Why I only work with startups

http://swizec.com/blog/why-i-only-work-with-startups/swizec/2936

by Swizec • 15 years ago

69 39 15 years ago

This is good though I would argue that most of this is true for small to mid-size businesses (<200 people) as well without the extreme risk of not getting paid or working 80 hr weeks that happens at startups.

bmuon• 15 years ago

It depends exclusively on corporate culture. I've seen my share of small to mid-size businesses with an IBM-like culture of paperwork and "ask permissions thrice to the superior of the superior of your superior".

comm_it• 15 years ago

I'd agree with this completely.

I work in a fairly large company (hundreds of thousands) and there is none of this paperwork culture at all. The fast-paced environment is exactly what I work in, time to market is everything and we sit opposite our users. The work is fascinating, I regularly chat with the global head of my dept (my boss' boss' boss) about details of something I'm working on.

There's lots of incentive to do well, and to have your own side projects, which can turn into big projects with budgets and people behind them.

Not saying the article is wrong, but there are many different styles of working across business sizes, and I'm not so sure that start ups are predisposed to not have any of the issues mentioned.

Swizec5• 15 years ago

In my experience it's much likelier there will be complications with being paid when it comes to small to mid-size businesses than startups.

mechanical_fish2• 15 years ago

I'm not entirely convinced there's a real correlation, just because my observations agree with yours, but they do: Any business with more than one tier of bureaucracy offers vastly more opportunity to pass the buck, offer plausible excuses, or play good-cop/bad-cop than a three-person startup does.

liljimmytables• 15 years ago

I expect it depends on the particular company, but I have noticed that there is a direct correlation between having a fully-staffed accounts department and paying your contractors on the last possible day you can get away with. (I'm sure someone will tell me that "it's just good business," but it shows a lack of empathy with small contractors who may be operating on a tight margin).

tyler_ball• 15 years ago

Whats with this trend of illustrating blog posts with Flickr photos that don't illustrate anything?

driverdan• 15 years ago

Same thought I had. The images are distracting and have nothing to do with the article.

lkrubner• 15 years ago

As far as I know, this particular trend was started by Phillip Greenspun back in 1994:

http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/

I recall many people accussed him of hypocrisy, since, in the mid 90s, he was a big advocate of graphically simple web pages, pages that could easily go over a modem and a phone line, yet he bloated his pages with images that had nothing to do with the content of the page.

mechanical_fish2• 15 years ago

Greenspun was writing articles specifically for web and photo nerds. Just as the developer-oriented sites were the first to drop support for IE6, I'm sure he felt safe offering less-than-optimal support for AOL users with dialup modems.

I always liked Greenspun's idiosyncratic photos. It was fun to try and spot thematic links between the photos and the text. Usually they were so subtle that you doubted their very existence, but sometimes they were obvious and funny.

dscape• 15 years ago

because you are too lazy to START a startup? :)

Swizec5• 15 years ago

Haha, I've started a startup before :)

Sometimes it just makes more sense to put your own ideas on pause for a bit and help others with theirs.

Fliko• 15 years ago

If all the engineers start startups then no one can fill the spots required to run the startups because they all have their own startups, dawg.

itmag• 15 years ago

I've been running a sort of startup (a zero-budget print/online magazine) for 2 years and I whole-heartedly agree with this.

I would add to this:

8. Open-ended work

You can improvise any way you want and pull from any toolbox you want. You can take the work in unexpected directions on a whim.

9. Platform for meeting interesting people

If you put out something of genuine value, you can use it as a kind of leverage to get in touch with interesting people. It also becomes a form of social honeypot (ie I get e-mails from interesting people from time to time because of the magazine I run).

10. Levels you up like crazy

You have to learn a bunch of stuff. My ability to execute a project and "git r done" comes directly from Interesting Times Magazine.

11. Gives you a sense of genuine achievement

Self-explanatory.

12. Allows you to scratch the itch you get from reading business/selfhelp materials

When I was only reading about stuff I was always going like "arrgghgh I need to actually be doing this". Scratching that itch feels GOOD.

jplewicke2• 15 years ago

I know it's an easy analogy to reach for, but I wish that writers would think twice before comparing some trivial inconvenience to being raped. You may have just ruined the morning of a survivor of sexual assault.

There are dozens of other things you could say that would have the same rhetorical effect without trivializing a severe problem, and it's beyond impolite not to. All you have to do is write "Nonstartups are just horrible to work with, like standing in front of an automatic baseball pitching machine."

Swizec5• 15 years ago

You are right. That was insensitive of me; editing right now.

jplewicke2• 15 years ago

Thank you.

ced• 15 years ago

I empathize with the intent, but it makes me wonder: are war metaphors insensitive?

coderdude2• 15 years ago

This should not be the top comment. It should be somewhere near the bottom of this page in light gray. It has nothing to do with the article and is completely off-topic. We should not pussy-foot around worrying about whether someone may be reminded of something that was traumatic in their lives because you mentioned a word.

HN has determined that this is the most insightful thing you need to know about the article: That the guy used the word rape.

synnik• 15 years ago

Clearly, since it IS the top comment, HN as a whole disagrees with you.

I believe that discussion about appropriate language and communication styles is very applicable to HN. We're trying to be a better, more insightful discussion board with higher quality than other sites. Better writing is one way to do that, so it seem like a perfect discussion point.

z0r• 15 years ago

Frankly, this article is the usual kind of frothy pro-startup blog post that is seen on an extremely regular basis here on hacker news. It's good for drawing conversation about how HN users feel about startups and that is about it. The feedback provided by the parent to the author of the post - and to the community as a whole - might very well be the most valuable thing posted here.

nemik• 15 years ago

I'm the victim of a terrible accident resulting from an automatic baseball pitching machine; you insensitive asshole.

philwelch2• 15 years ago

I'm about 99% confident you're being facetious even after you've said that. Whereas somewhere around 1 out of 4 women in the United States actually have been raped.

toxicity• 15 years ago

I would say the only startup worth working on is your own.

Working at someone else's startup is a recipe for getting exploited - overworked and underpaid. And the worst thing about it is that it's all couched in an atmosphere of guilt trips and taking-it-for-the-team.

Perhaps there are exceptions. I just haven't seen any. I'd rather work for The Man in my day job in a cold corporate environment where everything is explicit from the get-go, get well paid for it and crank out code for my own startup in my free time.

MicahWedemeyer• 15 years ago

As a consultant/freelancer, the relationship is often very different then employer-to-employee. If you're billing hourly then long hours directly relate to large invoices. You're in the driver's seat for how much you want to work.

You can get a lot of the great benefits of startup work (cool people, small teams, fast pace) and avoid a lot of the pitfalls (low salary, worthless equity, guilt trips).

raarky• 15 years ago

without giving out hard numbers (unless you want to), what is the average comparative rate that a startup pays compared to a larger company?

Are they on the same pay scale or do they pay less since it's a "startup" a money can be tight

sid6376• 15 years ago

Well it depends.I was at a big company and it sucked. We had two hour meetings on folder structure of our repository. I was depressed, thought i couldn't possibly do anything worthwhile anyway.Finally I just quit my job and sat at home for 3 months. While I did consider starting my own thing, my confidence was so shot that I could hardly trust myself to do something. After some time, I joined a startup through a job posting on HN. Its been great so far. I have written more code in 2 months than i wrote in 3 years. Apart from that working with two of the most intelligent and well rounded people I know, I have learnt a lot technically , have had a lot of autonomy and have gained a lot of my shot confidence back. While I understand this is a personal experience and may not hold true for all, for someone wanting to start a startup, the second best place(best being of course your own startup) to learn is at a startup.

CPlatypus• 15 years ago

I don't agree with the "no politics" point. Sure, there might be no politics within the startup, but there can be a lot of politics involving investors and their other portfolio companies, or partners and customers who are large/few enough to drive product or technical direction, etc. I've been at startups that have been told "don't do X because it will cannibalize stablemate Y's market" by investors. I've recently become aware of a VC telling companies "use stablemate Z's product and don't criticize it in public" situation. This same pressure can be applied by customers and partners, driven by politics within those larger companies, and can be hard for a small company to resist. So don't think you won't need those political skills when your working at or with a startup.

GavinB• 15 years ago

they simply have no empathy for the poor freelancer trying to make a living client to client.

If you are depending on one check from one client to come in so that you can make rent this month, I think you should be looking at your own financial practices, not anyone else's.

Swizec5• 15 years ago

It becomes a much bigger problem when the money you were counting on this month, comes in five months later.

Yes, I've had that happen.

rick888• 15 years ago

I've had this happen too. About 5 years ago I started a small consulting company and I had roughly 10 clients. I eventually had to get a job because clients realized I was small and would not pay me on time (sometimes 3 months late) or at all. I also had no money for a lawyer.

Freelancing is a terrible way to make money. It's like you traded in one boss for X where X is the number of clients you have.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

Consulted with a company 3 years ago, for warrants. They haven't appeared yet. Company getting up steam, looks like they would be worth something too. Sigh.

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

I guess I'd need to know the definition of 'startup'. It's a word so abused these days many people consider themselves a 'startup' when it's just a guy and an idea.

Do you mean someone with $x in funding and a revenue stream looking to grow?

Do you mean someone with an idea who works on it at night?

Do you mean "facebook" (which some people will continue to consider a 'startup' until they IPO)?

The only problems I faced with doing govt work so far is the paperwork. It seems convoluted, but really isn't generally that much more than a contract any mid-size company might require.

Many smaller companies (and what we'd now call 'startups') I've worked with give me the "gosh, we just spent $42k on this other company and they weren't any good and now we don't have any budget, but if you do this work for us we'll pay you back later with some more work or great referrals!". That's the situation I used to run in to more often than not. That tended not to happen with larger companies. Well, the wasting of money might have happened, but they'd find money in some budget to engage me if they wanted me.

lisperforlife• 15 years ago

This is true. I've found that I find it vastly enjoyable working with startups. Even if it is a couple of guys with an idea, they take time to talk about the background and they are in the selling mode. I feel more energetic and worthwhile working with people who value my effort. People in big companies do not value you as most of them do not value themselves. I worked for a big company. I know how I felt then. Now I have a new found respect for people doing things on their own. Be it freelancers/entrepreneurs or craftsmen of any kind. It is easy to miss it if you are allowed only to press "a" on the keyboard and you optimize your life and efforts around that. Sometimes you get promoted and get to press "b". They may not pay you for it and term it a lateral promotion. Nevertheless, getting out into the real world and getting jobs is an experience that has made me simultaneously humbler and wiser.

Overall, I agree with the author as well. I have said no to several jobs because I did not feel that I share the client's vision. Especially, when you choose to be in an underserved segment, you can name your price and your terms.

Why I only work with startups

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