We continue sharing our team’s ideas and opinions. This time we talked with Alexey Simatov, our senior developer. He has come a long way and gained profound career experience in both startup and corporate.
Choosing a new place of work, people usually have lots of questions about the future employers, what can I get from working with them, what can I give in return. The choice is usually between startups and big companies.
Developers are not an exception here. We also try to find the best option to apply our skills. Having worked in a big company, and then in several startups, I drew conclusions and now I want to share my observations.
Having joined Epam as a junior developer, in two years I grew to the lead of one of the product team, gained great frontend experience. Then I realized that I wanted to try myself in a startup because in companies all processes are super bureaucratic, monotonous tasks don’t give an opportunity for self-actualization, there is no possibility of changes, impact on the product. You may get the idea that I’m for startups and against working in companies. Don’t rush to conclusions.
Startups have their own specific features, about which I’ll tell you now.
FYI, speaking about some features of startups and giving examples, I’ll often refer to my most recent work experience, startup Overgear.
What to choose for your career: startup or corporate?
Students or junior developers couldn’t get into the startup. Because startups usually need specialists who can quickly solve problems, bring their knowledge to the project, and who can work without control and mentoring.
In companies, there is a larger team, work processes are well organized, usually, there’re training programs for young workers. It is often a good opportunity for students or junior developers to go to such companies just for the experience, to learn best company practices.
If we take middle and senior developers then they have much more opportunities and can choose between startups and big companies. Startups usually provide more freedom in decision making, modern approaches, more diverse tasks, and, in general, more opportunities for self-realization. There is no bureaucracy, developers are closer to management and product.
Big companies usually have more stability, may have better conditions (salary, office, compensation for training, sports), organized workflow (this is both bad and good), a large team, and a codebase. To add, it depends on the team, but generally, there is less freedom, because changes require more time and money. Therefore, most often you have to work with what you have. Finally, if the company is well-known and has a good brand it can be prestigious to work there, at least a good line in your CV.
To learn the features of working in a startups read the whole article.
