Starting Your Career with Startups

It’s good to see the freshers from premier institutes in India preferring startups over big companies. Well to some extent all this started 3 years back itself. Six (20%) of our classmates including me joined a startup. From my personal experience I feel working in startup is a great experience. Many people feel startups as a risky business, but in worst case only thing that can happen is you me lose the job if startup goes bankrupt. Being from a premier institute I don’t think its difficult to get the job.

But working in startup has many advantages:

1. You will own some of very important tasks.
2. You will be having your say in all important decisions. As a first tester in a startup I was responsible for product certification, building processes and hiring team. Even though I was a fresher the management had belief in me and gave me the freedom to make some key decisions which could never happened in big company.
3. The learning curve will be steep, not just technical but overall on how a company is built.
4. 2 years experience in startup is worth more than 4 years in big companies. If company is successful then you will get recognition very early in your career.
5. Don’t underestimate the ESOP they can make you rich if company is successful.

Things like "I Work for XYZ Co" where XYZ is any big brand name may sound great but working is startup will not sound great, but it will actually be great and exciting. Hope startups wont complain hiring is problem in near future in India.