This article will mainly cover working in Companies located in India, but this should hold true for companies accross the globe.

My background

I have worked in range of companies starting from startup in garage to Big MNCs like Amazon to MidSized Pre-IPO companies

I have close to a decade of experience in Software engineering. I stared my career in Service based Software companies and then moved to software Startups, In my journey I have worked with midsized companies like MakeMyTrip, PhonePe and Giants like Amazon. I also worked with various no name startups where Iwas among very first few engineers working on the Product, With this huge variety of scale, makes me a good candidate to point out pros and cons of working at startups and MNCs.

Startups:

Working at startups has its pros and cons

Pros:

1. Speed of execution: The speed of execution in startups is crucial for their success. Startups typically operate in fast-paced and highly competitive environments. They have flat hierarchies and development cycle are shorter enabling developers to churn out lots of features in smaller time frame. Usually code reviewers do less scrutiny.
2. Impact: In a startup’s agile dance, the developer is the architect. As number of devs are less and speed of execution is higher devs have larger impact and usually a single dev could be responsible for major feature like revamping landing screen.
3. Learning : Startup life is a software engineer’s bootcamp. Expect to learn on the fly, wear many hats, and conquer a steep learning curve. But the rewards are unmatched: gain expertise from the best, witness innovation firsthand, and become a code-slinging Swiss Army knife.

Cons:

1. Undefined processes : In startups only speed matters, so there are usually no processes and I have seen a lot of issues due to this like

Another dev writes breaking Code in your module , gets approval and merges without you knowing it,

Random product requirement without due-diligence where features makes little sense or requires a lot of last minute changes
etc…

2. Work life balance : As the companies are fending off competitions and trying out new features developer WLB takes hit. Usually features needs to be shipped on short notice, lots of ad-hoc changes are requested. I also have seen a lot false sense of urgency in many places. Mangers usually try to show their impact by number of projects shipped in limited time.

3. Low coding standards : Most of the startups focus on just getting the job done and due to tight deadlines devlopers are not able to focus on code quality either. easy code review process dont help either. Documentation and Unit testing are usually missing here.

4. Esops usually don’t materialise : Esops are important part of compensation but stock optionsin startups are a gamble. They promise future wealth, but many startups fail, leaving the options worthless. Think lottery ticket, not guaranteed payday.

Big techs

1. Perks: Larger companies for software engineers often offer perks like:

• Competitive salaries & benefits: Health insurance, retirement plans, etc.
• Learning & development: Training programs, conferences, tuition reimbursement.
• Tech & office perks: Free food, fitness stipends, on-site gyms, cool office spaces.

2. Work Life Balance : Generous vacation time, parental leave, flexible work arrangements. Timelines for feature delivery is usually not aggressive.

3. World class developers : You get rub your shoulder with some of the best developers out there developing applications serving millions of people. Some of the biggest companies have very difficult hiring process and also attract a large number of applicants.

4. Best practices: Large companies often have well-defined software engineering best practices in place to ensure code quality, efficiency, and maintainability. Even a small inconsistency can lead to outage affecting a very large number of users. Here are some key practices you might encounter:

• Unit testing: Writing automated tests to ensure individual code units function correctly.
• Code reviews: Senior developers review code written by others to identify potential issues and ensure adherence to coding standards.
• Documentation: Creating clear and concise documentation to explain code functionality and facilitate future development.
• Design reviews : Even before starting to code, solution and engineering design should be reviewed with senior engineers. This develops long term thinking and developers are able to foresee any future hiccups.

5. Pay : Large tech companies are known for offering competitive salaries to software engineers. Expect a base salary that can be quite high, along with bonuses and equity (stock options) that can significantly boost total compensation.

Cons

1. Impact : You are a small cog in a giant wheel. Usually in a big tech, most of the revenue generating features and process are set, there is a army of software engineers working on product requirements. Contribution of individual engineer in big picture is usually very small
2. Speed of execution : Speed of execution is very slow.. there are a lot of processes, sign-offs. Sometimes different teams are distributed in different geographies and aligning all the teams becomes time taking. Projects getting delayed is common since the requirements and engineering designs should be full proof.

What should you choose:

In my opinion midsized companies with good WLB is preferred, At places like this you mostly have good combination of impact, pay and learning.

But if choice is between startup and MNCs always go for MNCs as the learning, exposure and WLB is always better than that of startups.

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Where to work: Startup vs Big tech as a Developer was originally published in FAUN — Developer Community 🐾 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.