Well, at least is not ideal from my point of view…

At the moment there seems to be a lot of hype about startups. And why not? They are the places where the cool stuff happen. Filled with purpose, excitement, high stakes, fantastic teams, growth opportunities and the rare chance of maybe becoming a multibillionaire at a young age. I’ve worked in big and small companies (including startups), and I definitively prefer to work on smaller ones. You’re impact is bigger, the team works closer, way less corporate BS, etc…

But, while I think that working on a startup is exciting, and a great career move, I don’t think is a great first job. When starting a career on tech, a better place to start is an established company, at least for one or two years. Why? Simple because if you want to be a rebel, you have to know what to rebel against.

How else are are you going to know how to use a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle?

Established companies have a lot of bureaucracy, process, rules and middle managers. They are boring, that’s for sure. But there is one thing that they have than an startup has not. A proved method of doing stuff. A running operation. It can be dysfunctional, inefficient, stupid o just crazy, but they are being able to earn money with it. While the stupid processes seems to be there with the sole purpose of annoying workers, they are there for a reason. Maybe not the best one, but it is great learning experience to navigate through them.
Also, within all that craziness there are some steps that make sense. Something that has been refined after years of experience and a lot of work and it’s there for a reason. On every department there is some one that is actually brilliant and knows everything around. These people are excellent mentors. Not only on tech, but also on “the business world” and career-wise. We tend to think when we start that everything older than 5 years is obsolete. Talking to someone that is 25 or 30 years older gives a lot of perspective. They had gone through a lot, and their experiences are very valuable.
And, obviously, because that will make feel some of the pain on what a big company is. When I was a freshman out of college, I’ll just accept things that will drive me crazy today. Once you think about that you can effectively remove the pain points knowing why, and with actual experience on them. It’s the equivalent of measuring some software to discover the bottlenecks and then concentrate on them, instead of just making wild assumptions. Without real work on the field, it’s all premature optimisation.

Moving in the opposite direction, from small company to a big one can be absolutely horrendous. It is extremely difficult to perceive an increase in bureaucracy and processes as an improvement. Even in the few cases when it is. Having facing it in advance helps accepting it.
To be able to recognise how big companies operate and what are the real reasons why you don’t want to work there is a great experience when working in a startup. Of course, a small company have its challenges. But if your aim is to improve what big companies are doing (and that should be the goal of anyone working on a startup), how do you expect to do it without knowing it beforehand?