terrencecodes in
Software Engineer
Enterprise vs Startup Culture
For those that have worked on software development teams in both enterprises AND startups ...
I am a relatively new software developer (full-time for about 3 years). I am currently working for a startup where about 12 of the 40 employees are also software developers. Previously, I worked for a company with about 250k+ employees and dozens of software development teams.
The conundrum I am facing is that my current team (at the startup) is all about new features and services and are less concerned about code construction, best-practices, tech debt, etc. I am sure this is normal as the company needs to make money rather than focus on less non-revenue-generating activities. However, I continue to evangelize that the lack of housekeeping is hindering our current agility and will cause a snowball effect in the future.
Again, for those that have worked on both enterprise and startup software development teams, what has your expereince been? How do you rectify these two mindset?
Personally, I'm starting to think I am not meant to work for startups ... given my meticulous nature.
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terrencecodesSoftware Engineer
Thank you, @Prodanon, for you comments.
Very interesting perspective. How did you make the most of your time at a startup?
Very interesting perspective. How did you make the most of your time at a startup?
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Series B startup: minimal red tape, business cases still track ROI but are centered around customer experience and improving it with as few resources as possible. Delivery cycles can be as small as a sprint, up to something like 6 sprints. Most massive projects get broken up to be more agile and only target the P0 work and refine the later pieces so that we’re not wasting resources.
My take: you ship more and learn more at an emerging company. Large companies are for coasting in my experience. Also all of the ICs were in like their 40s and 50s and had 0 promotion potential because the management team was super legacy and weren’t planning on leaving and nobody was fired for missing deadlines.