Think twice before working at a startup

I’m a machine learning professional who has worked for a startup in the past. I’m writing from an EU and UK perspective, but generally speaking, tech startups are very American in the way they operate. This can result in some nasty shocks. This post will give you an honest take on the upsides of working at a startup—and the downsides.

Myth vs reality

Years of media coverage, often written by journalists who have never worked in a startup, have painted a very rosy picture, which I fell for in the early years of my career. The image of the startup is that of a small, Agile company that isn’t afraid to innovate, unlike big bureaucratic corporations. The startup is typically located in a sexy area (like a garage in Silicon Valley); likewise, the work they do is sexy. Your colleagues will become your friends. You can play videogames or ping pong, and drink beers. The startup is diverse, with people of many different nationalities and backgrounds.

And all of this is true, but this is a classic example of lying by omission. Here are the realities:

1. Your colleagues may be from diverse nationalities and/or ethnic origin, but they will almost all be men between the age of 25–40. They are also less likely to be parents. If you’re young, you’re considered too inexperienced to work there, and if you’re old, forget about it.
2. You may drink beers and play video games, but on a Friday afternoon after 5pm, when you should be enjoying your weekend. The other 4 days of the week will be spent frantically working, often with longer hours than well-established players. Early stage startups, and senior employees, might spend time working on weekends and holidays.
3. Sexy areas = high cost of living, and startups are often resistant to remote work policies (despite being “innovative”).

It doesn’t get better, I’m afraid.

Startups and the Agile methodology

Startups like to bill themselves as Agile, which means (roughly translated for non-software folks out there) as doing things interatively and not getting trapped in analysis paralysis. What actually happens is that startups write a lot of untested code which constantly breaks. The requirements change all the time, and not always because of good reasons (like the client wanting something else) but because management is fickle. There is often not much time for a formal design process, which results in poor abstractions; and nobody is responsible for writing documentation or doing QA. Likewise, there was no model review at the startup I worked for.

If you want to learn industry best practices, you are usually better off elsewhere. I would be especially careful about any startup that operates in healthcare, defence or finance. “Move fast and break things” might work for a social media site, but it will be a disaster in these fields.

Are startups innovative?

Some startups genuinely do innovative work that pushes the envelope of software engineering and/or machine learning. But this is the exception rather than the rule. Plenty of startups are building just another travel app, ecommerce site or payments platform – and it’s often a product that nobody wants (which is the reason so many startups fail). In machine learning, another extreme is the startup that tries pie-in-the-sky ideas which are academic projects, not serious commercial ideas.

And there is plenty of anodyne work in startups. You’ll end up doing the same thing as in a big company, but with worse management, benefits, and (especially) job security.

Furthermore, tech startups can often have messianic leaders. I personally find this very annoying. Startups are rarely solving world hunger or climate change, and no, your smartphone app doesn’t count. This particular criticism can be levelled at tech workers in general, not just startups, but I find many techies boring. They talk about tech during dinner parties or drinks, and rarely know much about current affairs or art. At best, I can talk about my gym routine with them.

Management can suck

Of course, management can suck in any company. But startups are often run by people who have no management experience. Furthermore, startups have a tendency to be extremely disorganised.

Job security sucks

Job security sucks for two reasons. One is that startups can go bankrupt quite quickly – they have a high burn rate, and are very dependent on investor capital, often with few clients and not enough revenue to be profitable. The second reason is that startups can be very erratic and unpredictable – and they operate with a short-term mindset. They might not need your skillset in six months or even weeks (!) from now. They don’t have the long-term mindset of keeping employees around so that they can train them.

This mindset results in a litany of problems:

1. Lots of technical debt, with complex systems in production and not many people that know how they work.
2. High turnover is demoralising, and a lot of people decide to leave fearing they will be next.
3. An inability to gain a competitive advantage by building up in-house know-how.

(If you are wondering, yes, I have seen a startup fire an entire department weeks after hiring them.)

From the perspective of the employee, it will be stressful, especially if you have children depending on you to put food on the table.

Is there any reason you should work for a startup?

There are some. Let’s get the bad reason out of the way: while you may get rich, it’s unlikely. What you do get out of working in a startup is lots of experience with a wide variety of technologies, which you won’t get if you’re pigeonholed somewhere in a big company. You will learn faster. And you will often get a stronger grounding in business problems (if you’re a technical worker) or technology (if you’re from a business background). Finally, there will be less red-tape at a startups; you will have greater freedom to try different things.

The compensation varies but I have not found startup salaries to be markedly different from the industry norm. You might want to work for a startup if they give you the best compensation (but keep in mind the downsides).

Startups from an EU perspective

Pundits admonish the EU for having way fewer tech startups than the US. Frankly, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Startups:

1. Can burn millions, yet never become profitable even years after being founded. The startup I worked for wasn’t profitable in 3 years after being founded, and didn’t plan to be profitable until 5 years in the future.
2. Can cost the clients money when their product fails unexpectedly.
3. Most never develop a useful product.

I am leaning more towards the Nordic/German/Benelux model of SMEs. It’s better to start small, serving a niche, and then expand, than to attempt something grandiose.