Almost everything mentioned about startups here has an equivalent trade off at large companies. It’s particularly amusing that he mentions Facebook towards the end as a potential place to work, given the pockets of high stress and long hours that I’ve heard about from folks who have worked there. Most of FAANG is no different. In comparison, most startups that I’ve worked at valued work life balance highly.
Every workplace has trade offs, it’s the nature of the thing. The compensation imbalances at large companies are bad as well, for example, it’s just that the total increase in company income allows for much more competitive packages overall.
Really this is more of a question of: what do you want out of a job and career? If you want to maximize compensation, go for that BigCo job. But that isn’t the only valid thing to maximize for, which the snark about “higher callings” towards the end misses. Higher autonomy, less complex organizational politics, More ownership of big problems, potential for better alignment between your values and the companies mission, etc. etc.
Having been at FB as well as multiple startups that became unicorns, I can tell you the "high stress" at FB is nothing compared to startups. On a whole, FB is a great place to work with very solid WLB.
My theory on the FB comments is because a lot of employees at FB have not worked elsewhere and compare to friends at Google or Microsoft. If you compare FB to startups or even finance, you're working significantly less with less aggressive targets and pressure.
At large companies the culture and expectations are not uniform across business units. Which is why I was careful to specify pockets vs. a global experience.
As far as your experiences, now it is anecdote vs. anecdote, nothing to be disputed there.
Agree, but I've been inside multiple pockets of FB including one that is consistently considered one of the worst. Even if did not compare to startups. Anecdata can be very reliable if you understand the source
Every workplace has trade offs, it’s the nature of the thing. The compensation imbalances at large companies are bad as well, for example, it’s just that the total increase in company income allows for much more competitive packages overall.
Really this is more of a question of: what do you want out of a job and career? If you want to maximize compensation, go for that BigCo job. But that isn’t the only valid thing to maximize for, which the snark about “higher callings” towards the end misses. Higher autonomy, less complex organizational politics, More ownership of big problems, potential for better alignment between your values and the companies mission, etc. etc.