<story><title>There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”</title><url>https://hunterwalk.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-startup-within-a-big-company-c3003615f3bc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nojvek</author><text>When I was at PowerBI in Microsoft, all the execs hailed it as Startup within Microsoft. Come work here instead of Uber. I worked like a dog, sometimes till 2am in morning. My manager would routinely ask us to come on weekends. I was naive, I thought we are growing customer base, this is what a startup looks like.&lt;p&gt;The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock. What we did moved very little of the top revenue metric. It made little difference if I worked like a dog, or slacked. The promos were very much “buddy buddy” system.&lt;p&gt;In the end I realized you can’t have startups in big companies (esp as an engineer you don’t have the huge upside  if the startup is successful, your upside is capped)&lt;p&gt;Startups work because you have skin in the game, when you build something people want, you get to reap rewards proportional to it. That correlation and feedback loop is very important.&lt;p&gt;At big companies you don’t have the the same correlation. Some big shot exec they hired reaps far far more on the work you did.&lt;p&gt;Equity is what builds wealth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DebtDeflation</author><text>&amp;gt;The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock.&lt;p&gt;I joined a startup in 1999.  There were 3 founders and I was employee #2 after that.  I received a ton of options (this was before RSUs became popular).  We had a great product and a great team, but 18 months later ran out of money and unfortunately it was right after the dotcom implosion of early 2001 when funding had completely dried up.&lt;p&gt;My takeaway was that base salary is actually the most important component of TC.  Cash bonus based on some metric that you control comes second.  Equity comes third.  If you work for a FAANG, maybe equity can move higher up (though it remains to be seen how long this will be true).&lt;p&gt;Outside of FAANG (and top executives at F500 sized public companies) very few people are getting rich off of the &amp;quot;equity&amp;quot; component of their TC.  The vast majority of startups go bust before IPO or acquisition.&lt;p&gt;Time is the most valuable commodity you have, don&amp;#x27;t squander it for lottery tickets and empty promises.</text></comment>
<story><title>There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”</title><url>https://hunterwalk.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-startup-within-a-big-company-c3003615f3bc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nojvek</author><text>When I was at PowerBI in Microsoft, all the execs hailed it as Startup within Microsoft. Come work here instead of Uber. I worked like a dog, sometimes till 2am in morning. My manager would routinely ask us to come on weekends. I was naive, I thought we are growing customer base, this is what a startup looks like.&lt;p&gt;The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock. What we did moved very little of the top revenue metric. It made little difference if I worked like a dog, or slacked. The promos were very much “buddy buddy” system.&lt;p&gt;In the end I realized you can’t have startups in big companies (esp as an engineer you don’t have the huge upside  if the startup is successful, your upside is capped)&lt;p&gt;Startups work because you have skin in the game, when you build something people want, you get to reap rewards proportional to it. That correlation and feedback loop is very important.&lt;p&gt;At big companies you don’t have the the same correlation. Some big shot exec they hired reaps far far more on the work you did.&lt;p&gt;Equity is what builds wealth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>onion2k</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Equity is what builds wealth.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In exceptional circumstances, yes. In &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt; circumstances equity in a startup ends up being worthless, even in the event of exit. Starting your own startup, or joining a startup as a very early employee can make you rich; anything else and you might as well be buying lottery tickets.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not to denigrate startups &lt;i&gt;in any way&lt;/i&gt;. Working in a startup is amazing. It&amp;#x27;s just not how you get rich as an employee unless you are &lt;i&gt;staggeringly&lt;/i&gt; lucky.</text></comment>