The Big Tech vs Startup Decision
6 things to consider when deciding where your next job should be
🍽️ Apply now to join our community and receive invites to our curated dinner series for engineers exploring opportunities. You can also directly request invites to specific dinners on our Luma, like our upcoming evenings with the founders of Owner and the AIUC.
It’s common to be curious about startups when you’ve spent years in big tech — we hear a lot of “I want to try something new..I’m thinking about joining something small.” When the questions get specific though (Why a startup? What don’t you like about your current role?) the answers become fuzzy. It’s easy to know what you don’t want, and harder to articulate what you do.
Big tech can offer you a great, long career. These companies provide stability, structured growth, and exposure to systems and processes that few other organizations can match. You can learn from experienced colleagues, contribute to products that reach millions, and advance along a clear career path. For many, that’s more than enough.
Yet startups call to a different kind of ambition. They promise high leverage, ownership, and the chance to see the immediate impact of your work. They’re messy, demanding, and uncertain. For some, that’s exactly the point.
If you’re weighing the trade-offs, or simply trying to figure out what type of company is the right fit for you, we’ve assembled six pillars to focus your thinking: impact, role clarity, people, quality of life, organizational support, and compensation. Each offers a lens for figuring out what you truly value in your work, and what could be the right next step.
Note: when we refer to “startups” in this piece, we mean companies that have achieved product-market fit and gained some traction. Choosing between a big tech job, a mature startup role, and an early-stage, pre-product startup involves a different set of considerations.
Impact: How much do you prioritize high-leverage work?
Not all big tech teams are equal. A Google Gemini engineer ships AI features that define the product while someone at Google Cloud billing is maintaining legacy Java services. The compensation is similar, but there’s wildly different leverage and impact in the work you do.
High-leverage teams (AI research, core infrastructure, new bets) exist at big tech companies, but getting onto them is competitive. It’s much easier to get sucked into empire-building projects: a director spins up a new org to hit VP, hires 50 people, and now you’re stuck building an internal tool nobody uses, or duplicating another team’s work because of politics. Your manager is great, your teammates are smart, but the work is performative.
At a startup, everything you do is high-leverage by definition. You build the entire checkout flow in a week because three enterprise customers need it by Friday, and you’re the only person who understands why the database keeps crashing at 2am. When you ship something, ten actual humans start using it immediately, but you’re not reaching millions.
Ask yourself: Are you willing to take a gamble on finding a high-leverage team, or do you want guaranteed high-impact work from day one? Or perhaps, impact isn’t your top priority at all?
Role Clarity: What type of work do you enjoy doing?
The sheer scale of big tech gives you guardrails. If you’re an L4 backend engineer on ads ranking, your scope is defined: auction algorithms, design reviews, and a clear promotion packet. It’s considered inefficient if you work on something outside this scope, which is great if you want to narrow in on a few things and not deal with other BS.
You’ll be doing a lot more “out-of-scope” work at a startup. You might officially be the “backend engineer”, but you’ve also done customer support, written frontend React, designed the database schema, and jumped on sales calls. Your job description might change every three months as the company scales, or the company product could change entirely.
Ask yourself: Do you want to work on a defined set of tasks, or are you comfortable wearing other hats?
People: How much do you care about who you’re surrounded by?
The people you work with in a big tech job definitely have depth, but not always hunger. You’re surrounded by engineers who’ve been at Meta for six years, have seen every system design pattern, and can debug distributed systems with ease. They’re excellent at navigating process, but are less likely to move fast. You’ll learn scale and polish, but not always building.
Of course, there are exceptions: elite teams (Gemini, core infrastructure orgs) are genuinely world-class. Most big tech jobs aren’t that, though.
Startups select for hunger and risk tolerance. You’re working with ex-Stripe engineers who left $800k packages, a brilliant designer who’s never worked at a tech company, and a 22-year-old PM who’s great at being scrappy. They’re invested in your growth because your output directly determines if their equity is worth anything. You’ll learn speed and ownership, but not always best practices.
Ask yourself: What type of people do you want to be surrounded by, and what do you want to learn from them?
Quality of Life: What sort of lifestyle do you want?
Big tech jobs optimize for sustainability: 9am standup, code review, a few meetings, and you’re out by 5:30pm. There are crunch periods (Google I/O prep, AWS re:Invent deadlines), but they’re planned months ahead and followed by recovery time. Your manager might actively discourage weekend work because burnout hurts their retention metrics.
It’s no surprise that longer hours are typically the default at startups. You’re more likely to work through weekends because that’s what it takes to satisfy customer requirements and fulfill the 5 new signed contracts. This can be incredibly energizing if you love the problem space and the people you work with, but you definitely have to skip your 4pm bike rides and pass on most Tuesday trivia nights.
Ask yourself: Do you want predictable hours to maintain your lifestyle outside work, or are you okay devoting most of your time to your job?
Organizational Support: Am I okay with a little scrappiness?
Think about everything it takes to run a company: legal, HR, IT, finance, recruiting, office management, benefits administration, learning and development programs. At a big tech company, all of this just works. When you need a new laptop, you file a ticket. If you have conflict with a coworker, HR has a process.
At a startup, especially early-stage ones, you’re figuring this out as you go. It’s likely that the administrative problems you run into could be setting the precedent for how to deal with them. You might be setting up your own development environment or helping interview candidates outside your area.
Ask yourself: Do you value having infrastructure that lets you focus purely on your craft, or are you okay being a bit scrappy?
Compensation: How much do I want to guarantee stability?
There’s rarely any surprise in your big tech compensation. There’s a good sense of what the compensation band is, and it’s pretty safe to assume what RSUs are worth. The money arrives like clockwork.
Your cash compensation will almost always be lower at a startup, but the equity might be worth $2 million in five years if things go well. Taking three startup jobs over a decade makes at least one meaningful outcome reasonably likely, but this payout requires patience and tolerance for uncertainty.
For engineers with mortgages, children, or risk-averse tendencies, the big tech compensation package is rational and attractive. For those who are young, unattached, and willing to bet on themselves, the startup upside case is worth considering.
Ask yourself: How much financial instability can you afford?
Ultimately, what’s right for your next step is a question only you can answer, and it can drastically vary as you progress in your career. If you want to talk through your thinking or connect with engineers who have made the switch, join our community here.