Considering to move from enterprise to startup
I've been working in big financial companies most of my 10 YOE career. Things haven't been too well lately, I'm SWE however half of my time is wasted on raising/following up and responding to tickets, emails and other red tape fluff. I barely get to do any development work anymore and when I do - it's wrapped into so many specs, agile practices and meetings that even trivial changes become a drag. Hell, mundane bugfixing and even digging through logs to fix incident in stage env are exciting compared to the rest. WLB is great, at least on paper - 9 to 6. When sh*t hits the fan I can work overtime or until late night (e.g. until 3-4am) fir several days with no issues and I like it because at moments like this bureocracy takes a backseat everything becomes about getting actual work done. But generally by the end of the day I feel like squeezed 🍋. I was considering to move to startup or smaller company where I could be a normal developer again. I was thinking what if it would be even crazier there and I'd burn out in a month. Has anyone tried to move from BigCorp to small company? What was it like? Tc: 148k
🍿 No but really, government work is the same. It doesn't hurt to try. Don't worry about being too old, in college one of my classmates was a 50+ year old woman, I've heard someone hear say one of their entry level Google SWEs was 40+, etc there's always room for for more in today's age and there's no reason you can't get a piece of the pie too. To quote Buzz Lightyear, reach for the stars. Good luck
Thanks
I just did this. Went from 800+ people company to 3. It's a big shift, I'm working my butt off, but I missed the early days of a startup. So far I'm happy with my decision.
Thanks
I moved from a 50000 company to a startup of 16. A couple of thoughts. 1) Founder(s) personality matters a lot. If you don’t think you can get along with them, forget about it. 2) qualify of talent in general is lower. It is harder to attract talent at early stage of the company, so you will be working with a lot of junior people who are not yet very professional. 3) risk is high. Startup in general these days is a bubble few of them makes an exit in the end. After 2 years in the startup I am ready to go back to the corporate that’s why I’m on blind :)
Thanks for extensive advice. Appreciate it
I’m assuming you have a good savings? Why not take more risk now. Yolo
Yes I do. Thanks for the advice. Will make a move in couple of months probably