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Why You Need To Work For A Big Company (onstartups.com)
207 points by misham on Dec 15, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments



Its funny, my advice would be the exact opposite. Don't join a big company if you are the kind of person who's ethusiastic and ambitious about what he or she does. It'll more than likely crush you. It'll feel like you're back in 2001, your co-workers will likely be average to poor, you won't have a choice in technology, you'll notice that being a shill is more important than being good.


I worked for a startup where it felt like I was being crushed. Most of my co-workers and people running the company were average to poor, we didn't have a choice in technology and I saw a person who downloaded porn all day, was barely at the office and was caught with child porn on his computer promoted to senior management.

That's not a good enough reason. I worked for a large company and know others who work for large companies and find the work very rewarding.

The choice of what experiences will best suit you on your way to starting your own company is more personal than black and white comparisons. Not all big companies are evil empires designed to crush you (e.g. Google) and not all startups are rosy playgrounds for engineers.

In the end, as expressed by several people here, it's a personal choice that has to fit your own values and which experiences you want.


Startups have larger variance. So, if you're unlucky, you have a possibility of doing much worse than average, as with for example child porn man.

So the key is then, presumably, to somehow try to make sure you get one on the correct end of the spectrum. Starting one yourself probably helps with this.


Not all big companies are evil empires designed to crush you (e.g. Google)

Google is "designed to crush you"? Hmm.


I think that was meant as Google is an example of a company not designed to crush you.


I think he meant it the other way (not clearly expressed).


Well, maybe not "you", but definitely your privacy.


I've known several people who've found that moving department at a big company makes a massive difference to their overall experience (I've seen it go from bad to good and good to bad).

Your coworkers and (possibly more importantly) your managers, are critical determining factors in how it all works out for you. Probably more so than whether you have a choice in technology, etc.


Agreed on the importance of good management. Something I read recently, but resonated with me.

People don't leave companies, they leave managers.


More precisely: people join companies, but leave managers.

There are good and bad managers at both small and large companies. One advantage of going to a small company is that you're more likely to get to meet the exact manager you'll report to during the interview process. One disadvantage is that there is a much wider range of how good a manager they are, because they probably have fewer peers to compete with. Managers take a lot of flack, but to manage teams at a big company like Google or Amazon you probably have to be at least decent at what you're doing, whereas at a small startup you might just be the person who got there first.

Years ago, I was hired to work at a small tech startup. After a few weeks, the CEO met with me and said it seemed to him that I didn't have a lot of respect for the opinion of my manager (who had never managed anyone in a tech company before, and never done any development themselves.) I told him straight out, no, I didn't respect their opinion - I didn't think they were qualified to be a manager. (Needless to say I didn't stay there very long.)


Teams vary pretty heavily too. I like the team of 12 in my large company, but a few other guys who started around the same time as me hate the people they work with. That makes a huge difference in your day. At a startup, there are 5-25 people and that's it. At a big company, groups and departments have their own cultures and job functions.


I would say that you should join a big company while you're still trying to figure out your ass from a hole in the ground. People mature at different rates and if you've come out of school and need a few years to figure life out, all the reasons pointed out in the article are quite valid. Mostly it's no different than an extension of going to school. And if it's as soul-sucking as you indicate, that will provide even more motivation to take what you know and make a hasty exit when the timing is right.

Best of all... while you're still young and dumb enough to abuse your body and get away with it, you can put in your 8 hours at the big company, come home, and put in another 8 hours at your own startup before life and its varied responsibilities catch up with you. And the whole "cash" thing shouldn't be overlooked either. While it's great to have a ramen-profitable startup, nobody should literally live on ramen.


It's probably worth distinguishing between a big company where you're working on the core business (i.e. an engineering company) and a big company where you're working in a pure cost centre, like IT. I suspect that may explain the diverging views of the article and some of the commenters here.


I would also add that it's possible for this dynamic to change as a company grows.

I speak from personal experience - successful e-commerce startup where I am director of web.

Year 1 was about fast growth. We built a home-grown e-commerce platform, and made it scale. Lots of interesting challenges for hackers and a strong technology focus - improvements to the platform contributed directly to the bottom line.

Year 2 has a different emphasis. Many of the technical challenges are now past us. We did such a good job in Year 1 that we don't have to do much WRT scaling, UX optimization etc in Year 2. Year 2 is more about sales and marketing - continuing to find channels to acquire members and getting products into the store that people want (at good prices).

This has much less of a technology emphasis than Year 1, and indeed while Year 1 was very exciting, in Year 2 I find it difficult to motivate my team when the tasks at hand are things like "ok guys so we need a modification to our internal admin tool so that marketing can...".

Sure, there are constant improvements to be made. We do regular tweaks. We think up mini projects ("site looks weird on Android. ok lets fix that this week"). But the dynamic has most definitely changed and that is just a factor of the type of company this is (it's a sales company) and the stage of growth it is at (nearing a B round of financing).


What's much worse is Year 2 of a startup that didn't do so hot on the technical challenges in Year 1 and is treading water.


Amen! I've not worked in enough companies to make a proper generalisation but based on my limited experience, small or large the major difference seems to be whether you're a cost centre supporting the business or the profit driver building new products. The latter is more pressure but a rather more enjoyable atmosphere, I feel.


That's an excellent point...I work at ClearChannel, and the interactive department is a small part of the overall business (radio being the lion's share). Our office is basically a startup within a big company. We have our own culture and quirks so it doesn't feel like a big corporation.


Be careful though. Even when the money, perks, and coworkers are good there are still serious risks to working at a big company. Certain aspects can make it a soul crushing endeavor that will burn you out and destroy your motivation to do anything software related (which can significantly hamper your efforts to move on to something less soul crushing). This is especially dependent on your personality. There's a reason why turnover is so high in this industry and it's not just because people are jumping from awesome experience to even awesomer experience.


I've worked for 2 startups before. Less money, less perks, coworkers can't cooperate well enough with each other and don't have time to gell.

Startups, at their first year, might be fun. But second and third year are soul crushing if they don't expand as fast as Twitter or Facebook. Startups have to keep the bubble strong (i.e.: brainwash) to motivate their employees. Otherwise, people will feel burn out due to 12-14 hours of working plus rotation on-call.

Most startups also write hacky code. In the long run, this can decrease moral of developers.

And you're right, there are reasons why turnover is so high in our industry. I don't think working for a big company is one of them. I didn't do a formal research but when I was browsing (re: stalking) in linkedin, the data I saw showed that people who work for a big company tend to stay longer than those no-name/small companies.

On the other hand, keep in mind that our industry keeps on building software to automate a long of manual tasks in a blazing rate. This could also be the reason why turnover rate is high: layoff due to automation.


The main argument for working at a big company, in my eyes, isn't on the list:

You need a big company to work on a big product.

If you want to work on something as complex, massive, multidisciplinary, and grand as, for example, the space shuttle, small companies aren't an option. Sure, you might be called upon to learn fortran, and there will be underperformers and politics. But the engineering challenges can be mind-blowing anyway.

I'm reminded of one of the characters in Snow Crash who loved her study so much she would go anywhere to practice it. Sometimes big companies are like that. A dead sexy product can make it all worth it.


"If you want to work on something as complex, massive, multidisciplinary, and grand as, for example, the space shuttle, small companies aren't an option. Sure, you might be called upon to learn fortran, and there will be underperformers and politics. But the engineering challenges can be mind-blowing anyway."

Or you could work for a small company like SpaceX and work towards making NASA obsolete. The same engineering challenges without all the bureaucracy.


SpaceX has > 1,100 employees. How small is a small company?

(Source: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php)


It's pretty small for an aerospace company.


Remember, though: only about half of NASA's budget is spent on space exploration (I assume that mostly goes on STS/ISS, and that will probably change if/when they retire the shuttle.) They do a lot of other good science too.

None of that changes the fact that working with SpaceX is an awesome thing, but I very much doubt it'll make NASA obsolete anytime soon.


There plenty of poorly run, large companies, that are filled with people that aren't that smart, bright, or motivated. Many of these companies don't have great perks, but you might get some job stability out of it.

If you are going to work for a big company, choose wisely.


While this is excellent advice you could say the same about small companies too. There are plenty of small companies that are filled with people that aren't smart, bright, or motivated and that don't have great perks.

If you're going to work at any company choose wisely.


I think there's one big thing missing here : the potential to meet future collaborators. A large company is the ideal place to find other people with skills and burning desires to do other things. You can find out if they have these skills by observing their output while someone else is paying. When it comes time to form your own, you should at least have a good shortlist of people to invite on board.


By that token graduate school is also an excellent place to meet future collaborators. If you go to a school that is decent, or better, you're surrounded by very smart and motivated individuals who will be looking for work within 4 years. You can see them give presentations, read their work, drink with them at pubs and work together... all good experiences to get to know them.


This may be true, but there is a difference between studying together and working together in a commercial enterprise. I've found the people I studied with drifted away whereas people I've worked with stick closer by. That, and people you meet through study all tend to be of the same skillset, whereas people you meet through work have varied skillsets.


He touches on this:

"Even in the age of social media, it is still often about who knows you, and knows you can do a good job. If your boss did a successful project he will often seek to 'reunite the band' for another gig years later. A big company gives you a chance to impress and end up in the address books of lots of future high fliers. And they will take your call when you have something to sell and arrange an introduction for you on the strength of your past performance."


Yes I read that. I was thinking the reverse - identifying peers with talent that you can pick up and work together with in the future, rather than attaching yourself to a talented boss. I see it as a slight distinction.


Isn't that splitting hairs? Two sides of the same subject. You'd have to be really short-sighted to not see the other side of the coin. :)


I think a further thing that builds on your thing is the ability to be exposed to ideas that need solving. Big companies have lots of pain points, things that an unemployed grad or person who has only ever worked in 10 person companies is never likely to be exposed to. Coming up with ways to solve these pain points can easily lead to enterprise application startups.


It depends on what you value.

The problem with being at a really large company is that it can be extremely difficult to find any kind of self-worth. You have to try and chase it but there will be so much red tape at every doorway that you'll have to find some other way around it. You may be in a huge department. You may be doing stuff that is only seen internally. You'll spend time hacking to rebuild something crappy to prove it's value. You're wedged into a system (slowly). The processes are already set. You'll learn a fair amount of things, but nowhere near what you'd probably learn at an energetic startup or doing your own thing.

The absolute best thing will be the people. You'll meet some outstanding folks... Potentially the kind that want to start something different.

It will be interesting for the first 6 months to a year, and then you'll become pretty bored. Unless you just don't care and you're riding the wave.

That self-worth thing is a pretty big deal. The majority of people enjoy being 'comfortable.' Finding the comfort that just pays the bills. That's great. That's where big companies shine. I'd rather chill on the edge being a leader revolving around building something new. But it took me joining a large company to learn that.

So, really, just follow you're heart. You'll learn. Nobody can argue that being a bad thing.


I especially like point #7: "You get a baseline. Then you go and try to do it better."

One possible interpretation: "learn as much as you can about your enemy, then use that knowledge against them." :-)


I'd be thinking "learn as much as you can about your customers, who have virtually infinite amounts of budget relative to your needs and lots of problems which you don't have because you can program around them in a day."


It really depends which large company you work for. My very first job was at an average large company and it was rather soul crushing. I currently work at a huge media company that has a terrific work atmosphere/culture. I think the difference between the two companies was a bankruptcy. The later company went bankrupt, projects were canceled, the hackers in the room figured they would be laid off any day and started working on whatever they felt like. Clients caught wind of what the hackers were developing and started buying in. The upper management saw all of this and didn't dare mess with it.


I worked for a very large company with ties to the Bush administration that everyone loves to hate.

Here is my take, and I would never want to work at a company of that size again...

1) I can say I did learn a lot during my tenure there, however, they were such a huge collection of edge cases that not much was directly applicable to anywhere else I have worked. I can say that I got a good grasp on not breaking large complex systems though.

2) I found this to not be the case, and this was very disappointing to me. When I started there I was expecting to be surrounded by the best and brightest on a mission. I found that in the case of this company, in my group(say around 100-150 people) it was 5% of the people doing 95% of the work, surrounded by people content to do just enough to not get fired.

3) semi true, I do maintain contact with several people there.

4) Perks- NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Benefits at this place sucked. After I left(2008) the company suspended raises for everyone for at least 18 months. While I was able to change titles to a much higher "paygrade", the company did not want to ever make my salary reflect the title.

5) Probably the biggest reason I never want to work at a large company again. Most managers were promoted beyond their competency, so decisions were made based on how much power they could wield and not what was best for the company. A great example is how they would not allow certain blackberrys to connect to the enterprise server because one of the managers thought the scroll wheel was a toy. iPhones were banned because it took > 1 hour to cut off your access if you were terminated. Thats right folks, exchange/Phone policy dictated by the fact that the company thinks they will probably fire you and they cant cut off your access quickly enough.

6) true

7) Absolutely. Im now at a small company(~150 employees) and the lack of all the crap I mention above has drastically improved my well being.


Best reason: going home at 6 o'clock and rarely getting called on nights and weekends unless you volunteer for it.

1. You learn an awful lot. You get to see the good, the bad and the ugly. You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control) and some not so good ideas (like how not to motivate people).

For good ideas, I think this depends on what you mean by "large." A small company company that has been around for a long time, and possibly grown into a medium- or large-sized company during that time, acquires a high level of expertise in its particular problems. It's really an education to see the technical solutions that emerge from years of accumulated experience in that kind of environment. However, after companies get really large, they devolve back towards mediocrity, because the prevailing management mentality is that technical excellence does not scale. Executives four or five levels away from the front lines want to feel in control. If they aren't in control, nobody is in control. If nobody is control, the company drifts aimlessly. And the executives aren't in control unless the people on the front lines are predictable and interchangeable. There's a flaw in that logic, but it's natural for executives to feel that way. Technical excellence (except in the empty sense that everyone claims) also means that management can't solve technical problems by itself, because management's only methods for solving technical problems are managerial: ramp up hiring, hire contractors, outsource, etc. Empowering management means organizing the company around the most common technologies, the most common practices, and the most common quality of developer. From that point of view, technical mediocrity is a feature, not a bug. There's no need to learn mediocrity first-hand: you can learn it from books and blogs, and from there you will quickly match or exceed it.

For bad ideas, I'm probably in the minority here, but I don't think there's much benefit to seeing ideas fail. Some things are obviously good or bad, and some things you need to see play out in practice, but in my opinion, the non-obvious things you need to see play out in practice are usually sensitive to context and specifics. They might work poorly in a large company but well in a small company, or poorly in one large company and well in another large company. Scrum, for instance, turns out to be a poor fit (in my opinion) for the engineering department I work in. If I try to predict whether Scrum will or won't work in another situation, however, I will fall back on common sense unless there are particular parallels to the situation I observed.

2. You get to work with lots of clever people.

Surprisingly true, probably because of the exact reasons he stated. However, the better the tech economy, the more the best people feel confident leaving.

4. They have lots of perks. I do miss the canteen, the sports gym and the other 'extras'. And that week's 'training' in Amsterdam at the company's expense. That was a lot of fun!

Not always true. Many big companies have no perks at all, or insultingly crappy ones. Mine won't even provide decent coffee -- we have a bunch of coffee fiends who simply don't drink coffee at work. It's better to have a coffee house nearby than to have a company canteen. (Also keep in mind that if you're a lower-level resource, big companies may compensate for lax productivity standards by paying more attention to when you're in the office, which makes it a bad idea to go out for coffee on a regular basis.)

As for training, that depends, too. Sometimes big companies won't pay for any training except overpriced training in proprietary software, and then only one or two people get it. You can encounter cases where the company will only pay for (e.g.) introductory Oracle training, but will only pay for training for its most senior resources. The introductory training isn't offered to junior resources, and the company won't pay for advanced training for the senior resources, so nobody ever gets trained. (And you'll never know whether this is on purpose, or simply due to stupidity.) I was going to get flown to expensive official SAP training halfway across the country, but then (thank God) I managed to avoid working with SAP. Result? No training of any kind for me, even if it's half the price. Unless I want to get a Master's degree, that is, in which case I have a lot of leeway. It seems ridiculous that the company will pay for a Master's degree but won't shell out a thousand bucks for a conference, but apparently that's not unusual. The rules are often bizarre and counterproductive.


Re training, yep. Our training budget was seriously mismanaged.

We got a budget every year, but our development manager was too weak to organise it himself along with his other demands. So it got passed off to a senior team leader to organise. He didn't really have time to organise it properly. We went many years where the budget was not spent, and therefore got shrunk the next year.

When we did finally organise training, it was very basic, and the company gave us 1.5 days off to study, which included the time to go to the testing centre (1hr trip each way, 2hr exam). Result: one afternoon off to study. At least I got Java 1.4 Certified Programmer (yay :-/ ).

The next training was organised the same, only this time, to avoid us all taking the 1.5 days at the end of the financial year (who'd have thought we'd do that!?!) training was organised in waves of 3 months. At the end of the 3 months, no one had taken an exam! So guess what? Training materials stayed with those people for the next 6 months. That was galling for the rest of us.

When I moved department, we had much better managers. They were pro-active is seeking out our training needs, and everyone knew what training or courses they would be doing over the next year. Then corporate HQ stole our training budget to train a team of inexperienced, but geographically cheaper, resources in our jobs. Surprise surprise we got pissed and started leaving. Now I hear that little experiment was an abject failure and they were trying to hire us back as consultants!

deep breath sigh

Hey, I got paid regularly, travelled a fair bit, learned a TON, and did get to work with some exceptional people. However racism was endemic among senior management, who were all based in ###### (redacted).


Could you, uh, undact the location of the racist managers?


Israel. I should point out almost all of my dealings with Israeli's have been positive.

However there were consistent appointments of Israeli managers and resources, where there were far more experienced and capable resources outside of Israel. Indians were exploited quite badly and rarely considered for any position above team leader. Within a division promotions would be blocked world wide, except in Israel, or Israeli's with Israeli bosses.

Conversations would often switch to Hebrew. If you knew a little Hebrew sometimes you'd figure out they were openly talking about co-workers who were in the room. The company official language was English, but that did not stop many internal job postings /requiring/ Hebrew (e.g. Central American on-site project, Spanish not required, English and Hebrew a must.)

This was not my observation alone, but a general consensus. Whenever it was raised as an issue, Israeli senior management response was "if you don't like it, you can leave". Seriously, go look at almost any Israeli company on Glassdoor etc, and you will find all the same issues again and again.


It reads like it was going to end up being thinly veiled racism in itself. How ironic.


I think working at a medium sized company that's been around for a while is probably about as good as going to a big company.

I mean, in a big company, you're unlikely to actually know people outside of your immediate working responsibilities, so you don't really get the chance to network across the organization.

Also, I mean, if you don't have any super great ideas... there are worse things to do than help someone implement their idea.


(Disclaimer: I work for Google, which is probably a bit atypical as big companies go.)

"I mean, in a big company, you're unlikely to actually know people outside of your immediate working responsibilities, so you don't really get the chance to network across the organization."

I work in Search Features. Over the past six months, I've been on a rotation with the webserver infrastructure team, and have gotten to work with people working on Google Maps, Doodles, Product Search, Image Search, Chrome, Protobufs, recruiting, UX research, and compilers & build tools.

Other big companies probably don't have quite as many cross-functional links, but rotations between groups are quite common, as are groups whose job is to consult across the organization.


The one big company I worked for did not have any cross-functional links. I think it also might be different in software as opposed to other industries. I should have clarified, but I meant a big company whose business was not-software.


In what ways is Google atypical?


They still did not give up on scaling technical excellence.


1. Yea, the fundamental flaws of treating people as dumb automata to be controlled top-down.


1. You learn an awful lot. --This is no different from a small company. Nothing that stands out to be a reason to work for a large company.

2. You get to work with lots of clever people. --Are you nuts? A good percent of large companies are made up of "resources" who chug on the framework created by few good men(mostly when the team/company was smaller). Usually an offshore vendor is already established and politicizing the project.

3. You become part of a large diaspora/community. -- The explanation makes more sense if you are working in a large non-tech company (say Ford,Toyota plant). But again not a reason that stands out as unique to a Large company.

5. you learn the art of politics - You are crushed by the number game (with equally competent(or otherwise)) competing for promotions, that loving to lick ass becomes more of survival than a favorite activity.

6. You have time to reflect. -It is not necessarily slow. It is fast paced repetitive, enough to numb you.You ponder about the life in general (and get into depression?) (this doesn't apply to the crowd that join the large company to live the retired life)

"You might also appreciate the relative security, the calm and the chance to get your life in order. Once you join a startup, it is generally going to be permanent 'seats of you pants' mode." -wtf is that about?

7. You get a baseline. Then you go and try to do it better. -how is this a reason to work for a large company only.


When you work in a large company you have to deal with many more people than a small one.

For example in a small company, if you have issues with pay, you go speak to the boss/owner, or if you're big enough, the book-keeper/accountant type. In a large company there will be a whole department for your problem - be it HR helpdesk, your local accounts/payroll clerk, etc.

In the big company, you should make the effort to learn who is who and what do they do. You will soon start working out what qualities these people have that make them great, average, or terrible at their job.

In a small company, if you hire someone with the wrong qualities, at a pivotal time in your growth, it will be like contracting a disease.

Big company experience shows you lots of mistakes, which can be covered over by co-workers, PR department, caught by the QA team hour before shipping, etc. etc. If you don't get exposure to these sorts of mistakes, whilst they may not kill your startup, they will cause you some big-time stress. Stress in those quantities is not good for the survival of your business.

You can, however, mitigate some of these risks by having good mentors around, and hiring smart and experienced staff at the beginning. Successful startups like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. didn't survive on hiring graduates alone. And if they did, they were lucky or smart enough to hire the right people in the right roles.


Two things you will learn:

- How not to do stuff.

- That you need to get out ASAP to protect your brain from rotting


I agree. Our small company which moved at a rapid pace was bought by a large company. Now because there are like 6 managers looming we can hardly code a line a day. Rapid paces are great if you actually want to learn your craft. But if you think your craft has anything to do with office politics, or any of the other things that you mentioned in this article, I would not want you to work with me and our company.


if you think your craft has anything to do with office politics

Ah, but it does. For a business to survive, it has to interact with people outside of itself. In those cases, understanding the political situation on the other side of the table can be of immeasurable value.


I don't "need" to do anything.


Eating? Breathing?


Big companies let you fail and learn from your mistakes on their dime...which later helps you succeed on your dime!


I worked in a few startups before joining a few large companies since then. The truth is that there is an incredible variety.

Not all large organizations are the same and it may be very different from department to department. I have worked with people of truly amazing technical expertise and work ethics in a large organization that relied heavily on heavy transaction loads. The cost of downtime was know to the minute and many operations were very sensitive to performance, the contribution of the technical teams to the business were known and recognized. Everything that was central to its operation was done in house all the way down to network protocols. This environment made technical excellence an important aspect of selecting employees. Less performing employees were moved to other areas of the business, or just not kept after their probation period.

I have also seen other organizations where you contact your technical team when you order the coffee for the press conference where you'll announce the new product they're supposed to build. When technical expertise is not well regarded; I've seen less talented people. But the machine was still working thanks to its traditions and established systems, at least if you're attentive you get to learn how to build resilience. I have done great and exciting work in startups, I have also seen countless numbers small companies with low levels of expertise and professionalism.


    most startups reckon you are past it if you are over 23
Is this true?


  many startups reckon you are too expensive or less likely to work insane hours
  if you are over 23
Perhaps.


Like most advice in life/money/startups doesn't it really depend?

I've never worked at a big company. I started and mostly failed at my first venture out of college. 2nd one did well. Never got a real job. Now don't need a real job, I love the one I've created for myself.

Why should I go work for a big company? To work more hours for little to no upside?

I can see some advantages....just not enough to make me quit working for myself.


I agree. Having worked at CNET and AOL, the two were like a short-term intensive training course in working culture. Lots to like, lots to hate, and all really useful.

That being said I could only stay at either for a short while, because the lack of progress just doesn't sit well with me.

But, I did like the experience and given the choice to do it all over, would repeat them.


I started out at a huge professional services firm. I only spent a year there, but I am really glad for that year. It was an introduction to the harsh realities of the work world that most people deal with day to day.

The startup that I went to work for afterwards was completely different in most ways. However, our clients were large enterprises like my former employer, and I was able to understand the pain many of our client contacts were going through while trying to do something that was obviously the right decision for the organization (buying our product) but dealing with red tape, politics, and morons in the approval process.

Not to mention, if I'd started out in a startup without dealing with the idiocy and creative vacuum of a behemoth organization, I am sure I wouldn't have appreciated the opportunity of working in a small, intelligent meritocracy nearly as much.


Some good points - it would be easy to counter, but what I would really like to see is an empirical study of successful ventures started by founders with a big company background. That would be a more meaningful way to understand how the experience translates.


While not exactly what you asked, here's a Kauffman study (http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-coming-entre...) about average age of an entrepreneur. I don't have a source, but I read another study which showed majority of companies were started by 30+; this would merit the assumption that most companies are started by people who worked at other companies, including large corporations.

This rings true since working for other companies allows you to build a network and find out where the pain points are in different industries.


I wonder if it varies by field? The abstract indicates that most entrepreneurs are 35+ in that study ("The 20-34 age bracket has the lowest rate of entrepreneurial activity"), but all the major tech companies I can think of, at least American ones of the past few decades, were by people under 35: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, and Dell were all twentysomethings; Nvidia, Oracle, PayPal, and Cisco were early 30s; and I have to go back to AMD (founded 1969) to find a 40-year-old cofounder.

I could be totally missing some, but I did just look down a list of biggest American tech companies to see if I could find anything.


There seems to be a pattern where you're much less likely to succeed as a younger founder, but when you do succeed, you're more likely to succeed big.

I can think of a few reasons why that might be so. Big companies that change whole industries tend to be started on the leading edge of sweeping technological changes (eg. the PC for Microsoft and Apple and Dell, the Internet for Google and EBay and FaceBook); usually these trends are too minor for an established career professional to bother looking at. Even if they do look at them, someone inexperienced has the advantage of looking at them fresh, without any preconceptions. A large number of the original dot-com bust companies were started by 30- and 40-somethings, and the bulk of them just imitated the brick-and-mortar shopping experience or old media experience. It took someone without industry experience to realize that search would be bigger than content, and that social networking isn't just media consumption.


I've worked for big companies with training budgets, lavish perks and benefits, also for startups that went bankrupt. I learned things in both situations. You can always learn something in almost any situation, and come away the better for it in the long run.


This is true, and I think this is a good attitude to have when you're in a bad situation. That said, some things are more educational than others, and you need to think about the opportunity cost of choosing a particular path.

This is how people justify things like learning Latin in high school (which I did). Sure it helps you learn where English came from and helps you learn other languages, but surely learning German or French would teach you the same and you would actually know a useful language.


I just joined a 70 people company from a company with 50K employees globally....and loving it here.

At my past company I worked on an important module, it was well tested, everyone loved it. After 2 months it was on the 'path' to be released after 2 months. At this company I worked on something last week and we are looking to release it in 2 weeks (with enough QA).

People work in mid-small companies. Big companies have smart people but they get LAZY and eventually the culture builds up on you.

It is important to work for a big company and get exposed to the culture......as these are the people you might make products for, these are people who may put money in your company, etc. I would RUN after spending 2 years.


Working for a large but still quickly growing company has been, for me, the best of both worlds. There's still a lot of upside in stock options and in career path because of the growth. You get to dabble in politics and you have a large community of people to learn from and keep in contact with in the future.

And usually, these companies are not mired in the large and unwieldy bureaucracy that is common in large and established companies. i.e. companies like Facebook, Zynga, Google 5 years ago, etc.

However, my experience is limited to two big-but-growing companies, one startup, and one small but completely dysfunctional. Too small a sample size for definitive generalization.


Followup - if your startup is successful, chances are you're going to end up working at a big company. Either you will be acquired, or you will grow.

Experience with this can help you be a better entrepreneur.


I have a hard time with articles like this that generalize over such a broad and variable base. Some big companies are great, some are terrible, and most are in between. And once you're in that big company, a lot depends on who you work for and what your group does, so you'll find that some areas are great to work in, some are terrible and most are in between.

And what makes this even more infuriatingly variable for the generalizer is that it is unlikely you and I would even agree on which of these companies, or departments within companies, are the great or terrible ones. So much depends on who you are, what you want and what you need.


I joined a very large software company almost 4 years ago, knowing that it probably wasn't for me... but you can only know for sure if you try these things.

As for the stated advantages? I don't see them here. I'm considering starting the New Year by resigning.

1. You learn a lot: Yes, I'd agree although what you learn might be a lot of internal architectures an systems which aren't applicable outside. I'd agree that you need to experience a big company to get a proper perspective on the rest of your career though

2. Smart people: kind of, though there's maybe 10% of the developers here who even touch a computer outside of work... far less do any sort of personal programming projects or reading.

3. Large community: true, I've made good friends here and some international contacts though I'm not sure they will come to anything. I came from a fairly lonely road of research/PhD studies and wanted the experience of working in a team. Unfortunately, my "team" is now mostly remote and, no matter what anyone says, it's not the same as working with the people in the cubes around you.

4. They have lots of perks: No! Our company doesn't even provide tea or coffee. We get health insurance but that's standard for most/all software companies here. Bonuses are small enough that you can effectively forget about them. There's no training budget or internal courses (except on internal processes).

5. You learn the art of politics: No, not necessarily. I've had a lot more office politics in the small companies I've worked for. And regardless of the company, I don't play politics. I'm friendly but not fake, I say what I think and I do what I say.

6. Time to reflect: That's part of the reason why I'm still here. The work is easy, standards are low and hours are flexible (and bosses generally ignorant as long as the job gets done) so I can work on side-projects in my spare time. The problem is that the lazy work and general depression at work spills over into your side-projects. So even though I have the time I've recently lost the motivation to do much in the way of proper side-project work.

7. You get a baseline: Exactly. I firmly believe that you can't bitch and complain about something until you've tried it.


Re: #6, don't you worry that they'll discover your side projects and take ownership of them / shut them down? Even if it's open-source contributions and not for profit, it's a liability for the project you contribute to. That's why some projects make you sign an agreement before accepting commits.


Just to clarify: I don't work on side-projects when I'm in the office, "at work" or using their equipment. Only at home and on my own equipment.

My contract also states that they understand people do other activities and the company doesn't want to own them unless they are a competing activity. And frankly, even if they did want one of my projects they wouldn't do anything with it and I can move on pretty quickly.


I've worked for:

- a large military contractor - consulted for many clients who were just starting their own startup - a 150 person internet company - a small 10 person website

I just turned 30 and feel like I've experienced most of the different work environments out there. I agree with the original article, I think most people would benefit from spending a few years, maybe right out of college, at a large company.

At the larger companies, I could spend a month really getting to learn a language. I wouldn't be able to do that at a startup.


All very good points, in line with my own experience. I skipped university and went to work for a big software company instead. I've transferred internally half a dozen times in six years, with half of that time spent in management. I've continually learned new things, and couldn't have got a better education anywhere.

Now, however, I'm ready to do my own thing. Thanks to the experience I've gained, I think I'll succeed, too.


In small companies, you work like Rambo: one person deals with a few products and wearing different hats. In big companies, you work like a bow in a machine: you are easily replaceable with someone with similar qualifications/experiences.


These are exactly the reasons I ultimately decided to work where I am today. I think it's worthwhile to reflect on these every now and then, because it's really easy to lose site of them in face of the politics and daily toil.


I have every one of these things at my current company and I work at a 100 person company.


I'm sorry, but I can't take advice from someone whose twitter handle is @JavaPDF. :)


Yes, but my real name is the same as that of Julian Assanges lawyer so JavaPDF seems a lot safer...




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