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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people.

This article is making the implication that big corporations and job security are bad; go risk your life for an endeavor with a less-than-5% of success!

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The thing is that big companies rarely provide as much job security as they seem to at the time you take your offer. Ask the folks who joined AT&T in the 1950s, or Digital in the 1970s, or Sun or SGI in the 1990s, how it worked out for them. When you're at a big company, you're often at the mercy of market forces and executive decisions that you can't see. In a small company, all of these are at least visible to you.

I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree that you learn less at a big company than a startup, though. I learned a lot more in my first year and a half at Google than I did in my 1-2 years at each of the two startups I'd worked at previously. It does level out after your first 2 years, but that's the time to practice soft skills like leadership, mentorship, influence, estimation, decision-making, and so on as you gain trust and get put into positions that don't exist in a startup.

I can’t speak to AT&T, but my friends who joined Digital, Sun and SGI in their twilight years got to work on fascinating engineering challenges and built up great professional networks. When those companies wound down, some took buyouts with several job offers already lined up for them. In many cases, entire teams were hired intact by other large firms with generous retention packages.

There’s nothing wrong with startups, but there’s nothing wrong with going to the giants that are doing Real Engineering, either. Both can lead to great careers.

That is why the title is Advice for Ambitious 19 Year Olds, not Advice for 19 Year Olds Looking for Security

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive.

Having a solid foundation for a life-long career with real-world experience is definitely ambitious.

Maybe by some definition of ambitious - but clearly not Sam's

They're not exclusive but maximising for security and ambition/impact lead in very different directions. There is not always and everywhere a risk reward trade off but in any but a very young field it's the way to bet.

"The reason I suggested college graduates not start startups immediately was that I felt most would fail. And they will. But ambitious programmers are better off doing their own thing and failing than going to work at a big company. Certainly they'll learn more. They might even be better off financially. A lot of people in their early twenties get into debt, because their expenses grow even faster than the salary that seemed so high when they left school. At least if you start a startup and fail your net worth will be zero rather than negative. " -Paul Graham

Sounds strange to me. I put alot of my own money and some of my parents into my startup, got seed financing and failed 2 years later. I am now 30 and still have to pay back my parents and havent saved a dime in my life while being a pretty decent software developer (not in the US). I learned a ton, but financially it has been a disaster.

So a Big-Co job ist still not too bad when starting out imo, you probably wont learn as much but startups are high-risk if you take it seriously.

Your comment sounds reasonable to me. Maybe a good middle ground in the beginning would be to work for a startup? Or somehow reduce financial risk.

Well, the mistake you made (and that a 19-year old starting a company should avoid) was getting into debt in the first place, even if it was with your family.

yeah, felt like the right decision back then though as we were gaining traction.

> But ambitious programmers are better off doing their own thing and failing than going to work at a big company.

I wish I could have told this to my wife when we were 22!

"I'm sorry, babe! You need to pay the bills and support me while I work to get my startup off-the-ground! You'll see! We'll be raking in the money in no-time. Our 130K of student loan debt will be paid off before you can say `boo'."

</sarcasm>

If that is the constraint, then don't go to school.

If you absolutely have to go to school, student loans are the responsibility of the person who takes them out, and have nothing to do with the blog's point. Get financial aid, get a merit scholarship, go to community college - there are alternatives within your control.

It's not that big corporations and job security are inherently bad... it's that they're bad if you are young and ambitious. Which is perfectly true.

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