#102 Battle of Start(ing)-up vs Corporate Race
A constant debate on which side to pick for career has taken over the social media by a storm. But which side is good for you?
You open the Instagram to take a break from your work and guess what consumes your mind? All influencers and related people are talking about that you should be starting-up or work at a start up and how your salary is not enough for the rest of your lives. Few people even start claiming it as a ‘slavery’, ‘9 to 5 circle’ or an inability to claim back your time. And on the other side, there are reels talking about new start-ups, reels on their products and how those are powerhouses of growth and shortcut of success.
Truth to be told, both of the options are like two sides of a coin and everyone has a freedom to pick either of the to basis what comforts them and how they perceive their future to be.
It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower. – Paul Graham, YCombinator Co-founder
What Corporate Jungle looks like?
The reason I tag this as a jungle is because there’s mess yet everyone has a defined role to play (just like animals have their territory and expertise). Below are some atrractions followed by distractions you may find in here:
You get a structure and clarity in roles and work you do, you can aim at one thing and choose to be in a related role. With structure, a right way to work or learning is also in a hierarchical manner and you get to visualize your growth path.
Sometimes, hierarchy can also be tough to navigate when you have competition around or a set of rules defined around you. Case in point, you want to take a switch into a different role, but HR policy binds you to one role for atleast 18 months before you make a move.
Finding your mentors or role models and learning from peers comes handy in this jungle. You have a pool of people with similar skills around you which makes your job easy.
On the flip side, you can also meet some weird managers or strict bosses which make you feel weak in your knees. It is not always possible to match your working style with that of your leads; I like working in peace taking end to end ownership and dislike the micro-managers.
As I said, there is a clear boundaries defined for your role, you take responsibility and accountability of the limited portion of your work in the bigger schema of things at work.
While, this takes away the liberation or flexibility to experiment new things at work.
At such jungles, you get to witness the end to end process of work and how your actions fit in the entire journey. This also brings out the opportunity to explore related fields and take a dip without hesitation. As a risk manager, I get to learn from my product and business folks and help them in their projects also, if required.
Work life balance is better obtained here if you focus and efficiently close your work. It takes time but eventually things and balance fall in place
How Start-Ups differentiate themselves?
Spencer Fry, Co-founder of CarbonMade has summed up entrepreneurship with this beautiful line: No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week.
Start-ups are full of glit glam at the front but what goes inside it is often not known through the reels or word of mouth. You are passionate about your work and keen from going zero to one, then you join a high growth team to fulfil your dreams.
At such places, you get to meet similar people high on energy and craving to build something out of the box. These people are driven and self motivated and with them you also become a part of the league.
Learning is immense as you touch base with people across the globe and try all your creativity luck to be great at the job
Every task is a challenging and requires a great amount of thinking on how to achieve the same efficiently. You collaborate with people to deliver the same.
Yet, it is hard to find folks who can help you learn or grow as everyone is busy with their set of activities. These places defeat the purpose of finding right mentors or a growth path as you have to define it for yourself. It is a zero sum game: either you can do it or not do it, there is no way in between.
There is flexibility at work, with no hierarchy being built up between the teams. You can experiment great deal of work but can often left clueless on how to execute or deliver.
Processes are haphazard more like made to order basis the ever evolving requirements.
Unlike corporate jungles where your vintage and experience has to go hand in hand for your growth, start-ups place a lot of importance to vintage. Since, you are one of the oldest member of the core team and has seen the transition of the organization makes you more reliable and hard to replace, with a level of rigidity coming in.
Does these two sides converge into each other?
While I have listed some key points and built a corollary between corporate jungle and start-ups, a person can get the best of both. I started my career with established brands to learn the work and how are they done in a big set-up. Once, I had a fair idea and ways to add some out of box ideas, I took a switch from the jungle to a startup (pretty early in age). Such places are fast paced which often camouflage your growth and you feel as if you are on top of your life. But when I took a break and looked back, I realized that I have been powerful in executing and putting all my skills to use which has driven some great results. But I have not learned or add any new skill to my kitty in the past one year. And this feeling hit me back to the corporate jungle with a thought that I still have some more time to be in a start-up space.
Another friend of mine has started her career with new age start-ups, building products and business and indulging into all activities that came her way. You name it and she has got a flavour of it somewhere through her past works. She enjoyed every bit of her work but now she is finding a miss of direction at her work. She feels unsettles with the fact that she doesn’t know yet which field interests her and how her growth path looks like. Now, she is adapting to a jungle to finally put her hands to learning in depth and end to end.
So, yes both sides converge at some point of time but when is the decision that you have to take for yourself. Another differentiating factor that has been kept out of purview in this blog is the financial growth and trajectories from both sides are poles apart.
Final verdict is that you have to fight this battle yourself and without the influence of any external information. This decision can make or break the starting point of your career yet never think that the road can’t be reversed. We all can achieve what we want to do with all experiments or choices we make it this jungle.
All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA. -Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder