I just received a verbal offer to be a leader, reporting to the CMO, at a 200ish person tech start up. I’ve worked at Microsoft and Qualtrics in my career, so massive enterprise and then joined Qualtrics at around 2000 employees (around 6000 now). What advice in general would you give about considering a smaller company? What do you wish someone told you about joining a small company? The good and the bad. I have a verbal offer so no TC details to share. Current TC: about $250k (varies by stock/year). Lead a small team, new job would be larger scope and more senior.
Smaller companies can be a mess in surprising ways. Maybe the HR person messed up payroll, so now everyone gets paid by check this month. Or they unexpectedly find out part of their business violates state law, so they do a hard pivot on that business line. There’s also a lot of opportunities. There’s usually a lot more low hanging fruit for initiatives that will have a big impact. I love small companies, but just be aware that you’ll likely run into situations where you’ll wonder how the company has been able to function.
That’s good advice. Honestly I’ve felt that way at my current firm at 2-5000 people as it’s grown. So many random errors or missing processes, I guess it’s even more dramatic at really small.
Small companies will give you a chance to wear a lot of hats and stretch your skill set in many ways. It's a great place to challenge yourself. You won't be able to coast. You will never have time to become an expert in one thing, but you'll need to be passably good at many different things. You will also need to be flexible to adapt to change frequently. It is a big opportunity but also can be a big risk. Ensure your offer includes enough real money and not just paper promises for the future of the company.
Thanks for the advice. My mindset is I’m trying to get enough cash that it’s basically equal my current salary + my smaller stock grants. That way it’s still a raise or equal money excluding the equity (paper money). During expectation setting it sounded possible. Any advice on how to truly value the equity?
That is a good plan. It's nearly impossible to value the equity. There's just no definitive growth path. At that size it could easily be acquired or merged before it ever goes public. Make sure you get enough in real money and then like you said, anything else is just an upside potential. Good luck!
1. Funding 2. Culture 3. Problem they are trying to solve. 4. Colleagues 5. Work life balance 6. Current state of system, processes to get an idea of learning. 7. Any hidden clauses in the offer.
Thanks for the advice, those sound like an overlap with what I’d want to know in any job. Anything specific within this that you see as a risk or positive for smaller?
Small companies, startups can be running with way too thin software and lot of hacks manual steps in the backend. It is important to check how much of work you may have to do to take it forward. When the software layer is too thin, there is going to be lot of late night hours to pull off the new features or to develop features for scale.
Hello fellow Qualtrician. When I was at a smaller start up, the funding of new series etc made big differences in the projects, bonuses and hiring teammates. Another thing is, wlb is hit or miss with smaller company. Having been at couple tech companies myself, Q has pretty good wlb, although not sure how it is for your department. Hope it works out well!
Hey colleague lol what do you mean by the funding rounds impacted the projects? The founders and hiring managers significantly emphasized work life balance and flexibility; it’s also not an American start up. So I think it’ll be really hard work but actually has reason to trust that it won’t be absolutely crazy My old VP at Qualtrics actually said to me once “every founder has a bit of crazy, just need to find a founder who’s “crazy” fits with what you’re okay with.” I think Qualtrics having a soul of a sales led founder impacts a ton of that burn out many employees feel
Politics - folks letting go of control can be a real and difficult issue. Enable your people to do their work and be a champion for the cultural change they require to thrive.
Any suggestions of how to do that well and how it may be different at a small company compared to big? Thanks
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Culture and management are really important.
I felt great about the CMO and the two founders that I met (C suite) and other people. They really promoted culture and everything I experienced in the interview and read on Glassdoor sounded really ideal culture wise. The startup appears well positioned in its industry (series B, planning C) but even more than that I’m trying to trust advice I’ve heard of “bet on culture and people more than the perfect idea”
I think that sounds great. Small companies can easily have management that has too much ego and won’t listen. There might also be a lot of process issues as it grows. But I think management is major part.