New grad joining startup or FANNG

[cal54mor]

@preston1982 I am a startup founder and I'd suggest this with all self-less-ness that you take up the seed stage founding engineer role only if the founders are experienced operators/ have had successful outcomes in the past. That'd make it like a "risk" worth taking vs a faang job

 

[natanyah]

@cal54mor They are definitely not solid founders if they are hiring founding engineer with zero experience.

 

[christian63years]

@preston1982 I founded / ran a YC backed startup for 5 years and just left FAANG after 2.5.

Between those 2 options, definitely Amazon.

Your first job is all about teaching you working habits. You want to learn things like - what’s a good vs bad work day, what is a metric, what’s an okr, how to give/ receive feedback, what is a roadmap and how do I follow it, what is revenue vs cost, how to make a deck.

A startup that small won’t be able to teach you that and I agree with others - it’s a red flag that they’d hire you as a founding engineer without experience.

The option I’d do over FAANG is a series B startup, 100 person team with traction, where your manager has solid experience and can train you. FAANG will teach things like work ethic etc but the product timelines are slow compared to startups (1 year projects vs 1 month projects).

Most solid entrepreneurs I’ve seen did 1-3 years at a solid startup, big company or VC to learn basic working norms. I think those at a solid startup seemed to have the easiest road - it’s easiest to find cofounders out of another startup where as FAANG folks are less likely to quit. Those who went straight to a 3 person team still struggle with things like polish or presence. The exception are the savant engineers I’ve met who founded their own thing based on PhD research they worked on or some crazy passion they’ve had.

I agree with above comment - leaving FAANG gets harder and harder over time and it does change you. FAANG is not what it was 10 years ago when there was a lot more open work. That said, if you stay there and you’re happy that’s a good fit. If founding or startups is really important to you, you’re body will force you to do it at some point.

My own path…
- consulting for 3 years
- tried to found for 9 months, failed
- went to innovation team at a non-FAANG public tech company, to learn product, worked with many ex-founders for 3 years
- then founded, failed (6 year journey)
- then went to FAANG
- now trying to work on art!

 

[christian63years]

PS highly recommend reading or listening to Mastery by Robert Greene - will add more color to the above and give you a solid framework for this stuff.

 

[lotusm]

@christian63years I second this, been with early stage startups all my career and while you learn how to hustle, you can pick up a lot of bad practices. Amazon will teach you a lot about what building great code really requires. Learn the rules then bend them later. You can always work on your own projects while at Amazon. That being said if the startup has experienced senior engineers and a strong CTO it could be worth it, but too many startups fall into the trap of hiring a load of juniors in the mentality that more engineering headcount == more engineering output. Avoid these kinds of places. Good startups hire senior first then take on juniors over time

 

[willorie1329]

@preston1982 It doesn’t matter

 

[iambatman11]

@willorie1329 The real answer. Under 30 you can afford to take all the risk that you want to.

 

[ddavdson]

@preston1982 Amazon. You need to beef up your resume, at least for your mental self esteem, to have a stronger resume in case the startups don't work, in order to be convincing in case you need to raise money, to learn about enterprise culture, to see things at a scale you won't easily see, to meet colleagues and other people beyond the college friends (expand your network, especially if your school is no name), to have an idea of problems that are worth solving.

Even, I'd say that if you're technical, if it's not your own startup then go for FAANG.
Even better, if you haven't started your startup during College that has traction, then go for FAANG.

Now if you can't enter... Only then I would consider startups.

So yeah, Amazon. (especially given how it is difficult nowadays for juniors).

 

[satanscumfuck666]

@preston1982 FANNG.

Every single ycombinator startup wants to hire FAANG employees. None of them want to hire employees that only worked at startups.

You can always work at a startup by working in FANNG. On the other hand, FANNG companies will think twice if you apply with only startup experience in the future. It’s a simple choice.