startup in my life: I agree with him. I learned a lot working for a big company, and had I known that when I started out, I probably would've been much more effective at evaluating the…

What would you say is the minimum number of years you should "put in", without looking like a job hopper?

It's heavily dependent on what you want to get out of it. From a resume POV, you want to show that you fully exploit the opportunities that are available to you, and yet also will seek out new opportunities if there are no more opportunities available to you. How long that translates to depends on how many opportunities are available to you.

I would say that if you're looking for technical skills, those max out at about 18 months. If you're looking to develop leadership, sales (as an engineer) or soft skills, plan on staying a minimum of 4 years, because it takes 2 years or so before people recognize that you have the technical skills to be worth listening to, and then another couple years to actually develop the soft skills. Persistence is another hard one: if you're trying to develop persistence, you need to get put on an ambitious project, and then you need to stick it out until the moonshot succeeds, which frequently takes 3ish years. Soft intrapersonal skills like recognizing your own blind spots and learning how to compensate for them are really hard: many people will never develop these skills, but if you do it usually takes being put on a project that's outside of your comfort zone, and then seeking therapy to deal with the anxiety and avoidance this creates, which usually takes all the time required to develop the skills above plus a year or so.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#64

Post by eropple »

null_ptr wrote: post #62
eropple wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So do you make the games for fun, or do you plan to switch to them fulltime in the future?

I'd like to make them full-time, but unless I move to the hinterlands or something I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay my rent on them.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#65

Post by Ologn »

> You learn how (and how not) to run your own business—on someone else’s dime.

I have worked everywhere from startups where I was hired employee #1 to Fortune 50 companies. Odds are your own business will start small. You learn about how to run your own business when you sit 20 feet from the CEO and the sales team and finance and HR and marketing etc. You don't learn as much about how to run a company when you are the company's 104th Java programmer in that particular city. Maybe at a big company you learn about their particular, complex procedure that it takes to change one line of production code.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#66

Post by sillysaurus2 »

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.

How, and over what timeframe?

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#67

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

Domenic_S wrote: post #28
Apocryphon wrote: post #18

What really is a startup, these days? A handful of hackers in a garage or a co-working space? Somewhere established but still youthful and fresh- Path? Square? Quora? Someplace much older but with a sense of dynamism and a startup ethos- Google? Apple?

If there's a chance your paycheck won't clear, it's a startup. /I kid, I kid. Sort of.

This is a good metric.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#68

Post by vincentstorme »

rlu wrote: post #39
kemiller wrote: post #14

Yep. If I had it to do over, I'd do it that way. The options are better now, though. 15 years ago, if you wanted a big software company you had Microsoft, and, uh... Sun? Oracle? Now you have Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, not to mention the in-betweeners like Square, Dropbox, and Github. It's an incredible time to be starting off in Software. Unless you're sitting on the idea of the century (hint…

How many employees does Square have?

A friend of my works at Square, I believe he said there were 600ish in the office here in San Francisco

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#69

Post by rybosome »

unono wrote: post #57
rybosome wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

> ...it's the modern version of dealing with the devil.

Hey, I get that bureaucracy sucks. It is an inevitable function of increased size. Have you had experience at any of the big companies you name, though? I don't mean to be challenging, but my view of them was more negative before I joined one; all of my meaningful work experience prior had been with very small employers, so I assumed big corporate life was like a Dilbert strip.

Finding what motivates you is a difficult and intensely personal process, so it shouldn't be approached as a universal truth. For me, I've found that I really enjoy programming for its own sake. Although I will always treasure the memories and experience I got working at a startup, I am also very satisfied working in a larger setting; I still get to do what I care about most in a work setting, which is to design software and write code.

Taking a job that gives me the opportunity to do what I love while also allowing time to pursue my passions outside of work is a perfectly reasonable way to live my life - hardly "dealing with the devil". I asked earlier, "who am I to tell you how to live your life?", but the inverse applies as well.

Re: Why you should join a big company first

#70

Post by VexXtreme »

unono wrote: post #57
rybosome wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry but I'm not sure I understand your reasoning. Judging by your writing, you sound very young and inexperienced.

The definition of employment is trading some kind of value (usually knowledge, skill and labor) for money. When you work for a company, you are doing that trade with your employer, who in turn resells your services to their customers, while taking a cut of the profits. In effect, your employer is a middleman providing a degree of stability, security and pretty much instant ability to sell your services, in return for making a profit off your work. By being a startup owner/founder, you are doing essentially the same thing, except that now your boss is your customer. You still answer to somebody. As long as you want to sell something to the world, you will always have a 'boss'.

I don't see what's so wrong with working for another person. So what if it makes them richer, is that a bad thing? It also makes you richer, so equating it with "dealing with the devil" is just immature.

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