Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

[1729]

To add more context to my question, I’m currently in a product leadership position at a ~300 person SaaS company and I found my way here by way of a semi-decent exit as part of a startup’s founding team. However, I have been considering a switch to a much bigger company (Microsoft, Google, AWS) of late. All I’ve ever learnt over the last decade has been by operating in a capital constrained environment. Moreover, I don’t have a lot of reserve energy in the tank to direct it at another startup after 10 years of blood, sweat and toil.

I often find myself thinking of and seeking out experiences from my peers at these behemoths on how decisions are made and products get built there. On one hand, I’m scared of slowly going further away from all my learnings as an entrepreneur (a lot of which haven’t come easy!!!) but on the other I feel like not having had relevant experience in the right BU/product within a big co is limiting my field of vision. What are some things I should consider before switching?

[austincheney]

Here is what it means to work at a big company:

* Things work slowly, so relax. There are many people that have a hand in every aspect of a product decision.

* At a startup you are actively changing the world. That’s done now. Put that completely out of your head. You are cog in a machine. Instead focus on your assigned product, help your teammates, and just learn to relax.

* You, the individual, are not important. The product is important, the department that delivers the product is less important, the teams that comprise the department are less important than that, and so on. Again, accept the reality and just relax.

* Do your best. Unlike at a startup, generally you will have time to get things correct. This is the difference between competence and others who struggle to get things right and always appear to be in a hurry. There is no reason to be in a hurry.

* Expect insufficient test automation, lots of regression, and plenty of repetition. Also expect everybody to be an expert that is in a hurry and things in a unique way. Just be patient, politely nod, and just relax.

* If you are good at systems automation then learn to automate away as much of your job as you can. Use the now increased free time to contribute to documentation and internal knowledge repositories. You will find that a lot of the documentation can be automated as well.

* My employer has something like 270,000 employees so it’s forgiven if you have no idea what all of those people in your cubicle farm do. You need to actively spend at least 2 days a month answering those questions.

* Just because you are at a big company does not mean you are safe. I have been in a large established super well known .com that failed. People get laid off even when big companies are healthy.

* If you don’t like being bored and are highly risk adverse you might find the big company life highly depressing. A lot of my advice here is to just relax, but I hate relaxing.

[bibabaloo]

Some counter experiences, just based on my own annecdata.

> * You, the individual, are not important. The product is important, the department that delivers the product is less important, the teams that comprise the department are less important than that, and so on. Again, accept the reality and just relax.

Working at startups I have never felt less important as an individual. The product is #1 and I only exist as a cog in the machine to produce that product and make the founders money. In a big company I was encouraged to pursue professional development, my professional goals and dreams were catered for and I felt like I could make personal progression.

> * Expect insufficient test automation, lots of regression, and plenty of repetition. Also expect everybody to be an expert that is in a hurry and things in a unique way. Just be patient, politely nod, and just relax.

Again, opposite experience, startups don't have time for test automation whereas big companies generally do.

> * If you don’t like being bored and are highly risk adverse you might find the big company life highly depressing.

I'm often bored at my startup though never lacking for work. It's just that the work can often be monotonous work because the startup doesn't have time to automate it or hire someone to do it. At a startup, its rare that you're encouraged to explore something new that might not work out. There's just not the time or budget.

[chrissnell]

This is all fantastic advice. I spent the first 26 years of my career working at startups and small companies before taking a job at a big, public tech company last year. This advice is spot-on.

I find that I'm actually working much harder here but my work is more focused and in a single lane. I'm not bouncing around all day between 20 different things. I'm grinding for months on end on one tough, big problem. It's not bad, just...different. The pay is much better here but you are expected to _be_ better.

[soared]

* Things work slowly, so relax.

The extent of this is hard to grasp outside of bigco. At oracle we had layoffs/reorg - no real work was done for ~7 days, and it took 3 months to figure out our new roles/responsibilities. Some people were paid $40k+ in that time period and did very little work.

Things occasionally move very very slow. Twiddle your thumbs and be happy about your huge salary, don't quit like I did!

[codegladiator]

Can't agree to this more. And depending on the size of the company, it might not be just few weeks, things which you would think should have been done in a month might take up to a year. And meanwhile everyone WILL keep talking about moving fast.

People will keep coming in and going out and you would end up have the same conversation with many people many times. And everyone will try to suggest "one change" at a time.

And there is nothing wrong with all this. This is just how big companies work, you cant fast-forward any of it.

[ed25519FUUU]

I came from multiple startups to a FANG and this advice is really good. Seriously, you’re going to need to relax.

Also I recommend reading “corporate confidential”. I was confused initially why being an excellent engineer who could “deliver” didn’t make me shine at bigco. The book helped me get on a better path.

Also relax.

[tarsinge]

It's worth noting that there is a culture change in some big companies where small teams given more latitude and budget to explore innovative solution (I know because these are the teams I mostly sell to). Also Intrapreneurship is a thing too. Way better place to be in than a medium sized mono product startup to be in if you ask me.

[LordFast]

> A lot of my advice here is to just relax, but I hate relaxing.

Hit the nail on the head with that one.

[weitzj]

I had the same experience and the comment about relaxing resonates with me.

Coming from the startup to the big company I could not understand why people leave the office at 5pm. There would be another few hours to work.

Also lots of meetings.

As the previous commenter said. Relax.

I guess you will have a broad skill set from your background and actually in big Corp the nice thing is that with this broad skill set That you can engage in so many different projects. And it is tempting to do so. But you only have this much time a day, and it will not be easy to accelerate your pace. This frustration can be bad for your mental health.

So my advice is relax. But also don’t forget the thoughts you had when joining the big company in the first months. Maybe keep a journal. Because you probably had good ideas but might get overwhelmed by the complexity of the big Corp.

If you have not read the “Accelerate” book, I would recommend this as well.

Also you can observe Conway’s Law in its beauty.

[faeyanpiraat]

Why would I find it depressing if I’m risk averse? You sound like the only risk is getting fired for a random reason, which could also happen at a smaller corp.

[j4yav]

Well that all sounds terribly depressing.

[systematical]

This nails it.

[KKKKkkkk1]

> At a startup you are actively changing the world.

That sounds very exciting. Can you point to one startup that's changing the world?

[par]

"just relax" good advice.

[PascLeRasc]

[deleted]

[lunias]

Remember when you used to ask your Mom / Dad, "Why?" and they'd respond with, "Because I said so." It's like that, but subtly more infuriating because it's never a single identifiable person saying "no" that could be spoken to, understood, and reasoned with. The answer that you'll get at a big company is, "because that's the way it is".

[katzgrau]

Having worked at Big Co and then on my own company for years, this is exactly what I was thinking.

You'll lose professional autonomy in exchange for a good salary, job security, and resume bling. And you probably won't have to work as hard or as often (again, probably).

[mliker]

No, that's not the way it works at big companies like AWS, Google, Microsoft (source: me, I've worked at all 3). A large company attracts various types of people. It's not homogeneous like what you describe. Also, there are plenty of opportunities to practice "intrapreneurship" within a large company with lots of resources to impact the world in a positive way.

[mcculley]

That's well put.

I did some contracting work for a very large organization last year. It was my first experience trying to navigate the rules inside such a large organization. The interaction that I found most amusing is that I would ask for something that would require crossing an organization boundary and the immediate response would be, "No.", followed shortly by, "Wait, why do you need that?" This happened several times and was just part of the dance required to find the right person to sign off on my plan.

[PascLeRasc]

There will be plenty of this, and occasionally sub in "that's unprofessional". Requesting to work from home will be unprofessional. Taking PTO will be unprofessional. Coming in at 9:02am will be unprofessional. Requesting the 1-year raise that's in your signed employment agreement will be unprofessional.

[koheripbal]

Also like working with your parents, it is always better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

Getting permission/authorization for anything is often a bureacratic nightmare with people who neither care enough to help you, nor wanting to authorize something that might get them in trouble, nor even knowing who's the right person to get authorization from.

As long as you're not breaking important, just do it.

[danck]

Once when I was frustrated with my current Job at a large corporation, an experienced friend told me the secret.

He said, they'd value "predictability over excellence".

Meaning, talk about your goals, give an estimation and arrive exactly on point. It doesn't matter if it's your personal project or projects/processes where you take the lead.

Being faster than estimated, or finding a better way and switching while your doing it will not be appreciated.

This really unlocked a lot of success and explained many glass walls i've been running into before.

[systematical]

Well my journey was a bit different than yours. I was Lead Dev at a small startup (<10 people) and went to a non-FAANG Fortune 500 and assumed a Sr role on a team. Things I didn't think would bother were a dress code. It does, it does bother me. Especially in the Summer. I was surprised on my first day that I didn't get to choose my own O.S. I really miss Linux, it really effects my productivity being in Mac. I thought projects Jira tasks would be better planned, they are not, they barely have any information in them. Documentation is a joke somehow. Onboarding was a joke. They just kinda stuck me in there. I couldn't believe I had better processes in place at the startup. Things move slow. Some days I barely have any work, its not much fun. There are things that can't be beat though. Chance to move around. Better benefits. With that said, I'll be looking for a smaller company after I've reached my year mark (they have me in relocation expense cuffs).

I hope your experience is better. If you're going to a FAANG I imagine it will be. This place is much more buttoned up.

[bengale]

This rings a bell for me. Before I started at a big firm I assumed they'd be super optimised to get people going fast, as its a common occurrence for them. What I didn't realise was that you sitting waiting for equipment and logins for 2 weeks doesn't show up on anyones spreadsheet so its not a real loss as far as they're concerned.

Plenty of time for self improvement though if you're just using it as a stepping stone.

[pembrook]

> I find myself seeking out experiences from peers at these behemoths on how decisions are made and products get built there.

I think you will be mostly astounded at the lack of things you can learn from the way decisions are made inside big companies. Which is to say, they aren’t super rational organizations.

As a multiple FAANG alumni, I can tell you that decisions made are often strongly influenced by politics, individual executive “hunches,” and legacy tech concerns instead of raw cost/benefit or actual data.

The fact is, you’re going to make a lot more money doing much less work at FAANG.

However, very little of what you learn about how the organization runs will be valuable outside of the big organization itself.

[bengale]

* Things move slowly.

* You need to be able to play the game if you're going to move up, if you want to stay in the same role don't make waves.

* Other people are playing the game. Sometimes if you're trying to make changes, even if they're going to be beneficial, you are going to run into people who have a vested interest in you not improving things. Don't let it get you down, pick your battles.

* You are way easier to replace than you think you are, don't start fights with people that can let you go. Most won't hesitate to remove you if you make their life difficult.

* Make the most of the perks and don't bust a gut, if anyone notices it'll be because you're making them look bad. Going above and beyond will earn you a pat on the head but nothing more.

* People will be doing everything they can to cover their own ass, don't let them use you for cover.

* Don't get too attached to projects, things get killed or mothballed. Years of work can just be binned without much warning. Make sure you're not defining yourself by what you're doing at work.

I've done my time at a couple of big firms and had people working with me on teams that want to be a 'craftsman' or don't really understand these workplaces, the thing I tell them to remember was "don't fight the waves, just let it wash over you". You can't win, you'll just knacker yourself out and drown.

Don't feel bad if you hate it or want to leave, it's not for everyone. Also don't feel bad if you love it, plenty of people have much better things going on in their life than work and are happy to coast along at a big firm doing what needs to be done.

[sizzle]

I can tell that this is hard-earned wisdom from lived experiences as I nod my head in agreement. Thanks for sharing.

[jerrysievert]

here are some things I've learned:

* politics: yes, they exist everywhere, but tend to be amplified at larger companies. polish your political skills, and one thing that I've learned is that it's important to "show, don't tell"

* fiefdoms: there are more of them, some more welcoming than others. be prepared for those that value power above all. you can't take it personally, or you'll go into a very dark place; "be the rubber duck", that is, stay floating no matter what and let the negative wash off of you like water off a duck

* duplication of effort: there likely will be tons of duplication of effort (even parallel projects doing the exact same thing), sometimes it's easy to work with others and come together for a common solution, sometimes it just plain won't happen (see fiefdoms). no real advices here, just that you need to be aware

* technology stacks: sometimes some groups will be stuck with what seem to be very old technology stacks, or things that don't seem to make any sense. look at the group you'd be joining and who they interact with, find out about the pain points before you join so you aren't surprised. even a small change can affect a lot of people at that scale, so approach changes and modernization gingerly.

[maybeiambatman]

> polish your political skill

Genuinely curious to know what this means.

[brudgers]

The biggest thing is that you don't really know anything.

_You weren't in the room when the decisions were made and there is oil tanker momentum based on those decisions.

_You don't have a clue as to who is who. People within the organization know each other in non-obvious ways. There is an invisible informal network built of many years, organizational structures, and projects.

_You don't know which project is whose baby. Two equivalent approaches are not equivalent when one has backing and the other relies on natural selection.

None of these is bad. It's just the nature of blindly encountering an elephant. Good luck.

[laktak]

If you end up in a 'bad' company you may make these experiences:

- there are feuds between companies or even departments in the same org

- decisions are not based on facts but on political circumstances

- the outcome of an analysis is often predetermined

- not the best idea/project/etc. win's but the one with the best connections

- decisions are made that are damaging to the company just to deny someone else in the org a success

[_y5hn]

"You are welcome to visit anytime to provide input on how we can improve our improvements-processes."

and

"Everyone got heard."

[woeirua]

This can be true at companies of any size. Sadly.

[RobRivera]

Spot on

[croh]

I worked in small company (50-100 employees) and lead team of 7 people before. After company went down, I joined as IC in big corps. Few things mentioned below might not be relevant to your position. But adding them for every one. Not all orgs are same, so take this with pinch of salt.

- Relax, don't boil the ocean. (This is first advice given to me by one of the director after raising concerns over dev practices being followed)

- Learn presentation skills. Charts are important. Executives don't understand technical language but only charts.

- Stay humble but be political. Avoid heated arguments. Give logical choices to people and let them choose instead of proving them wrong. Make sure to get all discussions on mail. So if later blame game starts, you will be saved.

- In such orgs, some folk stays for decades. They don't care about product or team. Deal carefully with them. But then again you can find some real gems with decades of specialist experience. Learn from them as much as possible.

- Learn proprietary technologies. Most of time such techs are not available for individuals or very pricy.

- Get certifications. Big corps provide very expensive certifications with huge discounts. (But before working on them make sure there arn't any traps. E.g. In my org, you had to stay for atleast a year after finishing certifications or pay back)

- Understand KPI well. (e.g. In startup, you may get appraisal on working hard in weekends and shipping. But in megacorps, that won't happen. You may get some praise but not appraisal)

- If you want recognition, try to conduct department wide technical sessions. People will respect you in (those never ending) meetings.

- Don't invest your emotions in projects. Sometimes they get scrapped quarterly.

- Welcome to world of VMs. Organizations are tuned for operations not for engineering. (I miss my Linux)

- Even though your performance is good, you can get canned. Layoffs are done based on budget not on performance. Keep an eye on Gartner index. Also manager plays key role in almost all decisions. So think once before messing with him/her.

- And last but not least. Don't go in comfort zone. Always keep an eye on market & opportunities.

[ricardobeat]

This is an accurate description of most of the negative aspects of BigCo.

[hoorayimhelping]

>Moreover, I don’t have a lot of reserve energy in the tank to direct it at another startup after 10 years of blood, sweat and toil.

>...What are some things I should consider before switching?

Take a break if you can afford it. I think that will serve you better than almost any other thing you can do, work related. I've felt this way, and took a few months off, I was champing at the bit to get back to work and start making something happen. You'll think a lot clearer about what you want to do next with some time away.

After you get out of a serious relationship, you need time to heal, regroup, re-find yourself, re-learn who you are, etc before you start dating again. It's similar with jobs you put a lot into.

[fistfucker3000]

I hard agree. Startups can burn you out a lot. I've been there myself. The best position is if you can line up a start date a month or two after quitting.

[daxfohl]

300 is already pretty big. I went from 20 years where by far my largest company was 16 people, to Microsoft, and I'm pretty happy.

The biggest transition for me was the amount of cross org digging and asking and such required. So much is constantly in Flux, and internal integration points are often poorly documented or have apis based off protocols from a decade ago, or whatever else. You spend most of your time doing that, figuring out how to integrate with various old, half supported systems, getting pushback that the integration won't be supportable, etc.

This is in strong contrast with a small company where you are generally working with public, well documented tools, and everyone you work with shares the same goal.

That said, I'm happy now that I have gotten used to it. The scale of things you work on is much greater.

One thing I'll say is don't sell yourself short by taking a job at the low end of where you think you should be and telling yourself that you can work your way up. I made this mistake when I was unemployed but not desperate. Your project could be canceled or there can be blockers or reorgs or whatever else that keeps you back. So wait for the offer that you want.

[borramakot]

I've done a startup, a couple of midsize companies (~4k engineers), and AWS. Just my 2c, a lot of the advice I'm seeing here applies more to the midsize companies than at least my corner of AWS.

In my Amazon experience:

* Some very high level project requirements would come from above (e.g. after this date, internal technology X is being deprecated, so you should have a really good reason to put out a project with X).

* Otherwise, decisions were mostly made at a low level, documented, debated with the wider team for an hour, then implemented. This was a little more structured than at the startup, but most of it was that documentation and debate happened before implementation, rather than after implementation at the startup.

* Project managers were somewhat active with the team, but a lot of the features we worked on came from the engineers watching what was used, forum requests, or customer requests through other channels (e.g. conferences).

* There was a focus on getting products out quickly, but tech debt/tests/reliability was a much bigger focus than anywhere else I've been.

* The team was fairly small, and encouraged to make heavy use of other team's internal tooling/native AWS tools for anything that didn't really need to be custom. Interactions with those teams was pretty straightforward and mostly supportive- "We're using your service to do Y, and would like to do Z too, but that doesn't seem possible without some tweaks to your API/service, is that something you can put in the backlog to investigate?"

* An individual team could be quick to change, but the organization as a whole has a lot of cultural momentum in the way things are done, and it's not clear who to talk to to make recommendations. For example, at the startup, I could go to the CEO and express concerns about the newly restrictive information security policy. At Amazon, I'm probably not going to email Jeff Bezos and suggest six-pagers be made available in advance of meetings.

* Transferring teams in Amazon is mostly extremely easy

* Conversely, Conway's law applies hard in AWS- it didn't seem straightforward to offer products or features that weren't obviously under one team's purview without forming a new team.

[sumanthvepa]

Having gone the other way, from Microsoft to entrepreneurship, I would say you are better positioned for success. For the most part your skill sets will transfer over to product management in a large company fairly easily. Some things are different though. You will typically be responsible for either part of a product or one product in a portfolio. As such your product or feature's future depends not just on how it is doing in the marketplace, but how it does relative to other products and features in the the portfolio. So you need to work with your managers to evangelize and promote the product within the larger organization as well. You'll have be able to justify its existence, very robustly with a lot of data. Much of the mid-level product managers function within a large company comprises of this activity. This may seem wasteful to you, coming from a startup, where the verdict of the market was everything, but this is how large companies determine how resources are allocated. Eventually the market will determine the future of the product, but for many product managers in large companies, that success or failure will not occur in the duration of their tenure. So one thing you need to focus on a lot is networking with the internal power structures of the company to build support for your self and your team. You have a huge advantage in this respect as an acquisition. They have paid good money to bring your team in, so there is significant awareness of who you are. If you are careful, and politically savvy you can leverage that awareness, and initial goodwill into strong long term support for your team and product.

[kartayyar]

- Domain mastery is more important than being a jack of all trades.

- Realize you are signing up to be part of a bigger machine, and there are things you will have less control over. This is both limiting and empowering.

- Both people in small and large companies can be smart, but they are typically a different flavor of smart. Learn from them accordingly.

- You should plan to have a much longer lead in terms of getting things done if it requires a dependency on a team you don't work with frequently.

- The team you work on is far more important than the company you work for.

- Be active rather than passive about finding opportunities and projects to work on. You can easily get stuck working in a role you might not be a fit for or a manager you don't click with.

[snarfy]

I just started at Big Co!

For my first assignment, I had a question about an API I was supposed to use. I was told to email Bob.

me: "Do I do A or B when using the API?"

Bob: (cc's his manager my email)

Bob's manager: Is your team suppose to be using API? (my manager cc'd)

Two weeks of infighting later, still no answer to A or B, and my task is now past due.

[axegon_]

Here is my list.

* Things work a lot more slowly in big co's.

* There's a lot more ego involved so prepare for a lot of ass lickers(I really can't think of a better term).

* A lot of "meetings", "discussions", "planning" and so on, which often are just means to kick a can down the road.

* More time to relax.

* Nearly impossible to change the status quo, not impossible but a very slow and painful process.

* Often more freedom to experiment with technologies and proprietary solutions if you find a way to justify them(which is often not a difficult task).

* Plenty of ways to squeeze out training, seminars, certifications and whatnot, just make sure you read the tiny font at the bottom.

[AnimalMuppet]

There are systems and processes for everything. The plus of that is that there's a lot less winging it, and that you can just hand a bunch of stuff off to people that know how to do it. The minus is that you have to learn who those people are and how to activate them, and it can take longer than just doing it yourself.

[kbos87]

Great topic, and I’d say there are already some signs you are asking the right questions. A few of my own thoughts:

Use your capital constrained mindset productively, but be attuned to when to shut it off. Being able to do a lot with a little can be a positive trait inside a larger company (e.g., early days on an unproven project), but you need to recognize when capital should be applied so you don’t risk unknowingly playing small ball.

There is something to be said for another commenter’s suggestion to “relax” a little bit. You’ll need to, because larger companies move more slowly. Be willing to push, but recognize that there are limits to what a large org can do in a short amount of time. That’s just reality.

Try your best to adopt a longer term mindset. In a smaller company you are often focused on what’s happening right now - larger companies have more space and more runway to think over longer arcs of time. What are the implications of what you are doing now a year, or even three years out?

[fsloth]

"Corporate Confidential" by Cynthia Shapiro is an excellent book in explaining the various motivations stakeholders at a large company may or may not have.

Although the book can be considered bleak, the point is not to train you to suspect your employer, but rather point out various possibilities of politics and power play that may be going on under the surface that are not so obvious from the get go. I.e. it's a survival manual of sorts to a new and sometimes semi-hostile environment.