My suggestion to 19 year olds. Be careful with this blog post.
"working at an already-massively-successful company means you will learn much less, and probably work with less impressive people."
Seriously? Yes big companies have lots of bureaucratic crap and things take longer blah blah. However, you do not want to be giving this advice to an "ambitious" 19 year old. Big companies have a lot of smart and impressive people. Lots. They also can teach you a thing or 2 about the "real world".
"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision."
Let me provide the other side of this. You are giving up $30K in salary today as a 19 year old. Now, lets imagine that you need to get a job soon again since that "awesome breakout" company actually failed, what do you think is going to happen ? Yes, you will not be able to negotiate as high a salary as you could have if you had that extra $30K. It is not just about $30K. It is about having the power to negotiate next time if you move which you probably will as a 19 year old.
"working at an already-massively-successful company means you will learn much less, and probably work with less impressive people."
Seriously? Yes big companies have lots of bureaucratic crap and things take longer blah blah. However, you do not want to be giving this advice to an "ambitious" 19 year old. Big companies have a lot of smart and impressive people. Lots. They also can teach you a thing or 2 about the "real world".
"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision."
Let me provide the other side of this. You are giving up $30K in salary today as a 19 year old. Now, lets imagine that you need to get a job soon again since that "awesome breakout" company actually failed, what do you think is going to happen ? Yes, you will not be able to negotiate as high a salary as you could have if you had that extra $30K. It is not just about $30K. It is about having the power to negotiate next time if you move which you probably will as a 19 year old.