Tea break: What's it like to work at a startup?

[emily927]

The next round of the startup and growth mindset challenge opens up next week, and with it we’ll be sharing the big prize update! If you have a few minutes, want to join me for another tea break? 

Today’s discussion: Pros and cons of working at a startup

Same as last tea break, please keep it friendly and protect the innocent. No trade secrets or inside info please!

1. Have you ever worked at a startup? 
2. What did you like about it?
3. What didn’t you like? 

I’ll start us off….

1. Have you worked at a startup? Yes! Only one. It was very small, fewer than 15 people. 
2. What did you like? Being able to learn about every single aspect of the business. I was hired as a tech writer, but I got involved in so much more: reporting, sales, support, development, QA, press releases, product management, the list goes on. 
3. What didn’t you like? Honestly, I loved it. It was exactly where I wanted to be. But there were late nights, weekends, and crisis moments with lots of uncertainty. No one tells you what to do - it took me a while to get comfortable with that, and to trust my own spidey senses! 

Looking forward to reading what YOU liked or didn’t like about startups. Thanks in advance for sharing 😀

[imharry404]

💫hehe

Thanks

[glen_yu]

1. Yes.  One.  It was <90 people (but IT team was ~6 people incl. myself, most were devs, acct mgrs, etc.).  It was in the tech startup in the cannabis industry and because Canada had legalized business was growing (pun intended).  

2. Little to no red tape.  The company at the time had some scaling issues so I was brought in to rearchitect their cloud strategy and start the process to get rid of their technical debt.  It might not be for everyone, but what I like most about it was I got to wear multiple hats and was the architect, engineer, support.  I liked it because to me, it was a hyperbolic time chamber. It was a much flatter org structure and it was easy a lot easier to get an audience with the CEO/VP/directors to get my designs approved and deployed to production.  This was also pre-pandemic, so being able to walk into the office in shorts, flip-flops and a cap is always nice.

3. Little to no red tape.  Yup -- this was indeed a double-edged sword.  It can be a bit of a wild west at times and you can really see it when there were issues in production and there weren't always proper procedures.  There was also a lot fewer staff so if you really needed a very skilled, tight crew otherwise it becomes painfully obvious who the weakest link was.  [begin rant] This is in contrast to larger enterprises with generally a slower process where (I'm not going to sugar coat this) incompetence can really hide in larger, siloed teams and buy time by playing the politics game or passing responsibilities to other siloed teams. [end rant]

All in all, I really enjoyed the startup life.  It was high risk, high reward and I would actually encourage anyone early-ish in their career to give this a go.

Optionally, you can go for a small/medium sized business (~150ish ppl?) that's a bit more established, which was where I went to after the startup. It's the best of both worlds between a startup and enterprise.  And now I'm back with a large firm, but in a new practice, so it's basically a startup but with the financial backing of an enterprise, which is great!

[emily927]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I worked at a Fortune 500 and a small/medium biz, then went to a startup (opposite direction). I thought it was enlightening for me to experience the established structures/processes first. It helped me decide what to do (and not do) at the startup!

[glen_yu]

I've been fortunate enough to work in different industries of different sizes:
- government
- telco (enterprise)
- animation (smb)
- retail (enterprise)
- bank (enterprise)
- cannabis tech (startup)
- consulting (smb)
- consulting (enterprise but with startup feel) <-- current


I get bored easily and would change jobs/roles quite regularly (every 2-3 years), but for me I found it the most frustrating with the large enterprises or regulated industries because they tend to use more "tried and true" *cough* legacy *cough* tech and also have a lot of process (read as: too many!).  Going to the startup really opened my eyes on how much freedom I could have.  I ended up in consulting because it allows me to change jobs without actually having to change jobs. 

[Abhishek213]

I have a doubt how your profile turned into google dev expert😅

[glen_yu]

Oh?  Although the profile update was recent, I've been a GDE for a year now.

[theyashsisodiya]

I like this challenge waiting for another one which is locked....

[SidVjSingh]

Nope, never had worked in a startup, but looking forward to work with it in future, if possible 

[Bholoubi]

Hello 

Thank you for sharing  your answers @emily927  

1- Starting you own business 

For a startup thinking my first time was 3 years ago when I wanted to start my own business . I worked on it during on weekends .. but when Coved19 happened I stopped . 

2.What did you like about it?

I liked the new skill that I earned "thinking out of the box"  and the "high risk"

3.What didn’t you like? 

Financially  I need to be ready for the risks  that I will take  and that will take a lot of time.  

Thank you for giving me the chance to share.  

Have a nice day.