In conclusion I’m sorry to say there are no absolutes or certainties in choosing to move to a startup company.

The goal of this blog post was to give the reader some insight into the most important component in making the decision, your character.

My current view is that experience in both types of companies is invaluable. I would suggest working a couple of years in a large company; teaching oneself organization, time management, networking (with people), integration and presentation skills followed by several years at a Startup improving your engineering and problem solving skills, as well as learning to work in a very dynamic and challenging environment.

In an effort to provide some real help in your decision try and understand the reason you are looking for a change:

• Are you looking for new challenges or are you not being challenged enough?
  The former can usually be handled within your workplace whereas the latter may not.
• Do you see yourself starting your own startup company in a couple of years?
  If so remember, the skills and people you meet in a large company can help you significantly when starting your own company. Many successful startups started as a result of large groups of people or entire teams leaving a large company together.
  If this is your goal, make sure you learn what you can from the company before leaving.
• Are you looking to strike it rich?
  Stop looking. The best startups aren’t headed by stock brokers but rather visionaries. Money is a byproduct of fulfilling your vision.
• Can you handle the pressure of the bad times?
  Startups are awesome when everything is going well, however, they can be outright depressing when in trouble. The feeling of the noose tightening is never as intense as it is in a very small company.
• Can you handle the pressure of the good times?
  Can you spend the amount of time required by a startup when business is booming? Keep in mind startups have less resources to shift around to handle work load.

I hope this helped someone with making his decisions, again I risk being redundant by saying that it is a very personal decision and everyone needs to find the reasons that apply to him.

My decision was to leave and join a startup. It is a hard decision especially considering the lack of spare time and the friends I left behind. It was also scary to start anew trying to figure out my place and the dynamics of a new workplace.

That said I have no second thoughts about moving to a startup, I believe the time and experience I acquired in my previous job serve me well in my new one, and I can honestly say that I think today I am a far better engineer than I was a year ago. Not only that but I enjoy my work a great deal more since I now feel a greater connection to the company and the product we produce.

Time

Well this seems pretty straight forward, how much time does your job take from your life.

I will state the obvious and say that moving to a startup requires you to spend more time at work than a large company requires of you.
Now I know that some might say that working in a large company can be just as time consuming as working in a startup and that they don’t think people at startups work more hours than they do. And while that may be true in principle and the amount of weekly hours spent on the job will be the same, there is still a difference.

When working in a very small company, a single person is usually very hard to replace.
This makes taking time off in a startup much more difficult than in a large company.
Furthermore, if you know you are heading into a time in your life where your time at work will be diminished like finishing your Masters degree or expecting a baby. Large companies can usually accommodate these changes with relative ease, you do less time and the work load splits evenly.

The possibility of slowing down and investing less time at work at specific periods in your life will always be easier in a large company where there are many people who can cover for you.

When you are approaching the decision you need to look ahead at your life and say:
how much time will I be able to invest at the job a year from now?

Risk

By risk I mean the threat of losing your job, this is a very tricky subject.

Large companies provide a security blanket that allows good engineers to keep their job even if their entire team is downsized. Furthermore even if large companies encounter heavy losses and decide to close shop; it is still a very lengthy process that may take months or years to complete.

That said. Small companies have the advantage of close personal relationships between the management and employees which may mean that a person is less likely to be fired even at the expense of some discomfort to the company.

Risk assessment in startups is very hard and not being an expert on the subject I don’t think I can offer a lot of insight into the process of evaluating risk, however, I will say this

Before deciding a startup is the place for you, sit down with the CEO and have a talk. Technology alone doesn’t make successful startups, the people steering the boat need to be visionaries with mental flexibility. The kind of people who aren’t afraid to fail, have faith in what they do and at the same time are capable of changing direction quickly enough if needed.

I think the last point is the most important and most difficult to assess when choosing a startup.

Personal development

Personal development is key to the choice of job, mainly because the route taken differs greatly between the two.

Startups are usually characterized by fast solution, burning problems and innovative technologies; as such they provide the perfect platform for building up your engineering skills.

I know some jobs at big companies offer very big challenges, but they rarely entail the wide array of skills required for building an entire application from the ground up.

Working in a very small company requires you to think about everything from deployment, integration and customization to security and testing. No aspect is covered by some other team or department it’s all you all the time.

While large companies can produce some great engineers, they will still be by definition limited to a specific area or field. From my perspective if one wants to improve his overall engineering skills little places can offer the kind of rapid learning and development startup companies offer.

While startups excel at engineering their small size and relative lack of experience make them less likely to offer management positions.

If in a large company you have many teams and many more developers. A highly regarded engineer can be rewarded or advanced into the position of team leader or process manager (PMO) relatively fast. In small companies such promotion is unlikely to occur fast, let’s assume you enter a startup company with 5 engineers. Even if successful the company can’t grow at a very high rate without damaging it’s quality and organization, so even if a year later you number 8-10 engineers odds are there will still be no opening for a team leader position.

Generally speaking, from my experience I would have to say that large companies provide the best platform for developing ones managerial skills whereas startups can help one develop very strong engineering skills.

When I made my decision to switch companies it was largely this distinction that affected my judgment, although I knew I could have probably reached some managerial position by staying at the big company for a couple more years. I felt that I need to improve my engineering skills in order to really understand which is the route best suited for me.

Today, a year later, I can say with certainty that no position at my previous work place could have possibly given me the tools and engineering skills I acquired during my time at the startup.

Like everything else this choice is largely affected by who you are and what your goals are…

Money

Money was never my reason for switching jobs, I know this is highly personal but the differences in pay between the 2 companies were all but negligible (<10%).

Nonetheless I’ll address some of the more minute differences in pay between the two.

Startup companies are small and as such usually allow their employees greater expenses, you can buy your choice of laptop or computer, lunch and coffee are usually paid by the company in full and generally speaking almost all work related expenses are paid in full.

Another thing is that small companies don’t need to try and cut down on employee salaries using some sort of trickery like big companies do, like giving a small base salary and counting the rest as “bonuses” or “expenditure”. This means you won’t get a de-facto pay cut when missing work or going on vacation. In countries where the employer pays social benefits according to your pay it also means that you get benefits according to your actual salary and not some low “base” salary, for instance in my previous job only 80% of my salary was considered for pension.

The other and to some the biggest allure of startup companies are the options you receive from the company, what it basically means is that if someone buys the company you can receive a relative part of the money. I think that if you choose a startup because of the possibility of striking it rich it is a mistake.
Most startups never reach the point of being sold, and even those that do usually take years to get there, and even on those occasions most times you will not have enough options and the sale price will not be that high so as to give you a huge amount of money.

If you are looking to join a startup in order to strike it rich you might be better off keeping your job and buying a lottery ticket every week.

On the other hand big companies have power in numbers such that small startups can never compete with, large companies might have a gym or some other facilities. Also large companies generally tend to have better offers on cars (lease), health care and other services.

Bottom line is that from my own personal experience if you count the added cost for health care, car ownership and various discounts it is very difficult to say which options pays off better at the end of the month. Maybe I’ll have a definitive answer several years from now :)

Working at a startup

I thought I’d start off my blog with the biggest change that happened in my life in the past year which was moving from my previous company to a startup company.

I want my blog to help people make decisions about technology but also about what works best for them, so I guess the best place to start is choosing where you want to work.

I can’t recommend any course of action for any person other than me, however, I can tell you what were my motivations and my reasoning for choosing a startup over a large well known company and hopefully someone might find it useful when faced with the same dilemma.

About a year ago I was working at a large international software company (>3000 employees) and my contract was about to expire. My previous company was pleased with my work thus far and had decided to offer me a generous contract.

Before my contract expired I decided to look around and see what other options I have available to me. In my search I came to a small Startup company that at that point in time had only existed for 2 years and had approximately 10 employees. I was fascinated by the technology they were developing and after passing the interview was also offered a contract.

And so I was faced with the difficult decision of switching from a large stable company where I was fairly appreciated to a new small startup company.

Now a year later I can look back and share some of my experience with people looking to make the same decision.

I tried to give some sort of logical order to my reasoning, I hope it helps