There is a constant topic that causing debates time and time in the tech industry: choosing between a startup vs a big corporation (e.g. FAANG company).
One of the arguments in favor of FAANG companies is that, although relatively one can make smaller impact at a big company, their work can be amplified by the scale of the company, thus making a bigger net impact in the world. This blog is just a quick post reflecting on this argument.
I used to believe in this statement. There is truth in it – the impact of even a small change (e.g. 0.01% CTR improvement in an ads model) can mean tens of millions of dollars of extra profit for the company (which is likely more than what the company will pay you in a lifetime). Similarly, in the infrastructure domain it’s easy to see that a small optimization to the cluster utilization brings a lot of value to the company. Some of the big corporations recognize this explicitly and even use examples like this in new hire onboarding sessions to inspire the folks. Compensation award and promotion can follow with these works.
However, after working in a few startups (and even started a company myself), I found this argument missing a lot of aspects for a software engineer’s career achievements and progress. It’s obvious that the skills and techniques used to make these incremental optimizations are less useful in a startup environment where things often have to be built from ground up, but there is more to that.
Truth is: most human organizations measure impact by human-based metrics, not absolute-value-based metrics. Google and Facebook are probably already the most notable companies that reward absolute-value improvements (given their sheer scale). However even there, a lot more work is recognized by solving human and organization problems, rather than making numbers up. From solving the headache of a VP to smoothly launch a product with approvals from all stakeholders, these are real meat that makes an engineer stand out. You have to solve or handle human interactions to earn the reputation. And you need to have the chance to do them, which is scarce in a big company.
This is where a smaller company or startup can do better for you. Even though it may not have the absolute impact a big company has, you have far more opportunities for you to take action, interact with peers, and be involved in the decision making. This gives you a lot of feedback, from the actual engineering result, to the feedback of execution, and results of decisions. You have higher chance to make a 20% difference, even though it’s numerical impact may be less than 0.02% in an established business. Heck, I would even argue that even if the product has no real impact in the end, there are still a lot more feedback to learn from if you are at the driver seat.
There is another psychological reason why working at a (small) startup may make you feel better: you are not indifferent in the company. You will feel your work is needed. This is a huge difference compared to big companies, where you quickly realize every role is designed to be replaceable. You can be making more money for the company and making more money for yourself today, but knowing tomorrow if you quit, there will not be much problem other than transitional issue (if there is). This is not to say that big companies have worse job security – it’s actually the opposite – but while you are there, the feeling of indifference is real and can make you sad.
Of course there are always exceptions in both worlds. The ideal case may be working a big company but having startup feedback and rewards. But if it’s not available to you, I hope my argument above can be helpful.
piaoyang 