Depending on what kind of person you are, working in a startup can be a great experience or a nightmare. It has it's pros and cons, like everything in life, but noone could argue that it pushes you to learn and grow and challenges your comfort zones. My first startup experience was a mix of both, but almost all bad things haven't got anything to do with the startup itself, but rather with how the founder made work experience a hell.

Time tracking software, unhealthy bonus structures, non-existing work-life balance, toxic owner and lot of things I've learned. Learning a lot doesn't seem to belong here, but I actually did learn a lot despite having toxic work environment like described above, for example - having a time tracking software that takes a screenshot of your desktop every 10 mins, and if you are not at your desk moving mouse for 5 mins, tracker takes the whole previous hour and removes it from your work hours, so you need to stay overtime.

Believe me a lot worse things happened there, but I don't wanna bother you with that. Truth is no matter the startup, things are moving fast, code is shipped fast, and you are expected to learn fast. If you didn't know about it before, you may find it frustrating or even overwhelming and repelant. But if you are not afraid going out of your comfort zone to learn new things and you are willing to work hard, you can learn a lot in a short period of time. There are a lot of examples of people who started their career in a startup and later on became successful entrepreneurs, but also a lot examples of people who started in a startup and swtiched to big tech companies, because they couldn't handle the pressure and the pace of work.

Startup vs Big Tech

As mentioned above, startups are fast paced and often not burdened by the redundant rules and procedures, again depending on what kind of person you are you might find this liberating or frustrating. As for myself I find this liberating, since I am a person who likes when things are moving fast and I don't like waiting 5 days on 44 different meetings and discussions to be held in order to change the font color of our app's h1. Big tech tends to overcomplicate procedures and often end up shooting themselves in the foot. That could mean to things for you:

1. I like that! Things are moving slow - meaning less work for me
2. I can't stand that! I want to work on something and learn from it and I am not afraid putting some hard work in it

If you fit in the second category, then startup is the right place for you. It is hard work, but it is rewarding. You will learn a lot, and you will learn fast, especially if you are a junior engineer. On the other hand if you're just starting out and got your first job in a big tech company, you might end up falling into routine, where you'll not learn as much as you would want to in order to kikstart your career. Some people find if "safer" to start in a big tech company, but that's not always true. Yes, they have money and resources, but they also have a lot of poeple and with the layoffs happening in the last 2-3 years, you might not just end up unemployed, but also unexperienced and with less skills to show for.

Imagine being a part of FAANG company. You are a junior developer, being assigned to work on a feature. That feature is probably so small that when being split up into tasks, it would most probably end up requiring some unimportant and small changes. Now imagine, 1 month of meetings and planning being held just so you can do that small change; Now think about what have you learned from that? More about the procedures than the work you came for to learn and love, right?

Now, not saying all big tech companies are like that (altough I think I could make a case for that), but most of them are. And if you are a person who likes learn while working on something, it could be a hard pill to swallow, and I am sorry, but you will learn a lot more by working for the startup. Of course you could also make a case on why startups are not a good place to work at, but if we're just comparing the learning aspect of it, startups are the way to go and this is coming from someone who had a pretty bad experiences in my first startup. Even having that in mind I still don't regret it and would do it again, since the things I've learned from it are invaluable and just because I had a toxic boss and even more toxic workload it didn't drove me away from seeing the pros of working at a startup.

All bad things apart, two things I prefer about startups are:

• I gained 2 years worth of experience in 6 months
• I went on to being a frontend lead after the 10 months of working there

Those things should tell you enough about procedures and how things are moving in a startup and if I am to describe it in one sentence it would be: high risk¹, high rewards.

Other chapters around the rest of the Journey may happen in the future...

¹ risk being assosiated with financial unstability and future of a startup, but as described above, with the current tech market and the layoffs, the risk factor seems smaller.