Re:After working at a startup, I'll never work at a big comp...
by gcp on Thursday September 01, 2011 @07:34AM
(#2949545)
While I agree with the author on many parts, I do think he misses the ball on some issues.
For example, there seems to be an argument being made that a lot of the structure in big companies, as compared to start-ups, is to keep "lesser" people from making mistakes. But, I think that is far from reality.
If you're a startup, you have no employees, no sales and no users. No users means no support to give, no need to check if your latest changes fail on some obscure configurations, no infrastructure to handle the load, no critical bug-fixing of now outdated versions, etc, no fear to make significant changes and break things. No employees means no human resource handling, simpler paycheck administration, less managerial overhead. No sales means less administration, less regulatory burden, no internationalization issues, less need for documentation, and so on.
There's a different kind of company needed to innovate compared to the kind of company needed to sell a product worldwide in a competitive market with low margins.
There's only a few companies that handle can both at the same time. (Bigger ones buying up small ones don't count)
That being said, a small company where the product is in flux generally requires the engineers to have broader skillsets and tends to allow them to make more wide-ranging design choices. That just doesn't happen at bigger companies or with established products. You spend most of your time maintaining things.
For example, there seems to be an argument being made that a lot of the structure in big companies, as compared to start-ups, is to keep "lesser" people from making mistakes. But, I think that is far from reality.
If you're a startup, you have no employees, no sales and no users. No users means no support to give, no need to check if your latest changes fail on some obscure configurations, no infrastructure to handle the load, no critical bug-fixing of now outdated versions, etc, no fear to make significant changes and break things. No employees means no human resource handling, simpler paycheck administration, less managerial overhead. No sales means less administration, less regulatory burden, no internationalization issues, less need for documentation, and so on.
There's a different kind of company needed to innovate compared to the kind of company needed to sell a product worldwide in a competitive market with low margins.
There's only a few companies that handle can both at the same time. (Bigger ones buying up small ones don't count)
That being said, a small company where the product is in flux generally requires the engineers to have broader skillsets and tends to allow them to make more wide-ranging design choices. That just doesn't happen at bigger companies or with established products. You spend most of your time maintaining things.