Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

Having gone the other way, from Microsoft to entrepreneurship, I would say you are better positioned for success. For the most part your skill sets will transfer over to product management in a large company fairly easily. Some things are different though. You will typically be responsible for either part of a product or one product in a portfolio. As such your product or feature's future depends not just on how it is doing in the marketplace, but how it does relative to other products and features in the the portfolio. So you need to work with your managers to evangelize and promote the product within the larger organization as well. You'll have be able to justify its existence, very robustly with a lot of data. Much of the mid-level product managers function within a large company comprises of this activity. This may seem wasteful to you, coming from a startup, where the verdict of the market was everything, but this is how large companies determine how resources are allocated. Eventually the market will determine the future of the product, but for many product managers in large companies, that success or failure will not occur in the duration of their tenure. So one thing you need to focus on a lot is networking with the internal power structures of the company to build support for your self and your team. You have a huge advantage in this respect as an acquisition. They have paid good money to bring your team in, so there is significant awareness of who you are. If you are careful, and politically savvy you can leverage that awareness, and initial goodwill into strong long term support for your team and product.

You will probably have less freedom, less authority, and more bureaucracy.

You might have a leg up when it comes to keeping your budget low. Upper management is always happy with that.

From your context description it sounds like you need some extended holidays to put things in perspective.

For me, the biggest difference is that processes in a big co are designed for any single individual to be replaceable. As a consequence, everything is bigger than you and slower to change even if for the best. This is exactly what you're trying to achieve in a successful start-up as it starts with everyone being irreplaceable (to some extent) where you can make a fundamental difference in the future of the company.

Being part of a successful company sounds exciting and you can learn valuable information to apply in other settings but I found that in start-ups you have a lot more room to learn than in a big co. This is because instability in a start-up is very visible and directly accessible (you'll run out of money in X months) so you must timebox everything. However, in a big co instability is more implicit and you can't fail as much. Also unless you can get a fairly high level position at a big co, you won't be able to get "very" relevant experience into building/working the right product because a lot of strategy is not discussed bottom-up in those companies.

Here is what it means to work at a big company:

* Things work slowly, so relax. There are many people that have a hand in every aspect of a product decision.

* At a startup you are actively changing the world. That’s done now. Put that completely out of your head. You are cog in a machine. Instead focus on your assigned product, help your teammates, and just learn to relax.

* You, the individual, are not important. The product is important, the department that delivers the product is less important, the teams that comprise the department are less important than that, and so on. Again, accept the reality and just relax.

* Do your best. Unlike at a startup, generally you will have time to get things correct. This is the difference between competence and others who struggle to get things right and always appear to be in a hurry. There is no reason to be in a hurry.

* Expect insufficient test automation, lots of regression, and plenty of repetition. Also expect everybody to be an expert that is in a hurry and things in a unique way. Just be patient, politely nod, and just relax.

* If you are good at systems automation then learn to automate away as much of your job as you can. Use the now increased free time to contribute to documentation and internal knowledge repositories. You will find that a lot of the documentation can be automated as well.

* My employer has something like 270,000 employees so it’s forgiven if you have no idea what all of those people in your cubicle farm do. You need to actively spend at least 2 days a month answering those questions.

* Just because you are at a big company does not mean you are safe. I have been in a large established super well known .com that failed. People get laid off even when big companies are healthy.

* If you don’t like being bored and are highly risk adverse you might find the big company life highly depressing. A lot of my advice here is to just relax, but I hate relaxing.

The biggest thing is that you don't really know anything.

_You weren't in the room when the decisions were made and there is oil tanker momentum based on those decisions.

_You don't have a clue as to who is who. People within the organization know each other in non-obvious ways. There is an invisible informal network built of many years, organizational structures, and projects.

_You don't know which project is whose baby. Two equivalent approaches are not equivalent when one has backing and the other relies on natural selection.

None of these is bad. It's just the nature of blindly encountering an elephant. Good luck.

There are systems and processes for everything. The plus of that is that there's a lot less winging it, and that you can just hand a bunch of stuff off to people that know how to do it. The minus is that you have to learn who those people are and how to activate them, and it can take longer than just doing it yourself.

I find a lot of these things you can expect, are just symptoms of an inefficient company. I wonder if there is a big company out there that moves quicker and cares about their individual employees more?

Work is not everything, learn rest of "political" skills if you are not good at them, like presentation, speaking, writing.

Most big corps have done really smart people, don't be afraid to actively seek to learn from them.

Having gone through a similar experience, I would say that your experience may vary depending on org culture, sub-culture within individual teams, and the traits of your manager. That said, there are always loose ends that will need ownership and that's where your "entrepreneurial" chops would kick in. You approach to execution would/should reflect on the lessons you've learnt.

Startup - Enterprise does not mean a paradigm shift in everything. Yes, there are some aspects that would change. And then there will be a lot of scope for applying your self-made learning and leanings.

>Moreover, I don’t have a lot of reserve energy in the tank to direct it at another startup after 10 years of blood, sweat and toil.

>...What are some things I should consider before switching?

Take a break if you can afford it. I think that will serve you better than almost any other thing you can do, work related. I've felt this way, and took a few months off, I was champing at the bit to get back to work and start making something happen. You'll think a lot clearer about what you want to do next with some time away.

After you get out of a serious relationship, you need time to heal, regroup, re-find yourself, re-learn who you are, etc before you start dating again. It's similar with jobs you put a lot into.

Well my journey was a bit different than yours. I was Lead Dev at a small startup (<10 people) and went to a non-FAANG Fortune 500 and assumed a Sr role on a team. Things I didn't think would bother were a dress code. It does, it does bother me. Especially in the Summer. I was surprised on my first day that I didn't get to choose my own O.S. I really miss Linux, it really effects my productivity being in Mac. I thought projects Jira tasks would be better planned, they are not, they barely have any information in them. Documentation is a joke somehow. Onboarding was a joke. They just kinda stuck me in there. I couldn't believe I had better processes in place at the startup. Things move slow. Some days I barely have any work, its not much fun. There are things that can't be beat though. Chance to move around. Better benefits. With that said, I'll be looking for a smaller company after I've reached my year mark (they have me in relocation expense cuffs).

I hope your experience is better. If you're going to a FAANG I imagine it will be. This place is much more buttoned up.

This post is relevant and made it to page 2 recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305216

It’s all about trade offs. You will have a tremendous amount of leverage at a big co. Customers who would otherwise not give you the time of the day at a startup will be happy to talk to you. Take advantage of this and learn from them.

On the other hand you will also have to pay taxes at a big co. Big co got that way in many cases because they have an integrated solution for customers. Integration is expensive but worth it. It takes a lot of people to be in alignment to make integration work. And that takes time; you need to be patient and look for opportunities to make a difference.

"Corporate Confidential" by Cynthia Shapiro is an excellent book in explaining the various motivations stakeholders at a large company may or may not have.

Although the book can be considered bleak, the point is not to train you to suspect your employer, but rather point out various possibilities of politics and power play that may be going on under the surface that are not so obvious from the get go. I.e. it's a survival manual of sorts to a new and sometimes semi-hostile environment.

Expect some resistance for very productive and crazy ideas

I just left Google, for facebook about 3 months ago. In case you are interested in comparison, i can help.

If you end up in a 'bad' company you may make these experiences:

- there are feuds between companies or even departments in the same org

- decisions are not based on facts but on political circumstances

- the outcome of an analysis is often predetermined

- not the best idea/project/etc. win's but the one with the best connections

- decisions are made that are damaging to the company just to deny someone else in the org a success

Bias. A huge deal in these corporates. You’re going to have to either learn how to navigate it or to live with it.

On the other hand, you will get a ton of exposure learning from others and knowing more people. That’s always there for sure at large organizations. Above all, a sense of being a part of a cult.

I wrote a little about this here

https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/10/02/why-are-enterprises-so-s...

> I find myself seeking out experiences from peers at these behemoths on how decisions are made and products get built there.

I think you will be mostly astounded at the lack of things you can learn from the way decisions are made inside big companies. Which is to say, they aren’t super rational organizations.

As a multiple FAANG alumni, I can tell you that decisions made are often strongly influenced by politics, individual executive “hunches,” and legacy tech concerns instead of raw cost/benefit or actual data.

The fact is, you’re going to make a lot more money doing much less work at FAANG.

However, very little of what you learn about how the organization runs will be valuable outside of the big organization itself.

Here is my list.

* Things work a lot more slowly in big co's.

* There's a lot more ego involved so prepare for a lot of ass lickers(I really can't think of a better term).

* A lot of "meetings", "discussions", "planning" and so on, which often are just means to kick a can down the road.

* More time to relax.

* Nearly impossible to change the status quo, not impossible but a very slow and painful process.

* Often more freedom to experiment with technologies and proprietary solutions if you find a way to justify them(which is often not a difficult task).

* Plenty of ways to squeeze out training, seminars, certifications and whatnot, just make sure you read the tiny font at the bottom.

> All I’ve ever learnt over the last decade has been by > operating in a capital constrained environment.

Even in big companies you will be constrained by budgets, and possibly even more than you're used to. The big companies have money to try many different things, but normally products start small, and can be killed if they're not going to be profitable enough. Especially if you're ina leadership position, you're going to have to convince people to fund your products.

The other big thing to consider is politics. Don't get me wrong, politics are everywhere, even in startups, but there's a difference. You're going to have arguments with people that you can't go have a beer with after work, and you have to consider how that will affect your relationship after the argument.

Politics.

You better brush up on your social engineering, learn when to smile and when not to, and watch your back. Rationality and intelligence will not get you far on their own, because the game isn't about who's the smartest or who has the best ideas, it's about leverage, prejudices, cliques, "prestige", and ultimately money.

Remember you're there to play with some toys, occasionally commit code, and get that sweet money.

I personally think that one should always look behind from where they are coming and focus on tomorrow. This will help them achieve their goals, both short terms, and long terms.

300 is already pretty big. I went from 20 years where by far my largest company was 16 people, to Microsoft, and I'm pretty happy.

The biggest transition for me was the amount of cross org digging and asking and such required. So much is constantly in Flux, and internal integration points are often poorly documented or have apis based off protocols from a decade ago, or whatever else. You spend most of your time doing that, figuring out how to integrate with various old, half supported systems, getting pushback that the integration won't be supportable, etc.

This is in strong contrast with a small company where you are generally working with public, well documented tools, and everyone you work with shares the same goal.

That said, I'm happy now that I have gotten used to it. The scale of things you work on is much greater.

One thing I'll say is don't sell yourself short by taking a job at the low end of where you think you should be and telling yourself that you can work your way up. I made this mistake when I was unemployed but not desperate. Your project could be canceled or there can be blockers or reorgs or whatever else that keeps you back. So wait for the offer that you want.