I believe in what the startup does but they are at very early stages and the salary they offer is 1/3 of what Google offers but I get about 6% options over 4 years.
I was faced with a similar choice two years ago and went with Google. I really didn't enjoy my time there; turns out big companies really aren't my cup of tea. I also learned much less than I would have somewhere else because Google's stack is quite proprietary and I simply wasn't motivated in that environment. I quit after only 8 months.
So it may surprise you that I'd recommend taking the Google offer! In my mind, there's no way to lose choosing Google. If it turns out that you love Google, awesome – you can have a great and well-compensated career there. And if it turns out you don't enjoy that kind of shop (like me), your career possibilities will be far wider after a tour of duty at Google than they are right now, including within startups. Google as a resume item will continue paying dividends for as long as it maintains its reputation for engineering excellence.
This advice is based on my personal experience – it's almost certain that I wouldn't be in my current role if I hadn't had Google on my resume when I applied. And my current responsibilities, experience and income far exceed what I could have expected on the alternative trajectory at an early-stage startup, unless its growth happened to have exploded while I was there.
This is a surprisingly jaded response that flies in the face of my experiences at multiple startups.
I concur with assuming equity will be 0. Dilution is real and almost all startups fold. Counting on equity is unwise and dangerous.
As for the rest of your commentary, I’d say startups are great because you get a better ability to shape your experience. I’ve now been employee: 21, 7, and 1 at respective startups. While I’ve seen poor management, I’ve not seen evil management.
As for opportunities, they are what you make them to be. There is always room for leadership at small startups, for instance. If that is a path the OP cares about, it is an intruiging option.
All that said, at 3x the salary google is hard to say no to even over a 1-2 year span.
Or VC investor with preferred shares that will guarantee you get paid first N-times your original investment (before unaware engineers will see a penny).
Disclaimer: I'm a founder of an early stage startup, so I'm biased.
You need to figure out what your goals are. We can't answer for you because we don't know what you want.
If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google. In 10 years you'll be earning 500k per year, and have put away a ton of cash too. Financially, if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely. At google you can guarantee you make $1m.
There are some good reasons to choose a startup:
1) you want the work environment of the startup. Less politics, less optimizing for career advancement, much closer to the customer and the decisions.
2) You want to learn. At a startup, you'll get to do everything. I'm assuming you're an engineer, so you'll get to do backend, frontend, ML, scaling, infra, etc. But you also get to do things like customer support, sales, marketing, etc, which are very valuable skills to learn and understand.
3) You want to do a startup yourself. Seeing how a startup works, and learning the hard lessons of how it doesn't, makes a huge difference if you ever want to start one later.
There are also other good reasons to go to google: you'll get to operate at a scale that a startup wont (that's a plus and a minus), you'll automatically have tons of customers for whatever you build, etc, etc.
Decide on your goals and what to optimize for, and only then can people help you choose.
I was a 1st employee at a fairly successful startup and am now an "early stage founder". The experience from one doesn't carry over as much to the other as you'd expect.
1) Somewhat true, it's definitely the case initially but you'll see politics develop if the company gets above 15-20 employees.
2) You'll half ass everything. It's nice to get exposure if you don't know what you're interested in yet but it will be hard to go deep in any subject. If you're doing ML the startup will probably have no data, process and infrastructure for you to be effective. At Google they have all the data you can dream of, 1000s of people to label things if you need them, unlimited hardware and tooling to run and manage experiments.
3) You'll learn a lot more about functional organizations at Google than as an early engineer at a startup. You'll also come out with a network and resume that will make raising money and hiring a lot easier.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-FANG, ex-founder, now-again-FANG, so I'm also biased.
I'm somewhat bothered by your comment about money:
> If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google.
I find this disingenuous, as money is also a big reason why people do startups, both the employees and the founders. The founders could have chosen to implement their idea inside Google or wherever (with an army of marketing, virtually unlimited funding as long as the idea is working out, and all forms of support to bolster the team and the product), but the founder passed on that in order to reap the huge rewards that come with owning a successful company. Or, in order to have "personal" control (inasmuch as you can have that when you still have investors, a Board, and an indifferent target audience).
Sure, there are _some_ founders whose vision genuinely doesn't fit inside any FANG... but those are the exception. For most visions, the best possible way to realize them is inside BigCo.
Also, the promise of a Google-sized payday is hinted at to employees ("Join us... we think this is a Google-sized opportunity" is a common thing founders say). Even your own statement ("you _might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely") embodies the dream and the challenge presented to a prospective employee who's ready for a big risk, to put their guarantees and expected-outcomes on the line for that sweet $10m.
The prospective employee probably doesn't realize that the founders who are pitching them on .01% still hold 60% between the two of them, and a different class of shares. The prospective doesn't realize that there is only an infinitesimally, vanishingly small likelihood they'll make even close to what they'll make at the big company.
But even when the employees make very little, the founders still have a good path to making bank, in the case of even a minor acquisition or an acquihire.
>if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m
if the startup is the next facebook, sure. But usually an employee doesn't make 10 million, even for 100 million dollar(+) acquisitions. Founders do, but that is a different game.
Having done both startup/agency work and working as a "cog in a big machine", hands down a "cog in a big machine" is far better for someone early in their career, looking to build good engineering habits.
1) Most startup code is hot garbage.
2) High caliber engineering practices rub off on you. - Surrounding yourself with talent and writing software is the best way to be good at what you do. Being in a small startup, that is almost certainly not going to happen. The numbers just don't allow for it.
3) Don't underestimate the draw of a major player like Google on your resume. - Before working for one of these companies, my LinkedIn mailbox would get maybe one or two messages a year from recruiters. Now my problem is making sure to politely decline all of the messages I get in a timely fashion.
4) A hefty sign-on bonus, HEALTH INSURANCE, and in most cases bonuses or stock offerings normally come as part of the deal with a Google offer. - Do you want a house, car, education, children, retirement? If you answer yes to any of these, a company like Google will give you a great financial foundation to work from so that once you've established yourself you can take more calculated risks with a much better safety net.
Maybe the market's kind of hot, I've been getting recruited on LinkedIn almost since I started (non-BigTech) employment two years ago. We had a contractor fresh out of bootcamp who got recruiting messages too and left after seven months. I never considered responding because I considered it spam, but it looks like there are some good canned responses you can send: https://www.themuse.com/advice/5-email-templates-to-respond-....
Advice from someone who had a similar choice and went the startup route: choose the Google option. It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs, but you can invest the money now and create a nice start for yourself.
There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
Google is also a very good learning opportunity; there is lots of training available to employees, you will be working with very talented people, and will get to see how the planet-scale dogfood is made first hand.
I couldn’t agree more—I would add live below your means because you don’t want to get used to that lifestyle/level of income where it would be impossible to step back later if you wanted.
It really depends on kind of person OP is, Personally I never want to work at any large corporation especially Google, the benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks for me.
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
I never had such an option but I agree. I picked a big company and after a couple years was able to leave in a much better place, financially, than I went in.
> It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs
Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.
I second that. Maybe one more point to add abich was already hinted at in other comments. Working for company like Google allows to develop a dgree of professionalism that a start-up simply cannot. This is something you can build up on for the rest of your career.
But since you are thinking about joining a start-up, I assume you are not preparing to stay at Google until you retire, one last suggestion. Prepare for an exit strategy already basically from day one. Not to take it negative at being with Google. Just be aware that this is not your last job in your life.
>There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
You forgot to factor in the blatant age discrimination in most startups.
OP could build a nice nest egg at Google, but have a severe lack of free time + not be working on "interesting" work, and come out of it financially stable but unable to compete with fresh out of college grads with no lives, willing to work 24/7 and who have all the time in the world to mess around with the latest and "greatest" new foo
If the startup can only offer you 1/3 the pay, we can infer that their equity isn't worth very much, or investors would have given them more money.
So you believe in the startup. That's great. It's great to believe in writing good software. It's wrong that someone would want to exploit that for their own gain. It very strongly sounds like what you're being offered is a pittance. Don't sell your dreams for that little, because someone that will offer you so little for your dreams isn't worth working for.
Google. In a few years you’ll have a million in the bank and then you can afford to roll the dice on any startup that catches your interest, if you still want to.
If you are interested in the problem domain of the startup, do the startup. If you aren't interested in it, it's not your life passion, don't do it. You will learn more at the startup about the tech game in general, but that knowledge will only be worth something if it is part of a longer term strategy as no one startup is an assured success. Also, there is risk in joining a startup. I'm not talking about the financial risk, I'm talking about the risk of you joining some startup that has no good mentors to learn from, and, while you will certainly have more "change control" than at a large company, what point is that if you are constantly making the wrong changes? Unless you're a person that likes to (and can) learn on their own the hard way. Prepare yourself for the possibility that you may be the only one you can "fall back on".
Google, on the other hand, will provide a different kind of education. You'll generally learn the same amount of information but it will be more specialized and the pace will generally be slower (which can be a good thing). There will be less pressure on "getting something done and working" and more pressure on "doing the right thing". These two characteristics are often directly opposed which is why a lot of people who like startups say they hated Google and vice versa. The negative in that being if you spend several years specializing in a very bespoke part of Google, you won't be any more prepared to either join a startup or start your own -- the only way to get startup experience is to work for one. In fact, although people may respect that you've worked at Google, in my experience ex-Googlers aren't an assured success as startup employees and are no better as founders than someone coming from any of the other large companies. It can be a shell-shock coming from Google where there is a lot of support to join a startup where there is no support and you must loosen your standards and understand where you can and cannot cut corners. Also those people who make excellent early stage startup employees often don't survive the transition to behemoth tech company.
Speaking from experience, this is a very hard choice. I've been there too. I've drunk the Kool-Aid and decided that startups are the place for young ambitious people to be. 5 years later, working for a second startup now I regret the choice I've made.
Difference in my case was that the startup actually paid well too. In the long run though it was not worth it.
The first startup I was working failed within a year even though from the outside it looked like it was going for the stars. The second one, kind of stagnated.. reached a ramen profitability but is far from hockey-stick growth everyone would like to see. I'm looking to change jobs now but noone cares if you're doing the best job in a company noone ever heard of. In the meantime my friends working for Big Corps make careers, and while they are being given responsibilities much slower their personal growth seems more.. robust. Well known names really open you many doors.
If you manage to find a successful startup, that will become a unicorn, great for you, this is probably one of the best things that can happen to a person. But it's bloody hard to know beforehand. For me going forward it's either my own startup or working for a well-known name that people will recognize.
Those options are totally worthless for new startups, don't care about them. In 4 years chances says they will be still worthless. Specially if the startup didn't go over a funding round yet.
Consider only the job, what would make you happy. Would it be super cool, super distruptive, super inovative? The perspective of the future is worth the risk? Then choose the startup.
But if you are on this for the money, or if you care about risk, choose Google.
Plus early stage stock always gets diluted in further rounds of capital raising ... that 6% will turn into 1% or less and some later hires inevitably will end up with a lot more.
Unless you're coming on as part of the management team --- really, even then, I guess --- 6% seems like a bit of a bad sign. That's a lot. Like, that's the kind of grant you get when nobody is sure how things will turn out, not when something is locked in.
Take what Google offers as a baseline. Convert the difference per year to stock at a realistic valuation (as in, if you were a VC what would you give). Compare it, factoring in the strike price (so at a strike price of 0 you will be offered 6%/4 per year..)
Perhaps throw in a 20% rebate for "more fun job", but then again remember that the "VC valuation" of the stock is what VCs with a lot more capability for risk than you, so perhaps you want a 20% risk penalty (or more!)
"But the startup cannot afford to pay market". No, but they should compensate through sufficient ownership. Otherwise you will just be working hard to try to make someone else rich.
You don't say what stage it is, current valuation etc which is very important here.
My brother left a good job for a promising start up last year. Without getting into detail he wound up quitting a few weeks before they closed up shop. It started out great but quickly fizzled out due to the lack lack of a cohesive goal. It's a high risk that he took and lost. Now he's looking for work again. He regrets the decision.
YMMV but Google is a guarantee and a great resume stuffer.
First job? Go work for Google. Make a lot of friends, figure out who is compatible with your work style and who isn't and remember them for future recruiting calls :-)
If you're more senior I suggest picking the job where you will learn the most. My personal experience is that wider experience is better than deeper experience in a fast changing world.
This. Also companies like Google and Microsoft love welcoming back employees who were good and gad switched over to other companies. So, if you had a good reputation in google, and want to take a few years to work on a startup, you will likely have a fallback option if things don't work out
Read some articles about the way people get diluted in successful startups. That should change the expectation value calculation. Also, you will have a larger network at Google.
I agree with most people’s advice about going to Google. My additional reason for advising you to go to Google is that you seem to be on the fence. The startup option is a great option if you’re very passionate about it.
While I didn’t have a Google offer, I had a Lockheed offer and that was always a company I really liked growing up (also former Marine). It was a difficult choice for me as well, but I chose Lockheed and I have zero regrets. I learned a lot about large organizations and got to work with a huge team of very smart people. Many of which who very directly mentored me. I worked there for two years + 3 years previously for internships.
When the startup bug became irresistible, I knew it was time and went and co-founded DataRank with some friends. The Lockheed experience helped me in the sense that it “validated” me, much like Google on your resume will certainly validate you.
In regards to money:
When I finally went the startup root I made 1/4 my salary and had zero benefits for the first 1.5 years. If you’re passionate enough about it you won’t really care about that 1/3 salary (for a while at least). Then I bumped my salary to 1/3 my previous salary! It wasn’t until after 2 years when my salary returned to 80% my previous salary. Eventually a surpassed my previous salary, then double and tripled it, and now I optimize more for doing what I love.
This is a really tough decision and there are lots of things to weigh.
1. The equity sounds all good and well, but you need to know the intentions of the founder — would they every consider selling or doing an IPO. If not, your shares will have zero value.
2. What space is the startup in? Do they have a technology where they are both building a moat and growing at a rate where they will be around in 5-10 years?
3. Can you live on 1/3 of what Google is offering you?
If you believe your startup is the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX or Pinterest I would say join that. The thing about these mega-companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon) is that they aren't going anywhere and if you made it through the interview already, I'm sure you can do it again. These mega-companies are filled with brilliant people so you will definitely learn a lot about running projects at scale. They are also filled with bureaucracy (unless you're on a skunk works team with no budget) which sucks if you're the type of person that likes to move quickly.
In my opinion, a great startup beats any mega-company any day of the week.
Assuming you are very early in your career, take the google money now and invest. When you know what you're doing with respect to the market and have more connections and a bit of a financial base, then do a startup.
I was in a similar situation, I had offers from both companies and chose the startup, but ultimately ended up at Google.
I was up with the startup for 6 months, it was not a good fit for me and I lost faith in the company quickly. A recruiter reached out to me from Google while I was there to follow up. I did not need to re-interview and they brought me in since I was still in the system as an accepted candidate (I think this stands for one year). so I got to experience the best of both worlds. I’m still at google 2 years later, I can echo the sentiments of it opening up many more doors
[+] [-] kcorbitt|7 years ago|reply
So it may surprise you that I'd recommend taking the Google offer! In my mind, there's no way to lose choosing Google. If it turns out that you love Google, awesome – you can have a great and well-compensated career there. And if it turns out you don't enjoy that kind of shop (like me), your career possibilities will be far wider after a tour of duty at Google than they are right now, including within startups. Google as a resume item will continue paying dividends for as long as it maintains its reputation for engineering excellence.
This advice is based on my personal experience – it's almost certain that I wouldn't be in my current role if I hadn't had Google on my resume when I applied. And my current responsibilities, experience and income far exceed what I could have expected on the alternative trajectory at an early-stage startup, unless its growth happened to have exploded while I was there.
[+] [-] Hydraulix989|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byebyetech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somethingsimple|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bb88|7 years ago|reply
2. 4 years is a lot of time to spend at a company for a high probability of making 6% of zero.
3. If you're an employee at a startup, you're in the wrong job. You're much better off being a founder.
4. Equity is a way to be paid less and to be fired in the first year if you haven't vested anything.
5. Who are you going to sell your equity shares to? It's not necessarily a free market in the startup world.
6. Big companies aren't just the only type of company to be soulless. Wait till you see a small company try to screw it's employees out of equity.
[+] [-] liquidise|7 years ago|reply
I concur with assuming equity will be 0. Dilution is real and almost all startups fold. Counting on equity is unwise and dangerous.
As for the rest of your commentary, I’d say startups are great because you get a better ability to shape your experience. I’ve now been employee: 21, 7, and 1 at respective startups. While I’ve seen poor management, I’ve not seen evil management.
As for opportunities, they are what you make them to be. There is always room for leadership at small startups, for instance. If that is a path the OP cares about, it is an intruiging option.
All that said, at 3x the salary google is hard to say no to even over a 1-2 year span.
[+] [-] gesman|7 years ago|reply
Or VC investor with preferred shares that will guarantee you get paid first N-times your original investment (before unaware engineers will see a penny).
[+] [-] burlesona|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbiggar|7 years ago|reply
You need to figure out what your goals are. We can't answer for you because we don't know what you want.
If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google. In 10 years you'll be earning 500k per year, and have put away a ton of cash too. Financially, if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely. At google you can guarantee you make $1m.
There are some good reasons to choose a startup:
1) you want the work environment of the startup. Less politics, less optimizing for career advancement, much closer to the customer and the decisions.
2) You want to learn. At a startup, you'll get to do everything. I'm assuming you're an engineer, so you'll get to do backend, frontend, ML, scaling, infra, etc. But you also get to do things like customer support, sales, marketing, etc, which are very valuable skills to learn and understand.
3) You want to do a startup yourself. Seeing how a startup works, and learning the hard lessons of how it doesn't, makes a huge difference if you ever want to start one later.
There are also other good reasons to go to google: you'll get to operate at a scale that a startup wont (that's a plus and a minus), you'll automatically have tons of customers for whatever you build, etc, etc.
Decide on your goals and what to optimize for, and only then can people help you choose.
[+] [-] m_ke|7 years ago|reply
1) Somewhat true, it's definitely the case initially but you'll see politics develop if the company gets above 15-20 employees.
2) You'll half ass everything. It's nice to get exposure if you don't know what you're interested in yet but it will be hard to go deep in any subject. If you're doing ML the startup will probably have no data, process and infrastructure for you to be effective. At Google they have all the data you can dream of, 1000s of people to label things if you need them, unlimited hardware and tooling to run and manage experiments.
3) You'll learn a lot more about functional organizations at Google than as an early engineer at a startup. You'll also come out with a network and resume that will make raising money and hiring a lot easier.
[+] [-] khazhou|7 years ago|reply
I'm somewhat bothered by your comment about money:
> If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google.
I find this disingenuous, as money is also a big reason why people do startups, both the employees and the founders. The founders could have chosen to implement their idea inside Google or wherever (with an army of marketing, virtually unlimited funding as long as the idea is working out, and all forms of support to bolster the team and the product), but the founder passed on that in order to reap the huge rewards that come with owning a successful company. Or, in order to have "personal" control (inasmuch as you can have that when you still have investors, a Board, and an indifferent target audience).
Sure, there are _some_ founders whose vision genuinely doesn't fit inside any FANG... but those are the exception. For most visions, the best possible way to realize them is inside BigCo.
Also, the promise of a Google-sized payday is hinted at to employees ("Join us... we think this is a Google-sized opportunity" is a common thing founders say). Even your own statement ("you _might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely") embodies the dream and the challenge presented to a prospective employee who's ready for a big risk, to put their guarantees and expected-outcomes on the line for that sweet $10m.
The prospective employee probably doesn't realize that the founders who are pitching them on .01% still hold 60% between the two of them, and a different class of shares. The prospective doesn't realize that there is only an infinitesimally, vanishingly small likelihood they'll make even close to what they'll make at the big company.
But even when the employees make very little, the founders still have a good path to making bank, in the case of even a minor acquisition or an acquihire.
[+] [-] plinkplonk|7 years ago|reply
if the startup is the next facebook, sure. But usually an employee doesn't make 10 million, even for 100 million dollar(+) acquisitions. Founders do, but that is a different game.
[+] [-] sfuller|7 years ago|reply
1) Most startup code is hot garbage.
2) High caliber engineering practices rub off on you. - Surrounding yourself with talent and writing software is the best way to be good at what you do. Being in a small startup, that is almost certainly not going to happen. The numbers just don't allow for it.
3) Don't underestimate the draw of a major player like Google on your resume. - Before working for one of these companies, my LinkedIn mailbox would get maybe one or two messages a year from recruiters. Now my problem is making sure to politely decline all of the messages I get in a timely fashion.
4) A hefty sign-on bonus, HEALTH INSURANCE, and in most cases bonuses or stock offerings normally come as part of the deal with a Google offer. - Do you want a house, car, education, children, retirement? If you answer yes to any of these, a company like Google will give you a great financial foundation to work from so that once you've established yourself you can take more calculated risks with a much better safety net.
[+] [-] Noumenon72|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnomeduck|7 years ago|reply
There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
[+] [-] jhillyerd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdlecler1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manquer|7 years ago|reply
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
[+] [-] alistproducer2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerr|7 years ago|reply
Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.
[+] [-] hef19898|7 years ago|reply
But since you are thinking about joining a start-up, I assume you are not preparing to stay at Google until you retire, one last suggestion. Prepare for an exit strategy already basically from day one. Not to take it negative at being with Google. Just be aware that this is not your last job in your life.
[+] [-] m_ke|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pierre_d528|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clubm8|7 years ago|reply
You forgot to factor in the blatant age discrimination in most startups.
OP could build a nice nest egg at Google, but have a severe lack of free time + not be working on "interesting" work, and come out of it financially stable but unable to compete with fresh out of college grads with no lives, willing to work 24/7 and who have all the time in the world to mess around with the latest and "greatest" new foo
[+] [-] cynicalkane|7 years ago|reply
If the startup can only offer you 1/3 the pay, we can infer that their equity isn't worth very much, or investors would have given them more money.
So you believe in the startup. That's great. It's great to believe in writing good software. It's wrong that someone would want to exploit that for their own gain. It very strongly sounds like what you're being offered is a pittance. Don't sell your dreams for that little, because someone that will offer you so little for your dreams isn't worth working for.
[+] [-] burlesona|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamleppert|7 years ago|reply
Google, on the other hand, will provide a different kind of education. You'll generally learn the same amount of information but it will be more specialized and the pace will generally be slower (which can be a good thing). There will be less pressure on "getting something done and working" and more pressure on "doing the right thing". These two characteristics are often directly opposed which is why a lot of people who like startups say they hated Google and vice versa. The negative in that being if you spend several years specializing in a very bespoke part of Google, you won't be any more prepared to either join a startup or start your own -- the only way to get startup experience is to work for one. In fact, although people may respect that you've worked at Google, in my experience ex-Googlers aren't an assured success as startup employees and are no better as founders than someone coming from any of the other large companies. It can be a shell-shock coming from Google where there is a lot of support to join a startup where there is no support and you must loosen your standards and understand where you can and cannot cut corners. Also those people who make excellent early stage startup employees often don't survive the transition to behemoth tech company.
[+] [-] lockee|7 years ago|reply
Difference in my case was that the startup actually paid well too. In the long run though it was not worth it.
The first startup I was working failed within a year even though from the outside it looked like it was going for the stars. The second one, kind of stagnated.. reached a ramen profitability but is far from hockey-stick growth everyone would like to see. I'm looking to change jobs now but noone cares if you're doing the best job in a company noone ever heard of. In the meantime my friends working for Big Corps make careers, and while they are being given responsibilities much slower their personal growth seems more.. robust. Well known names really open you many doors.
If you manage to find a successful startup, that will become a unicorn, great for you, this is probably one of the best things that can happen to a person. But it's bloody hard to know beforehand. For me going forward it's either my own startup or working for a well-known name that people will recognize.
[+] [-] danilocesar|7 years ago|reply
Consider only the job, what would make you happy. Would it be super cool, super distruptive, super inovative? The perspective of the future is worth the risk? Then choose the startup.
But if you are on this for the money, or if you care about risk, choose Google.
[+] [-] nwatson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danilocesar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagss|7 years ago|reply
Take what Google offers as a baseline. Convert the difference per year to stock at a realistic valuation (as in, if you were a VC what would you give). Compare it, factoring in the strike price (so at a strike price of 0 you will be offered 6%/4 per year..)
Perhaps throw in a 20% rebate for "more fun job", but then again remember that the "VC valuation" of the stock is what VCs with a lot more capability for risk than you, so perhaps you want a 20% risk penalty (or more!)
"But the startup cannot afford to pay market". No, but they should compensate through sufficient ownership. Otherwise you will just be working hard to try to make someone else rich.
You don't say what stage it is, current valuation etc which is very important here.
[+] [-] MisterTea|7 years ago|reply
My brother left a good job for a promising start up last year. Without getting into detail he wound up quitting a few weeks before they closed up shop. It started out great but quickly fizzled out due to the lack lack of a cohesive goal. It's a high risk that he took and lost. Now he's looking for work again. He regrets the decision.
YMMV but Google is a guarantee and a great resume stuffer.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
If you're more senior I suggest picking the job where you will learn the most. My personal experience is that wider experience is better than deeper experience in a fast changing world.
[+] [-] rishav_sharan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aj7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KennyCason|7 years ago|reply
While I didn’t have a Google offer, I had a Lockheed offer and that was always a company I really liked growing up (also former Marine). It was a difficult choice for me as well, but I chose Lockheed and I have zero regrets. I learned a lot about large organizations and got to work with a huge team of very smart people. Many of which who very directly mentored me. I worked there for two years + 3 years previously for internships.
When the startup bug became irresistible, I knew it was time and went and co-founded DataRank with some friends. The Lockheed experience helped me in the sense that it “validated” me, much like Google on your resume will certainly validate you.
In regards to money: When I finally went the startup root I made 1/4 my salary and had zero benefits for the first 1.5 years. If you’re passionate enough about it you won’t really care about that 1/3 salary (for a while at least). Then I bumped my salary to 1/3 my previous salary! It wasn’t until after 2 years when my salary returned to 80% my previous salary. Eventually a surpassed my previous salary, then double and tripled it, and now I optimize more for doing what I love.
[+] [-] joeblau|7 years ago|reply
1. The equity sounds all good and well, but you need to know the intentions of the founder — would they every consider selling or doing an IPO. If not, your shares will have zero value.
2. What space is the startup in? Do they have a technology where they are both building a moat and growing at a rate where they will be around in 5-10 years?
3. Can you live on 1/3 of what Google is offering you?
If you believe your startup is the next Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX or Pinterest I would say join that. The thing about these mega-companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon) is that they aren't going anywhere and if you made it through the interview already, I'm sure you can do it again. These mega-companies are filled with brilliant people so you will definitely learn a lot about running projects at scale. They are also filled with bureaucracy (unless you're on a skunk works team with no budget) which sucks if you're the type of person that likes to move quickly.
In my opinion, a great startup beats any mega-company any day of the week.
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chamza|7 years ago|reply
I was up with the startup for 6 months, it was not a good fit for me and I lost faith in the company quickly. A recruiter reached out to me from Google while I was there to follow up. I did not need to re-interview and they brought me in since I was still in the system as an accepted candidate (I think this stands for one year). so I got to experience the best of both worlds. I’m still at google 2 years later, I can echo the sentiments of it opening up many more doors
[+] [-] m_ke|7 years ago|reply
Being an early employee at a startup is usually not worth it.