Ask HN: Join a small startup or a medium sized one
Context: Currently working at Google, joined almost 5 years straight out of grad school. Its been a tremendous learning experience working at Google all these years, however, I realized around late last year that the amount I was learning was plateauing. That combined with the slow but sure changes towards a bigger Google made me realize that it was time to move on.
I've narrowed down the offers to two
1) Startup 1: 'A' round funded, 4 engineers total, being offered a Director of Eng position reporting to the CEO. Revenues have been doubling every year with the growth rate increasing. Low single digit millions in revenue. Company is profitable. I'd have to take a ~30% paycut.
Startup 2: Very successful company, close to $500M in revenue, relatively small eng org of about 50 people. Being offered an eng lead position reporting to the CTO. Will be getting a 30% raise (but will require me to move to the Bay area, I'm in Seattle)
Both of the positions involve working on the next generation of Display Ads systems, though in different contexts.
Confused between the two. On one hand I'd certainly have the opportunity to influence the company far more at the smaller startup, but on the other hand the bigger startup certainly has far more resources and a far bigger paycheck to boot.
Any insights into the pro's and con's of either are very welcome :-)