Auren Hoffman says that joining a huge big firm is a more riskier proposition than joining a start-up.
His argument is that the learning and the chance to make it good in a start-up is a better than joining a large firm and learning politics and not learning anything else.
My take on that is that the reason why MBAs join a B School is to make more money and any chance of making money is going to be preferred more by them. While start-ups require analytical and biz skills that an MBA brings, they require passion more than anything else.
I would agree that sometimes a fresh pair of eyes are needed to look at opportunities for disruptive innovation, and for folks out of college who think like that joining a start-up would be a great idea.
The other fact that people need to think about is how tolerant are they of ambiguity themselves. People who like to live a structured life might find the varying job-roles in a start-up a little hard to digest. So $$ earned might not be a great factor to calculate whether its risky for you to continue in the big huge organization or to join a start-up!
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ReplyDeletegg: i think the statement "they'll likely offer you that same job two years from now" is an important assumption in the entire argument. The fact that there's a steady inflow of jobs for the qualified, obviuosly makes it easier to experiment this year and then if we fail, join a big firm.
ReplyDeleteanother problem in the arg is: the benefits of joining a a startup that are said to be greater than those in an established firm, are largely intangibles - learning, dyanmism, fun and opportunity. And these apparently beat the tangibles in jioning the big firm.
it also depends on the job doesn't it? A person doing sales may have a higher success rate in the big firm because of the firm's own prowess in the market, while a coder may have more fun in the startup by implementing the latest technology.