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Work at a startup or a Big Tech?

The Pragmatic Engineer • 2025-06-03 • 1:40 minutes • YouTube

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Big Tech vs. Startups: Navigating the Career Choice for Software Engineers

Choosing between a career at a big tech company and joining a startup is a nuanced decision—there’s no clear-cut answer. Both paths offer unique advantages that cater to different professional goals and learning experiences. Here’s a breakdown of the key factors to consider when evaluating these options.

The Upsides of Big Tech

  1. Building Reliable Software at Scale
    Working at a large tech company teaches you how to develop software that performs reliably under massive load—handling millions of requests globally without downtime. This skill set is fundamentally different from building software that simply works in a controlled environment. Mastering this is invaluable for engineers who want to deepen their expertise in scalable, robust system design.

  2. Moonshot Projects and Innovation
    Big tech firms often have the luxury to invest in ambitious, long-term research projects that don’t immediately generate revenue. Whether it’s advanced AR/VR development or other cutting-edge technologies, you get to work on innovations that could shape the future.

  3. Practical Benefits
    Beyond technical work, big tech jobs often come with perks such as higher pay, faster visa sponsorship (e.g., green cards), and a prestigious resume boost. Being an engineer at a renowned company like Google tends to carry more weight in the job market compared to a similar role at a less successful startup.

The Appeal of Startups

  1. Shipping Code and Solving Unique Problems
    Startups often have more problems than people, meaning engineers get to ship code more frequently and tackle “zero to one” challenges—building foundational systems and features from scratch. This contrasts with big tech environments where many problems are already solved, and teams focus on incremental improvements.

  2. Breadth of Skills and Responsibilities
    At a startup, your role is often more fluid. One quarter you might be enhancing a front-end feature focused on growth hacking, and the next you could be managing infrastructure with Terraform. This variety accelerates learning and skill diversification.

  3. Business Insight and Ownership
    Startups provide unique exposure to the business side of technology. Engineers are expected to manage their own projects, propose impactful ideas, and execute them independently. This autonomy fosters a sense of ownership and a deeper understanding of how engineering decisions affect the company’s success.

Making the Choice

Ultimately, your decision depends on what you want to prioritize in your career:

  • If you want to specialize in building scalable, reliable systems and work on advanced research with financial stability, big tech might be the right fit.
  • If you seek rapid learning, diverse experiences, and a chance to own projects end-to-end while gaining business acumen, startups offer unparalleled opportunities.

Both paths cultivate valuable skills; understanding these trade-offs will help you align your career trajectory with your personal and professional goals.

Have you faced this decision before? Share your experiences and what influenced your choice in the comments!

📝 Transcript (53 entries):

So I started to evaluate the big tech versus startup option and I don't think it's black and white. The upside of going to big tech was first you learn how to build reliable software for scale. It's very different to build something that works versus build something that works when it's swarmed with millions requests from around the world and Reddus happens to be down at the same time. Very different skills. So that was one upside. Different upside for big tech in general was that you do get to work on more moonshot projects that aren't making money today. They don't have the same existential crisis that startups do and so they can work on things that you know great ARV VR research is happening. They're also practical good reasons to go to big tech. I'd get my green card faster. I'd get paid more on average. And the unfortunate reality I think is that the role does hold more weight. People are more excited about hiring an L5 Google engineer versus an L5 from a startup, especially if that startup doesn't become very successful. With that all said though, I think there are great reasons to go to a startup. First you just ship so much code there more problems than people and so you get access to these 0ero to one green field problems that you wouldn't necessarily get where at big tech maybe where there are more people than problems. Second is the breath of skills. And this is not just in the software engineering space, right? From a software engineering space, maybe one quarter you're working on a growth hacking front-end feature and the next quarter you're writing Terraform. But even in terms of the non-technical skills, you get an insight into how the business works and you're expected to PM your own work and you just get more agency in what you work on. You get the opportunity to propose ideas that you think would be impactful for the business and go execute on it. So that breath and learning opportunity to me was a huge upsight that got me very excited about startups.