Why do people love working for tech startups - because they sound terrible.

[msmith537]

I've worked for a wide variety of companies over the years, including a number of tech startups, and I'm trying to wrap my brain around why people love working for them. Ratings on Glassdoor.com are often 5 stars and people I have worked with have consistently been like "I love working here". But when you objectively look at the compensation, hours, culture and other factors, often based on the comments of those same employees, they sound like horrible places to work.

From various postings on Glassdoor.com and my own observations and experience:

Startups are typically run by a relatively inexperienced inner circle of management who maintain absolute control over the company.

Hours are obscenely long, often requiring late nights, weekends, holidays and long marathon stretches of no sleep.

They are typically extremely critical cultures, demanding people constantly "exceed expectations" whatever that means.

Most aren't particularly well run or well managed.

Compensation is nothing special, at least not compared to larger companies employing similar individuals.


Honestly, it seems almost like a cult / abuse victim / Stockholm syndrome mentality. These companies hire bright kids, constantly telling them how bright everyone working there is for working there. Abuse them with long hours, absurd deadlines and "flat organizations" with not much upward advancement. Constantly harass anyone who complains or falls out of line by telling them they are not "meeting expectations" and that they need to work harder. And yet the employees "love" working there? What is it they love? Wearing T-shirts to work and playing fooseball in the break room?

[madmonk28]

Not in the tech industry, but my WAG: there is a chance for a huge payoff by being at the ground floor and there is a sense of helping build something from scratch.

Part of my job is traveling to countries and starting up new projects. It starts with a handful of people working in a hotel and (hopefully) ends with a humming beehive of efficiency. During that start up phase, you work obscene hours, but it is kind of fun. There is a comradery amongst the staff that you won't have once the project gets larger and it's nice to feel that your actions and decisions have a larger than normal impact on outcomes.

[Iggy]

I worked a biotech startup so maybe the culture was a little different.

I enjoyed the ability to guide the overall direction of projects, and the company as a whole. We had the freedom to try new approaches to novel problems.

I worked, in part, for equity. Got the whole "ownership" mentality going on. The pay sucked. It was eat beans out of a can because I couldn't afford anything else level of suckage. But it worked out well in the end due to equity.

Flat organizational structure. Loved it. Advancement was only by moving the company as a whole forward.

[N9IWP]

Well, there have been some start ups that get bought and employees (who got paid mostly in shares) suddenly become gazillionaires.

But some also work there beacuse they believe in "the cause" - whatever the company is making.

Brian

[grude]

And yet the employees "love" working there? What is it they love? Wearing T-shirts to work and playing fooseball in the break room?

I think you are missing the fact that most workers are young and without a family to support(which sorry changes everything) so yes they will absolutely trade tangible benefits for workplace culture that is looser. Everyone else including management is culturally close to your own values, don't have to worry an errant comment will cause you to lose your job. Management is forgiving of stuff like drinking and other drug use, hell they might use with you!

[Dewey Finn]

Not in the tech industry, but my WAG: there is a chance for a huge payoff by being at the ground floor and there is a sense of helping build something from scratch.
I think this is correct. Partly there is the hope of a big payoff when the company goes public or perhaps when it's acquired. And also as the company grows, you can move up the management chain perhaps more quickly than you could in an established company. (As an example, look at Marissa Mayer. She was employee number 20 at Google and rose to a vice presidency in her thirteen years at Google. Recently of course, she took the top job at Yahoo.)

[Hari Seldon]

The son of a friend of mine decided before he finished college that he wanted to work for a startup. Presumably because of the possibility of a huge payoff. He got a job with one--it led nowhere although the company may still be limping along. He is now working the anti-startup Apple. I assume he is well-paid, but he will say nothing, even to his father about his job or pay. "You talk, you walk" appears to be the unofficial (or maybe official) slogan there. Microsoft (where my son works) is a lot more open. He even wrote a self-published book about his first ten years there. They didn't object.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I've only ever owned a start-up so my direct experience is limited to brainwashing enthusiastic young employees - I've never had it done to me. However, I disagree with several of your observations.

Startups are typically run by a relatively inexperienced inner circle of management who maintain absolute control over the company.

Good start-ups are run by experienced managers who know their industry/product and have experience working at other start-ups. If you work for a bad start-up of course your job might suffer for it, but that's equally true of working for an old private family-owned business run by an idiot. You can work for a large public company and if you get into a division that has poor managers your job might suck just as much.


Hours are obscenely long, often requiring late nights, weekends, holidays and long marathon stretches of no sleep.

That's something most ambitious young professionals expect at any job. New hires at big law firms, public accounting firms and investment banks all work the same hours and they're like anti-start-ups in most other respects.


They are typically extremely critical cultures, demanding people constantly "exceed expectations" whatever that means.

I'm not seeing why this would be a negative. I guess if I was looking for a receptionist job I'd rather work for a dermatologist's office than a technology start-up. But if I'm looking for an engineering position that's part of the core team I'd much rather be challenged than the opposite.


Most aren't particularly well run or well managed.

I'd say that in terms of an employee's day to day experience that is MUCH more of a problem at large companies.

[Alessan]

I'd say that in terms of an employee's day to day experience that is MUCH more of a problem at large companies.

Exactly. You don't like how a big company does something, you write a memo, which is usually ignored. You don't like how a startup does something, you say "Hey, Mark! I need to talk to you."

[Nava]

Exactly. You don't like how a big company does something, you write a memo, which is usually ignored. You don't like how a startup does something, you say "Hey, Mark! I need to talk to you."

You don't have the accesses you need at a startup, you say "Hey Mark! I need to talk to you."

You don't have the accesses you need at a company that's the biggest in its sector worldwide, coping over 60% of the market in all countries but one... well, some of my end-users still don't have the accesses they need 3 weeks after go-live, and part of the issue is that nobody is sure who can authorize it. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: etc.



I've had jobs where any time we spent at work had immediately pinpointable results. I could say "this data I spent 2h crossing has saved us 20h of loading unnecessary data".

I've had others where 90% of the time was spent looking busy. Worse, I've had jobs where we were required to be at work for 6x12h/wk when most of us simply had nowhere near enough work for that.

After a 14-16h day of the first, I'd get home energized, ready to do laundry, cook the next day's lunch and kill a few illegal aliens* before tucking in. After 12, 10 or even 8h of the second I'd be ready to scream. If startups are more like the first, I sure can see the charm.



* Civ. Anybody who's not my citizen is not under my legal system and therefore illegal. They need to be rescued from their situation.

[Vihaga]

My husband worked for one right out of college, and it worked out well.

Pros: He started at an entry-level tech position and was promoted very quickly, so he ended up with a much better job than he probably would have otherwise. It was a great resume boost as a result.

He ended up telecommuting almost exclusively, which was nice.

He liked working on something new and found the start-up culture to be exciting.

He wasn't one of the original employees and the stock still gave us a nice down payment on our house.

Cons:

He worked or was on call All The Time. Luckily, we were in our 20s and I was in school, so he had plenty of free time.

When the company was bought out and got a new CTO, the work environment changed vastly and he ended up quitting.

His base salary was kind of low, especially to start.

It was nerve-wracking from a job security standpoint until the company started gaining momentum.


Overall, it was a very positive experience for him and helped get him the more stable job he has now with a much larger company. The bonus of his current job is that the base salary is higher and the schedule more predictable.

Would he do it again? Now now, because we have a baby and he wants to see her grow up. He definitely misses it sometimes, though, and I think it can be a good deal for a young person without other commitments who is looking to gain experience. I will say that my husband didn't experience the "cult like" culture you mentioned; in general, his supervisors at the startup seemed to be much more respectful than average until the company was acquired. I think that's an individual personality thing.

[Sattua]

I have worked for two tech startups. They both sucked AND blowed. The experience permanently soured me on them; apparently they are mostly investor scams--get as many $5 million rounds of funding as you can before you go belly up, pray you get bought before that happens.

Neither startup had a product or even a clear vision of what the product should be. They were just vehicles for moving money around.

The first ran out of money and stopped paying employees before they stopped having huge parties for their board members. They were investigated by whatever organization investigates these employe welfare questions, and ordered to start paying everybody minimum wage. I was gone by that time so I don't know what they're doing now.

The second one was conservative with their cash but still had no product or clear idea of what their product should be. They limped along twice as long as the first--but had three rounds of layoffs that cleaned out everyone who had gotten in at the ground floor and had a claim to stock options, except the board members. They were bought and gutted a year ago.

I know that anecdotes aren't evidence and there are a few excellent startups that don't freaking start up until they KNOW what they're going to do or even have a product already. But yes, many of them are basically scams, and the people who "love" working there love it because of the easygoing culture at the beginning, and pathetic delusions that it will pay off big some day.

[Obsidian]

Is it so out of the realm of possibility that people like that culture? I personally find the Manhattan suit wearing, status driven, overgrown frat-boy culture pretty awful. I look at the consultants who come to my office and can't for the life of me figure out how McKinsey and their ilk convinced bright, ambitious young people to spend their life living out of a suitcase. Is it just money and status?

Not everyone is motivated by money. A flat organization means there are less layers of bureaucracy to wade, and not everyone wants to climb the ladder. I think what most employees want is to do interesting work, and to make a product that they believe in. It's viscerally satisfying, and you want to work the long hours to get it done. You also want to work with people as smart and as dedicated as you are. I have very high standards for myself. I sure as shit want my coworkers to meet or exceed expectations-- or GTFO. Who wants to work with dead weight?

Many people also find not having to wear uncomfortable clothing and being able to work flexibly (including downtime at your much-derided foosball table) a significant perk. You'd have to pay me 20% more to get me to go work somewhere I had to have a business wardrobe.

All that said, startups are a young (wo)man's game, because they're risky and unstable as hell. They can be awful, particularly when they go south (I once got laid off on Christmas Eve). On some levels it's almost a right of passage-- my boss joked during my interview process that everyone in Silicon Valley has at least one dead company on their resume. You do it, you grow up, you take the plethora of experience you've gotten and go work somewhere with stable revenue and good health insurance.

I work for a huge company now. Though they do still let me do very interesting work, and make awesome things, and try to hang on to as much of that culture as they can.

[msmith537]

Good start-ups are run by experienced managers who know their industry/product and have experience working at other start-ups. If you work for a bad start-up of course your job might suffer for it, but that's equally true of working for an old private family-owned business run by an idiot. You can work for a large public company and if you get into a division that has poor managers your job might suck just as much.

Fair enough. You have good and bad managers at all kinds of companies.

Except I would say that at a larger company, there is at least some sort of consistency to the idiocy and it's somewhat buffered by the organization as a whole. At a small startup, your career is much more closely tied to the whims of your boss's "vision" and his personality quirks.



That's something most ambitious young professionals expect at any job. New hires at big law firms, public accounting firms and investment banks all work the same hours and they're like anti-start-ups in most other respects.


So basically what you are saying is that working at a startup sucks as bad as being a first year analyst at Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Cravath Swaine & Moore or Deloitte? Only without the resume-building name or career track to partner / MD?





I'm not seeing why this would be a negative. I guess if I was looking for a receptionist job I'd rather work for a dermatologist's office than a technology start-up. But if I'm looking for an engineering position that's part of the core team I'd much rather be challenged than the opposite.


Well first of all, it's absurd. If your expect employees to constantly "exceed expectations", then raise the expectations. Otherwise you are bitching at them for not wearing enough "flair".

I like to be challenged too. However "challenging" people does not mean giving them impossible assignments and then treating them as if they aren't working hard enough if they fail to complete them 100% according to (often uncomunicated) expectations.





I'd say that in terms of an employee's day to day experience that is MUCH more of a problem at large companies.

I never noticed much difference. Other than at the startup, the lack of resources applified every bad management decision.




Exactly. You don't like how a big company does something, you write a memo, which is usually ignored. You don't like how a startup does something, you say "Hey, Mark! I need to talk to you."


Provided Mark isn't already putting out a dozen fires for someone else.

[delphica]

My experience with a start up is NOT in the tech field, so take that for what it's worth.

I work for a large, traditional institution and had the opportunity to go work at a related startup for a year.

Man, it was a blast. Yes, we worked all the time - late nights, weekends, whenever, but it was a very small group handpicked to work well together. There were a lot of moments that seemed like something from a fakey fake sitcom about startup offices -- late nights, ordering in diner food and beer, everyone getting goofy and witty and super creative.

The best part is that I got to work all the time, with nearly no supervision or limits. We didn't HAVE policies, if I wanted to do something, I figured out the best way to do it and then that became the policy going forward. It was like doing all the best parts of my job without the stupid parts (waiting for approvals, submitting paperwork, cc'ing five million people on pointless memos that none of them will actually read but will be offended if they are left off, etc).

I will say that I appreciated the luxury of knowing that I had job security and that no matter the outcome, I was going back to my "real" job after a year. I am so glad I did it, having a year that was so different (but in the same field) ended up being a great refresher for me, the experience and knowledge gained has served me very well professionally. Even more, I had gotten to a point in my career where I was feeling a little a dull and clock punchy without realizing it, the mental change of scenery was so energizing and it carried over to my real job as well.

[kushiel]

I wouldn't work for a startup. I've worked at two small businesses that sustained themselves fine but then tried to introduce a startup into the mix and both times it tanked. The first time I got laid off because of it (I wasn't even on the startup team, but someone needed to get axed for overhead!) and the second time the owner realized that two of us were the only people bringing in the money to support the startup, so he just tanked the startup instead.

I understand why some people do though. Twenty-somethings that still have a college, energy drink fuelled mentality love startups. There aren't any processes in place, they just get to code to their heart's content, no one telling them how to do it, and the company founder is enthusiastic about what they're doing. It's like an extension of school, but you get paid for it!

Then they get older, their priorities change, and they settle in for a more steady job. But that's okay, because there's never a shortage of new grads wanting to recreate The Social Network.

My God, I feel so jaded - and I'm only 25!

[even sven]

I worked at a tech startup for a while, and it was a really fun time in my life.

I think the biggest appeal is that you and your ideas can have a real impact on bringing something new and exciting into the world. In a larger organization, a young professional doesn't have much of a chance of doing anything beyond routine work. It can take years of climbing the corporate ladder to be in a decision-making position- and even then your decisions are often just creating a tiny minuscule sliver of increased efficiency in what is probably a tiny minuscule department. Those rare chances to use creativity and do something really different are often reactionary, rather than visionary. There are times in my job now (with a larger organization) when I need to think outside of the box- but these are often about stamping out fires and trying to return things to business as usual, rather than trying to create something new. And when I do get to make creative changes, they often trickle through so much bureaucracy and so many competing interdepartmental interests that the end result isn't really much to speak of.

But in a startup, everyone from the secretary to the CEO are a part of a creative, collaborative process that leads to quickly realized results. I worked in a administrative position, but sometimes I'd mention some random idea that popped into my head during the morning meeting, and it'd be up on the website and being actively used before close of business. That's fun, and it builds a sense of camaraderie. The atmosphere is kind of like grad school- everyone is working too hard and not making much money, but you are having fun, stretching yourself, learning and doing really exciting things. Every day is something new, and you feel this great sense of possibility. Even if you don't luck out and strike it rich, you can at least feel like you gave it your best shot.

Anyway, different strokes for different folks. People vary in how risk-averse they are, how creative they like their workplace, how motivated they are by money, etc.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Fair enough. You have good and bad managers at all kinds of companies.

Except I would say that at a larger company, there is at least some sort of consistency to the idiocy and it's somewhat buffered by the organization as a whole. At a small startup, your career is much more closely tied to the whims of your boss's "vision" and his personality quirks.

On the other hand, at a large company you have virtually no chance of impacting the strategic direction of the company. At a start-up you should be able to make your voice heard. That's a huge value to certain people, specifically people who gravitate toward start-ups. For some people feeling like a cog in a giant company is soul crushing, so to be able to work in an environment where you can make your case to the CEO is a big deal. Just making a difference is extremely valuable to a lot of people.

For instance, say you're one of two developers the start-up has who are working on the new API product that's a critical part of the company's growth plan. Sure they could fire you and get a new developer. But you actually matter, and that's very fulfilling to some people. A less chaotic office where you're working on a new version of one of 400 products the company offers just isn't an appealing alternative for everyone.




So basically what you are saying is that working at a startup sucks as bad as being a first year analyst at Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Cravath Swaine & Moore or Deloitte? Only without the resume-building name or career track to partner / MD?

I was saying lots of young people expect to work extremely hard early in their career. None of those names you mentioned are good resume-builders for tech start-ups. If you want to work in start-ups you should seek start-up experience.




Well first of all, it's absurd. If your expect employees to constantly "exceed expectations", then raise the expectations. Otherwise you are bitching at them for not wearing enough "flair".

I like to be challenged too. However "challenging" people does not mean giving them impossible assignments and then treating them as if they aren't working hard enough if they fail to complete them 100% according to (often uncomunicated) expectations.


Well I never did that and I've never worked at another start-up. For what it's worth, I did my start-up, pursued my dream. There's no way I would work for somebody else's. So as much as I'm defending working for a start-up I wouldn't.



I never noticed much difference. Other than at the startup, the lack of resources applified every bad management decision.

I think the difference is the lack of resources precludes there being much of a bureaucracy. If you're annoyed by the company's overall bad strategy then that's fine, it's a different story. But big companies are better at annoying you and distracting you from your day-to-day work, I think.

[msmith537]

On the other hand, at a large company you have virtually no chance of impacting the strategic direction of the company.


Do you really give every employee a chance of impacting the strategic direction of your company?




At a start-up you should be able to make your voice heard. That's a huge value to certain people, specifically people who gravitate toward start-ups.


Maybe a kid right out of college should spend less time worrying about "making their voice heard" and more time learning how their company or industry actually works?




I think the difference is the lack of resources precludes there being much of a bureaucracy. If you're annoyed by the company's overall bad strategy then that's fine, it's a different story. But big companies are better at annoying you and distracting you from your day-to-day work, I think.

I found it distracting working for a startup and not being able to get the office phones to work because they weren't set up properly. Or that my boss would bother me every 2 minutes with his latest "great idea" that was completly unrealistic. Or that I had to work for weeks with a laptop that blue screened every 20 minutes until the lone IT guy could finally get around to fixing it.


What seems to be a common theme is that startup folk think that the rest of corporate America is inept or irrelevant. And encouraging that sort of thinking is similar to what cults do. Cults tell their members how special they are for being part of a cult and how anyone outside of the cult wouldn't understand or is actively against them. They reframe their message so that desiring working conditions that most people would consider reasonible - normalish hours, defined structure, career progression - are perceived as a weakness or character flaw.

I'm not even making this shit up. One company I worked for in the 90s actually provided a well known corporate book with entire chapters on creating a cult-like environment.

[even sven]

Not everyone wants or needs the structure and career progression that you value. You have an MBA and work as a consultant (right?) so you have a lot of interest in management, organizational structure, corporate strategy, etc. These are the things that get you wet about a company. And in your field, things like name value and career progression hold a lot of weight.

But a young person with an applied skill, like coding or design, doesn't give a flying fuck about corporate structure and name value, as long as they are reasonably sure they'll have some notice so they can get another job before the company folds. When you have a practical skill, what you need to do when you are young is to build up a really compelling portfolio of things you have done with that skill. And so the most attractive job is going to be the one that gives you the best opportunity to shine, to grow, and to take on increasingly impressive projects. Startups are a great way to go from "rookie coder' to "demonstrated expert at X, Y and Z" Walking the rigid corporate ladder, going from "Assistant coder A" to "Assistant coder B" to "Associate coder A" is the long, slow, boring route to the same thing. Why spend five years going up the corporate ladder when you can walk into a startup after college and have the same title after a year and have a lot more freedom while doing it?

Eventually, you may want a corporate job and the stability that comes with that. But tech is not management consulting. You may have gone to MIT, worked for Microsoft for five years, and put in all your dues, but Google isn't going to hire you unless you can show that you have done some pretty badass things with code. Likewise, your formal experience may be limited to "messing around with the computer in my basement", but if you can back that up with the work you have done, you may well be able to get yourself hired to a high-level position. I have friends in high-level positions with good companies who walked in with nothing but half-assed expereince at no-name companies (and great examples of their skills). Unlike management consulting, people in tech are not going to face much discrimination from spending some time with small, shaky startups. It's a part of the culture, and it's expected. It's where people get their chops.

Again, you are comparing apples and oranges. Big consulting firms only hire from a select group of elite universities. Tech firms actively encourage people to drop out of college and get their hands dirty starting businesses (seriously- there is a tech leader who is offering 100k to promising students to drop out of college.) Big consulting firms rely on a rigid merit structure because if you walk up to a major company and say "Hey, I'm a badass consultant and you should hire me" they just aren't going to believe you- you get your credibility by working up the ranks. But a coder has some real, tangible deliverables to back up their claims, so they are less reliant on having an impeccible career record. Technical jobs lean more towards being skill based meritocracies, rather then being relient on networks and impressive credentials. So people are going to value where they can use their skills, not what has the biggest name value.

[msmith537]

Not everyone wants or needs the structure and career progression that you value. You have an MBA and work as a consultant (right?) so you have a lot of interest in management, organizational structure, corporate strategy, etc. These are the things that get you wet about a company. And in your field, things like name value and career progression hold a lot of weight.

Well..."interest" is a strong word.

"structure" is also a strong word. Most consulting firms are organized as loose pools of resources to be assembled for specific projects.

Unless you want to keep doing the same exact job with the same exact responsibilities for 40 years, EVERYONE is interested in some sort of career progression.

Unless you work for Mckinsey doing pure strat work, much of management consulting is technology related. Especially at firms like Accenture or IBM. In fact, that's how I got my foot in the door, because my grades weren't so great.

But yes. I would say my interest and experience lies in increasing businesses performance. Putting a bunch of smart kids in a room and having them figure out problems is not a sustainable and scalable business model in the long term.




But a young person with an applied skill, like coding or design, doesn't give a flying fuck about corporate structure and name value, as long as they are reasonably sure they'll have some notice so they can get another job before the company folds. When you have a practical skill, what you need to do when you are young is to build up a really compelling portfolio of things you have done with that skill...

I don't think that's entirely true. The "drop out of college and join a startup" thing is largely annecdotal. Most people I have met in the high tech startup space are highly educated and many do have experience with big companies.

[Voyager]

On the other hand, at a large company you have virtually no chance of impacting the strategic direction of the company. At a start-up you should be able to make your voice heard. That's a huge value to certain people, specifically people who gravitate toward start-ups. For some people feeling like a cog in a giant company is soul crushing, so to be able to work in an environment where you can make your case to the CEO is a big deal. Just making a difference is extremely valuable to a lot of people.

Blowing really hard can affect the course of a toy boat in a kiddie pool. An aircraft carrier on the ocean, not so much.
I can't make my case to the CEO of my big company. I can to the VP who is down the hall, and who has more people and budget than almost any startup I've heard of. Now, I do have a good track record. Management should listen to the ideas of everyone, but letting them influence strategic direction? Not hardly. Unity of direction is very important - a company which zigs and zags based on input from just about everyone is not going to get very far.

[Algher]

I am on my 5th startup, plus time at two global companies, one management consulting firm, and a stint in academia.

It is a different world, and each stage of the startup is also different. I have been with heavily funded companies twice where we were simply an aggressive small company. I have been with an Angel funded firm where we burned through $1 million and they pulled the plug. I have been with another firm that wanted to grow, but had gotten there by bootstrapping and the co-founders did not want to take on VC funding and lose their control.

So there is not a single model of startup - they are in different stages and different fields. I have always worked in B2B - Business to Business software products. It is a lot of fun, great culture, hard work and hard play type stuff.

My corporate days SUCKED. Way too long to get anything done, or to make a change, or to respond to market needs. However, it was nice to know that those firms would be around forever.

[Voyager]

Well first of all, it's absurd. If your expect employees to constantly "exceed expectations", then raise the expectations. Otherwise you are bitching at them for not wearing enough "flair".

Or some execs get their jollies telling their reports that they suck. A company with a large number of employees rated unsatisfactory had better look at its rating or hiring policies - or both.

I like to be challenged too. However "challenging" people does not mean giving them impossible assignments and then treating them as if they aren't working hard enough if they fail to complete them 100% according to (often uncomunicated) expectations.

Even worse, people work like hell to do what they get rated on, and neglect the stuff that might really be important for the success of the company. I've been there - but not for long.

[steronz]

I have several friends who work or worked for startups, and the story is always the same. None of them did it for the "culture," and none of them did it for the potential payoff. One of my friends left a well-paying job, working with people he liked, at a medium-sized software company. The products his company produced were solid, and lots of people depended on them. I wouldn't say it was even uninteresting work, especially compared to the boring schlock I do for money. But, as he put it, "[This startup] has the potential to change the way the world works." Might seem like hyperbole, but he made a good case. He wanted to be on the forefront of computing history. My other friends similarly wanted to work on the sort of cutting edge products that larger companies wouldn't risk working on, because they were also dreamers.

Now, I know there are plenty of startups that are basically just investor scams, and all they want to do is rip off venture capitalists with a song and dance about being the next Facebook or whatever, but I'd guess that the people at the bottom of those companies, on some level, believe that they have a chance to do something first, to do it excitingly, and to change the world in the process.

Eventually they'll all get old and have babies and work for CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet, formatting reports and whatnot.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Do you really give every employee a chance of impacting the strategic direction of your company?

No but it's easier to be in a position to do that than it is at a large company for exactly the reason you're hinting at in your question. It doesn't matter if you have 100,000 employees or 30, you can only have so many people influencing the company's strategy. If it's vital to you to feel like a part of the company and contribute to where it's headed, the smart move is to work for a smaller company. It's not just influencing direction either, your work inherently matters more.

You can be one of 5 customer service reps and know that your dedication to doing a good job really helps build the company's reputation for offering great service. Customer service reps at AT&T don't get to make that impact.



Maybe a kid right out of college should spend less time worrying about "making their voice heard" and more time learning how their company or industry actually works?

Maybe, but I wouldn't suggest it to anybody.



I found it distracting working for a startup and not being able to get the office phones to work because they weren't set up properly. Or that my boss would bother me every 2 minutes with his latest "great idea" that was completly unrealistic. Or that I had to work for weeks with a laptop that blue screened every 20 minutes until the lone IT guy could finally get around to fixing it.


You definitely had a bad boss but he could've worked anywhere. Obviously there are good and bad executives all over. Maybe it's on you for picking a startup with a bad management team? The IT problems are a good point.


What seems to be a common theme is that startup folk think that the rest of corporate America is inept or irrelevant. And encouraging that sort of thinking is similar to what cults do. Cults tell their members how special they are for being part of a cult and how anyone outside of the cult wouldn't understand or is actively against them. They reframe their message so that desiring working conditions that most people would consider reasonible - normalish hours, defined structure, career progression - are perceived as a weakness or character flaw.

I'm not even making this shit up. One company I worked for in the 90s actually provided a well known corporate book with entire chapters on creating a cult-like environment.

I've never personally observed that in the slightest but I've never been a part of silicon valley either. East coast start-ups definitely have a different culture.

But anyway, I don't think you're weak or flawed for needing structure, but that kind of career has never appealed to me.

[even sven]

I don't think that's entirely true. The "drop out of college and join a startup" thing is largely annecdotal. Most people I have met in the high tech startup space are highly educated and many do have experience with big companies.

It's not universal, but it does happen, and that is a sharp contrast to industries where it pretty much never happens. I'm in an industry now that, if you do not have a post-graduate degree from a well-regarded school and a selective internship, you have basically zero chance of getting into a mid-career position with a large organization, no matter what your technical skills are.

In tech, going to a top-tier school will probably help out, and interships are great, but it's not as much as a prerequisite. The emphasis is on building skills and responsbilities, and startups are great for that. My startup hired a lot of UC Berkeley whiz kids, but also a pretty random assortment of eccentric characters with lots of talent but few credentials to their name.

It's worth noting that most people working at startups don't intend to make that their life plan (unless, of course, they get lucky and the startup makes it big.) In most cases it's something to do for a few years after college before you move on to something else. Startup workers are not as concerned if the company is stable and well-managed or not. Everyone knows that at any time there is a chance the whole thing could crash and burn. But a shaky and poorly managed company doesn't neccessarily inhibit you from building your technical skills.

It's like someone who does lighting for movies- being the assistant to the assistant of the lighting director for the Best Lighting Oscar movie isn't worth half as much as being in charge of lighting for a terrible money-burning B movie that had gorgeous lighting and has given you some great shots in your demo reel.

[msmith537]

No but it's easier to be in a position to do that than it is at a large company for exactly the reason you're hinting at in your question. It doesn't matter if you have 100,000 employees or 30, you can only have so many people influencing the company's strategy. If it's vital to you to feel like a part of the company and contribute to where it's headed, the smart move is to work for a smaller company. It's not just influencing direction either, your work inherently matters more.


I think it has less to do with the size of the company than it does the culture. I always liked consulting firms because you have the resources of a large company, but your work usually consists of being part of a small, high impact team working at a client site, solving some big problem for their senior management .



You definitely had a bad boss but he could've worked anywhere. Obviously there are good and bad executives all over. Maybe it's on you for picking a startup with a bad management team? The IT problems are a good point.


They looked good on paper. It's hard to tell sometimes.




But anyway, I don't think you're weak or flawed for needing structure, but that kind of career has never appealed to me.

Some structure is good. Like having working phones or having someone to call when your laptop breaks.

[Beware of Doug]

I would say my interest and experience lies in increasing businesses performance. Putting a bunch of smart kids in a room and having them figure out problems is not a sustainable and scalable business model in the long term.That says something pretty sorry about businesses' priorities today, if problem-solving isn't considered relevant to improving performance. Then again, reality doesn't drive the numbers anymore - the numbers drive reality.

[msmith537]

That says something pretty sorry about businesses' priorities today, if problem-solving isn't considered relevant to improving performance. Then again, reality doesn't drive the numbers anymore - the numbers drive reality.

That's not really what I meant. The trick is to make the solution repeatable.

[amarinth]

I've worked in multiple startups, in various stages of the startup process. Two of those companies were bought out by large, established, household-name companies.

Of your list, the only thing that rings true was the long hours. The rest, not so much. I didn't experience the cult thing. The compensation was comparable. And the large companies I ended up at were horribly managed. The multiple levels of managers at established, larger companies had more experience making bad decisions than the some of startup management teams did, but when they actually did make decisions, the decisions weren't any better. The management teams at the larger companies also seemed to spend a lot of time not making decisions, while the startup management teams would at least do things - sometimes the wrong thing, but they did make decisions and implement them. I have a very small sample size, so it may very well be that the large companies I ended up at were just incredibly incompetent companies and their problems are not indicative of the problems at most large companies. Still, it seems the benefits of those companies were not that they were run that much better but that they had enough capital to weather their mistakes.

My favorite job ever was with a company with a great product idea and a horrible business plan; the management team had no idea how to make money. They did create an environment where my co-workers and I could collaborate, work through problems, and get things done. There were long hours, but I could see the results of the long hours I was spending at work. The company fell apart because they ran out of money, but it was great while it lasted.

[Nava]

That's not really what I meant. The trick is to make the solution repeatable.

And the problem in some large companies is that once they found a solution which worked for a case, and they insist on applying it to every other case. I'm sure you've run into the confusion between robust and straitjacketed more than once.

Some of my clients were startups; there was for example that one where their reaction to "we're going to examine your processes, learn your corporate culture and then come up with the way to use this program that fits you best" was "oh, but we don't have a corporate culture!" "Yes you do, you just don't have it on paper. Promise. You don't work together for three years without developing a corporate culture." They had repeatable solutions, but also the ability to recognize when a case had not come up before, and processes for dealing with these. Too often, established companies have lost that mental flexibility and have grown into a mindset where the unforeseen becomes unseen.

[Hello Again]

It's pretty you should ask, msmith537, since most people would rather stab themselves in the face than do what you do. Swooping in at the behest of seagull managers to piss everyone off, then swooping out again once you've done your damage. Spending all your time in Corporate HQ shitholes like Midland, MI and Omaha, NE. Traveling all the time to see people who hate you. Partying with the bros at the same crappy mall bars all over the country.

You're going to say, "but my job is nothing like that!" Exactly. Every job looks shitty if a)it doesn't appeal to you to begin with and b)you only see the worst examples of it.

[ftg]

I'm in Computer Science, so I've known a lot of people of the years who've gotten into startups. (Including the ground floor of some quite famous ones.)

There's a spectrum of outcomes, of course. Almost all end in failure for the usual reasons. A few people did well. Actually made it to the stage where they could cash in their stock options and buy 2nd homes and such.

(Note: All too often, even once a company is sold or goes public, employees with stock options and such are limited in what they can do and when. Some people actually end up owing the IRS big taxes on stocks they can't sell and later turn out to be worthless.)

Those people I know who keep going back for more after being burned seem to have the "gold rush" mentality. The next site is going to be the big one, if they can just hold on a bit longer, the mother lode will be hit. Just a little longer, it's really going to happen this time.

Key repeated scenario: The suits start firing people. Round after round. Especially when they get to the "we need to find a sucker buyer now" stage. Some of the founder suits end up with no employees under them. They still draw salary and benefits and do no work. The suits never fire themselves. You're either a suit or meat.

[msmith537]

It's pretty you should ask, msmith537, since most people would rather stab themselves in the face than do what you do. Swooping in at the behest of seagull managers to piss everyone off, then swooping out again once you've done your damage. Spending all your time in Corporate HQ shitholes like Midland, MI and Omaha, NE. Traveling all the time to see people who hate you. Partying with the bros at the same crappy mall bars all over the country.

You're going to say, "but my job is nothing like that!"

Sadly...I'm not. Most people who do what I do would also prefer stabbing themselves in the face.:(


Technically I don't do management consulting anymore. I'm an independent contractor working as a project manager for the program management office of a large Wall Street insurance company.

[msmith537]

You're going to say, "but my job is nothing like that!" Exactly. Every job looks shitty if a)it doesn't appeal to you to begin with and b)you only see the worst examples of it.

It's not so much the job itself I question. A computer programmer at Dropbox.com, Accenture and Walmart's corporate HQ is essentially the same "job". But their work environments are radically different.

Heck, I have what is basically the same "job" at my current company as I did at my last company working for some crazy startup-ish tech firm. The difference is now I can go home at 6pm, I don't get calls after hours, and I have a sweet-ass view of the Brooklyn Bridge out my window instead of a shitty roach-infested loft in Tribeca with plastic wrap over the vents for climate control.



I'm in Computer Science, so I've known a lot of people of the years who've gotten into startups. (Including the ground floor of some quite famous ones.)

There's a spectrum of outcomes, of course. Almost all end in failure for the usual reasons. A few people did well. Actually made it to the stage where they could cash in their stock options and buy 2nd homes and such.

(Note: All too often, even once a company is sold or goes public, employees with stock options and such are limited in what they can do and when. Some people actually end up owing the IRS big taxes on stocks they can't sell and later turn out to be worthless.)

Those people I know who keep going back for more after being burned seem to have the "gold rush" mentality. The next site is going to be the big one, if they can just hold on a bit longer, the mother lode will be hit. Just a little longer, it's really going to happen this time.

Key repeated scenario: The suits start firing people. Round after round. Especially when they get to the "we need to find a sucker buyer now" stage. Some of the founder suits end up with no employees under them. They still draw salary and benefits and do no work. The suits never fire themselves. You're either a suit or meat.

One thing that soured me a bit on the whole "startup" culture is how there is that gold rush mentality. Maybe it's an East Coast / 90s dot com thing, but to me it felt less like a bunch of kids starting a company in their dorm and more like Ivy League investment bankers, strategy consultants and trust fund kids playing a shell game with VC funding, "incubators" and "exit strategies" for questionable business plans in order to get rich quick and avoid working real jobs. I mean we actually had alumni speaking in my classes in 2000, saying how you have to really think hard about whether you want to stay in B-school vs starting your own company. Which seems to echo your own observations.

[dre2xl]

I've worked at both. There's nothing magical about tech startups. To address a few points from my perspective:

People who go into there know the odds, and don't expect any big payoff.

Hours & crunch time are really a by-product of management, not of necessity, and in that regard, I haven't found that startups are worse than corporations. *shrug*

Amount of direction, influence, etc., and a lot of other mentioned issues are really all also culture/management, imo. I've had plenty of all those benefits at big corporations.

IMO, they aren't really that much different. The thing I like most about tech startups is the relative lack of crusty, bitter engineers. Not being around depressing influences is worth the pay cut to me.

[Martin Hyde]

I've not really worked for a tech startup or a fortune 500 company but I can see them both having their pros and cons. A lot of the cons mentioned about startups aren't necessarily intrinsic to them, a good startup could probably provide decent work-life balance and etc. They probably won't match the pay of more established companies, but they do have some potential for pay above and beyond that and advancement into positions of higher importance faster.

The big thing I'd watch out for is, even the the worst Fortune 500 company you know more or less what you're getting, or at least you should. In this day and age any really big employer is going to have tons of reviews on sites like Glassdoor.com and etc. You can at least get a feel for the company, further, almost all of the Fortune 500 is publicly traded and even the privately held ones are so big you can get decent research on them. This means you can really do some due diligence and see what the company's business model is, how viable it is, how likely they are to lay everyone off in an economic downturn and etc.

With a startup, you have no such guarantees and can easily be lied to by the person recruiting you. Something mentioned upthread is the startup designed just to attract enough venture capital to get the founders rich and then bought off or folded up is something I've seen a little bit of...and something to watch. I don't know how common it is but I've known of a few in my area that basically followed that mold (and a few business partners of mine invested in on a personal level), there are also startups that don't intend for that to happen but get too deep in and realize their business model is untenable but keep asking for more and more money from investors because they think one big deal or contract will save the day and reverse all wrongs. Being an employee at a company like that can turn out badly.

[stw004]

I think it has less to do with the size of the company than it does the culture. I always liked consulting firms because you have the resources of a large company, but your work usually consists of being part of a small, high impact team working at a client site, solving some big problem for their senior management .


Isn't there an old saying that goes, "Consulting: If you aren't part of the solution there's good money to be made prolonging the problem."?

:D

[msmith537]

IMO, they aren't really that much different. The thing I like most about tech startups is the relative lack of crusty, bitter engineers. Not being around depressing influences is worth the pay cut to me.

Come on. You always need to have at least ONE crusty, bitter (perhaps even crazy) engineer who just happens to know everything about everything.


I'll admit, the opportunity to be part of a rapidly growing company where people have a positive outlook about their careers and the future of the company is certainly appealing. And I think when you are young and right out of college, you should be working 100 hours a week, traveling all over and gaining the practical experience that will jump start your career.



Martin Hyde - I don't know what to make of the Glassdoor.com reviews. That sort of prompted my starting this thread in the first place. When you look at some of the "best places to work" like Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Mckinsey, Accenture, Google, any of the Big-4 accounting\consulting firms, tech startups and whatnot, they all sort of say the same thing, regardless if it's one or five stars:

PROS:
Great being part of a group of smart, hardworking people working on the latest and greatest whatnot.

CONS:
Work life balance sucks. Pay isn't that great. Lack of upward mobility unless you know someone.

ADVICE TO MANAGEMENT:
Stop treating employees like meat to be ground up and spit out.

[Celidin]

I've worked at two companies that were probably technically just beyond the true start-up phase, but still had a lot of the same people, management and thinking. I am now working for a Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical with tens of thousands of employees.

And I'm actively looking to go back.

Working for a start-up gave me some great benefits that I'm now actively comparing to the huge organization I'm in now.

1) The employees here are mediocre. There are some solid people who know what they're doing, but there are many, many more people who seem like they're just here taking up space. Trying to get simple things like a 1-page HTML-based, nothing complicated landing page made through our development dept could take as long as a week ... and it would be screwed up. The other two start ups - it would have been done same day, and done correctly. (And no, it's not simply because of queue time).

Or, to put in different terms - A+ employees like to be surrounded by other A+ employees. You don't get that in big bureaucracies where B-level and C-level employees can "hide" for years. In a start up environment, if you can't keep up, you get let go for someone who can. Start ups simply can't afford to keep someone useless on the books.

2) Bureaucracy. This company I'm in now has something like 40k employees worldwide. Trying to get a website hosted is atrocious. I can't even tell you who these people are or who they report to. They sit in a different office that's 20 miles away (and it might as well be the other side of the planet). There's no responsiveness and there's no one I can track down to call.

At the two start ups, on a huge number of occassions I could simply walk over to the head of IT and tell him my problem (or to be less intrusive, shoot him an email or leave a voicemail) and it'd get solved. Or the site would be hosted. Or hell, they'd give me the ability to access the webservers and host the site. Things got done quickly and didn't have to go through 4 levels of checks and 3 weeks of "committee/guidance" meetings.

3) Advancement. In the one start up, I went from a mid-level individual contributor to a team lead to a dept manager to the director of a couple departments, within about 3 1/2 years. At the same time, my salary almost doubled. In the large company I'm in now, I'll be lucky if I get promoted once in the next 2 years ... and if the economy doesn't affect the company, I can look forward to 3% raises until I I quit.

If you're a good employee, a start up can recognize that and reward you accordingly with promotions or bonus money or raises. A large bureaucracy? Not so much.

And then, as has been mentioned above, there's always the possibility the start up gets bought or goes public and suddenly everyone's rich.

[Mangetout]

They are typically extremely critical cultures, demanding people constantly "exceed expectations" whatever that means.


We've got that here at the moment as part of the PDR process (although we're not a tech startup) and it's really weird bullshit.
Management actually issued a statement saying "We expect most people to be exceeding expectations".
What they really mean is "We're going to rate everyone on a five-point scale, which goes: Shit, Mediocre, OK, Brilliant, Outstanding, and it's not OK just to be 'OK'"

(which in itself is contradictory, but these things always are - "Acceptable" actually means "substandard"; "satisfactory" actually means "somehow less than satisfactory")

[BlinkingDuck]

Not in the tech industry, but my WAG: there is a chance for a huge payoff by being at the ground floor and there is a sense of helping build something from scratch.

Part of my job is traveling to countries and starting up new projects. It starts with a handful of people working in a hotel and (hopefully) ends with a humming beehive of efficiency. During that start up phase, you work obscene hours, but it is kind of fun. There is a comradery amongst the staff that you won't have once the project gets larger and it's nice to feel that your actions and decisions have a larger than normal impact on outcomes.

The problem with that belief is that many organizations grow like trees...which means they grow upward fast but the individual part of the tree stays the same distance above the ground. When people realize this, they leaveto be replaced by another recent grad idealistic.

[even sven]

Also worth noting is that not everyone has the knowledge, qualifications and/or luck to be employed by a larger firm. In other words, these startup reviews may be comparing them to something like working at a low end tech support call center, rather than comparing them to working for Microsoft on an accelerated management track. On the grand perspective, it's the relatively rare 22 year old that has the long-term vision, focus, and previous qualifications (top school, excellent internships, etc.) that leads to the career track with a major company directly out of college. No doubt you saw a lot of these career-saavy, well-qualified and ambitious young professionals in your MBA program and subsequent employement, but that's a self-selecting group that doesn't reflect most people's experiences. Lots of recent grads are still drifiting career wise, and may just be happy to have a job in their field. If that job doesn't overtly suck, they'll probably be over the moon about it.

I don't think this is neccessarily a reflection on the intellegence of the individuals, either. I grew up in a blue/pink collar family where "ambition" meant getting an entry level government job and sitting on it until retirement. I had never been close to someone who had a professional career, and I was in one of those situations where you just don't know what you don't know. I didn't have a concept in my head for "get recruited by a large organization." I didn't know that happened, and I had no realistic way of knowing it.

[msmith537]

Or, to put in different terms - A+ employees like to be surrounded by other A+ employees. You don't get that in big bureaucracies where B-level and C-level employees can "hide" for years. In a start up environment, if you can't keep up, you get let go for someone who can. Start ups simply can't afford to keep someone useless on the books.

2) Bureaucracy. This company I'm in now has something like 40k employees worldwide. Trying to get a website hosted is atrocious. I can't even tell you who these people are or who they report to. They sit in a different office that's 20 miles away (and it might as well be the other side of the planet). There's no responsiveness and there's no one I can track down to call.

At the two start ups, on a huge number of occassions I could simply walk over to the head of IT and tell him my problem (or to be less intrusive, shoot him an email or leave a voicemail) and it'd get solved.


In reality, people who think they are "A+ performers" like to be surrounded by people who coddle them and provide validation that they are, in fact, special A+ people. That sort of hyper-responsive, "drink from the firehouse", OCD workstyle sort of works in a small company where everything is chaotic and the team is small enough where everyone knows everyone. And it makes people feel like their work MUST be important since they are constantly running around working on it.

But as a company grows, the head of IT can't put out fires for you and another dozen people just like you who think that their project is the most important thing on the planet.

Some people think the entire notion of superstar performers is bullshit to begin with. Do you really believe you are so awesome that you can go from "mid-level individual contributor" to "team lead" to "dept manager" to "Director of a couple departments" over a space of 3 1/2 years? That's an average of ten months per job to learn the new job and demonstrate a consistent level of competency at not only that job, but the one above it in order to justify promoting you. Basic logic would dictate that you were likely hired at a much lower level than you should have been, each of your roles were basically the same, or that someone decided you were "The Guy" for reason that are probably more subjective and arbitrary than you would care to admit.

And what about all the other "A+" performers who work along side of you? Do they all get promoted every 6-12 months too? I actually worked at a company like that. You know what happened? They ended up with a glut of middle "account managers" and had to keep inventing more levels between that role and the "managing director" role where you actually run an entire practice area. They also laid off a bunch in a slow trickle of "counselling out" sessions.





Also worth noting is that not everyone has the knowledge, qualifications and/or luck to be employed by a larger firm. In other words, these startup reviews may be comparing them to something like working at a low end tech support call center, rather than comparing them to working for Microsoft on an accelerated management track.


I'm not so sure there is that much distinction. IME, people who work at Silicon Valley / East Coast startups are the same smart, ambitious, educated people who could get competitive analyst jobs on Wall Street or in consulting firms or in management training programs at large companies. They just have an aversion to large corporations, probably because of the relative anonymity, the rigid structure of conformity and slow methodical pace of everything.

[raspberry hunter]

So disclaimer: I do not work for a tech startup, but I work for a small-ish company that does technical work and has some things in common with a startup (can be long hours, flexible, relatively inexperienced management -- I think there's, like, one MBA in the entire company):

In reality, people who think they are "A+ performers" like to be surrounded by people who coddle them and provide validation that they are, in fact, special A+ people. That sort of hyper-responsive, "drink from the firehouse", OCD workstyle sort of works in a small company where everything is chaotic and the team is small enough where everyone knows everyone. And it makes people feel like their work MUST be important since they are constantly running around working on it.

Uh... okay? How about if I talk, not about myself (I wouldn't call myself a special A+ performer anyway, I like too many other things other than work) about people I know (some at my company, some at startups) that I think are A+ performers but who have never referred to themselves that way (and many of whom probably wouldn't think of themselves that way anyway)? Every single one of those people wants to work with other smart competent hard-working people because it's more fun to work with smart competent hard-working people that you can spark off of. Even though I don't think of myself as a special A+ performer, there are times when I've been working through something technical with another guy on my team trying to solve something and everything just comes together and I go home even after twelve hours of work thinking, "Wow, my job is awesome!" It has nothing to do with thinking the project is the most important thing on the planet. It's the thrill of solving problems with other people who are focused on it. (I got the same thrill in school out of staying up until 3am doing problem sets with friends, sometimes, and obviously that wasn't important at all -- in fact, in grad school I took the classes pass/fail, so it was actually pretty much completely not important for any external reason to do the problem sets)

The husband of my close friend works in a large company with guys who are just marking time, and he hates it.

Some people think the entire notion of superstar performers is bullshit to begin with. Do you really believe you are so awesome that you can go from "mid-level individual contributor" to "team lead" to "dept manager" to "Director of a couple departments" over a space of 3 1/2 years? That's an average of ten months per job to learn the new job and demonstrate a consistent level of competency at not only that job, but the one above it in order to justify promoting you. Basic logic would dictate that you were likely hired at a much lower level than you should have been, each of your roles were basically the same, or that someone decided you were "The Guy" for reason that are probably more subjective and arbitrary than you would care to admit.

Eh. I don't think your definition of A+ performer is the same as mine. An A+ performer, in my book, is someone who is smart and competent and hard-working and good to work with, and that's not necessarily the guy who vaults to director in a couple of years. That being said, in my company some people do this kind of jump, because yes, they happen to be very good at leading and in bringing in work, and those people do have to be A+ performers to show that. Most don't.

And what about all the other "A+" performers who work along side of you? Do they all get promoted every 6-12 months too? I actually worked at a company like that. You know what happened? They ended up with a glut of middle "account managers" and had to keep inventing more levels between that role and the "managing director" role where you actually run an entire practice area. They also laid off a bunch in a slow trickle of "counselling out" sessions.

Many of the A+ performers at my company stay at a technical contributor level (at most rising to technical team lead) because they're happy doing technical work and don't want to manage. In fact, the two best A+ performers in my department have both refused repeated attempts to try to get them into management (in one case, he accepted and then decided he hated it and demanded a demotion, actually).

I'm not so sure there is that much distinction. IME, people who work at Silicon Valley / East Coast startups are the same smart, ambitious, educated people who could get competitive analyst jobs on Wall Street or in consulting firms or in management training programs at large companies. They just have an aversion to large corporations, probably because of the relative anonymity, the rigid structure of conformity and slow methodical pace of everything.

...didn't you just answer your own question in the OP? I am confused.

[Celidin]

In reality, people who think they are "A+ performers" like to be surrounded by people who coddle them and provide validation that they are, in fact, special A+ people. That sort of hyper-responsive, "drink from the firehouse", OCD workstyle sort of works in a small company where everything is chaotic and the team is small enough where everyone knows everyone. And it makes people feel like their work MUST be important since they are constantly running around working on it.

I disagree. So does Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/12/14/top-ten-reasons-why-large-companies-fail-to-keep-their-best-talent/2/) (see #7).

The reality of the situation is that there are people who perform their job well and those that don't. People who fall into the first category tend to want to surround themselves with others who also perform their job well. Or to put it in a direct hypothetical - would you rather work in a company making widgets where everyone performs their job and does it well, or would you rather work in a company where your co-workers spend half their day goofing off on a message board or on Facebook or whatever and take twice as long to get anything accomplished?

I, for one, am all for taking a few minutes for a "brain break", but when I need something done in a timeline that we've all agreed to, then I don't want to see you spending most of your day on Facebook.


But as a company grows, the head of IT can't put out fires for you and another dozen people just like you who think that their project is the most important thing on the planet.

This is a true statement and as a small company grows, they'll have to figure out how to handle it. And it seems ultimately after enough years and a large enough company, a huge bureaucracy grows up as policies and procedures and help desk tickets are put into place. And about the time I would like to seek another place else to work.


Some people think the entire notion of superstar performers is bullshit to begin with.


Who? Can you let me know so I can avoid those companies?


Do you really believe you are so awesome that you can go from "mid-level individual contributor" to "team lead" to "dept manager" to "Director of a couple departments" over a space of 3 1/2 years? That's an average of ten months per job to learn the new job and demonstrate a consistent level of competency at not only that job, but the one above it in order to justify promoting you. Basic logic would dictate that you were likely hired at a much lower level than you should have been, each of your roles were basically the same, or that someone decided you were "The Guy" for reason that are probably more subjective and arbitrary than you would care to admit.


Do I think it was possible to jump from individual contributor to director in a few years? Yes. I'm sure it makes me sound arrogant (and in this case, yeah I probably am), but I am very good at what I do, I learn extremely quickly and I am more than willing to put in the extra hours and hard work to learn what I need to. And ultimately that got recognized in additional responsibility and some rather large raises.

I think what gets missed for people who don't work at a start up is that yes - you're putting in long hours and the work is strenuous, but that also means you're learning at a very accelerated rate. I was just in a "leadership meeting" with my boss and she made the comment (in discussing the yearly performance review cycle) that "when you get to have 4-5 direct reports, you need to be more careful throughout the year on taking notes to properly evaluate their performance."

That's a very true statement, especially since most of the people around the table only had maybe 1-2 direct reports (and a bunch of contractors under them that don't get performance reviews). I couldn't help but chuckle inside in that at one point, I had about 18 people directly reporting to me (not fair to me or them and really needed to change). Meaning that for the 2 years this situation was standing, I did more performance reviews and performance review meetings than my current boss (high-middle-manager) would do in like 7 or 8 years. It gave the opportunity to learn how a large variety of people would respond to their reviews in a very short period of time. Meaning I gained 8 years of performance-review-experience in 2. Other things were similar.



And what about all the other "A+" performers who work along side of you? Do they all get promoted every 6-12 months too?


Some of them, absolutely. We were in a position where the company was actually growing pretty quickly, so there was room to create - and a severe need to create, in some cases - mid-level and eventually junior-executive-level management positions.

But the reality of the situation is that not everyone wants to or needs to be in a management role. There's a whole class of workers who are happy to be individual contributors, and eventually very senior individual contributors. A bunch of the A+ people I worked with fell into this and they were more than happy to get big raises and keep doing their job, or take on new projects/new technology and learn new things.


Going back to the "some people... notion of superstar performers is bullshit" comment ... In my opinion and experience, the people who complain about the "all star performers" who "constantly get promoted" or "are so-and-so's best friend, so they get the raises" complain because of two reasons.

1) There's a legitimate complaint and you have a manager who's doing a poor job. Thinking around, I actually can name two or three of them in the company I'm in now. Can start ups or smaller companies get stuck with a bad manager? Absolutely, I had to suffer through one for a bit.

However, in a good* start up or small company environment that sort of poor manager doesn't last very long, because it's very, very obvious even to the upper layers of the company what's going on. In a larger corporation, it's a hell of a lot easier for that person to hide, or to get a chain of poor managers pulling the same tricks.

2) The complainer is lazy or otherwise a poor performer and would rather blame someone else for their lack of advancement. Again, it's very possible for this type of person to be in a start up, but they usually don't last very long. They either burn themselves out or get fired for poor performance. In a large corporation, it's very easy for this person to hide, or to find one small job that they're okay at and stay there. They still won't advance in the corporation, but they'll have a job.

Ultimately, we can politely discuss management theory till we're sore from typing. But, getting back to the OP question, the reason I gravitate towards small companies and start ups is because of those three reasons - I can find a place where I'm surrounded by other people who are doing their job well, I know most of the people in the company and know how to get things done and I advance more quickly than elsewhere.

[Ethilrist]

(a) Free kool-aid.
(b) A steadfast certainty that something like the dot-com bubble couldn't POSSIBLY happen twice in one lifetime.

[ftg]

Also worth noting is that not everyone has the knowledge, qualifications and/or luck to be employed by a larger firm. In other words, these startup reviews may be comparing them to something like working at a low end tech support call center, rather than comparing them to working for Microsoft on an accelerated management track. On the grand perspective, it's the relatively rare 22 year old that has the long-term vision, focus, and previous qualifications (top school, excellent internships, etc.) that leads to the career track with a major company directly out of college. No doubt you saw a lot of these career-saavy, well-qualified and ambitious young professionals in your MBA program and subsequent employement, but that's a self-selecting group that doesn't reflect most people's experiences. Lots of recent grads are still drifiting career wise, and may just be happy to have a job in their field. If that job doesn't overtly suck, they'll probably be over the moon about it.

This is quite the opposite of my experience. Small, fast growing companies want/need the best recent grads. Big places like MS will hire generic meat to fill slots. They then filter out the ones that can't make it. Small places can't afford to hire a bunch of maybes just to see who sticks. They also don't have the resources to mentor someone and wait until they get up to speed.

The big places only get finicky when they have to hire someone from outside to fill a senior position.

[msmith537]

Who? Can you let me know so I can avoid those companies?


Malcom Gladwell, for one. (http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm)

His take is that high achievers don't create great systems. Great systems enable high achievement.




The reality of the situation is that there are people who perform their job well and those that don't. People who fall into the first category tend to want to surround themselves with others who also perform their job well. Or to put it in a direct hypothetical - would you rather work in a company making widgets where everyone performs their job and does it well, or would you rather work in a company where your co-workers spend half their day goofing off on a message board or on Facebook or whatever and take twice as long to get anything accomplished?

Well let me ask you this. How do you define "doing your job well"? If my team is offline for an entire day because the Director of IT is so preocuppied responding to half a dozen equally important issues that he can't get to it, is he "doing his job well"? He may be working hard, acting super responsive and doing his job to the best of his ability, but assuming it's not due to a lack of talent or know how, the job isn't getting done.

That was one of the things I had trouble reconciling at the startup where I worked. In spite of all the highly educated, impressive "top talent" and "super achievement" talk, shit wasn't getting done.








Do I think it was possible to jump from individual contributor to director in a few years? Yes. I'm sure it makes me sound arrogant (and in this case, yeah I probably am), but I am very good at what I do, I learn extremely quickly and I am more than willing to put in the extra hours and hard work to learn what I need to. And ultimately that got recognized in additional responsibility and some rather large raises.

Would you say arrogance is a good quality for a manager to have or that it is a trait that should be nurtured in an organization?







Eh. I don't think your definition of A+ performer is the same as mine. An A+ performer, in my book, is someone who is smart and competent and hard-working and good to work with, and that's not necessarily the guy who vaults to director in a couple of years. That being said, in my company some people do this kind of jump, because yes, they happen to be very good at leading and in bringing in work, and those people do have to be A+ performers to show that. Most don't.


I would mostly agree with your definition of a real A+ performer. What I don't agree with is that someone is only an A+ performer if they consistently work until 3am every night, respond to every email on their vacation (if they get to take one) and have no life outside of work. That just means they work for C- management.

[even sven]

This is quite the opposite of my experience. Small, fast growing companies want/need the best recent grads. Big places like MS will hire generic meat to fill slots. They then filter out the ones that can't make it. Small places can't afford to hire a bunch of maybes just to see who sticks. They also don't have the resources to mentor someone and wait until they get up to speed.

The big places only get finicky when they have to hire someone from outside to fill a senior position.

I'm not talking about people who can't cut it. I'm talking about smart, capable people who didn't take the standard path- the guy who toured Japan with his avant-guarde rock band rather than having his dad hook him up with a big-name internship, or the Laotian girl genius who is amazing at what she does but didn't know enough about the recruiting process to realize she needed to show up for the on-campus "information sessions." The startup I worked at focused on music, so it attracted a lot of smart people hoping to combine their love of music and tech. Startups can put a lot more thought into their hiring and can consider the whole person, taking time to understand how ALL of your experiences and talents fit in, meaning there is more room for those with a slightly different career narrative. Larger corporations are often just looking for a checklist of standard accomplishments covering a relatively narrow perspective, and if you don't happen to have those for whatever reason it's going to be tough.

The point is that not everyone who doesn't choose the standard path does so because of some irrational fear of corporations.

[gazpacho]

I may have missed this but I didn't see anyone talk about working on interesting new problems. That is one of the best things about working at a tech startup. At bigger more established companies you are far more likely to be working incremental updates to established things

[msmith537]

I may have missed this but I didn't see anyone talk about working on interesting new problems. That is one of the best things about working at a tech startup. At bigger more established companies you are far more likely to be working incremental updates to established things

Interesting new problems are not the sole domain of small startups. I just left a small startup to work for one of the biggest financial services companies in the world. They basically formed a group the size of my old company overnight to work on similar interesting issues. It may be a bit more beurocratic by virtue of being a big company and not as "sexy" from a Silicon Valley startup nerd perspective. But the actual business problems are at least as interesting and I don't work in a roach infested loft anymore.

Trying to get the office phones to work is not an "interesting new problem" to me, but it is a typical startup problem.