The biggest myth about working for a start-up vs. a big company
“I can’t handle those all-nighters.”
That next job you think you want — it may not be what you think.
When I ask friends and strangers, “What kind of company do you want to work for next?” I get a lot of very thoughtful answers. It turns out people spend a lot of time thinking about this!
But like anything else, this thinking is colored by biases, stereotypes, and myths. People assemble stories about working at companies at various stages of their lifecycles, influenced by portrayals in popular culture, podcasts, “struggle porn,” corporate vulnerability exercises, media reports, Top Places to Work lists, the experience of friends, their parents’ careers, and more.
As someone who’s worked for companies that ranged from 6 people to 60 people to 300 people to 30,000 people to 130,000 people, I’ve kind of seen it all. And by “all,” I mean “a slim, non-representative selection of business environments.” But a good sample, maybe better than most!
Over the past 24 years (minus two years at business school), I’ve held middle management roles at two of the FAANGs. I’ve worked for two companies that are now possibly the most hated in America. I’ve been a road-warrior consultant. I was on the founding management team of a startup that saw its funding suddenly pulled by shady investors. I’ve been promoted many times, and asked to leave a job once. It’s been quite a ride, and I hope it’s not over for a while.
But enough about me. I want to help you, and in particular I want to help you figure out where you’d like to work next.
So let’s get one thing straight.
A lot of people believe this:
”Startups are a grind. Big companies are for work-life balance.”
But these are both myths.
If you’re thinking about what you want to do at this stage of your career, accept that both these stereotypes are wildly inaccurate.
You may believe that startups are about running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace, burning the midnight oil, grinding until you hit the wall. You have to exceed those metrics, you have to approach profitability, you have to achieve escape velocity, you have to climb the hockey stick, you have to make zero into one, you have to appease the investors. If you don’t do those things, you can’t complete your next fundraise. Maybe you don’t make payroll.
Meanwhile, big companies are about setting priorities, balancing your work and life, punching in at 9, then clocking out at 4:55 to pick up your kids from school, attend yoga class, or whatever your thing is.
Here’s the truth: Your work-life balance is not a function of how long your company has been around, or how many other people it employs.
Yes, at a startup, you have broader responsibilities. That means you’re probably working on a more diverse set of projects at the same time. And when fires break out — which is a normal, everyday thing — you gotta grab the hose yourself.
But at a big company, your work is specialized. If there’s work to do that’s not in your narrow job description, it’s likely someone else’s job. Seems much more manageable, right?
Except, and this is a big except, if you’re a salaried employee at a larger company, you need to coordinate across cross-functional teams. Cross-functional coordination is your job. And that means meetings. It means internal communications. It means weekly reports.
If you know anyone who works at a big company, at some point they’ve probably said, “Ugh, I’ve been in meetings all day. I didn’t even have time to work.” Well, my friend, when you’re at a big company, the meetings are the work.
And who decides when the meetings happen? Probably the highest paid person who needs to attend.
Funny story: When I was working at Google, I attended regular trainings for “leaders,” which is what they called middle managers. The instructor, a long-time Google veteran, responded to a question about carving out personal time from our unforgiving schedules. Her pitiless answer was: “I hear about this all the time. Well, let me tell you something. [Executive Vice President] is training for a triathlon. Every Tuesday and Thursday, he sets aside the full morning to train. No meetings. If [Executive Vice President] can do this, don’t you think you can too?”
Then we Leaders all looked at our schedules and saw them plugged thick with regular and one-off meetings at times we felt powerless to change. I had three that month that included that very same, tri-athletic [Executive Vice President] — at times that worked conveniently around his training schedule.
Startups, meanwhile, are generally much lighter on meetings because you have fewer workstreams to keep coordinated. For the most part, you’ll have way more flexibility, with fewer people in the mix. You’re likely still meeting with external partners, vendors, and customers, but that’s also the case at a big company, too.
(Exception: If you’re the entrepreneur yourself, the company is your life. There may be some blog posts on Medium about that topic.)
And then there are the big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).
Big, successful companies in our modern global economy have two paths to remaining big, successful companies. They can set BHAGs that require nonstop reinvention and improvement at great speed. Or they can be heavily-regulated monopolies protected by the government.
If you’re working at the latter, you may get this 9-to-5 gig, if that’s what you really want. You also may get laid off in a few years when the modern global economy passes it by. (This is another myth — big companies promise “job security.”)
If you’re working at the former — the successful big player that’s growing via nonstop modernization and reinvention — you will have aggressive goals. These will require sprints, crunches, and other words that sound healthy but aren’t.
You will also experience cross-functional offsites, business travel, training on corporate processes, planning, reporting, and bureaucracy. These all take up a lot of time. They are the work.
Talk to people at big, non-regulated companies about their hours. You’ll hear all kinds of stories. My friend at Oracle has put in 60-hour weeks for years. Another friend, a mid-senior bureaucrat at a US federal agency — yes, the government — typically puts in 11-hour days and sees his family on weekends.
And, personally, my most demanding and inflexible jobs, hours-wise, were at two big tech companies that are frequently rated among the Best Places to Work in the world. Nonstop emails, 24/7 attention required, IMs on Christmas Day, extensive travel expectations — those have come strongest at the larger employers.
It was endemic to life at these companies. No employee programs haranguing us about getting sleep, exercising daily, meditating, or encouraging something called “work/life balance” could allay their inherent cultures of competition and hitting aggressive OKRs. That is what you’re signing up for there, and in exchange you get paid marvelously and build your network, and maybe you learn some things!
Eyes wide open
Let’s be clear: I’m not proposing that startup life is easy, relaxed, or undemanding. It most certainly is not. I’m in situation right now at a fantastic startup with the potential to have a massive world impact, and no day is easy, no week without its unique demands. That’s the fun part.
What I’m proposing is that the independence of your work at a startup is more likely to give you more control over your life. The people I’ve met at startups have families, hobbies, and social lives. For many of them working at a startup permits them to make tradeoffs — leave on Tuesday afternoon, get things done on Sunday morning — that can be harder to pull off at large corporations.
(And I’ve met people at other startups who are expected to participate in the company ping pong/pushup/drinking tournament, 6–11pm this and every Wednesday that the founder and CEO is in town.)
Lifestyle is an important factor in any career decision. Every employer is different.
The good news is that you have lots of ways to determine whether a company’s culture is a fit for your needs and lifestyle. You can talk to people there. You can go read Glassdoor reviews.
Has it been your dream to work at Apple? Great! It’s not hard to understand what might be great about working at Apple. What might be harder — but equally important — is understanding what your life will be like in a particular class of job at Apple.
And you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to ask.
Once you can honestly determine what type of environment is best for you, you can target that type of role.
But don’t assume that your lifestyle has anything to do with the number of global co-workers you’ll have.
Best of luck with your next thing.
