Working at a start-up often means very long hours with little pay and a lot of risk. If your kid has a large student loan then he/she may not be a good candidate for a start-up.
In my days working in WS, it was good to start at a large/well known firm. After few years of training at a well respected firm, one could often get multiple offers from smaller firms, at much higher pay and position. I would imagine it would be the case of getting a job at Google then move on. By getting a job at Google is almost a stamp of approval of your pedigree.
My son absolutely put in 100 to even 120 hours work weeks at times during his first two years out of college. The pay was very good but not great if you calculate the wage per hour, but he was willing to tolerate the schedule for a while in order to get where he wanted to go in his career. He tells the story of the Occupy Wall Street protester who complained that they never actually see the finance guys, because they start work before the protesters are awake and leave work after they are asleep. No love for that movement among those who worked extremely hard all through high school to gain admission to an elite school, and then studied their brains out while there to learn and earn a high enough GPA to even land an interview, and then who practically killed themselves with sleep deprivation on their first job. It’s not for everyone, but at least the kids who are of the caliber to even consider pursuing those “elite jobs” tend to end up actually employed. Many of the kids in D’s high school class are still underemployed a year out of college, working at the old job in the mall or at the restaurant at the beach. My friend’s son (Econ/CS) from a different state is the only one from his group of high school friends who has a job after their college graduations this month, and that includes engineers.
If a person has a passion to be in a small company and feel their participation make=s a difference, and they are fresh out of school with , hopefully, little debt and few obligations, then let them enjoy the opportunity to be at a start up. Yes, they are risky, and many fail, even if the idea was a fabulous one.
It takes a lot of marketing and access to funding to get a start up off the ground. DS #1 has always loved the idea of being with a start up, and was willing to take the risks, and went through the challenges that came alone with them. But he has no regrets. He went through bumps and grinds and did some independent consulting work in between those start up experiences. Last one was a charm, and he was in the right place at the right time with a more solid start up that was acquired by a big name company, giving him the benefit of still being a big fish in a smaller sea, with the support, protection and benefits of the big parent company.
But this journey took him several years, where he made many excellent contacts and developed excellent skills and garnered fabulous experiences along the way. If he wants to go for the start up, now is the time. No one in SV will look down on him for this passion. It will be seen as a strength, and its pretty darned common out there. My DS started on the other coast, so its not just a SV thing. Good luck!
While the risks of startups is obvious, established publicly-traded companies can be riskier than generally assumed. They have their ups and downs (downs often mean layoffs, since layoffs are the first resort for many managers), and if one of them attracts the attention of a Wall Street raider, that is usually not so great for employees (raiders usually pressure the management to cut costs, meaning massive layoffs, and they are often attracted to companies due to stock underperformance, which may or may not reflect actual company underperformance in the short or medium term).
I often hear this, and I always wonder, how is that possible? Working seven days a week, 15-17 hours a day? How could anyone sustain such a schedule? I can understand working such long hours occasionally - to finish a project or during a crunch time, but it doesn’t make sense to me that someone could work that much for two years and manage to stay out of the hospital. It doesn’t leave enough time to eat properly, exercise, or have any kind of life.
I worked at a big five consulting firm back in the mid-80s to early 90s, and while we worked long hours, it was not day in day out. Most periods of several late nights in a row were followed by a period of regular working hours. People still complained about the hours, and we all thought it was excessive, but nothing compared to what @TheGFG describes.
Haven’t reputable companies figured out that these long hours benefit no one? There is much evidence that productivity declines significantly past 8-10 hours, so what is anyone really accomplishing at hour 17? Or after months of working like this? It doesn’t make sense to me.
To the kid choosing between Google and a start up - whichever he/she prefers. I advised my junior team members to move between large companies and smaller ones throughout their career. In small companies you gain responsibility, take risks, in large ones you find mentors and optimized business processes you can replicate. Just watch for title inflation and entitlement developed in a startup, people with a decade on you may insist you pay your dues before promotion in a larger company.
I agree with Alumother. Many tech companies are successful in spite themselves, i.e, they are very product driven. Thus, many of the attributes and idiosyncratic behaviors one has in a smaller horizontal start-up do no necessarily transfer with larger and vertical organizations. Not a good or bad judgement, but just something one should be cognizant of…
I think it’s best to start out with big name then alternate if you like from big to smal just like Alumother suggested. But it depends on the kid.
Even in hedge fund world, my friend went to big name then to startup, got lots of responsibilities and the he jumped back to big name again only to be laid off. Fast forward, he is now one of the cofounder at a very big hedge fund. He told me he is semi retired now, but last time I googled him, he was on Forbes list of one country.
I don’t think they are expected to be productive at all times. I think it’s a culture thing. Yong people are supposed to pay their dues by staying in the office for long hours, taking orders and running errands on the fly. Same thing goes with some high tech companies where young people stay around, having 3 meals in the company and essentially live there. I think the challenging part is not necessarily the hours (which does mean these young people won’t have a life outside work for those few years) but the deadlines and competing priorities that come up every so often. It takes a great deal of physical and mental toughness as well as smart to deal with them.
Same with tech people. They exercise, play ping pong, and do all sorts of things during work hours. With the millineal it’s probably worse. More distractions.
Back to the topic of “pedigree”, if we confine it to the context of opportunities for graduates fresh out of college, my observation is that when all other things being equal, a degree from a prestigious college WILL give one an edge and open more doors in the usual suspects of “elite fields”. (Again, we are talking about a general trend instead of every case scenario.) And in my view, since these fields are usually very competitive, the first opportunities would give one a big advantage for their future development. Of course, years after out of school, experience and prior achievements in workplaces will count more and more, but in these fields in particular, your degree still goes a long way - somewhat like a legacy status in college admission, prestigious college graduates get an “automatic” second read.
“And in my view, since these fields are usually very competitive, the first opportunities would give one a big advantage for their future development.”
What fields aren’t “competitive”?