While resigning from my first corporate full time job 4 years ago, I didn’t know that I would find a job at an early-stage startup. To be honest, I had very little idea on startups and the pros of working for one. Joining a startup as an early employee, it taught me a lot and provided me a great amount of experience in ways I never could have imagined. If you ever considered landing a job with a startup but have doubts or lack of knowledge on what is waiting for you or you just simply want to have more insights on startups, this article is for you!
A matchless learning opportunity
Imagine you join a startup and they are in their early stages, everything still remains to be done. You and your teammates need to figure out everything that has already figured out in big corporations (from HR to which tools you will use for certain things.) This will give you a unique opportunity to have a grip on different functions. Fast feedback loop and ability to execute without bureaucracy will enable you to learn faster. You will learn most of the things by trial and error, there will be a huge room to make mistakes. On the other hand, if you have a corporate job, you will have a job description limited to your position and bureaucracy/slower feedback loops will block your way most of the times.
You don’t focus on nonessentials
On one side, there are a ton of responsibilities in big corporations that you will take only because you are obliged to complete those tasks that are not usually even useful for the company growth. You will lose a lot of time by adjusting the colours of the presentation that actually your manager will make to her managers next week (because she didn’t like the color and you won’t even be in the presentation room.) Your manager will ask you to share pictures of your last product launch with the entire team, when you are concerned about sales (and you will try to do it to satisfy the company’s showoff culture.) Another manager will ask you to wear high heels while visiting your customers, they will have a right to say on your clothes.
On the other hand, while working at a startup, you will learn to focus on essentials. You won’t much about the colours of the presentation, as long as you tell what is important on the slides. You won’t spend your valuable time to showoff, your work will get noticed anyways because you would be creating a bigger effect for your company’s growth. Nobody will ask you to wear a hand bag instead of a back pack, they will say nothing about your choice of clothes. You will have tasks that you will feel appreciated and valued while performing them.
You become more flexible
If you work at a startup, you will learn how to be flexible. You will be ready to change your plans 1 day before the execution date. You will be proactive and always create a plan B. You will also have a more flexible schedule and to-do list that you manage. You will decide when to start and end your work day in most of the startups. They will give you the option to work from home whenever you feel like it. You will learn to manage your time in an efficient way.
You learn to take initiatives
And most of the times those initiatives will help you to go beyond your job description and be the truest mark of your success. Your company will encourage you to find opportunities that you can work on and take initiatives to run projects that you think will make a difference on company growth.
All of these sound great. However, I should also warn you that working at a startup is not for everyone. It has some “not that good” aspects too, which we will cover in the next posts.
A note: all of these conclusions derived from my personal experiences. I also have a lot of friends who work for corporate companies and they learn a lot&improve everyday and can work from home, have flexible schedules etc. These are just not yet that common in corporate world. Hope they will go widespread in the future.
Take care until then and if you enjoyed reading this, I suggest you to take a look at my previous posts:
Wow, very convincing reasons! I am looking forward to reading about the “not that good” aspects.. There would probably be uncertainty, constant change that not everyone is ready to deal with… But I guess the positive points outweigh the disadvantages here!
Thank you and you are right Sofia, those are some of the “not so good” aspects. Maybe I will explain those with a video, let’s see. 🙂
Demet, thank you for making this comparison! I didn’t know there could be such great reasons to work for a Startup. I am looking forward to your next post to see the other aspects as well, but I can say that I am already convinced for Startups. ??
✌️ It is a personal comparison in many aspects. However, I recommend everybody to experience startup culture to see if it fits them or not.
Hey Demet, I am glad that you share your experience with us. I totally agree with what you wrote here! Waiting for your next post. 🙂
Thanks Nicole! ?‍♀️
Hello Demet! This article had a great timing! I was just looking for jobs and had cold feet about startups. But this info was very useful. Thank you!
Wow, so glad to hear that! Go for them! 🙂