Ex-Google TechLead explains differences between working at a tech startup and a large company, and their pros & cons. 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Video Transcript: Note: This transcript is auto-generated by YouTube and may not be entirely accurate. 00:00 hey tech leech here and welcome back to 00:01 another episode of the tech lead today 00:04 we're going to talk about a very 00:05 fascinating interesting topic startups 00:07 versus big tech companies it is coffee 00:10 time with the tech lead I am the tech 00:12 lead at Google tech lead by the way 00:14 let's have a sip here not bad not bad at 00:20 all now sunny cooler let me just clarify 00:24 something for you if you are working in 00:27 tech adult and I think that you're gonna 00:29 be doing great you're gonna be doing 00:30 good and no choice is really going to be 00:32 a bad choice and startup or big tech 00:34 company it's all good really now I have 00:36 worked in a combination of startups as 00:38 well as at Google as an X Google tech 00:41 lead and they're very different in some 00:44 ways but they're also very similar the 00:45 quality of life that you get your 00:47 overall standard of living it's about 00:49 the same really now we have a new 00:51 sponsor today and I would actually 00:52 highly recommend that you guys check 00:54 them out 00:54 ting mobile if you live in the US and 00:56 you're using cell phone service and 00:58 you're paying like 50 60 bucks a month 01:00 for this service it's a contract you're 01:02 locked into one or two year contracts 01:04 you know that's just really not the way 01:06 to go there are far better options ting 01:08 Mobile offers you paper use cell phone 01:10 service and the cost is very cheap you 01:12 can figure out how much it might cost 01:14 you I would say for an average person 01:15 it's probably gonna be 15 to 25 bucks or 01:18 something like that and one of the best 01:19 parts is that there's no contract you're 01:21 not locked into anything you know I 01:23 remember when I was trying to become a 01:24 world citizen travel all over the place 01:26 and embrace that mobile lifestyle one of 01:29 the things I was really locking me down 01:30 was my cell phone service it was just 01:32 tying me to the u.s. tied me down there 01:34 with that one or two-year cell phone 01:36 contract and that was one thing that 01:37 kept weighing on me so with t-mobile you 01:40 get a no contract cell phone plan you 01:41 get voice messaging data all comes at 01:44 the very reasonable standard rate and 01:46 the great thing is it's so simple to 01:48 setup there's no contract you just send 01:49 them a dollar they send you a SIM card 01:51 back you plug that into your cell phone 01:53 and then you're off and running and when 01:54 you're gonna save so much money check 01:56 them out ting Mobile there'll be a link 01:57 in the description below and you can 01:59 thank me later you know no matter 02:00 whether you're working at a startup or a 02:02 big tech company you're gonna be having 02:04 a pretty sweet comfy job you're gonna go 02:06 and you work at the computer you do some 02:08 typing do some code spend some time 02:10 surfing the net surfing reddit play some 02:12 ping pong you may 02:13 have to pay for your online tour you may 02:14 get some lunch catered and by the way 02:16 the food that these large tech companies 02:18 are not necessarily better there may 02:20 simply just be more variety but it's all 02:22 going to be buffet style food and often 02:24 is quite easy to beat any of the sweet 02:26 just go to any restaurant and the food 02:28 quality is already going to be beaten 02:29 supposedly they like to advertise that 02:31 they've got all-star chefs but in order 02:33 to feed thousands of people it's just 02:36 going to cost way too much they're gonna 02:38 end up using more basic ingredients trip 02:40 ingredients and then do it buffet style 02:42 and you're not going to want to eat too 02:43 much food anyway it's not gonna be 02:45 healthy for you just gonna get 02:46 overweight essentially most of the time 02:48 no matter where you are you're going to 02:49 be working at the computer doing some 02:51 code across startups and big tech 02:53 companies is going to be similar now 02:55 let's talk about the main differences 02:56 here one is going to be compensation 02:58 compensation at a tech company a public 03:01 tech company is going to be well-known 03:02 it's going to be fixed 03:03 you're gonna know exactly what you're 03:05 getting is a public company and when you 03:07 get stuck you're gonna know for sure 03:09 that that's going to be worth something 03:10 when you go into a start-up you don't 03:13 really know what the value of that stock 03:15 is going to be and oftentimes it's going 03:17 to be a complete mystery it's going to 03:18 be completely obfuscated for you and 03:20 startups have a bunch of different ways 03:22 to screw you over they can dilute the 03:24 stock they can kick you out fire you 03:25 before they IPO they can delay their IPO 03:28 intentionally and force you to stick 03:29 around and stay at the company and work 03:31 longer they can tell you that you have a 03:32 million shares but it really there could 03:34 be a hundred trillion shares outstanding 03:36 and many companies simply aren't going 03:38 to tell you what percentage of the 03:40 company you truly own and even if you 03:42 were to somehow find that out which you 03:44 probably won't be able to find out most 03:46 companies I've seen they never quite 03:47 tell you exactly what percentage you own 03:49 even if you do find out they're just 03:51 going to devalue that when you finally 03:53 leave the company when you quit 03:54 oftentimes they'll say that you have to 03:56 exercise these stock options within a 03:58 certain amount of time like saying you 04:00 got three months to use that up and when 04:02 you do exercise those options you're 04:04 going to have to pay tons of taxes on 04:05 this stuff if the company never IPOs and 04:08 it could take ten years before the 04:10 company actually IPOs you've just paid a 04:12 bunch of money on stock and you've taken 04:14 a big risk you don't really know what 04:16 you're getting sometimes this stuff all 04:18 pans out maybe you'll get some money but 04:20 oftentimes it's not necessarily going to 04:22 be life-changing money I'm known 04:24 scenarios where I've joined companies 04:26 actually in other 04:26 people join companies and then the 04:28 startup eventually gets acquired right 04:30 acquisition happens more commonly than 04:33 IPOs and in an acquisition everybody 04:35 gets some payment for their stock it's 04:37 not all that much it's not really 04:39 life-changing money you might be like 50 04:41 K right 60 K something like that 04:43 if you're lucky it could be more if 04:45 you're not lucky it could be less one 04:47 thing that a lot of engineers don't know 04:49 is that even if your engineer number one 04:51 at the company you could already be 04:53 getting less than say 1% of the company 04:55 you would be putting in as much work if 04:57 not more work than the founders and 04:59 still the founders would have like 99% 05:01 of the company you would have one 05:02 percent or even 0.1% by the time your 05:06 employee numbers say ten or twenty your 05:08 ownership would already be point zero 05:10 zero zero one percent or something like 05:11 that 05:12 it would be a minuscule amount and 05:13 that's just a culture of startups 05:15 personally I got so disgusted by all of 05:17 this one time I remember I had the 05:19 business partner a friend and we were 05:21 going to start a company together and 05:23 then he said that yeah we would be 50/50 05:26 partners except he wanted 50.1% and I 05:29 would get 49.9% I just thought why why 05:32 not just 5050 and he was so insistent on 05:35 this point that it smelled fishy to me 05:37 and I backed out of the whole deal and I 05:39 didn't start the business because I 05:41 figured that he could just say well 05:43 let's take a vote should I get kicked 05:44 out of the company after I feel 05:46 everything yeah let's take a vote he's 05:48 got 51% ownership oh yeah he wins I mean 05:50 he could just kick me out he can do 05:52 whatever he wants now it's just our 05:53 pretty tricky and I remember there were 05:55 even times in my life when I just sort 05:57 of said to myself I don't like startups 05:59 I don't want to work at them and if I 06:01 were gonna work I would rather work 06:03 either for a large tech company or I 06:05 would found the company on my own and 06:07 those would be the options I would be 06:08 going for now having said that let's 06:11 talk about some of the good things about 06:13 startups because I've worked out a few 06:15 of them and there's some good things 06:16 about them one is the challenges are 06:18 going to be very different between 06:20 start-up and large tech company large 06:22 tech company you often work in a large 06:24 code base a lot of the challenges are 06:25 going to be organizational you're going 06:27 to have to deal with a lot of people 06:28 cross-functional teams and there's going 06:31 to be a ton of code and people blocking 06:32 everything that you're trying to do and 06:34 in a small tech company in a start-up 06:36 you're going to have a lot more freedom 06:38 and anything you want to do 06:39 anything you want to try just not going 06:42 to be a lot of people standing away you 06:43 want to try something you have the 06:45 flexibility to try that and that goes 06:47 for rolls as well so if you don't really 06:49 want to be an engineer let's say you 06:51 want to be more of a product manager or 06:53 designer or prototype or in a large tech 06:56 company it would be an entire shift in 06:58 careers you would have to get the proper 07:00 approvals maybe even do an interview 07:02 just so that you could do some p.m. work 07:03 however in its small startup you're 07:06 gonna have a lot more freedoms to take 07:08 on any role that you want and in this 07:10 sense I would say that there may even be 07:12 better career mobility for example if 07:14 you wanted to get into management it may 07:16 take a lot of effort to get into say 07:18 senior management at Google right that 07:21 would require you proving yourself and 07:22 everything but if you were to go to a 07:24 start-up you could probably get a 07:26 management role quite easily because the 07:28 requirements just aren't as strict you 07:29 can start building up your experience 07:31 and over a number of years you would 07:33 have that experience and then you can 07:34 transfer into large tech company like 07:36 Google and do management there and you 07:38 would already have built up a lot of 07:39 that experience if that were your 07:41 interest and so if there were areas in 07:43 your career that you want to do develop 07:45 more into a startup may be a good path 07:47 for that and that's really what a 07:48 startup is good for I would say it's 07:50 learning so I would recommend this if 07:54 you are a junior engineer or even if 07:56 you're not and you want to get some more 07:58 experience and learn and build your 08:00 skills in a certain technology there may 08:02 be a field that you're interested in 08:03 getting more until you think it's cool 08:05 and you want to do that then the startup 08:07 is a great way to do that the worst 08:09 reason to join the startup is because 08:11 you think as a library ticket and it's 08:13 going to make you rich and you hate the 08:14 work and you're not trying to learn 08:15 anything but you're just doing that 08:17 currently for the money because in that 08:18 scenario I would say I startup there's a 08:21 little chance it's going to work out for 08:22 you if I you curveballs money the other 08:24 thing I might mention here is that I 08:25 don't think money is the proper 08:27 motivation number one if you're a junior 08:29 engineer say either way your pace look I 08:32 know it sounds like a lot for you now 08:34 but it's not going to make a difference 08:35 for you in a few years when you look 08:37 back on that salary range that you're at 08:39 just spend your time trying to learn and 08:41 guide your career in the direction that 08:43 you want it to go to but trying to argue 08:45 and optimize for a few thousand bucks 08:47 here and there it's just not really the 08:49 right time to be doing that because 08:50 you're really splitting pennies at 08:52 point the other great thing about 08:53 startups is they can be a little bit 08:55 more closed now I remember I worked in a 08:57 start-up with one of my professors and 08:59 during the company holiday party it was 09:02 just us with our spouses or girlfriends 09:04 or boyfriends or whatever and there just 09:06 felt more like a family the office was 09:08 like the professor's living room you 09:10 don't really get this sort of dynamic 09:11 when you're in a larger company in which 09:13 it's an open door right people are 09:15 coming and going all the time and 09:17 there's tons of people that you may be 09:18 interacting with you don't really get to 09:20 know anybody really that well sometimes 09:22 people just get fired to just disappear 09:25 randomly and that just seems to happen 09:27 sometimes 09:28 so overall let me put it this way I 09:30 think that if you can get into a large 09:31 tech company then you might as well try 09:33 and it's good to explore your options 09:35 and see what you can get 09:36 but startups are great too you can learn 09:39 a lot there develop your skills and 09:40 experience there are some good 09:42 connections get to know some people 09:43 there and overall it's probably going to 09:45 be a pretty good time working there 09:46 because it's not like going to a large 09:49 tech company like Google you're gonna 09:50 have a 10 times better experience there 09:53 it's not quite like that it's more like 09:54 it's just bigger it's not like the food 09:56 is 10 times better it's not like the 09:58 computers are 10 times more powerful 10:00 it's still essentially the same stuff 10:02 the same environment that you're working 10:03 in maybe for lunch instead of having a 10:06 single item on the menu you may have 10 10:08 different items on the menu but you 10:09 still just pick one thing to eat when 10:11 you interact with people and self 10:12 interacting with five people you may 10:14 have to interact with 50 people when you 10:17 work on a codebase it would just be a 10:18 larger codebase and the office overall 10:20 may be larger instead of having a single 10:22 building there may be 10 different 10:24 buildings that are interconnected but 10:26 you still end up going to a single 10:27 building your small little desk whenever 10:29 you're going to work in that sense the 10:31 work environment is similar and often in 10:33 many scenarios a startups work 10:35 environment the facilities the bathrooms 10:38 the kitchens that stuff can actually be 10:39 better and higher quality than what you 10:41 may find that large tech companies I 10:43 will say that for a lot of people it 10:44 might make sense at some point once 10:46 you've learned enough once you've 10:47 developed enough experience that you may 10:50 want to prioritize compensation maybe 10:52 make sure that you've got some real 10:53 money on the table that you can lock in 10:55 there maybe tackle some different types 10:57 of technical problems and challenges 10:59 those that have to do with larger code 11:01 bases dealing with many different types 11:03 of people you know that 11:04 interesting challenge in itself and also 11:06 just add some more options to your lunch 11:08 menu those are all things that larger 11:10 tech companies will be able to offer you 11:11 so it may not be a bad idea to consider 11:13 those two at some point I mean the way 11:15 you think about startups versus large 11:17 companies in the comments below if you 11:19 liked the video give a like and 11:20 subscribe and see you next time right

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