Startup life pros and cons.

7 Comments

1. AnonymousMarch 4,2022 at 3:04AM UTC

   I've worked for Fortune companies, followed by corporations, non profits, small companies and startups.
   I enjoyed working for a start up as my hard work was rewarded. It was a lot of late nights but it was exciting to watch the company prosper.

   I wouldn't suggest a startup for new graduates unless they are self motivated. Someone that needs a lot of hand holding won't survive or thrive in that setting.

2. Barb HansenMarch 4,2022 at 3:49AM UTC

   As you know, Georgene, there are not only huge differences between Startups and established companies, but there are huge differences between a Startup after its Series B 80M raise and that same Startup back when it only had two months of cash left before the doors shut.

   More money brings more people, more teams, more corporate structure, and more procedures and brings a startup closer to an established company.

   I have worked at a Startup before and after a large cash infusion. There were plenty of changes. The good changes included much better office chairs, hiring more people, and forming a new team (we had an HR team), and you got to work on the job you were hired to do.

   The no-so-good changes included some co-workers you worked with daily you now only saw occasionally in the lunchroom, and you only worked on the job you were hired to do.

   I started my business career in startup land, and in the middle of my career, I worked for a large multi-national publicly traded company, and now I'm back in startup land.

   Here is the list of things that I love about working at an early phase Startup (so these are my Pros) ;

   1) You get to work on projects that you weren't hired to do, giving you lots of experience across multiple job types and divisions.

   2) You'll learn technical jobs and technologies you didn't even think you needed to know.

   3) You'll be around really talented people who will encourage your brain to think differently.

   4) You'll work with Founders and CX0s giving you experience on how to communicate with senior executives (and you'll lose any nerves you may have when interacting with senior executives).

   5) You'll probably learn more about the financial side of the business than you may ever want to know (assuming that you're not already in finance).

   6) You'll learn how to communicate quickly and effectively in emails and meetings - there is no time to waste

   7) And speaking of meetings, you'll learn to talk about what you're working on quickly without embellishment, and you'll learn to speak up in those meetings.

   8) More opportunities for financial growth - new teams need leaders, and those leaders are promoted internally, nice bonus structures, and huge upside if the Startups ESOP (employee stock option plan) is well funded, and there is a liquidity event.

   Here are the CONS:

   All of the items listed above can be CONS. If those items don't sound good to you, then an early-stage startup is not for you.

   And here are some more CONS (some of these cons are not found in all startups. No bro culture allowed in my startups)

   1) Not much formal career planning (lots of informal career growth but nothing formalized)

   2) Too much work to do (unless you are really good at saying no)

   3) Company pivots can mean that weeks or months of your work is no longer needed (which can be heart-breaking)

   4) Strong personalities (by strong, I mean "bros")

   5) Less money than funded startups and established companies (but usually more stock options)

   6) No HR policies, or HR department or even an HR person

3. Heather CutlerMarch 6,2022 at 1:22PM UTC

   Thank you for this excellent rundown!

4. Danielle SimonMarch 8,2022 at 4:48AM UTC

   I've worked for a startup that is fairly new and now work for a startup that is not new at all. As Barb said, those types of differences can make a startup work experience pretty different, as can many other things. The following have been my experiences:

   Newer startups:

   -More disorganization than at standard companies

   -More poor leadership than at standard companies

   -Easier to get hired and/or promoted (this has some correlation to there being more poor leadership)

   -You can get thrown into the fire

   -You are more likely to get experience with a lot of different tasks and duties that could fit multiple job titles than at standard companies

   -You can have far more of an impact than anywhere else

   -They tend to be very much for doing things in different ways than standard companies do, which is a pro and a con

   -Related to the point on doing things differently, they have processes that make no sense/are confusing or that need a lot of work/fine-tuning...if they even have a process at all

   -They can go overboard with software, programs, resources and other things that they use (they literally had 20+ different sites for me to get login credentials to use when I was first hired--honestly, probably 30 sites, as someone in marketing)--they are far more open to spending money on anything they think they need/that might help them

   -Stock options as part of your benefits

   -Far more access to pretty much any leader than at standard companies

   -More flexible and less traditional in an arbitrary sense than standard companies (i.e. they are less likely to believe you have to be at work from X time to Y time vs caring more that the work gets done, they are less likely to care about working on site/in the office, etc)

   More established startups:

   -They mostly feel and operate very similarly to standard companies

   -The same point above re: going overboard with how much they have for employees to use/all the different logins

   -Stock options as part of your benefits

   -Far more access to pretty much any leader than at standard companies

   -They find more of a sweet spot between being "different" from corporate or "more innovative" than corporate and having ridiculous processes/doing things in ways that don't work well vs newer startups

   -You're aware that they still raise money, that they still could go public and other behind-the-scenes things that happen with startups, but you feel like you have the stability of working at a standard company

   -More flexibility/less traditionally arbitrary

   A few differences from what Barb wrote stood out to me:

   1) HR--My current job, the more established startup, 100% has an HR department that operates like most HR departments. The newer startup used Rippling to function as their HR department.

   2) Bro culture--FGB seems like it's mostly woman-run. So is where I currently work. It has honestly been a dream in that regard. I feel like you get more understanding (i.e. you need to take off work for whatever, it not being a good idea to throw you into the fire, work takes time to complete, training takes time, etc), more being realistic, and, potentially, less phoniness about valuing various types of diversity and differences (I did recently read about a woman-run startup that was a racist mess, though).

   3) Communication--There are those people who don't know when to stop talking or asking questions, and they regularly drag meetings over the scheduled time. Some people, you learn not to schedule meetings right after one they're running because theirs 100% won't end on time. Oftentimes, they communicate significantly better in those meetings than they do in writing, which also causes issues. I really have not found it to be much different than at a corporate or standard job. I will say, this is mostly the case at my current job and was not so much the case at the startup that was more new.

5. Siobhán RichardsMarch 9,2022 at 4:11PM UTC

   Thank you very much to everyone for sharing, my experience has only been with standard/corporate companies and I have always been interested in working in a start up, so your insights are invaluable!

6. AnonymousMarch 9,2022 at 5:34PM UTC

   I've spent 15+ years working for startups and often hire and manage people early in their careers. One of the things I've always explained during the interview process to these candidates is when working for a startup, the words "that's not in my job description" don't exist.

   For some people, like myself, the idea of getting to do and learn different things is exciting and they see this as a positive. But as someone else said a person who requires more structure or hand holding, might see this statement as a negative and be a better fit for a larger organization with clear systems/processes, etc.

7. Sasha TellerFebruary 21,2023 at 9:57AM UTC

   I believe that it is very important for a startup to constantly look for new ways to develop, use different software and other ways to optimize the workflow. That's why I recommend immediately looking for a proven development company, for example, https://www.startupsoft.com/n-ix-review/ . Here you can read the review and find out if this option is right for you or it is better to look further.