I don't like this kind of article that presumes that their readers have a choice in this matter. Reminds me of a friend of mine who once naively advised me to only take a job at a company that I would invest my own money in. I said are you kidding me? I've been grinding for months and failing interviews left and right just to get this job and you're telling me don't do it because it's not Google or something?
A huge portion of humans don't have the luxury to say "hmmmm, this startup is ok but myyyeehhh, I kinda like this one better, err idk maybe i'll just go to GiantCorp". I took jobs because they paid me to write code. The story is probably the same for 90% of humans who are doing the best they can in their own situations.
Oh yeah, and the crappy companies I wrote code for years ago? Those are the places that gave me a foundation for a successful career as a programmer. I absolutely could not have done it without them because they were actually willing to invest a little bit in me-- which (in my experience) might not have happened, even at megacorps or unicorn startups.
I totally agree. My first job was exactly as you describe. I graduated in 2009, in the teeth of the recession, and every company I applied to had a hiring freeze... except for one, which was known to be a miserable place to work, and known for chewing up programmers and spitting them out after six months to a year of grinding labor. I signed on anyway, because, at the time, I needed a job, any job on my resume. So I took the job, but I was cognizant of the fact that it was a "gig", not a career, and I spent time burnishing my portfolio outside of work, and kept looking. The moment the job market started to thaw, I jumped ship for a modest improvement in pay and a massive improvement in working conditions.
That said, I think you're underestimating how good the job market is for programmers right now. Yes, your first job might suck. But if it does, try to recognize that fact early and make plans to switch companies at the earliest possible moment. Look in other cities (or even other countries) if you must. This is, after all, advice for young programmers, so they're not likely to have houses, family, etc. tying them down to a single location.
As controversial as his points are, I feel like Michael O. Church really nails this hypothesis. Startup CEOs are not CEOs in any meaningful sense. Startup CEOs are our equivalent of what division vice-presidents were in the '50s and '60s. They're executives with a certain level of autonomy, to be sure, but they're hardly the independent mavericks that the rhetoric around startups would have you believe. Just like VPs in the old corporate conglomerates were ultimately answerable to the CEO, now our startup "CEOs" are answerable to the VC-appointed boards of directors.
In fact, if you squint your eyes a little, a modern Silicon Valley VC firm looks an awful lot like a corporate conglomerate from the '60s (e.g. 3M).
I find this analysis pretty baffling and wildly differing from my own experience. In my experience, startup CEOs are exactly what CEOs usually are -- not totally independent, but beholden to investors/shareholders who want to see their money grow.
I've never heard of a company so tightly managed by its VCs that you could liken them to upper management. Sure, they might make some final decisions, but most VCs just don't have time to scrutinize their portfolio companies that closely.
I think the author raises some important and valuable advice that applies to anyone/everyone. It certainly has me wondering about my motives for building a company.
But, equally I feel the author is speaking of the go-big-or-go-home model of "startups", not the slow-growth or lifestyle approaches that one could alternatively take. When you don't have to impress investors, you can approach things differently. Deadlines are more up to you, and customers are more supportive as long as you're taking care of them.
Customers want a product that solves their problems and requires as little thought as possible to use(at least in Software). VC's want a significant return on their investment. Both have money, but only one of them will continually give you money. Which would you rather aim for?
Anyway, I think its worth reflecting on how the startup will fit into your life, and what kinda time you will put into it. It doesn't HAVE to be 80 hours a week. Doesn't even need to be 40. Success is up to you to define; unless you're playing with someone else's money.
Personally, my goal is rent. If I can build something that can earn me enough money to always cover my monthly rent, that's success for me. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.
>But, equally I feel the author is speaking of the go-big-or-go-home model of "startups"
I think startups, as far as Hacker News is concerned, are "go big or go home" businesses. Quoth Paul Graham:
A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not
in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on
technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only
essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows
from growth.
That's according to Paul Graham, and I respectfully (and strongly) disagree with that definition; nor do i believe it to be the hacker news definition, as that is subject to the collective opinion despite whatever official stances may be taken.
But I recognize that ycombinator is certainly focused on that type of startup, and that they obviously have influence on HN.
But it is silly, and unhealthy, to solely focus on this narrow definition; which is why i often find myself highlighting it when it presents itself in a HN link.
> But it is silly, and unhealthy, to solely focus on this narrow definition
So what defines this "startup" thing? How "startup" is different from
a "small company"? Because, you know, not everyone opening a business needs to
be "startup", and that's OK.
Quite often 'small companies' hit a vein that suddenly causes them to scale beyond their wildest dreams (I know this happens, because it happened to me).
Paul is super smart and wildly successful (as is YC) but he doesn't have a monopoly on what certain words in the English language mean. Defining a start-up in such a way that it benefits the YC narrative should be seen as a marketing ploy rather than a statement of fact or an extremely insightful realization.
It's not as if the word 'start-up' originated with Ycombinator, or with Paul Graham.
By other definitions a start-up is a company that is more potential than realization of that potential, an idea packaged in a company that might one day be successful or it might not.
The success element is often still up for grabs long before a start-up fits the PG description of what a start-up is. It's a useful definition within a certain context but don't be surprised if outside of the 'YC bubble' (or more properly the SV bubble) the word has subtly or even widely different interpretations that are just as valid.
I note this trend to creative redefinition or claiming ownership of terms a lot with successful SV entities. It's a 'partial reality distortion field' and I'm sure it is useful to them otherwise it wouldn't be such an often repeating pattern but you should be aware of the fact that the world is a lot bigger than that.
There was no mention of what his hypothetical company would do, what problem it would solve for people. His goal was business for the sake of business.
I think it's perfectly valid to want to get into business for its own sake, and not because you have a 'passion' for a specific area. It worked for Richard Branson.
The 'find what you love/do what you love' mantra is an invention of our time.
If a startup insists that it will play by existing rules, it usually does not stand much of a chance, even though there are a few notable exceptions. So, the way to go about things, is to do something that clearly breaks the rules, but that is also virtually impossible to shut down. Something like Napster well done. Young people should even be more willing to do that. Furthermore, there are 200+ countries, most of which are powerless to do anything at all. If nobody is going to be pissed off with your startup, it will probably not be a home run.
I still believe that for recent graduates looking to begin their career, there is no better option than to join an early-stage startup. Admittedly, it's like buying a lottery ticket, but if you win you can win very big and give your career a massive boost. On the other hand, if you lose you have still gained valuable career experience equal to or greater than what you could have gained at "GiantCorp". More importantly, early stage startups offer employees a broad but shallow understanding of businesses, versus GiantCorp's narrow but deep understanding. This is important for young employees who may not be 100% sure what they would like to specialize in yet.
Why is the career experience more valuable than that you'd get at a big company?
If we're taking about developers here, then the experience a recent graduate needs is how to become a better, more capable developer.
In a big company, they'll have multiple senior colleagues, established processes, numerous large and varied codebases to study, and a large body of institutional experience to learn from.
In a startup, they'll have what? A frazzled technical founder with little more experience than them and no time for them, a few equally inexperienced colleagues, and a crummy Rails codebase.
You're absolutely correct, but the main benefit of working in a startup, from my personal experience, is you have your hands in the product from end-to-end, and have to wear many hats in the process of getting the product to market, and probably even have discussions and input on both design and business decisions going into the product.
You will probably not get significantly better at process and architecture design in a startup, but you will learn how to get the damn thing to work no matter what, at every stage of the process, instead of being responsible for one little feature here and there and working on tech that is likely 5-10 years old and in maintenance, bug-fixing mode.
I think working in both environments is valuable, as you probably won't see the value of unit testing, code reviews, continuous integration, and senior mentors in a startup environment, but being able to see the entire lifecycle gives you a perspective that other programmers that stay with big companies aren't as likely to see as well.
Also, I've worked in corporate environments with much worse development practices than startups, as well, mainly companies where software is not their main business. It goes both ways.
A huge portion of humans don't have the luxury to say "hmmmm, this startup is ok but myyyeehhh, I kinda like this one better, err idk maybe i'll just go to GiantCorp". I took jobs because they paid me to write code. The story is probably the same for 90% of humans who are doing the best they can in their own situations.
Oh yeah, and the crappy companies I wrote code for years ago? Those are the places that gave me a foundation for a successful career as a programmer. I absolutely could not have done it without them because they were actually willing to invest a little bit in me-- which (in my experience) might not have happened, even at megacorps or unicorn startups.