Chrystal Taylor:
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Chrystal Taylor:
Welcome to SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Chrystal Taylor, and with me as always is my co-host, Sean Sebring. Today we thought we’d take the time to talk about an evergreen tech industry topic, whether you’re currently in the job market looking for a new position or just want to keep your options open, there are some fundamentally different experiences waiting out there in a new role. We’re going to dive into the differences between working at a startup and working at an established corporation and help you ask yourself some important questions to decide where you fit.
Chrystal Taylor:
So we’ll kick things off talking… A good topic to start with is risk versus reward. They are very, very different experiences. I have worked at both a startup and at an established corporation. We’ll start on the startup side. Some of the risks associated I think with working at a startup are benefits. For instance, you may not have benefits right away or they might not be benefits you’d like to have right away, where they’re still figuring things out, getting funding, all of that stuff you can certainly miss out. When I started at a startup, we didn’t have 401(k), for instance, and so it was like a year in before we established a 401(k), and that was fine for me because I was like 23 or 24, so sure, whatever. I don’t care about 401(k), but your experience may differ.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah. No, I totally see where you’re coming from and agree, the financial stability for you as an individual is a risk because obviously an established corporation shows proof that they will continue and they have the funding to say, we have continued to provide these benefits for X amount of time. And I think that some startups are getting better at having some benefits earlier on as part of their funding because part of the startup is they need funding from the founders, from donors.
Sean Sebring:
And depending on how that works, they may factor in that they need funding for those benefits just to make it more of an incentive. But still, it’s not as secure feeling as an established corporation. But yeah, I mean it totally makes sense that it’s… You mentioned your age. So there’s a lot of factors that come with being younger where the risk is more acceptable. You’ve got a higher appetite for it, and as we go down, through kind of our list of topics here, there’s even more that will play into those risks and then even the rewards that’ll come with it for kind of having less outside of work responsibility so that you can accept more of that risk. But I don’t want to go too far ahead of it, but yeah, I totally echo everything you said there.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, I think one of the things that’s like a reward I guess for working in a startup is oftentimes opportunities for working more on the bleeding edge. Being a bit more forward-thinking, there’s not as much red tape to get through to get a new policy in place, for instance, or like I want to go try to do this type of work. Oftentimes there’s a lot more opportunity there for you to get more experience doing a variety of different things, and of course the risk that comes with that, the other side of that coin is that means that you may be working a lot of hours and you may be, what they say, wearing many hats where you have a lot of responsibilities kind of across the board.
Chrystal Taylor:
In an established corporation, oftentimes you have one job and that is your job, and you have the roles and responsibilities that go with that, whereas working at a startup, you may have to accept that you’re going to have to do all kinds of other things. Just because you wouldn’t learn something new doesn’t mean you have to stop doing whatever you were doing before. Oftentimes you just keep adding to that and that can lead to burnout faster.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, and it’s funny, I completely agree with that sentiment, but in the research I was doing, they talked about a benefit of startups is a more flexible schedule, more oftentimes remote, which the remote part, yes, absolutely a hundred percent agreed on because how are they going to compete in this market without offering one of the most popular benefits of any job right now, which is remote. But I a hundred percent agree that I feel like in a startup, one of the risks you take, which could be something you’re looking for is more work where you in an established environment have an incredibly structured role, hopefully, depending on the corporation, organization, but you have a very structured role that says stay in your lane, almost. And I mean, those are things that all organizations and corporations should be trying to improve upon. Breaking down the siloed aspects of things and doing more knowledge share, but it’s so much less of a rigid thing in a startup company because they need everybody doing everything almost, which means more hours, more responsibilities.
Sean Sebring:
The many hats thing, oh, my gosh, couldn’t agree more. And similarly to a startup, when a company’s going through a big transformation, I see this happening too, especially if it’s a smaller company. So there’s not as many roles if they’re going through a larger attempt at digital transformation, even if it’s a slower process. As they bring in a new sweep of IT folks, you’re going to have few heads, but there’s a lot of roles and responsibilities to fill with that, so it’s almost like a startup feel.
Sean Sebring:
But yeah, it’s definitely something I would say both. It’s a risk and a reward. It just depends on your appetite. And where your threshold for work-life balance is really because yeah, the exposure to those opportunities is something that folks in corporations would die for. They’re like, oh, man, I just really wish I would get a chance to do that. And again, from a risk perspective is you may not be getting paid for the role you’re in, but you get the exposure for it. Maybe you can throw it on your resume, and so the startup gives you that opportunity and it’s a really cool opportunity.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, for sure. I think that that leads pretty nicely into one of the other things I wanted to talk about, which is policies. And the difference is when you work at a large corporation, they have established policies and programs and all of the things. That you have a certain way of doing things. Not to say that they can’t ever be changed, but it takes a lot more effort and responsibility-taking in order to change policies. So maybe you’re changing a role or you’ve added a new piece of software or something, so now you have to create new policies versus I think at a startup, one of the things I found very frustrating many times is that there were no policies, and part of that is because they’re establishing them as they go, whether that is a policy for like this is how we do this thing that we have to do all the time, and not even just internal HR policies or even if you have HR or outsourced HR, because oftentimes startups have outsourced HR.
Chrystal Taylor:
Another thing is employment policies, but I’m not even talking about just employment policies. I’m talking about work policies. The company I worked for provided services, so it was not a software company, but we did things a certain way. Like if we’re going to go talk to a customer and we’re going to do an assessment of their infrastructure and how it’s set up and all of that. Then we didn’t have a document to follow or established process or established policy to say, this is what we do when this happens.
Chrystal Taylor:
We had to figure all of that out. And a lot of that is good and bad. Because you get to have some say in what that is going to look like, what that process is going to be, and it’s a bit easier to tweak it as you go. No one’s just laying down the hammer saying, “This is the way that it is.” That really doesn’t happen very much in my experience in that kind of startup culture where everybody’s a bit more flexible on making changes as long as you’re the one that’s suggesting the change is willing to go through the effort. Because you can’t just suggest-
Sean Sebring:
I get that extra hat on.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. You can’t just suggest that something changes say like, oh, someone should do this additional work. It’ll never happen. You have to be willing to do those things. And oftentimes they’re very open to it. At least that’s my experience’s like, well, we need a policy for this. We’re bringing new employees on. We’re telling them, “This is probably how you should do this,” but every different person might have a slightly different way of doing that thing. And as you grow, then you might need to establish this is how we should be doing this thing because your customers start to get expectations and you have to meet those, and that’s not just customers, but employees as well. For internal policies.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, customers is definitely a big thing that they would need to keep in mind. But I like what you said because you said good and bad, when you were talking about the fact that a startup gets some capability of shaping what the policy should be. And I think one of the terms they use, which is a very common popular term. It’s a buzzword is agile. Startups are much more agile. Flexible is another synonym for that, but that agility is something that I think corporations are trying to strive for now because they’re realizing that, hey, if we want to stay relevant, these startups are going to disrupt us if we can’t also be agile. And so the better corporations are trying to have some of that flexible agile feel so that you can bring things up. A lot of disrupt projects, innovation projects and saying, “Hey, try and see if you can give us an idea of what’s going to make this better.”
Sean Sebring:
And a cool analogy I have that’s kind of like a startup, it was a college campus, it was just built. And so they built the campus, but they hadn’t put in the walkways, footpaths, sidewalks. And so what they said was, “Let’s actually not put them in yet.” And what they did was they just let the campus be green and where they saw foot traffic, dirt trails where people made decisions to say, this is the best path from A to B. And that’s where they ended up building the sidewalks. They paved in where people were already walking. And so it’s like it gave the natural organic feel of this is what makes sense, now let’s do it. It was a little bit more of an iterative approach, but it kind of had that same vibe of the people who walk the path get to help influence where the path is. So it is a really cool benefit to the startups and encouragement to every corporation out there is allow some of that flexibility and innovation to come from the folks that are doing the work.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that it can be frustrating. Like I mentioned earlier, I found it incredibly frustrating. That there were… So I was the reason a lot of policies got put in place because I was frustrated, so I would then make a policy or a process and then that would become the policy or process. That’s how I rose through the ranks as well. There’s an opportunity there where you can show your worth and then get leveled up or whatever. You mentioned earlier, the opportunity for remote work is often a benefit of working at startups these days, and I think that that is true. Established corporations often have these big campuses or buildings that they’ve already spent money on, they’ve invested huge sums of monies in these things, and if they have a campus, there’s all kinds of stuff. There’s gyms and there’s fitness centers and cafeterias and play areas and whatever.
Chrystal Taylor:
They’ve invested huge sums of money into these campuses, and so they’re very often reluctant to offer the opportunity to be remote, and they certainly don’t have a remote-first culture. And oftentimes I think that in a startups case, they’ve realized that they don’t have to take on those operating costs to start out with. Established corporations, they’ve already done the investment, but when you’re establishing a new company, you can decide, oh, well this remote work thing is a lot cheaper for us, so maybe we can do that.
Chrystal Taylor:
I mean, it also promotes asynchronous working and that kind of stuff, which is important. Yeah, I find it very fascinating kind of watching corporations talk about remote work these days and how against it they are. I do understand at the same time that I think that they need to realize they’ve got to catch up with the times. I think that it is becoming more common even at larger corporations to support hybrid, at least working if not fully remote work. And I think it’s only going to become more common. Our technology has advanced far enough that there’s no reason we can’t support it.
Sean Sebring:
I a hundred percent agree just from a thought leadership perspective that it’s proven that it’s what people want and it can still work. So with those two arguments in mind, I don’t see an argument that’s going to sway it in the other direction. I think that like you’d said, there’s going to have to just be some acceptance that this is the way the world works now and we’ll see what happens. This is just the fun part about being able to observe again from a thought leadership perspective, observe what’s going on out there. I guess the struggle for them is how do we balance it? It’s tough when you say X number of days in per week because then it becomes so flexible. People may try and trick or abuse the system in ways or it becomes so ambiguous, it’s hard to monitor and track.
Sean Sebring:
So again, like you said, finding some kind of better policy. There’s four-day-a-week work weeks for some organizations, and maybe that’s an answer is, okay, well these four days you’re in and Friday’s just always a work from home day or maybe something similar to that, but having it so loose is almost not helpful, but you’re right, there’s no way they can’t accept it. They’ve got to find a solution because again, it’s proven. It’s what people want. People are happier and they’ve proven that they can do the work. And often selfishly personally, I do like working in the office. I feel very productive when I am, but there’s some work where I’m like, I feel like I just can’t get this done because I’m in the office. People won’t stop tapping me on the shoulder. I need quiet or for these scenarios, unless they give me a recording studio, there’s no way I could do this in the office. I have to be at home. I have to be in a place where I can lock myself in a room, keep it quiet and do a recording.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, I used to say this all the time. I’ve worked from home for 13 years and I find that I accomplish different work in-office versus at home. I think that I have gotten used to the quiet and the ability to concentrate at home. At the office, I get very distracted constantly, and I don’t know if I have ADHD, I’ve never been diagnosed, but I find it very distracting. People walking by, I can hear people talking over there and it’s just like stuff is happening all the time. So being at home, I can sort of tune everything out because there is nothing to tune out. I don’t have to struggle to do that. And so I find I accomplish different work.
Chrystal Taylor:
There’s a lot of great collaboration that happens when I go to the office. I can visit with people. You can answer questions that they maybe think of on the spot that they don’t want to send you over Teams because there’s some weird culture going on with remote communications, and that is because we work for a company that was not always supportive of remote. They’re used to having everyone in the office. And so the culture hasn’t quite caught up, and I think that’s probably true for a lot of larger corporations is like I previously worked at a remote first company and it was very different, I guess communication happening there, where at an established corporation, they’re not used to… Everyone that works there, they’re used to working in the office, they’re used to talking to people regularly. Those elevator conversations or hallway conversations, whatever you want to call them, that happened naturally.
Sean Sebring:
The water cooler conversation.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. That happened naturally while you’re in the office and they’re great. They prompt ideas and they prompt changes and better collaboration between different departments and things like that. They are really useful, and I feel like a lot of corporations haven’t caught up to the idea that you can still do that remotely. People just aren’t used to it, and so for some reason, it feels like more of a bother to send a person a random message. I found this a lot that people don’t just like, “Hey, I was thinking this thing,” and then send you a message. They don’t do that. It’s like they don’t want to bother you.
Sean Sebring:
I think it’s the gamer in us though, Chrystal, we’re just used to DMing, PM me, whisper me, whatever the term for the game might be. Just shoot someone a direct message and, “Hey, I had this idea, what do you think? Or, oh, man, that thing happened to me again.” Just recalling an experience. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And when we’re talking about the startups versus big corporations, one of the things… And you mentioned the word culture and this plays into it, is the budget allocation for those kind of socialization things. And they’re different. One might argue that larger corporations have more budget for it, but in my experience, having worked for larger corporations, there’s less budget allocated for it. There’s more often just a couple large events that are very much an expense for the organization, and they do pour a lot and it can be a high quality event.
Sean Sebring:
But what I find when I was working for the smaller organization, the startup, that there was more frequent but less “high quality engagement.” And the quality I’m saying is the venue. Because the quality of the engagement’s up to the culture. So I think more frequent, and it doesn’t have to be weekly or even monthly, but doing a quarterly, all right team get-together of some kind, giving opportunities for folks to come together and create those water cooler conversations, even in the remote experience or if we’re in the office and just don’t bump into each other often. I think those kind of meetups for employees to be allowed to focus on just talking to one another and innovate because if it does happen on accident, that’s a really lucky spark that happened because a lot of times I was on my way back to do something and I’m too distracted to stop and chat with you.
Sean Sebring:
So if you provide them the avenue to say, “Let’s just mingle and talk about stuff,” and it can be a work-related event, so it’s okay to talk about work instead of it just being a, this is an off-hours work event where we don’t want to… Because there’s both. There’s both. And so I did see, and I don’t know which is the right answer of a startup having the budget for it versus an established organization because I think that the way the money is spent is just so different in both that there’s arguments for benefits on both sides.
Chrystal Taylor:
So it’s really interesting that you bring up budget when it comes to getting people together. Because I think that’s really important is getting people together. You can get better collaboration out of people that at least feel some sort of camaraderie. It builds morale, gives you camaraderie, all of those things. I think those get togethers are important. One of the things that I think applies to the situation as well is oftentimes startups have much smaller teams, so while it might seem like they have more budget, they might not actually have more budget and more like it’s easier to get people together because there are less people. I think especially again, in the upper echelons of large companies. Where you have 5-, 10,000 employees, it’s really difficult to get people together. So oftentimes they do things like smaller team get-togethers where it’s just like your individual department or your individual team, which doesn’t promote a lot of cross-departmental collaboration, but it does still build morale.
Chrystal Taylor:
So I think that’s one of the things that you should consider actually if it’s important to you. I am an introvert, so I don’t mind smaller get-togethers. I would prefer actually smaller get-togethers, but if you are extroverted and you need that interaction with other people, that face-to-face, that’s also something that you should consider. What I’ve experienced, and I’ve seen experience at startups a lot, is they often do parties that include spouses and children even, they can do a bit more because they’re not having… The teams are smaller. So they can really get people together. On the other side of that though, I think one of the problem cultures that comes out of that in my opinion is that then they start to say that you’re a family. And I think that there are issues with that, and it does happen at corporations too.
Chrystal Taylor:
I’m not saying that it doesn’t, I think it’s just more prevalent in these startup cultures. Because you get this kind of feeling where you’re all trying to make this thing a success together and we’re all taking a risk on this thing. And so you start to get these kind of feelings that you’re all in this together and they promote this family attitude about work. And I think that can be problematic because there’s a lot of things and a lot of people. You’re raised to do things for your family that you wouldn’t do for a stranger on the street or even a friend necessarily. There’s this whole culture around family that we have in the world, and I know it’s different in different places, but oftentimes you’re more willing to ask for things, for instance, that you wouldn’t ask a random colleague for. Ask them to do something above and beyond or help you out after hours or whatever.
Chrystal Taylor:
It feels less like a big ask whenever it’s someone that you consider family, which says a lot about our culture in general, and maybe that’s an American thing, but I feel like it’s definitely prevalent in other places as well where the boundaries are less strict when you consider someone a family member or versus, well, that’s just a colleague. So I think that those kind of things go hand-in-hand. They promote that culture even more. Not to say that I did not enjoy all of those parties where my son got to go with me and I took my mom and all of that thing. I loved it. I had a great time. It was super fun. I loved the people that I worked with. I think that there are definitely pros to all of that stuff. I think you just have to keep in mind, and it took me a long time to learn this, you have to establish boundaries and be willing to support yourself in those boundaries.
Sean Sebring:
I think that that’s one of the risks, especially for the younger professionals out there jumping into something is family in the workplace. A hundred percent Chrystal, I couldn’t agree more. It has benefits, it’s cool, it’s nice to be part of a community, but you’re still there to work. You’re still an employee, you’re still a professional, and at the end of the day, if something happens, especially to that startup, you’re going to have to move your career on. And so you have to be… And I say this and hopefully folks understand it in the right way. You have to be selfish in the sense that when you have actions and interactions with people, you need to make sure that they’re in your best interest professionally as well as fun, as well as beneficial to the company culture.
Sean Sebring:
So it’s something that it’s the work-life balance and it blurs the lines a bit more when you have that tighter community, but you do have to still maintain that work-life balance, and it’s a more confusing one because it’s a more emotionally involved connection than a professional connection. So yeah, it is so cool, and especially again, the younger folks with less responsibility or rather more appetite for risk, it can be really cool, but tread carefully that you don’t become too immersed in a situation and make sure that you recognize even if they’re friends, they started as work friends and at the end of the day, it’s still work.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, I think one of the things to note too about those blurred lines and blurred boundaries is that it can lead to HR problems, especially if like earlier I mentioned, your HR is outsourced, which means that when you do have a problem, you’re either not going to be taken seriously because oh, they’re just friends, they’re fighting or whatever. It’s not taken seriously or they think that you’re being over emotionally involved or whatever. And maybe that’s just my experience as a woman, but I have a feeling that it’s not just my experience. Definitely the blurred lines lead to problems. People get a little too comfortable around each other, and as you just said, you do have to remember that they’re still work friends. Even if you take it outside of work and you go have a beer or whatever, you have to remember that that can go back to work. So keep your boundaries up, be a little bit selfish in taking care of yourself. CYA, make sure that you’re not saying anything that you’d be afraid to come back to an HR conversation.
Sean Sebring:
Yes, that one’s so true.
Chrystal Taylor:
So I’m just going to pivot us a little bit. I think one of the things that we haven’t talked about… We talked a little bit about opportunity in a startup that’s different than opportunity in a big corporation, and I think one of those places where that’s the most prevalent is in upper level positions. The requirements are not as strict or stringent. If you want to up level into management or in a higher leadership position, oftentimes they can’t afford the large salaries for a CMO or a CFO or a CTO.
Chrystal Taylor:
And so there’s a lot of opportunity for you to experience a growth in your career by moving to a startup to be able to say, “Oh, I was a CTO,” and maybe it was for a tiny startup and maybe whatever, maybe it was a year or two, but it’s enough to get your foot in the door to get a higher level position somewhere else. So that’s an opportunity I wanted to talk about because I think it’s really interesting. You get to experience the position and the title and all of that. You can add it to your resume without having the same really strict requirements necessarily that you would have somewhere else.
Sean Sebring:
Well, and that plays into what you brought up earlier, the policies aspect of things, because the more established corporations with the more embedded HR, and what happens is despite talent, someone may be restricted. And this happened to me almost 10 years ago, that I was kept from being promoted into the position that my manager wanted me to be in and that I felt I should have been in, and it capped me in pay, because you can’t skip pay grades to a certain level. You can only jump X number of pay grades, which I don’t want to disparage any organization who does this, but to the employee, that’s incredibly discouraging. And so, one of the major benefits to the startup is that those kind of restrictions aren’t really there. They’re desperate for talent, not for adhering to policy. So if they see the right candidate, they’ll make it happen from within as well.
Sean Sebring:
It’s a huge benefit, again, to the person advancing their career at a rapid pace and looking for the high risk and great opportunity because you have less restriction on just the path. Now, on the contrary, using the term path, something that is a benefit of the organization is oftentimes they will have a more clear career path. Something where you can continue to march in a specific direction and it will help you accelerate your career on that path. But it does follow more of those guidelines, but it’s something that’s clear, and again, based on the different personality of person who’s looking at the job startup versus established corporation, someone might say, “Ooh, I don’t like risk.” Or, “Ooh, that sounds cool, but I’m a little bit more of the follow the guidelines. Let me go to icy-veins.com and just say, show me the build and I’ll plug in the talents. I’ll plug in the skills.” That’s a game joke for folks who aren’t aware, just following the guidelines though, and there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re just two different ways to approach job levels.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. And I think that the interesting thing too is as well as it being kind of easier to step into a higher level position, there’s two things that go hand in hand with this sort of job level discussion, which is A, that may mean you have more responsibilities than you otherwise would have in that position. And B, something that I’ve noticed as well is oftentimes because there’s not established policies that may also mean that there are no performance reviews, and while people can groan and complain every time it comes time to do their performance reviews and it’s such a pain and whatever, there’s all those downsides to doing performance reviews that also makes it easier for your manager to give you acknowledgement and give you a pay raise and give you even a job position level. If you’re moving to… You need those performance reviews for those things to happen, and I definitely worked somewhere that didn’t have performance reviews for the first two years I worked there, and let me tell you, that was incredibly frustrating.
Chrystal Taylor:
So you have to balance that out as well. If you are… I’m also the reason why that was established. You have to be willing to shake it up a bit or to point out the fact that you don’t have those established policies, and it may not happen right away either, like maybe they haven’t figured out how to do that because they’ve outsourced their HR, whatever the case may be. There are oftentimes reasons behind it, I’m sure. Or they’re just so excited for this idea, it’s not something that they thought of or whatever. I mean, there’s any number of reasons why you might not have that in place, but that is something to consider asking about, at least during interview process. What is your performance review process so that you can have that in your back pocket to know whether or not it’s been established and if it’s going to happen?
Sean Sebring:
Kind of similar than when we’re talking about positions, it’s not so much about climbing or increase merit, increase performance, and this may fit a little bit better in a different subject, but the amount of responsibility you feel in your position. Because not all positions at a startup are going to be those higher positions where you’re looking to expand. You’re doing so much innovation, a lot of times it’s just a salesperson. And so some of the differences, I mean in sales… And this is hard to say because sales, your number always matters. Because the more you make, the more everyone makes. It’s that kind of feel. But in a startup, it matters more because there’s less of you and you are impacting the company with much bigger stake, whereas with a larger organization, I don’t want to say at a salesperson, maybe a drop of water in the bucket, but they’re much less of an impact on the larger organization itself.
Sean Sebring:
So the pressure is greater potentially. The pressure and maybe the reward too is greater at a startup, but the relief or lack of pressure at the corporation may be something that you’re looking for as a benefit. Now, contrary to that part as well is the fact that you have less pressure means you may feel or be less or more rather expendable to the organization. So the larger the corporation, the more impactful a reduction in forces. So there’s potential that you feel like a part of that family, and so when you’re at the startup, you are more of a contribution. It’s harder for the organization to let you go, the small organization, whereas with the larger one, some of those decisions are made so far away from you that you don’t have the ability for that connection, that family feel to protect you in any way. So there’s just more things to consider or look at as far as how the positions vary in there.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. I have noticed you brought up the sales impact in a startup versus a corporation. I have noticed too, that I feel like wins are more broadly celebrated at a startup as well.
Sean Sebring:
It’s a vibrant experience being on the sales floor of a startup organization.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, it’s definitely a bigger deal when you make a big sale or if you’re part of it in any way. I was going to bring up too, I had a thought that when you’re working at a startup because of the attitude of you wear many hats and they’re a bit more agile and flexible in that, it also means that there’s more opportunity for cross-departmental learning opportunities. So if you were like, “Oh, I don’t know. Well, I wonder what it would be like to be a front end dev,” then you might have an opportunity to go do that because as I said earlier, the requirements are often less, and because they often promote that family feel, there’s also this attitude of like, well, if you want to and we have an opportunity for you to, then we will let you.
Chrystal Taylor:
And I feel like that doesn’t happen nearly as much in a larger corporation. There’s a lot more rigid structure in place in a large corporation than in a startup because they don’t have any of that structure. So if you want to learn something new, a startup is a great place to do that because there’s more flexibility to take on a new position or try a new technology or whatever. There’s a little bit more flexibility there.
Sean Sebring:
No, I think flexibility is one of the coolest key parts of it, and yeah, it’s definitely got its wins as far as take the family aspect, if it’s suitable for where you’re at, maybe if you just started a family of your own, it’s not. Because you’re looking for more time at home, less time with coworkers and peers so that you can spend it with your family and more stability. So I mean, everything’s going to vary. There’s pros and cons to both, but ultimately I think that both sides should try to adopt the pros of the other, which is why when you had brought up earlier the policies aspect and talking about the agility or the fact that folks should be able to influence some of the decisions that are made, I think larger corporations are getting better at that, but do need to just continue embracing it rather than, yeah, we tried it and we try it seasonally. It has to become part of the culture, not just an experiment or experience that happens so often.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. You can’t let it be the pumpkin spice latte of your corporate world.
Sean Sebring:
That’s a good analogy for it. Yeah, it definitely cannot be that.
Chrystal Taylor:
Everyone loves it, but it only comes once a year. It’s one of those things that you have to learn, and I think, not specific I guess to startups I suppose, but I do want to talk about growing pains and acquisitions, and I think growing pains are less noticeable in a larger corporation than they are in a startup. And the reason for that is because, A, if you’re VC funding-backed or whatever, there are specific goals that they’re looking for to get their money back and things like that. It’s a little bit different. Versus a larger corporation has… If they’re publicly traded, they’ve got a whole board and there’s all these larger discussions that no one ever is a part of, and then you have to listen to your stakeholders and there’s way more of them and all this.
Chrystal Taylor:
So it’s different, but as you’re growing, I worked at the same company for nine years, so when they were a startup and then when they were definitely no longer a startup. And I think one of the things that is very interesting is the growing pains that you go through. When you’re newly established in the first two to five years, I would say as you’re trying to become established successful company, if you stay with the company throughout that time, you’ll notice things change a lot.
Chrystal Taylor:
The growing pains are natural, the employees are growing, and so there’s more responsibility there, but also I think that you’ll notice too. It goes back to policies and that kind of stuff. You have to establish those things as you go, and you don’t notice the things that you would notice at a larger corporation until later where you’re like, “Well, if we would’ve had this in place.” And then you’re establishing things kind of after the fact, a lot of the times. Now we’ve had to deal with this thing and now we know we need X policy or whatever, and maybe this is a place where startups could learn from corporations is to say, these are established policies. We should consider something similar for our company to head those things off at the pass because I feel like it happens a lot. It’s so fast-paced, you’re doing so much so fast all the time, and as you’re growing and becoming more established, if you have retained customers over time, which we hope that you have, they start to have higher expectations of you.
Chrystal Taylor:
They start to spread those expectations to other people. If they’re happy with the work that you’re doing with them or the software you’re selling or whatever, if they’re happy with what your company does, then you’re hoping that they’re spreading the word to people that they know at other places so that you can sell your product or services or whatever to other people, which means other people are having higher expectations of you. And so those growing pains happen naturally. I just feel like kind of your sales analogy earlier, in a larger corporation, it’s a little bit more of a drop in the bucket. You don’t notice it very much. Or if you work in a non-impacted department, you’re not going to know it happened at all.
Chrystal Taylor:
And even if there’s a whole… We hired a whole new sales department in this country over here, it’s like, oh, whatever, it means nothing to me, so I don’t care. Versus if it happened at a startup, you definitely would notice that they hired a bunch of new salespeople or whatever the case may be. Those growing pains are much more noticeable and sometimes can be really difficult to deal with because you don’t know how it’s going to impact you. Even if it’s not anything to do with your role, it’s going to impact you more at a startup than it will at a larger corporation in most cases.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah. And part of the growing pains may be an acquisition because one of the biggest purposes of some startups, not all startups are doing this, but oftentimes many startups, their whole goal is to make a product in an established market to be acquired. So that the creator can make money. And it’s not to take away from the folks that participated in the startup. They can continue working with said product, but an acquisition is a part of many, many startups. And so it itself has growing pains, and it’s something that if you’re considering a startup, you should be ready for and planning as part of your career path. Are you planning to continue as the product is acquired or when the acquisition takes place, are you moving to your next startup. Obviously, if you’re moving to your next startup, you will have already created your own lessons-learned path, but when we think about acquisitions, you have to think about the fact that all of your culture will change, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but all of your policies will change.
Sean Sebring:
Your go-to market strategies will change. So initially, and from personal experience, many things may attempt to stay the same, but that’s to kind of ease the acquisition in. And so organizations that do this often should be continuing to develop better and better acquisition activities to make the transition smoother and smoother, but be prepared for that both as a corporation that’s established. If you’re the ones acquiring, keep the culture in mind. I think the culture is actually absolutely the most important part of an acquisition from both sides.
Sean Sebring:
Be prepared to see your culture change a little, and on the other side of things, the adopting or acquiring established corporation has to be incredibly considerate of that because part of what made said product that you acquired successful was the culture of that startup company, and the customers know that. So it’s not just the employees that you can replace, not that I’m saying that’s what happens or is ever intended to happen, but the customers have become accustomed to the culture that the folks at that startup brought to them. And so embracing and accepting that that culture is now part of the larger organization, maybe it can spread throughout or maybe it can still stay somewhat segmented, but the culture is probably the most important thing because policies do change all the time, but culture is something that keeps people happy and keeps people where they want to be.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think something else that I’d like to bring up about acquisitions is that if you are at a startup and you are acquired, one of the things that is really important if you decide to stay with the company after it has been acquired, A, we could talk about the practicalities of what that entails, which is a lot of work. It is a lot of work to integrate two companies together. But, B, I think that the other thing to consider, and this goes to culturally as well, one of the things that you have to come to realize and be okay with and change your mindset about the fact is that when you join a larger corporation, you’re no longer the only important thing in that corporation. So one of the things that happens is when you’re doing cross-team collaborations after you’ve been acquired, oftentimes your experience in the past however many years you worked at the startup is that you’re the only product, you’re the only thing, whatever.
Chrystal Taylor:
And so you think that your priority is the same as other people’s priority, and that’s just not the case. You have to learn to adapt to the larger… Say you’re a software company. And you guys make a piece of software, you get acquired by a larger software corporation. We’ll say it’s Microsoft. Microsoft has hundreds of products. And they’re not just one product, which means that while it’s your priority, it’s not going to be the same priority for everyone that you work with. And I think that’s an important transitional change that is very difficult for a lot of people to come to terms with, especially if they loved working at a startup. You only have one or two things that you guys make. That’s all your priority is. That’s your whole importance. Everyone you work with also knows that. And when you go and you be absorbed by a larger corporation, that’s not true. You won’t get the same privileges, you won’t get the same attention, and you have to be okay with that if you want to stay.
Sean Sebring:
So you use one of Chrystal’s favorite F-words: family. You are now part of a family, and so you are but one of many children as far as the products and whatever organization that’s doing the acquisition. So yeah, that’s a hundred percent true is you have to realize that investment from the organization is now shared with you, not for just you. So it’s a big deal for folks moving from a startup via acquisition into that next role. Just more things to consider. What could happen is… And I don’t want it to make it sound like acquisitions are a bad thing. They don’t have to be, absolutely not. Because it’s also potentially almost like a career natural progression for you. If you started at the startup, maybe you did rise fairly rapidly, but you’re starting to notice in your startup that you’re hitting somewhat of a glass ceiling, then you become acquired.
Sean Sebring:
Now you have an established corporation with very clear career pathing and policies so that you can continue, you found your niche role, you can continue on a path. So this can be a great thing for you that you’re now able to say, “Wow, I got a really great ramping start at this startup company, and fortunately for me, I was part of an acquisition and I can continue my path now. I’ve got clear guidelines and a company with an established budget and resources to help me along this journey.” So there’s pros to literally all that we’ve talked about as well as cons to the same, and that’s exactly what this topic was supposed to be about. So what are the benefits?
Chrystal Taylor:
You have to decide for yourself because they’re… Like you said, there’s pros and cons to both. I think one last thing I wanted to mention is if you are part of an acquisition or the company was bought, and even if they do a labor force reduction, oftentimes if you have been established at that company for a significant amount of time or you’re at a certain level, there might be monetary benefits for you in that segment as well. So if you’re working for a startup and you’ve worked there the whole time it’s existed, there’s oftentimes when they get purchased or whatever, you can get a nice package, a severance package or something out of it.
Chrystal Taylor:
So don’t necessarily discount it. Even if they do reduce the workforce, which is obviously a negative or you decide to leave, which may not come with any monetary benefit, that’s for you to negotiate, but I think that there are oftentimes there are monetary benefits to that as well. “We’re going to reduce the late workforce, but you were a CTO and we know that you worked hard to make this what it is, whatever, we’re going to let you go with these benefits.” There’s definitely a thing that happens fairly regularly. People just don’t talk about it.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, there’s a chance you might be able to put a down payment on a new home if your organization gets acquired. So great point.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. Obviously it doesn’t happen for everyone, but it is something to consider.
Sean Sebring:
It’s something I’ve seen. So again, risk and a fun, exciting potential risk with a startup company.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, I think the only thing that we haven’t touched on that I want to cover is education in these two different spheres. Well, we talked a little bit about opportunities for learning different roles and stuff like that, but I want to speak about more formalized versions of education, certifications, courses, even going to events and how that is different at startups versus corporations. Typically, corporations that are established have budgets set aside specifically for continued education of their employees, which means that while you have to go through an approval process to get these things, and maybe you’re getting a certification and you have to give them the reasons why this would be good for them and you. If you can get them to pay for that… And that includes going back to college and all kinds of things. Corporations oftentimes have established programs for these purposes, and that means that they have money set aside for that, and oftentimes startups don’t.
Chrystal Taylor:
They might be willing to pay for it because they are, like we said earlier, agile and flexible, and so if you can prove to them that this is going to be beneficial for the company as a whole or whatever, you may be able to convince them that it’s worth their while, but oftentimes they don’t have college programs set up. They’re not going to be paying for anybody to go back to school and get a degree, but they might be able to pay for someone to go to an event or get a certification, do a bootcamp or something, because there are lower costs.
Sean Sebring:
When you mentioned venture capitalist investments, they’re not investing in the employees, and it’s not because it’s a negative. They’ve invested in the product. So I think that to your point, events are very common because that’s to get exposure for the product or whatever they’ve invested in. But where you might get lucky… And it is way less often in a startup, I a hundred percent agree, but where you may get lucky from a certification is let’s say you got in through luck with some of your experience or a really good interview to a position, but to make your product credible, you need a certification or someone with some accreditation of some kind, then I can see a startup saying, “Yeah, we need to go ahead and get you some training.” But Chrystal, a hundred percent to your point, a startup’s investment isn’t for you, and that’s just because it’s a startup.
Sean Sebring:
The whole point of it is it has to become an established product of its own first. So that’s where you’re right. Established corporations can give you those incentives. And just a quick side note and Chrystal, you can add feedback to this if you want. If you’re part of an established corporation and you think or know that your company may have those benefits for you, please use them. Something that gets under my skin is that organizations will… It’s like a rebate. You remember rebates. They’ll say, “Oh, if you write in, mail this in, we’ll give you some money back.” People treat these programs like rebates, and they’re like, I just don’t feel like it, but that education is waiting for you, and the company said that they will pay for it. Please use those education opportunities that organizations provide. Please. That’s my PSA. I just have to say that because if they offer it, I get so frustrated when I see that people don’t use it.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. Well, I did want to throw out there, in addition to this, there sometimes are strings attached to those offers, so you have to weigh the benefits of whether or not that’s worth it and saying strings attached made me think of RSUs, which is restricted stock units, which is not a benefit you are likely to get at a startup, but if you’re at a publicly traded company, a larger corporation and you’re in a higher level position, often part of your pay structure can be RSUs restricted stock units. And they sometimes give them out as bonuses or whatever. Those do have string attached as well. They own-
Sean Sebring:
It’s a stay with me bonus.
Chrystal Taylor:
It’s a stay with me bonus. That’s right. That’s a great way to put it. So they vest on certain dates and then you can do with them. So their future money that they give you instead of money right now.
Sean Sebring:
I think that that’s a really cool incentive because to me, I try to change my way of thinking and say, “It’s an investment in you.” If they do say, “Hey, here’s X number of RSUs, restricted stock units,” which for folks who may not be aware, is just something that is a stock that you have in your portfolio that isn’t technically yours until X number of years. That’s just kind of my way of dumbing it down because I’m not great at this stuff. So that’s the way I look at it at least. Yeah, I’m not a financial expert, but it’s really cool because it’s the organization saying, “Hey, look, I’ll give you X number of potential money, but it’s not technically yours until you’ve been with us for X amount of time.” So it’s an investment in you because they want you there, and you should look at it that way because it is a cool benefit.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. Just like the education. Even though they have strings attached, they are investment in the employees versus not. I think you’re right. That is the attitude, even if it feels like it. I mean, I’ve worked at a startup, it feels like it. You’re all friends and you talk to your manager and they’re like buddies, and that’s like this whole attitude that everyone has, and then they can’t do anything for you.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, it’s the opposite. As startup employees, you are investing in the startup as well. You’re saying, “Here’s my time. I know this is a risk, but the payoff could be great.” Especially if it goes public and then gets bought. That’s where I was making the joke that’s not a joke, you might get a house out of it, but you are investing in the startup versus the organization, the established organization’s investing in you.
Chrystal Taylor:
It’s a good point. I like it. I like it a lot. Well, I think that about wraps up what we wanted to talk about for startups versus established corporations. So I think what I’d like to do now is kind of generate some questions that you can ask yourselves and we can ask ourselves the next time we’re looking for a new position so we can adjust our expectations on our acceptable risks for the rewards. So just some questions that you should ask yourself, like are you okay with working a lot of overtime? And are you okay with traveling more. Because oftentimes in startups you may be traveling more and maybe in the position you’re taking for a corporation, it involves a lot of travel. That might also happen. You got to ask yourself that.
Sean Sebring:
Something. I think that is probably one of the most fundamental questions because I’m now a family man myself, is what is the level of job security and stability. If I were a single man and a little bit younger in my professional career, I think the appetite for a startup sounds so much fun just because I personally am an adventurous person and I like the aspect of the risk, but being part of a family where I’m a sole provider, that’s a risk that I may not be able to take because I want to make sure that I have established benefits. I can see that I can have this job for X number of years in the future, so what level of job security and stability am I comfortable with?
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah, I think that that goes right into my next question, which is are you willing to move? I think that that is always a question for a job, but if you are not going to work for a remote-first company or a position that is remote, then you will have to consider potentially moving to a new place, and I think that’s right in the same lines. If I am much less willing to move now, I’ve got a kid and established life and I’m around family and stuff than I would’ve been 10 years ago even.
Sean Sebring:
To kind of piggyback off of a lot of what we talked about during this topic, I think an important question is how does the company approach innovation and change. So if you have a big appetite to see a lot of change, a startup may be something that’s more in your wheelhouse. If you are just looking to flex your expertise in a certain field with a little bit more consistency, then maybe established corporations are something that’s a little bit better for you. So kind of identifying what’s going to make you feel your sense of success.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. Following that because that sparked a question for me, which is, what are the opportunities for growth? And that includes career growth as well as maybe even personal growth. Because there are a lot of opportunities. It might seem like there’s a lot more opportunities at a startup for career growth maybe, but you could also have a lot of career growth opportunities at a corporation like as Sean mentioned earlier, with them having a more established career path. That might be something you’d rather look at versus during your interview, if you do an interview at a startup, ask them what the opportunities for growth are because they should be able to tell you if they’ve established any policies around that or not.
Sean Sebring:
Just lastly from me here is keeping the risks that we’ve brought up in the other questions in mind, is it something you believe in? Because again, when we talk about fulfillment, I think that startups represent an opportunity that if there’s not already something out there that fulfills that. You could chase it. If there’s already a product or a company that does what you want, go for it. But a startup gives you an opportunity to see something you didn’t know that you were passionate about, or maybe you knew, but it didn’t exist yet. You were waiting for that startup. So keeping risks in mind, is it something that you believe in because chasing that is such a fulfilling experience and may be worth your time.
Chrystal Taylor:
My last question I think is going to center around if you’re an extrovert or an introvert, you need to ask yourself, how important is it to me to work closely with other people? And this is maybe not necessarily startup versus corporation. I think it’s a question you need to ask yourself for any job that you’re willing to take on, even if you’re exploring two at startups or two at corporations. If they have a remote first culture, then as we talked about earlier, they may have established some kind of teams or Slack or whatever channels where there is camaraderie happening that wouldn’t happen necessarily somewhere else. So you need to think about that as part of your goals. How important are those big parties to you? How important is it that your family is invited… All these are kind of along the same lines as your family invited to those celebrations and things like that.
Chrystal Taylor:
You need to think about that as part of it. I know that it may not be as high of a priority, but I mean obviously that’s to each their own. Your priority may be that you feel like you’re part of a larger family. I’m not knocking it. I just think that it can ruin whatever boundaries you have. So that’s to each their own. Well, I think that about wraps up this episode of TechPod. Thank you so much for joining me in this kind of a rambly talk about startups versus larger corporations. I think that it’s an important topic and important things to consider as you’re looking for a new role somewhere. I’m your host, Chrystal Taylor, joined by fellow host Sean Sebring, and if you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe and follow for more TechPod content. Thanks for tuning in.
