Startup or Big Company After Graduation?
When I graduated from college in 2008, I don’t think I knew anyone who was going to work for a startup, but things are very different on the East Coast, where it seemed like getting a full-time offer from Google or Goldman Sachs was the ultimate achievement. I worked at Google for two years after graduation, and then left to explore other opportunities and ended up at Pulse, a small startup in Palo Alto, where I currently work.
So now that I’ve worked at both a startup and a big company, which is better for recent college graduates? Despite articles that claim otherwise, I don’t think either one is the right choice for everyone. I believe it depends on a large number of factors, but I’ll try to cover some of the most obvious differences. Please keep in mind that this represents my biased experiences in Silicon Valley working at Google and Pulse. Also, by “startup,” I mean joining an existing startup, not founding one yourself, though that is certainly an option as well.
Compensation and Benefits
Available engineering talent is scarce, and everyone is hiring, which is very good news for college grads, as they are a fresh influx of talent. Facebook and Google are sucking up a lot of this talent pool and I’m pretty sure the base compensation package for college grads has gone up substantially in the past few years as the market demand for engineers increases. At a large company, you are pretty much guaranteed a nice salary, health insurance and 401k contributions, as well as the non-monetary benefits like free/cheap food, onsite gyms, etc.
Startups used to, and maybe still do, invoke the image of people subsisting on ramen and barely getting paid, but with VCs pumping money in startups, this is hardly the only option. Of course there are also startups with very low salaries and larger equity offerings, but there are also many startups hiring aggressively that have solid funding and can offer competitive salaries and benefits, as well as some equity.
If you are healthy and young with few financial responsibilities, I would suggest that compensation not be a major deciding factor, and to look more critically at some of the other factors.
Learning
If you’re just getting started on building a career, try to think about where you can learn the most. Big companies can provide a very solid technical foundation, in terms of general knowledge, coding practices, and working with large-scale systems. They may also pay for you to continue taking classes per semester, which amassed over a few years, can get you a Master’s degree. Many larger companies also have internal training classes for popular programming languages, design patterns, etc.
At a startup, the learning that takes place is arguably more varied. Depending on the size of the startup and how transparent the internal processes are, you’ll learn a lot of things that are maybe not in your “engineer” job description. Some non-engineering things I’ve done at Pulse that I never did at Google (maybe it’s important to note here that these contributions were not because I had two years of industry experience, but because of the inherent difference in working at a startup): recruit at a career fair, conduct full-day interviews, answer customer feedback emails, represent the company at conferences, contribute to high-level discussions about our vision for the company, actively shape our unique culture.
A large company is a good place to ramp up your technical knowledge. Startups expect people to be able to hit the ground running, and I’m pretty sure wasn’t prepared after graduation to work at a place like Pulse, as my undergrad experience was very theory-heavy and coding/application-light. But if you’re interested in working for a startup, don’t just assume that you don’t have enough experience. It doesn’t hurt to take a look around, and many engineers downplay their own abilities, despite a track record of accomplishments.
Impact
In general, you’ll work a lot more at a startup than at a large company, and you’ll have a lot more responsibilities. There’s no getting around that, but when the work you are doing has real immediate impact, it’s incredibly rewarding. Startups move fast, and pretty much everything you’re working on is critical to the product, which is definitely not true at large companies.
Big companies have a large existing user base, so you can theoretically reach a lot of people with what you do, but if you’re a regular college grad, chances are you’ll be working on a pretty small part of the codebase, and it may not even see the light of day. Projects get cancelled all the time–the ones we hear about are only the ones that have been released publicly. My impression is that if you move a few notches up the corporate ladder, you can have substantially more impact and ownership over projects.
This section is fairly biased because I personally feel like I have much more impact now. I feel obligated to note that there are also plenty of startups that never really take off or just never get a substantial amount of users. However, the successful startups that have millions of users (where your work would have real impact) are almost all hiring, including Pulse.
Future Career Opportunities
Working at a large company that has a reputation for good engineers is undeniably good for your resume. That’s why startups that have ex-Googlers almost always advertise that their team includes ex-Googlers–it implies a certain level of quality to the engineering team. Moving up the corporate ladder at a large company can be mind-numbingly painful though. That’s why people say that the fastest way to get a raise is to quit (oh and also find a job elsewhere and negotiate a higher salary).
What if you work at a startup for a few years, and it fizzles or never really takes off? Someone recently asked me if that would mean starting over from scratch. Now that I’m fairly involved in hiring, I was sort of astonished to hear that point of view. To me, startup experience stands out as a huge positive that indicates that you are probably self-motivated, take initiative and can adapt and learn quickly. I would imagine that this would be true for big companies looking to hire as well, as these are traits that are desirable in any company.
Also, at either a startup or a big company, you will be building a network of connections that will be invaluable to you during your career.
General
If you’re trying to decide between startups and larger companies, please don’t make any decisions based on what you hear from me or other people. I’ve painted a view of startups and big companies with very broad strokes that is hopefully helpful but by no means comprehensive. Try to visit different startups or larger companies, talk to as many people as you can, and see where you might be able to imagine yourself. Companies vary so much in terms of culture, product, and team, that the decision to be made isn’t really just startup or big company, but where you think you would be excited every morning to go to work.
Related posts:
- How to Join a Startup Right Out of School
- Are All Engineers Better Off Joining Startups?
- How Effective are Technical Interviews?
- Work/Life Balance at a Startup — Just a Pipedream?
- Thoughts about School and Work
Comments (32)
Great overview! I’ve been around the block myself working at various-sized companies, and I’ll add that:
- Large companies can propel your career to beyond that of a software engineer (e.g., PM, eng. manager) with more training provided.
- For me, startups are a better environment for networking, esp. w/ people with all sorts of backgrounds and personalities.
“Large companies can propel your career to beyond that of a software engineer (e.g., PM, eng. manager)”
Not a good way to think, if everyone who joins a bigco with me has the same aspiration, I’d find it difficult to work with them for I believe these elevations should be by-product of hardwork and innovation done in work.
People with such direct motivations do start screwing up things. Real life example, let’s say we got manager A>B in seniority and B>C, C being the developer. In one of the work scenes, I came to know that just because A searched for “foo” on the website, and results were irrelevant and talked about it with B, B marks “foo” a high visibility priority bug and makes C take special care of it. Now you can see, how B is not doing justice to QA work because its more important to keep A happy as for now.
Similar push and pull, and variety of forces around is what makes bigcos slow.
Hm, what you’re describing wasn’t really what I was thinking. I mean, people with different motivations and aspirations are going to happen in any company large or small; startups, beyond perhaps the very initial prototype stages, aren’t immune from having politics and having conflicts arise because of a difference in skill levels, job functions, or seniority.
I was referring more to the fact that in startups and small companies, people are often thrust into positions they’re simply unprepared for (trial by fire). E.g., I’ve had friends become managers despite having no managerial experience, take on product roles when they have no interest in talking to users, etc. Sure, startup’ers do everything and you can argue that just throwing someone into a role is great for learning, but let’s not confuse enthusiasm and passion for actual training, skill and talent. Big companies, by virtue of their size, are (usually) able to find willing and able participants for specific roles, and provide them good training.
I also prefer network where I have more chances to communicate with people from different culture backgrounds and experiences.
Thanks for writing this up, I’m in a situation that poses similar doubts.
” large company is a good place to ramp up your technical knowledge ” , true this is what I’ve been considering since last week. In my experience the speed of getting work done at bigcos is low, but I’m seeing it as a small stoppage to ramp up some of the things I’ve developed interest in, in the company of experienced oldies.
“please don’t make any decisions based on what you hear from me or other people” sure
You forget a point about lots of international students (especially EECS grads) with F-1 visa. This is also a big impact when they choose their first company after graduation.
When people ask me this, I emphasize future career opportunities first and foremost.
With a startup, you HAVE to assume that you will be job searching again in 1-2 years.
Depending on your career goals, startup experience is not necessarily the right answer. You may learn invaluable skills, but they are often hard to show on a resume or in an interview.
So ask yourself: when the startup fails in one year, will you have advanced towards your long term career goals?
(This question had a lot more merit several years ago in the poor economy. It’s a lot harder to make a poor decision in the current hiring environment)
How many people did you hire for Google who had worked at a startup straight out of University? Clearly if you’ve worked for Google a startup will hire you, but is it true the other way round. Would Google prefer hiring a Graduate who has been at a failed startup over a Graduate who has never had a job?
I think it truly depends on the individual where they end up. When I was in college, I made sure to take my internships in companies of various sizes (Fortune 500, regional chain, local chain) and in various industries. Publicly held, privately held, family-owned… working in those different environments gave me a feel for how those environments worked. Through those experiences, I learned what works for me and have continued to explore.
Well written, and lots of good points stated. I think, however, the core issues haven’t changed much than 20 years ago, when I started building my career at Digital Equipment Corporation Japan.
Learning about the organizational politics of a large corporation will help developing the skills of working with different kinds of people. For example, very few people are geek-minded, and there are many kinds of potential customers thinking differenly about the product you sell and create. Being forced to deal with corporate politics is not always necessarily a bad thing, though I think you should not take such a political culture for granted in any way.
If you are just burning out yourself and feel learning nothing from the workplace for many months, I suggest you to leave there and look for a new job.
Definitely a large company:
1) Move from project to project
2) Be exposed to a variety of platforms, languages, operating systems, toolkits
3) Meet older engineers – some of whom you’ll find yourself looking up to, aspire to be like, and whom you’ll keep in mind throughout your career.
Stay in that environment for about 4 years, then join a startup. Besides pay and hours, another drawback of a startup is that you may find yourself doing the same thing over and over; if things don’t pan out there within a few years (I stuck with mine for 10), go back to a large company and get your skills back in shape before trying again.
I went to MS right after grad school and left to do startup stuff 7 months later. My issue was with the bureaucracy and slowness of the org. I’d rather build something quickly and see it fail than explain what, how and why I’m going to build it, guess how long it’ll take and then convince people that it’s the right thing to build (and almost always those predictions are wrong anyway).
In a startup you still need to justify yourself for sure, but there aren’t 10 people waiting to shoot you down, it’s more like you and another guy/gal
I have been at MS for just six weeks and everything you say is exactly what I am experiencing. I did not join after graduating, I been a developer for five years and worked for two small companies before this, and had my own small business (now dormant, basically dead).
The bureaucracy is at the levels of absurdity here. I get more done on my own projects in one week then I have here so far this whole time. I am quite disappointed so far, I hope it gets better but getting constantly shot down is hard just because someone senior person’s preference is different rather than because of a valid reason.
Sorry to hear that it’s a disappointment. Hope you will find happiness there or elsewhere!
Great post! I would add that it doesn’t only apply to engineers. As a recent graduate in ecommerce I had to face the same situation as you, started in a big company and ended up in a startup! I shared my experience on http://techentrepreneurship.com/2011/04/05/to-join-or-not-to-join-a-startupa-5-factor-decision/
You do know what startups and big companies are not the only choices, correct?
Oops, that should have been “THAT”, not “WHAT”
Start up start up Start up…. You would be doing a lot more, stuff you shouldn’t be doing too and you would have the feeling of ownership and every thing you do has an impact which would be very evident and visible and that would motivate you to do better and avoid mistakes… (at least it worked for me…).
Some of the best projects I have done are the once I did when I was at startups…
and the process is as lean as it could be in startups and thats good too
As someone who’s had a similar career path (I joined Yahoo! after graduating and am with a startup in the Bay Area now) it’s quite obvious that this decision depends on a lot of factors. At the same time, I truly value my time at Yahoo!. It gave me a solid foundation in programming and also access to some of the best people in the domain. At a startup, there is a tendency to do quick and dirty hacks and not do the right thing, but just get things working quickly. You will definitely do more things at a startup, but you need to be prepared to handle such responsibilities. In any case,I think it’s quite important to experience both.
Thx! In today’s scenario, would going to yahoo be as valuable, as it was in your time? (Im talking about yahoo india)
Probably not, but would depend a lot on which team you joined. The scale and the technical challenges are still there, the peer quality is what would have gone down.
One can easily move from a large Organization to a start up but it is not very easy the other way around.
I think there’s another category that’s missing from this and that is Small Companies that aren’t startups.
I worked for a small company with its feet on the ground for over decade as a web developer and the experienced gained there was unique because they had already had trial and error processes.
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I’ve done the opposite. Went straight from college to startup. But it was a quite unique startup because it was a project from a mid-sized co conducted as a startup. Kinda best of both worlds.
Now I’m moving to a bigger company.
Right now I work at a startup. Joined right after graduation. And like it here. I get to learn many thing. After 3 months of joining I’m handling the whole project my self. From writing the code, handling the production to interviewing the people. It just boosts your self confidence.
But there is other side also. The technology and the procedure they use at start up is not that much evolved. So after one or two years you have to quit. Otherwise you will lag behind the others.
So, I would recommend the startup after graduation.
Awesome as usual..
Love your posts, very interesting look forward to reading more!
jean good writing look forward to reading more!
can you email me some pictures of your cat?
jonathandspro@gmail.com
thanks
P.s. this is from jonathan
Very interesting reading your post, and all the comments that have followed.
I graduated a year ago and went into a internship>permanent position at mid sized company. This company had to let me and a few other developers go after 6 months as it downsized it’s UK dev team.
I then started at a start-up within 2 weeks and have been here 7 months now.
However, I have had another internship offer from a HUGE company (Allianz)
My aspirations are to move into more of a project management role and the internship is that of a junior project manager.
So now I face the same dilemma again…
My loyalty and the ability to have more responsibility here at the start-up I’m with, as well as the flexibility they allow me is what’s keeping me here right now. But I am unsure as to whether an opportunity from a company similar to Allianz will ever come along again…
It’s a very difficult situation and one for which I still do not have the answer yet. But I haven’t experienced working for a big company yet. So perhaps it would be good to get that experience and then re-assess.
Internship’s at Allianz tend to lead to permanent positions as long as you don’t completely mess up, so that is an exciting prospect.
But I still don’t have a clear cut answer on my plate.
*SIGH*
I worked for 3 startups since graduation and I have number of friends that work for big software corporations (read IBM, Microsoft, Google) to give you a good view on a perspective. In my opinion, given all the risks around the startup environment it might be better off working for the big guys.
Startup companies generally have difficult time getting the large projects (talking about IT) and technology wise its either built in (which will be something far from what big guys have) or you will work for a small service provider (yack)
Having the experience in working for corporations will benefit you in more ways than having a general startup experience. Corporations have resources to train you, you will work with people of more specialized roles and skills.
At startups I have seen improvisations like nowhere else and it gets old after a while. You expect competency and skills that you can predominantly gain at the big companies since they will give you ground basis to develop these skills.
Big companies usually solve big business problems that are paid big dollars. Small company will not have leverage to support or run these kind of projects so you might get stuck on working on not that important applications that have little to no impact on people around you (what’s even worse you will probably be delusioned that you do)
When we hired at startups we looked for a big company experience which was always a plus.
If you were among the best in class, go for a corporation.. they will take care of you. If you have entrepreneurial spirit, you will have plenty to show off in corporations. Even if you are so crazy minded to start something on your own, do it later when you get enough experience and big network so you can leverage those.
I find today’s corporations in IT being more and more like car companies… it’s not that easy to compete with them.
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