For anyone thinking about joining a startup : be very, very careful before you accept a job offer. The main thing to consider is that you'll be working very closely with just a few people (from 2 to a dozen) for the foreseeable future. You'll have to really like these people as you'll be spending an awful lot of time with them.
When I was interviewing last, I was a lot more concerned with what the teams I met were producing than their culture, or how they interacted with each other. Long story short, I ended up working for a company with 10 employees, but I had never felt more alone in my entire life. Small things I took for granted at other jobs like eating lunch with people, sharing jokes, or any type of bonding felt near impossible.
I don't want to discourage anyone from working at a startup, but I feel it is very important that you consider the reality of working in that environment for a considerable amount of time.
I don't think this only applies to Startups, but in most jobs. There will always be niche groups and little clicks and you may not fall into them, or you might. Just with a larger company there is a larger pool of potential work-buddies.
Currently, I work for a company with 25k+ employees, but I know that down the road I would like to work for a startup. The author raised some good points that got me thinking about exactly what size startup I would like to be a part of.
The author's description of a startup that has "taken a decent-sized round" with about 15-30 employees (including senior engineers) who "will be less focus on getting things done NOW, and more on getting them done correctly" sounds great.
Is it typical for a startup of that size to offer competitive salaries? I would love to get my student loans paid off before I join any startup where I have to live in a closet with 3 other people and eat spaghetti every day.
I worked at a smaller startup recently and it was fairly competitive as far as jobs at other businesses in the area. I wasn't making as much as my friends at Apple, VMWare, or Google, but I made enough to live comfortably and had stock options that would have started me towards "F-U money" had they gone public.
However, that might have something to do with their business model performing very well, and the business being profitable earlier than expected. It all depends.
A really good read. I am currently a senior in college and working for a startup has been something I feel like I want to do after I graduate. This article doesn't really do much to scare me away from that, because I am sort of expecting that sort of thing out of working for a startup.
And I agree with conorgil145, the description that the author of this post gave about a company with 15-30 employees sounds like it would be a great work environment.
If you're a senior in college right now, the best advice I can give you is to take an idea you have (even if it's not your best) and try to execute it. Even if you don't ever launch, you'll learn a lot about starting a business and getting from the initial idea phase, to design, to launching, to (hopefully) making money. That sort of knowledge is invaluable.
I'm several years out of university myself and just now getting a few of my side projects to that point. It's exciting, but I can't help but worry that I'm behind the curve. Tinkering and design comes fairly naturally to me, but everything else that goes with entrepreneurship ... not so much.
> I'm several years out of university myself and just now getting a few of my side projects to that point. It's exciting, but I can't help but worry that I'm behind the curve.
There is no curve. Comparing yourself to others based on age and level of startup success isn't a good comparison. I used to do this to myself a lot, and it only causes pointless anxiety.
I think the leading edge of startups is finally paying real equity to the first 5-10 (i.e. pre series A, taking a very low salary) people.
It used to be you'd get 0.1-0.5% as an individual contributor engineer; it is going up to 1-5%+. Much more on par with what founders get. Obviously this varies a lot with the size of any seed raise, where the company is, who is being hired, etc., but it's a whole lot better than it was in the past.
When I was interviewing last, I was a lot more concerned with what the teams I met were producing than their culture, or how they interacted with each other. Long story short, I ended up working for a company with 10 employees, but I had never felt more alone in my entire life. Small things I took for granted at other jobs like eating lunch with people, sharing jokes, or any type of bonding felt near impossible.
I don't want to discourage anyone from working at a startup, but I feel it is very important that you consider the reality of working in that environment for a considerable amount of time.