Startups also want to pay you less and expect more out of you for that money. It used to be you could potentially get a payday out of the equity but lately it seems somehow, magically that ends up with the founders and investors. I don't see a compelling reason to work for a startup in 2023.
There’s more to life than money. Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those are the textbook three dimensions of intrinsic motivators that lead to job satisfaction, and it’s often much easier to find those in a startup. Working in a more established company can be soul sucking. Sure, you make more and you don’t have to worry as much about the whole thing failing and needing to find another job, but you’re in a position where you can meaningfully move the needle on the company’s success. You’re not a cog in a very large machine. You’re going to be given more freedom on how to accomplish things. And the mission of a startup can often feel much more compelling.
To some extent, it can feel very different depending on whether you’ve got a family to support. Having a family as a sense of purpose makes you want to choose something more solid in service of that. But to those without kids, finding purpose in work can feel more appealing and compromising on security and pay to get that freedom and sense of purpose can be much more compelling than trying to find purpose in money, which is just a losing proposition for most people.
Because you like the mission, and having a palpable impact, and dislike bureaucracy, and busy work.
The equity equation for startups changed over time because the abundance of venture capital made it possible for startups to avoid going public to raise capital, and the attendant scrutiny. But this meant that workers' equity stayed illiquid longer. I do not think startups conspired against workers.
More control over your own destiny and the company's? If you just want to do what someone tells you and conform (which most people do, and that's fine) you're better off with a bigger company. If you want a chance to defence what you do, startup is better. I would agree that it's important to not join a startup that wants to pretend it's a big company, or you get the worst of both worlds.
If a startup will let you work on things a more established company wouldn’t, you can acquire skills that bolster your long-term income and job security.
Also, not every startup is “pre-revenue” with 6 months of runway. There are many startups out there with real product-market fit, several years of runway, and prudent financial management in place.
Relatively speaking the bigger the company the better the job security. Nothing is ever risk free. But a job at a large pubco is way more secure than a job at a random startup with 6 months of runway.
It was exactly the same a generation ago. unless you’re referring to industries that used to have strong unions 3-4 generations ago or something.
A generation as in 20 years ago? Are you sure you want to claim that those people had job security? 3-4 years later, those people would be out of a job.
40 years? Lets see what Volker was doing to maintain that position.
60 years? Now you're getting to a place that the term might have made sense. But only in this place, and only if your entire career lasted less than 15 years.
80 years? Well, we're in a war, don't know how much that counts for job prospects but a military career is a career.
I lived through the dot bomb 22 years ago and was unemployed for 6 months. Had to move to another city to find work. It's been this way since probably the beginning of the 1980s. Neoliberalism brought in by Reagan and reinforced by Clinton (and everyone since) killed that world.
The rust belt was rusting since before Reagan. From a well-paid secure middle-class [added: blue collar] jobs perspective it was the loss of all those union jobs to foreign competition that made that lifestyle a lot harder. I wouldn't blame any specific president or individual.
Dot bomb was a specific nuclear winter for tech which I personally only managed to get through, albeit with not great earnings through the 2000s, with great fortune as I landed something new almost immediately. The broader economy was much less affected just as tech was less affected by 2008.
Way to extrapolate your own preferences on everyone. For me, security isn't even on the list of things I look for in a job. I'd take a startup job over a mature company any day and I wish looking for startup jobs specifically was easier than it is now.
It's probably more like a popular lie told by engineers. Yes, layoffs have been in a mixture of roles as far as I can tell. But there's definitely this wishful thinking in some circles that it's just administrative and marketing people.
It could be. I was at a company that fired 1/4 of its employees, many of whom were engineers, and nobody has said a peep about it. As far as I know, there hasn't even been an internal broadcast E-mail explaining why a bunch of people just disappeared.
On the one hand, I find that disrespectful on the part of management. On the other, it allows job-seekers to remain quiet about what happened. If I'm not asked directly if I'm still there, I don't talk about it.
The attention that some tech layoffs are getting is often not the norm. It commonly just happens, no announcement is made, and employees know a bunch of people are gone but not much beyond that—aside from some individuals they know aren’t there any longer.
If the economy is good and you are connected in the startup scene you can someday get a new job in a few days or weeks if a startup fails. there is no stigma in being involved in a failed startup.
Keep in mind that they first focused on young people just finishing college. These typically don’t yet have a family, nor experienced lifestyle inflation, so may be less focused on security.
