I believe in what the startup does but they are at very early stages and the salary they offer is 1/3 of what Google offers but I get about 6% options over 4 years.
If the startup can only offer you 1/3 the pay, we can infer that their equity isn't worth very much, or investors would have given them more money.
So you believe in the startup. That's great. It's great to believe in writing good software. It's wrong that someone would want to exploit that for their own gain. It very strongly sounds like what you're being offered is a pittance. Don't sell your dreams for that little, because someone that will offer you so little for your dreams isn't worth working for.
Assuming you are very early in your career, take the google money now and invest. When you know what you're doing with respect to the market and have more connections and a bit of a financial base, then do a startup.
I've been in a similar situation with more upside – I suggest pulling up a retirement calculator and seeing where you are financially compared to where you want to be.
If you're interested in hearing more about the difference in cultures, and how that will feel after some time, feel free to reply with a place I can contact you privately.
Where are you in your career, what is your personal financial situation, what is your family situation (wife? kids?), what stage is the startup (revenue?), etc, etc. Need a lot more details. Fwiw, 6% is an unusually high equity package unless they just started the company.
Advice from someone who had a similar choice and went the startup route: choose the Google option. It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs, but you can invest the money now and create a nice start for yourself.
There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
Google is also a very good learning opportunity; there is lots of training available to employees, you will be working with very talented people, and will get to see how the planet-scale dogfood is made first hand.
Put another way, you'll learn much more about how to identify and work with talented people on difficult projects at Google than at a startup. At a startup you're worried about how you'll pack a bologna sandwich for lunch tomorrow, at Google you're a sous chef for a 5 star banquet hall in NYC.
I've done both extremes, and you're absolutely right, but the point still stands no matter how many cases we can find that might hint at the opposite :)
That is not true. No matter the shit Google gets on HN it's a tremendous place to learn and grow. All the large scale systems you see now were first invented at Google and now are replicated at Facebook etc.. The code reviews alone will make you a better programmer and working with senior people will give you an appreciation for designing complex systems. It's a great place to work IMO.
This used to be the case, but these days many fundamental Google tools are open.
Borg is Kubernetes, flume is externally available as Google Cloud Dataflow (it's basically Apache Beam), Tensorflow is open source, many of Google's internal java libraries and tools are available externally (Guava, Guice, Dagger), and absl (c++ common libraries) are also available externally.
More importantly, assuming you land on a team with strong software engineering culture (this is likely, but admittedly not guaranteed, even at Google), the general skills you pick up for software design, planning, testing, etc. are transferable anywhere.
That said, all of this applies mostly to software engineers. If you're applying for an SRE position, then I've heard the experience is less transferable, but it's not something I could comment on first hand.
That's true about many of the specific tools you learn, but you also learn a lot of generic development skills that no one will take the time to teach you at a startup.
Google's CI system is proprietary, but learning how a CI system should work is valuable. Google's code review system is proprietary, but learning how code review should work is valuable. Repeat for every proprietary system Google has.
When I left Google for a startup, all the tools I took for granted didn't exist. But because I knew how things could and should work, I was able to apply open source and commercially available tools to improve software development practices at my new employer.
Google's in-house tools are generally stronger than the publicly available stuff across the board. Ex-Googlers are more often frustrated not by a lack of ability with those tools, but knowing what they can't do with them.
Also, Google's best tools are increasingly open-source.
Really, for the most part, the talent goes to the best places to work. That's subjective but the major factors for most people are mission (e.g. charity good, privacy violation bad), working environment and compensation.
Amazon isn't really particularly good at any of these, so you'll tend to find more talent at places that do better. Facebook and Google both have better compensation and from what I've heard from friends (who've also had experience with Amazon), both also have a better working environment.
> It will not only open doors for you for all your future jobs
Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.
Sample size of one: my company tends to ding candidates from Google if they have any whiff of the kind of status- or compensation-driven thinking displayed in this comment section. Can sometimes indicate limited independent thinking and low concern for others. Definitely can close doors.
Basically what you're talking about here is arrogance.
And typically yeah... that's true. You don't really want arrogant people on your team, unless they're super productive and share their knowledge freely.
What's compensation driven thinking ? There's a difference between only caring about money vs asking for what you deem fair. Startups always abuse the naivete of new grads and low ball them by saying they are working for a grander cause. That is BS too.
Startups can't pay BigCo wages because they don't have the money to. They have to leverage other, harder-to-value benefits which BigCo generally can't offer.
Increased responsibility, fewer "rules" on how to execute, more tightly focused mission are a few.
Naturally this differs company to company and there are always bad actors.
The compensation equation works out differently for each individual. Not everyone should work at a startup.
And that is fair. But the parent comment insinuated that anyone asking for money is doing something wrong or is inferior to "someone who truly loves technology". It's a highly personal decision with no right or wrong IMO.
Agreed. "Compensation-driven thinking" may not be the best choice of words. Money is always a touchy subject.
I read parent's comment to be more about highlighting the expectations mismatch that occurs sometimes when candidates aren't willing to make compromises and then blame the startup for being "too stingy".
I've seen this mismatch occur on both sides of the table. Startups have a harder time hiring due to as they need to seek people willing to forgo direct compensation in exchange for these harder-to-value benefits. Startups need to stay self-aware they'll have a harder time hiring since the candidate pool is smaller.
Candidates applying to startups also need to temper their salary expectations. If you want to join a startup, especially pre-Series C, and you're not willing to compromise on direct compensation, then prepare for a harder time. The employer pool is much smaller and you're not likely to get the most out of working at a startup if salary is a top priority.
Small town personal tax agencies aren't financially competitive with Deloitte either. Doesn't make them abusive if Deloitte tier accountants choose to work for them.
Every industry has small low income employers and big titans with deep pockets. The big take most of the high quality talent by offering high salaries, and the small compete for the scraps with niche offerings.
Only in software does being the former seem to be some moral crime. Like if you're not as good as a place to work at as google you're meant to put "we're fairly shit. B- tier candidates at best please" on your hiring page.
That's true. But by the same token the owners of those agencies don't get up on their high horse about candidates that are "compensation driven". If a top talent interviews with a small town agency and asks if they can do 33% of Deloitte instead of 30%, the agency might say yes and might say no, but they don't say "how dare you even think about money when I am offering you a chance to do god's work on earth by helping to build venmo, but for dogs?!?"
While I don't know about the status, but compensation is definitely is the correct thinking. Startups need to offer something for less compensation, a lot of times they offer less and even less flexible than a big co.
When you're comparing against Google, outside of Facebook/Netflix pretty much all companies offer less. There are certainly plenty of predatory startups out there that are exploiting labor with unrealistic promises of riches and cap tables that guarantee no such happy outcome for employees. As an employee you have to look out for yourself, but if you set Google as the standard then everyone else is going to look cheap. There are many companies out there who simply don't have the unit economics to compete with FAANG, but may be more attractive for other reasons.
Then they can’t afford google talent. Short of pay they’d have to offer some other compelling narrative (e.g. HBO’s SV “changing the world through algorithms”). In essence it’s a trick to give up their economic advantage.
My main point is that Google doesn't define market comp, they define top-of-market comp. If you are a software engineer expecting to make Google money then you need to make peace with the fact that there are very very few places where you can earn that. It doesn't mean that all other companies are somehow low-balling or cheating their devs just because they don't have Google's money hose of a business.
>if they have any whiff of the kind of status- or compensation-driven thinking displayed in this comment section.
Whenever I hear about an employer that doesn't want employees who want to get paid a fair market value, I just assume the bosses and owners are the greedy ones which exploit their employees emotions in order to under pay them.
Opening the door means you get the interview, not that you automatically get the job. It can also mean that you get the benefit of the doubt when your interview doesn't go as well as you had hoped.
For my current job, I was able to use my big company experience and contacts to skip the phone screen at least.
I never had such an option but I agree. I picked a big company and after a couple years was able to leave in a much better place, financially, than I went in.
I couldn’t agree more—I would add live below your means because you don’t want to get used to that lifestyle/level of income where it would be impossible to step back later if you wanted.
(Being real, this is good advice. Find the lowest-cost digs you can get; stay flexible, lease; don't get involved with securities you can't unload. Remember that you're on a 5-year plan.)
It really depends on kind of person OP is, Personally I never want to work at any large corporation especially Google, the benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks for me.
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
IMO one of the best things about working for Google is that it's so easy to move between teams to e.g. find the domain you want to work in.
While it's true that you may not have many options for your first team (unless you are already a domain expert, in which case you may get funneled into your domain), if you are performing well for your current team, it is extremely easy to move around.
I say this a a Googler who was originally slotted into a team that was fun but not what I was really into. I swapped teams a couple of times and found something much better for me.
So easy relative to what, I wonder? I was slotted into a team which was neither fun nor anything I am into, and never managed to transfer. They said my manager wouldn't be able to block me from transferring, but he did so anyway, and I ended up leaving Google. There was nothing about the process which felt like it was any easier or less political than what I've seen at other megacorporations.
Well, easy relative to a startup which has just one engineering role (wear all the hats). In the startup world, changing roles generally means going through the interview process at a new company, starting over on seniority, vesting schedules, etc.
I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience at Google. It is a large company, so I don't doubt that there are dusty corners with bad management. But I've seen a pretty broad cross-section of the company and find most of it to be quite great in terms of mobility.
You need to stay ~12 months in your initial team; if your performance rating is bad (non-trivial chance of that after 1st year), no other team would ever touch you and you'll be slowly driven out (rare exceptions happen). 18 months used to be average stay of a Googler inside company. If you are out of luck with your team/boss, you are done internally, and this happened to many clever developers. You'd also have to get used to usual corporate CYA, internal politics and all the fun that comes along, with many developers barely doing anything but excelling in those "soft" metrics. Smaller chance of that in a startup with strong pre-selection, a mission and personal relationships, if it has solid funding.
Add to this the tendency to promote quality engineers to mediocre or outright bad managers. I witnessed a bad manager destroy the Google careers of virtually every engineer on his team.
Still, I would strongly recommend accepting the offer. Despite the drawbacks it's a great learning experience.
I second that. Maybe one more point to add abich was already hinted at in other comments. Working for company like Google allows to develop a dgree of professionalism that a start-up simply cannot. This is something you can build up on for the rest of your career.
But since you are thinking about joining a start-up, I assume you are not preparing to stay at Google until you retire, one last suggestion. Prepare for an exit strategy already basically from day one. Not to take it negative at being with Google. Just be aware that this is not your last job in your life.
>There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
You forgot to factor in the blatant age discrimination in most startups.
OP could build a nice nest egg at Google, but have a severe lack of free time + not be working on "interesting" work, and come out of it financially stable but unable to compete with fresh out of college grads with no lives, willing to work 24/7 and who have all the time in the world to mess around with the latest and "greatest" new foo
I understand the risks you're talking about here, but it's not like OP will start working at Google and suddenly his technical skills will atrophy. It is still a very competitive place to get into and a place where great work takes place. Even if OP doesn't get extremely interesting projects, a more established company is often better in terms of mentorship. Not to mention the fact that financial stability as well as the job security of working at such a large company have their own benefits.
I think OP could work at Google and have a promising career start, while taking on the risk of working on slightly-less-interesting projects.
At the same time, OP could work at this startup and make a bucketload of money through equity while working on fascinating projects. But the work could also be boring API stitching. Or the hours could be really long, and OP might have no outside life.
They're both good options. But back to the point I was originally trying to make: it's not like OP is going to work at Google and then never get hired by a startup again. In fact, working at Google is such a positive signal on a resume that it might actually make it easier to work at startups in the future.
Don't be greedy. Google is a gold-plated brand name that will offer tens if not hundreds of individuals smarter than you.
6% options is about average for a co-founder-level tech lead at a very small company.
You have to be realistic about your expectations for equity. It is more likely the company gets acquired than goes IPO. If the company gets acquired for $100M, then you may bring home around $4M post tax.
What is the company's competitive advantage? Usually, especially in AI/ML, it is the people already working there. Who is working there that will be smarter and more experienced than you that you can learn from?
"6% options is about average for a co-founder-level tech lead at a very small company."
Even if true, the fact that there are a lot of gullible young tech leads driving this average down is no good reason that the poster should be equally gullible.
Do the startup thing when it can be your thing. "First employee" is really the worst of all worlds.
Obviously pick google. Google signals that you are in the top 1% of human intelligence (which you must be if you passed the interviews). This is enormously helpful in future interviews and to VCs if you go the startup route yourself. Outside of FB and a handful of top startups and finance companies no company offers such a signal - some like Amazon SDE1 signify the opposite.
I think the two things are what do you want to do and where are you in your career?
Being at Google is the safe easy money and will most likely work out better than your startup from an odds perspective. However, you'll be a cog in a very large company whereas the startup you'll probably be able to have a huge impact in (presumably if you're getting 6% in options, that's like first/second engineer there or you're an exec).
If this is your first job one thing to consider is that having worked at Google definitely is a good spot on your resume, recruiters like it, you'll get reached out to by lots of other recruiters, it'll be super easy to find another job which can honestly be more challenging if you just have no name failed startups on your resume.
There is probably also more potential for title advancement at the new startup also vs. google.
In my mind Google is a lot of sure money and you get to have a small impact on something with potentially huge impact to the world/people/whatever
Small startups are a very small chance of some amount of money on the levels of (car, house, fuck you) and you get to have a large impact on something that may or may not have any discernible external impact.
Try Google for a couple of years. Move around and work on different teams. Leave and join a startup of your choosing. The Google brand is like going to Stanford or something. You'll have many more options and better connections. Maybe you'll also have enough cash to start your own thing.
If you're young, choose the startup. Say things work out: great! Say things don't work out: you'll have had an interesting experience, and can then go work for Google.
1. If Google has offered you a position now, they absolutely will offer you a position later. You wouldn't be burning any bridges, especially if you choose a startup over them.
2. It'll be a lot easier going from a startup to Google, than from the comforts (and money) of Google to a startup.
I did the startup thing. The ROI was crap compared to working at Google.
If you want to do the startup thing go ahead. You will have more stress and less money at the end of it compared to Google but Google will still be there to hire you at the end.
Take what Google offers as a baseline. Convert the difference per year to stock at a realistic valuation (as in, if you were a VC what would you give). Compare it, factoring in the strike price (so at a strike price of 0 you will be offered 6%/4 per year..)
Perhaps throw in a 20% rebate for "more fun job", but then again remember that the "VC valuation" of the stock is what VCs with a lot more capability for risk than you, so perhaps you want a 20% risk penalty (or more!)
"But the startup cannot afford to pay market". No, but they should compensate through sufficient ownership. Otherwise you will just be working hard to try to make someone else rich.
You don't say what stage it is, current valuation etc which is very important here.
Those options are totally worthless for new startups, don't care about them. In 4 years chances says they will be still worthless. Specially if the startup didn't go over a funding round yet.
Consider only the job, what would make you happy. Would it be super cool, super distruptive, super inovative? The perspective of the future is worth the risk? Then choose the startup.
But if you are on this for the money, or if you care about risk, choose Google.
Plus early stage stock always gets diluted in further rounds of capital raising ... that 6% will turn into 1% or less and some later hires inevitably will end up with a lot more.
It depends on whether you are driven by money or by a need to have fun or to be more in control. If money is your main driver then Google any day. If you want to be in control then the start-up is good but only if you are a very early hire.
If you want to have fun it depends on how the fit is between what you will do at both places, then pick then one that seems most suitable.
Disclaimer: I'm a founder of an early stage startup, so I'm biased.
You need to figure out what your goals are. We can't answer for you because we don't know what you want.
If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google. In 10 years you'll be earning 500k per year, and have put away a ton of cash too. Financially, if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely. At google you can guarantee you make $1m.
There are some good reasons to choose a startup:
1) you want the work environment of the startup. Less politics, less optimizing for career advancement, much closer to the customer and the decisions.
2) You want to learn. At a startup, you'll get to do everything. I'm assuming you're an engineer, so you'll get to do backend, frontend, ML, scaling, infra, etc. But you also get to do things like customer support, sales, marketing, etc, which are very valuable skills to learn and understand.
3) You want to do a startup yourself. Seeing how a startup works, and learning the hard lessons of how it doesn't, makes a huge difference if you ever want to start one later.
There are also other good reasons to go to google: you'll get to operate at a scale that a startup wont (that's a plus and a minus), you'll automatically have tons of customers for whatever you build, etc, etc.
Decide on your goals and what to optimize for, and only then can people help you choose.
I was a 1st employee at a fairly successful startup and am now an "early stage founder". The experience from one doesn't carry over as much to the other as you'd expect.
1) Somewhat true, it's definitely the case initially but you'll see politics develop if the company gets above 15-20 employees.
2) You'll half ass everything. It's nice to get exposure if you don't know what you're interested in yet but it will be hard to go deep in any subject. If you're doing ML the startup will probably have no data, process and infrastructure for you to be effective. At Google they have all the data you can dream of, 1000s of people to label things if you need them, unlimited hardware and tooling to run and manage experiments.
3) You'll learn a lot more about functional organizations at Google than as an early engineer at a startup. You'll also come out with a network and resume that will make raising money and hiring a lot easier.
>if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m
if the startup is the next facebook, sure. But usually an employee doesn't make 10 million, even for 100 million dollar(+) acquisitions. Founders do, but that is a different game.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-FANG, ex-founder, now-again-FANG, so I'm also biased.
I'm somewhat bothered by your comment about money:
> If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google.
I find this disingenuous, as money is also a big reason why people do startups, both the employees and the founders. The founders could have chosen to implement their idea inside Google or wherever (with an army of marketing, virtually unlimited funding as long as the idea is working out, and all forms of support to bolster the team and the product), but the founder passed on that in order to reap the huge rewards that come with owning a successful company. Or, in order to have "personal" control (inasmuch as you can have that when you still have investors, a Board, and an indifferent target audience).
Sure, there are _some_ founders whose vision genuinely doesn't fit inside any FANG... but those are the exception. For most visions, the best possible way to realize them is inside BigCo.
Also, the promise of a Google-sized payday is hinted at to employees ("Join us... we think this is a Google-sized opportunity" is a common thing founders say). Even your own statement ("you _might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely") embodies the dream and the challenge presented to a prospective employee who's ready for a big risk, to put their guarantees and expected-outcomes on the line for that sweet $10m.
The prospective employee probably doesn't realize that the founders who are pitching them on .01% still hold 60% between the two of them, and a different class of shares. The prospective doesn't realize that there is only an infinitesimally, vanishingly small likelihood they'll make even close to what they'll make at the big company.
But even when the employees make very little, the founders still have a good path to making bank, in the case of even a minor acquisition or an acquihire.
Startup Non-founders statistically /rarely/ have their options worth much of anything in the end. Startups also generally pay less than FANG companies to boot (typically until they are no longer startups).
Not sure if big companies are the best place to realize most visions. Google seems to make a mess of almost every new product they put out nowadays. They simply don't care with all that revenue. Many startups that focus on one thing and do it well are unlikely to have developed at a similar pace at a big company?
You probably want to say more about your situation. How much experience do you have, what kinds of things are important to you? Are you already wealthy?
Read some articles about the way people get diluted in successful startups. That should change the expectation value calculation. Also, you will have a larger network at Google.
That is a personal question. Nobody can choose for you. Nobody. Not your parents, or your partner,or people on hacker news, it is you.
As an adult you start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. Children have their decisions taken for them.
If you take the decision of going with the startup it will be one of the worst experiences in your life. If will be daunting, it will be taking risks every single day. At the same time, you will be making a contribution. Even if you fail you will learn things you will never learn in Google. If you success you will be free with freedom few things will ever give you.
If you go with Google you will be safe, isolated of the mundane problems most people have and you will be able to focus immensely on very interesting problems sharing your time with some of the smartest people on earth. On the other hand your creative and independent muscle will almost disappear, atrophied by not using it, as the big organization takes the load from your shoulders. Over time, it will make your shoulders less strong.
The decision is yours to make. Write down on a paper what your values and priorities are in your life and how each decision will affect them.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadIf the startup can only offer you 1/3 the pay, we can infer that their equity isn't worth very much, or investors would have given them more money.
So you believe in the startup. That's great. It's great to believe in writing good software. It's wrong that someone would want to exploit that for their own gain. It very strongly sounds like what you're being offered is a pittance. Don't sell your dreams for that little, because someone that will offer you so little for your dreams isn't worth working for.
If you're interested in hearing more about the difference in cultures, and how that will feel after some time, feel free to reply with a place I can contact you privately.
Being an early employee at a startup is usually not worth it.
There will never be any shortage of interesting startups to work for in the future.
Just like any other successful company that does something interesting and has been around more than a couple of years.
Borg is Kubernetes, flume is externally available as Google Cloud Dataflow (it's basically Apache Beam), Tensorflow is open source, many of Google's internal java libraries and tools are available externally (Guava, Guice, Dagger), and absl (c++ common libraries) are also available externally.
More importantly, assuming you land on a team with strong software engineering culture (this is likely, but admittedly not guaranteed, even at Google), the general skills you pick up for software design, planning, testing, etc. are transferable anywhere.
That said, all of this applies mostly to software engineers. If you're applying for an SRE position, then I've heard the experience is less transferable, but it's not something I could comment on first hand.
When I left Google for a startup, all the tools I took for granted didn't exist. But because I knew how things could and should work, I was able to apply open source and commercially available tools to improve software development practices at my new employer.
Also, Google's best tools are increasingly open-source.
Do you think they are more talented than other companies, like, say, Amazon?
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Amazon isn't really particularly good at any of these, so you'll tend to find more talent at places that do better. Facebook and Google both have better compensation and from what I've heard from friends (who've also had experience with Amazon), both also have a better working environment.
Is this true though? I guess it might help with the first contact, but I've heard from x-googlers that they still had to prepare and pass all those whiteboard CS-riddle based interviews again, for next endeavors.
And typically yeah... that's true. You don't really want arrogant people on your team, unless they're super productive and share their knowledge freely.
Startups can't pay BigCo wages because they don't have the money to. They have to leverage other, harder-to-value benefits which BigCo generally can't offer.
Increased responsibility, fewer "rules" on how to execute, more tightly focused mission are a few.
Naturally this differs company to company and there are always bad actors.
The compensation equation works out differently for each individual. Not everyone should work at a startup.
I read parent's comment to be more about highlighting the expectations mismatch that occurs sometimes when candidates aren't willing to make compromises and then blame the startup for being "too stingy".
I've seen this mismatch occur on both sides of the table. Startups have a harder time hiring due to as they need to seek people willing to forgo direct compensation in exchange for these harder-to-value benefits. Startups need to stay self-aware they'll have a harder time hiring since the candidate pool is smaller.
Candidates applying to startups also need to temper their salary expectations. If you want to join a startup, especially pre-Series C, and you're not willing to compromise on direct compensation, then prepare for a harder time. The employer pool is much smaller and you're not likely to get the most out of working at a startup if salary is a top priority.
Every industry has small low income employers and big titans with deep pockets. The big take most of the high quality talent by offering high salaries, and the small compete for the scraps with niche offerings.
Only in software does being the former seem to be some moral crime. Like if you're not as good as a place to work at as google you're meant to put "we're fairly shit. B- tier candidates at best please" on your hiring page.
Does it ding investors for return driven thinking, or does it happily takes checks from people so crass as to care about money?
Look, employment is a business contract. Business is about making money.
Whenever I hear about an employer that doesn't want employees who want to get paid a fair market value, I just assume the bosses and owners are the greedy ones which exploit their employees emotions in order to under pay them.
For my current job, I was able to use my big company experience and contacts to skip the phone screen at least.
I would be leery of hiring from Google. I would need to be convinced that the candidate strongly rejects Google's culture.
This is good advice in general
Life finds a way. -2008 joeb
(Being real, this is good advice. Find the lowest-cost digs you can get; stay flexible, lease; don't get involved with securities you can't unload. Remember that you're on a 5-year plan.)
Apart from what others mentioned in the thread In the startup choice the biggest benefit not going the Google for me is that I choose to work in a domain(by choosing the startup) where I am passionate about, slim chance of it happening in a large organization.
OP has to understand what he gets and does not get at both outside of pure comp and then figure out how much of value they are to him
While it's true that you may not have many options for your first team (unless you are already a domain expert, in which case you may get funneled into your domain), if you are performing well for your current team, it is extremely easy to move around.
I say this a a Googler who was originally slotted into a team that was fun but not what I was really into. I swapped teams a couple of times and found something much better for me.
I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience at Google. It is a large company, so I don't doubt that there are dusty corners with bad management. But I've seen a pretty broad cross-section of the company and find most of it to be quite great in terms of mobility.
You need to stay ~12 months in your initial team; if your performance rating is bad (non-trivial chance of that after 1st year), no other team would ever touch you and you'll be slowly driven out (rare exceptions happen). 18 months used to be average stay of a Googler inside company. If you are out of luck with your team/boss, you are done internally, and this happened to many clever developers. You'd also have to get used to usual corporate CYA, internal politics and all the fun that comes along, with many developers barely doing anything but excelling in those "soft" metrics. Smaller chance of that in a startup with strong pre-selection, a mission and personal relationships, if it has solid funding.
Still, I would strongly recommend accepting the offer. Despite the drawbacks it's a great learning experience.
But since you are thinking about joining a start-up, I assume you are not preparing to stay at Google until you retire, one last suggestion. Prepare for an exit strategy already basically from day one. Not to take it negative at being with Google. Just be aware that this is not your last job in your life.
You forgot to factor in the blatant age discrimination in most startups.
OP could build a nice nest egg at Google, but have a severe lack of free time + not be working on "interesting" work, and come out of it financially stable but unable to compete with fresh out of college grads with no lives, willing to work 24/7 and who have all the time in the world to mess around with the latest and "greatest" new foo
I think OP could work at Google and have a promising career start, while taking on the risk of working on slightly-less-interesting projects.
At the same time, OP could work at this startup and make a bucketload of money through equity while working on fascinating projects. But the work could also be boring API stitching. Or the hours could be really long, and OP might have no outside life.
They're both good options. But back to the point I was originally trying to make: it's not like OP is going to work at Google and then never get hired by a startup again. In fact, working at Google is such a positive signal on a resume that it might actually make it easier to work at startups in the future.
6% options is about average for a co-founder-level tech lead at a very small company.
You have to be realistic about your expectations for equity. It is more likely the company gets acquired than goes IPO. If the company gets acquired for $100M, then you may bring home around $4M post tax.
What is the company's competitive advantage? Usually, especially in AI/ML, it is the people already working there. Who is working there that will be smarter and more experienced than you that you can learn from?
Or will you be the chief cook and bottle washer?
Even if true, the fact that there are a lot of gullible young tech leads driving this average down is no good reason that the poster should be equally gullible.
Do the startup thing when it can be your thing. "First employee" is really the worst of all worlds.
If you feel like the startup is doing something unbelievable and you want to be onboard, go with them.
Google will still be around in a few years, and if you got an offer from them now you are likely to be able to get one again in the future.
Disclaimer - I’m an Amazon SDE1.
Being at Google is the safe easy money and will most likely work out better than your startup from an odds perspective. However, you'll be a cog in a very large company whereas the startup you'll probably be able to have a huge impact in (presumably if you're getting 6% in options, that's like first/second engineer there or you're an exec).
If this is your first job one thing to consider is that having worked at Google definitely is a good spot on your resume, recruiters like it, you'll get reached out to by lots of other recruiters, it'll be super easy to find another job which can honestly be more challenging if you just have no name failed startups on your resume.
There is probably also more potential for title advancement at the new startup also vs. google.
In my mind Google is a lot of sure money and you get to have a small impact on something with potentially huge impact to the world/people/whatever
Small startups are a very small chance of some amount of money on the levels of (car, house, fuck you) and you get to have a large impact on something that may or may not have any discernible external impact.
1. If Google has offered you a position now, they absolutely will offer you a position later. You wouldn't be burning any bridges, especially if you choose a startup over them. 2. It'll be a lot easier going from a startup to Google, than from the comforts (and money) of Google to a startup.
Just make a contract with yourself to save 2/3 of salary each month.
More savings and more experience puts you in a lot better position to do a startup later at your terms, as a co-founder or similar.
Early employee in startup is really the worst of all worlds.
If you want to do the startup thing go ahead. You will have more stress and less money at the end of it compared to Google but Google will still be there to hire you at the end.
Take what Google offers as a baseline. Convert the difference per year to stock at a realistic valuation (as in, if you were a VC what would you give). Compare it, factoring in the strike price (so at a strike price of 0 you will be offered 6%/4 per year..)
Perhaps throw in a 20% rebate for "more fun job", but then again remember that the "VC valuation" of the stock is what VCs with a lot more capability for risk than you, so perhaps you want a 20% risk penalty (or more!)
"But the startup cannot afford to pay market". No, but they should compensate through sufficient ownership. Otherwise you will just be working hard to try to make someone else rich.
You don't say what stage it is, current valuation etc which is very important here.
Consider only the job, what would make you happy. Would it be super cool, super distruptive, super inovative? The perspective of the future is worth the risk? Then choose the startup.
But if you are on this for the money, or if you care about risk, choose Google.
If you want to have fun it depends on how the fit is between what you will do at both places, then pick then one that seems most suitable.
You need to figure out what your goals are. We can't answer for you because we don't know what you want.
If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google. In 10 years you'll be earning 500k per year, and have put away a ton of cash too. Financially, if the startup is successful you_might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely. At google you can guarantee you make $1m.
There are some good reasons to choose a startup:
1) you want the work environment of the startup. Less politics, less optimizing for career advancement, much closer to the customer and the decisions.
2) You want to learn. At a startup, you'll get to do everything. I'm assuming you're an engineer, so you'll get to do backend, frontend, ML, scaling, infra, etc. But you also get to do things like customer support, sales, marketing, etc, which are very valuable skills to learn and understand.
3) You want to do a startup yourself. Seeing how a startup works, and learning the hard lessons of how it doesn't, makes a huge difference if you ever want to start one later.
There are also other good reasons to go to google: you'll get to operate at a scale that a startup wont (that's a plus and a minus), you'll automatically have tons of customers for whatever you build, etc, etc.
Decide on your goals and what to optimize for, and only then can people help you choose.
1) Somewhat true, it's definitely the case initially but you'll see politics develop if the company gets above 15-20 employees.
2) You'll half ass everything. It's nice to get exposure if you don't know what you're interested in yet but it will be hard to go deep in any subject. If you're doing ML the startup will probably have no data, process and infrastructure for you to be effective. At Google they have all the data you can dream of, 1000s of people to label things if you need them, unlimited hardware and tooling to run and manage experiments.
3) You'll learn a lot more about functional organizations at Google than as an early engineer at a startup. You'll also come out with a network and resume that will make raising money and hiring a lot easier.
My main point was to focus on goals. There's no point arguing any of these points without a focus on what OP wants from their career.
if the startup is the next facebook, sure. But usually an employee doesn't make 10 million, even for 100 million dollar(+) acquisitions. Founders do, but that is a different game.
I'm somewhat bothered by your comment about money:
> If your goal is just money (which is fine, don't be afraid to say this), then definitely go to google.
I find this disingenuous, as money is also a big reason why people do startups, both the employees and the founders. The founders could have chosen to implement their idea inside Google or wherever (with an army of marketing, virtually unlimited funding as long as the idea is working out, and all forms of support to bolster the team and the product), but the founder passed on that in order to reap the huge rewards that come with owning a successful company. Or, in order to have "personal" control (inasmuch as you can have that when you still have investors, a Board, and an indifferent target audience).
Sure, there are _some_ founders whose vision genuinely doesn't fit inside any FANG... but those are the exception. For most visions, the best possible way to realize them is inside BigCo.
Also, the promise of a Google-sized payday is hinted at to employees ("Join us... we think this is a Google-sized opportunity" is a common thing founders say). Even your own statement ("you _might_ make $10m, but that's unlikely") embodies the dream and the challenge presented to a prospective employee who's ready for a big risk, to put their guarantees and expected-outcomes on the line for that sweet $10m.
The prospective employee probably doesn't realize that the founders who are pitching them on .01% still hold 60% between the two of them, and a different class of shares. The prospective doesn't realize that there is only an infinitesimally, vanishingly small likelihood they'll make even close to what they'll make at the big company.
But even when the employees make very little, the founders still have a good path to making bank, in the case of even a minor acquisition or an acquihire.
As an adult you start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. Children have their decisions taken for them.
If you take the decision of going with the startup it will be one of the worst experiences in your life. If will be daunting, it will be taking risks every single day. At the same time, you will be making a contribution. Even if you fail you will learn things you will never learn in Google. If you success you will be free with freedom few things will ever give you.
If you go with Google you will be safe, isolated of the mundane problems most people have and you will be able to focus immensely on very interesting problems sharing your time with some of the smartest people on earth. On the other hand your creative and independent muscle will almost disappear, atrophied by not using it, as the big organization takes the load from your shoulders. Over time, it will make your shoulders less strong.
The decision is yours to make. Write down on a paper what your values and priorities are in your life and how each decision will affect them.