Startups are often the fiefdoms of a single-minded narcissist who believes their gut reactions are the same as skills and experience.

Sometimes this works out, but most of the time it just leads to a team that was excited to build something together getting their projects smashed and destroyed by someone who has no idea what the results will be, but is certain that the experts are wrong.

Then as the mission creep sneaks up on them they will usually hire more of their management friends (more layers of management will surely get the product out faster than the scientists and engineers working on it)

Then the team that managed to build something useful gets let go for a few juniors to ‘save runway’ as the managerial vultures soak up any running capital and pour it into advertising for a product they don’t have working (advertising to investors instead of consumers) right up until the last minute when the C-levels yank the rug out and take whatever they can from their comp package and go destroy another startup.

This is a big part of the reason startups that ‘make it’ are such news-worthy stories

The circle of life.

If it’s your first offered dev job, take it without thinking, take all you can from it, and flip this into another dev job in about 6-months to 1-year

Generally, I have enjoyed smaller companies because it’s easier to meet people and get to know them. When problems arise, you have a direct connection to whoever you need to talk to. The downside is that you need to do a lot of stuff yourself if you are the one pointing out the issue. It can get rewarded, but that depends on the company.

Startups are usually fast-paced and always hunting for more money and more desperate than large companies.

They were a good experience to learn from and they taught me what to focus on and when to let things go. There just isn’t enough time to do things “the right way”. In large companies it’s much easier to bullshit your way into writing proper code (triple estimates, start a corporate sounding initiative, pretend to held up by other teams, use bullshit lingo to make thing sound complicated, make small promises deliver more, etc.)

For first job experience it’s great.

Yup, chaos. But no/less stupid red tape to get things done.

Misery is at any job and more about your coworkers and management.

A couple of negatives I’m gleaming from your comments:

Yes. The most senior having 3 years is a bit of a flag. But it kind of depends on what they got for a seed round.

RE: tutor/text/valuable experience. I might shelve that a bit. Speccing, building, delivering, supporting is a bit of a beast from what I might guess is an academic basis.

You actually seeking out a more enterprise company with Seniors might point to you preferring that kind of structured environment.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter - if you want to get into SWE take what you can get for experience. Enterprise is unlikely to touch you without some.

Honestly, working at a startup means being part of a company that is more interested in selling equity than products.

In other words, these guys probably don’t care as much about the quality of the applications that they’re making (or the code that goes into them) as they do about making huge pitches and promises to potential investors in an attempt to score big multi-million dollar investment deals. In my experience, startup culture is a bunch of people pretending to care about a product, but really only interested in selling an idea of a product.

As a worker without any stake in the company itself, this means that things are probably going to be fast and loose, and more than a bit chaotic. The people you are working for are going to be spending a lot of money quickly (which can be fun to be around) and are eventually either going to score a big investment deal or totally run out of money. You may end up switching gears often and doing different things.

Most startups die and in their race to get to market, typically accrue heavy technical debt.

Unless you’re at a startup founded by industry or academic veterans, you likely won’t learn much more than how work long hours to ship a minimum viable product that looks good on the outside but is incredibly poorly built, cost ineffective, resource inefficient, and lacks decent security.

If a startup is full of veterans, it can be a magical, close knit environment to learn by osmosis and make incredible connections.

But I don’t get that vibe from this company based on what you’ve said.

the most senior person in the company (of 4 devs) has three years experience in software, and comes from an electrical engineering background. They work a lot with AI, but they are looking to bring more structure in the code

Sounds like you’ll learn nothing beyond what you already know there.

They said I don’t have to vibecode, but

Run.

It varies.

I was employee #50 at a startup. Prior to my joining, they had a lot of incredibly poor practices. No release management. Few automated tests. Around when they hired me, that stuff turned around.

The CEO was kind of a controlling jerk, but was kept in check by the other founder. When that guy left, it got worse. The org also accrued layers of sycophants. The soft skills of knowing how to weasel your way into the CEOs favor paid off.

It’s not really based on merit. It’s all based on emotions. Building a cool thing can help, but that’s not enough on its own. You could rewrite the code base so it’s bug free and easy to expand, but if management doesn’t know you or understand that, it won’t matter. Meanwhile, the guy who’s always at his desk making a lot of code shaped noise to management might get promoted.

I’ve worked with startups that were great, and where I had real responsibility and felt useful. I also worked with startups that were hell, where the shitty managers harassed people because they had no purpose in life.

The moral of the story is:

• It can happen in ANY company, big (100k employees) or small (3 guys in a closet)
• You CANNOT know from the outside if it happens, you have to work with them for a few months to detect whether you’ll have fun or not
• Try it because you’re young and you can leave early if it goes bad (and stay if it’s good)

Startups are real companies. They are not the comfortable lazy jobs you would have on a big tech company campus or even a post-IPO tech company. They are still trying to “change the world” or else they figured out it’s not going to work. The founders typically leave within 5 years of starting them, either because they succeed and get bought out or because the investors stopped financing their continued existence for a particular reason. Maybe the idea was great at the time but the market changed. Maybe they were wrong about the idea from day 1. They are often 1 mediocre executive decision from going out of business.

Big companies are full of people who aspire only for a comfortable existence in a relatively easy job offering a career path or a lucrative compensation package that will get them the nice 2 story home in the suburbs and pay for the kids private school this year. They work a standard 40-50 hours per week unless they’re on the management track and then they may leave the baby at home with the nanny until they make Vice President of something very ordinary and mediocre.

In a startup, depending on what it is, you could be working for or alongside the next Steve Jobs and not know it yet. You could also be working for and alongside total bozos. Figuring that out is key to knowing whether its worth your time. Steve was kind of an a-hole according to some, so it might not be apparent until you talk about serious things having to do with the vision for the future. You will probably have 5 to 10 jobs that change frequently and will work way more than a standard workweek.

It’s like saying “I’m going to join the military and can either become a supply clerk or join an elite unit whose name is not publicly acknowledged”. Most people should probably stick to supply but the others will never be fulfilled there.

what do you think make your resume standout? ive been building projects trying to get my foot in the door at a startup

I encourage you to watch Silicon Valley. It’s pretty accurate lol