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Don’t Write Code for a Startup
Confessions of a serial startup software developer
You’re talented, hard-working, and want to make it big.
Don’t do it at a startup.
I’ve worked for many startups and experienced everything from three people in a coworking space to scaling with $100M in funding.
The return-on-time-invested for competent engineers doesn’t make sense. There are faster ways to learn, make money, and live well.
Five years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to work for another startup, but no longer.
You’re Giving Up Mentorship
You won’t get the mentorship you need from senior engineers.
Over a long enough time frame, mentorship is win-win. But not when turnover is high, there’s too much work, and the company is burning cash by the day.
Poor mentorship has been my experience on both sides of the relationship — as a junior having to figure things out alone and as a senior not having the time to mentor.
In contrast, working for an established company or later-stage startup with growing MRR will give you more opportunities to learn from senior talent.
Mentorship is the most underrated input to a successful career. Even Warren Buffett apprenticed under Benjamin Graham. Don’t sell yourself short here.
High Breadth but Little Depth
There’s too much to do and nobody knows what works yet.
A startup is as valuable as the problem it solves. So until product-market-fit exists, resources are deployed “ready, fire, aim” style, jumping from one project to the next.
Learning something new every week is fun. For a while. But it won’t make you an expert or give you skills to sell yourself on.
It can be helpful if you don’t know what to specialize in yet. It allowed me to transition from software engineer to data scientist. But it also made me realize how little I knew about both when starting future jobs.
The ability to write CRUD apps in four different languages is cool but will not earn you big bucks.
