Small company, big company
Following is another email from one of my former students that I want to share with you:
Dear professor,
I have received your email asking for sharing working experience with student. Following is my story:
“After graduated in 2006, I went to work for a small software company in Silicon Valley. It was a good job and nice company with ninety software developers. The owner kept promise us: “We are going to make millions, we all will be rich” We worked hard to build a product that may someday make a lot of money. However, after sixteen months, the company filed for bankruptcy. The simple reason: What we are building is based on a good idea but we never do any market analysis to determine the customers’ need. The result was we have a quality product but no customers. That was the first lesson that I learned: Young people like us, who are good technical but know nothing about the business should never get into this type of venture company. Of course, we all have dreams of making a lot of money but there are risks in doing that.”
“Silicon Valley is always vibrant with thousands of technology companies. This is the center of information technology where everything that can happen will happen here. This is the land of Apple, HP, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Oracle and eBay so there is no such thing as “unemployment” because demand is always exceed supply. If you want to do technical work, this is the place. After few weeks of depression, I found another job in a larger software company.”
“Working for large company has many advantages. You rarely have to work long hours. Your position is safe as there are thousands of developers like you but large company also have strict rules and disciplines. You must follow the defined process; you must use certain tools; you must go to meetings; and you must work collaboratively with others. In school, we work in team that often has three to five people. In large company, a team is about fifteen to thirty people so it requires different way to communicate and share information. There are many tools to help us to work collaboratively such as Office Communicator, Wiki, Twitter, Skype etc. Teamwork is based on trust and professional attitude. You must focus on the common goals rather than yourself. There is no hero in a team so you must learn to work as a member because you depend on them and they also depend on you. I cannot emphasize enough on teamwork because it is essential for the project success. This is the activity where you must change your attitude, your ego, and your illusion about yourself and be a professional developer, else you will fail. Large company does not tolerate rebel, someone with hero attitude. If you do not work well with the team, they ask you to leave immediately.”
“These last three years were among the most joyful and professional growth years of my life. They sharpened my technical skills, improved my soft skills, and helped me to move up to project manager position. Large companies are generally done well in the industry, small companies may not. If not well manage, small company will continue to spend money until they are gone, then bankrupt. In other words, if you like adventure, innovation, and dream to make a lot of money, you may try small company. However, if you want stable, routine work, safety to build a career, in my opinion a large company is better. Small company does not tolerate bureaucracy or laziness, this means you must work hard but you also learn more in less time because you have to do everything, including documentation. Large company has disadvantage because you must follow certain rules, some are good but some are not. There are some wasteful activities such as too many meetings and documentation that you must accept. I am lucky because I have learned a lot of technical skills in the small company so transition to large company was easy because I already knew many things.”
“There is nothing like waking up in the morning and knowing that you have a good job, good career and good future. Now more than ever, I realize that the time I spend in college is a good investment. As students, we have to work hard, study so many things that we are not sure of any value but they are all important later. We have to delay many things during our four wonderful years and sometime we wonder: “Is it the right thing to do?” Believe me, good things happen to those who can wait and people who has patient. Instant gratification does not work here. You go to college to acquire certain knowledge and skills. College prepare you for something bigger in the future. You are preparing for your life ahead.”
“As someone who is working in the industry now. My advice is that you have made a good choice in select Information Technology. This is the “Information technology age” so you already made a right decision because there are so many opportunities today and the future. What you learned today will apply to the rest of your career, even the technology may change, the professional attitude, the continuous learning habit that you learned in school will stay with you for a long time. As someone who recently married, there is nothing better than knowing that I have the ability to raise a family, take care of my children and have a professional career.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
