[Off-Topic] The New Generation's Dilemma: start a company or get a job?

First published on 2014-02-20T09:00:09+00:00

Recently a blog article generated some buzz. Titled I wanted so much to work at Apple, now not so much, the article is a vent from the blog’s author. The summary of it all is that, in his opinion, his boss treated him — and his team — very badly, to the point where he simply dropped everything and left.

The more generic discussions, obviously, go to the side of how Apple must really be a horrible place to work, that the upper hierarchy possibly still practices the legendary “Steve Jobs style” of kicking people to get results. Some even go so far as to say “That’s why the only way out is to start your own thing, follow your own dreams without a boss like that stepping on you.”

And that’s the point of this article. Because of the current frenzy around startups, this is an attitude I see with increasing frequency.

Let me put in perspective the common complaint about bosses. No boss you’ve ever encountered, the one you think is the worst of the worst, would compare to Henry Clay Frick, responsible for the operations of legendary Andrew Carnegie’s steel companies. Working conditions in the late 19th century were pretty bad. Maybe not even the worst current conditions match the worst of that era. And, more than that, many of the great industrial magnates of that era, including Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and many others actively exploited workers to the level of misery. An example of where things went was when the famous Homestead Strike happened. The result? Nine workers killed and eleven wounded.

Believe me, you wouldn’t want someone like Frick as your boss.

Obviously this was an extreme example and doesn’t mean there aren’t really bad bosses today. I’ll restrict the context only to the world of tech startups that we are part of today — I won’t talk about public services, military, or other peripheral areas.

The big difference between today and Carnegie’s time is that today there are options. Back then, either you endured terrible working conditions for terrible pay, or your only other choice was to live in misery, with no job at all. Today, any good professional has many options. People come and go from companies hundreds of times, in hundreds of companies, daily. Just look at the proliferation and commoditization of job and recruiting sites.

If you’re a student, or a recent graduate, understand an absolute truth: you are equal to all the hundreds of people who graduated alongside you and enter the job market every day. The first job is always hard. Not just the first, but the second, third, and maybe more. What you “think” you have the capability to do is worth absolutely nothing until you have a sequence of concrete results to demonstrate it. That’s what we call a CV.

I’ve heard many young people say things like “I need to change jobs, I’m not learning anything more here.” If you’ve been at the same company for 10 years, it’s certainly past time. In the first, second year? It’s a huge nonsense. It’s not the company that has nothing to teach you, it’s you who don’t want to learn. A programmer, for example, doesn’t have “programming” as their only attribution. In August 2013 I wrote that the hardest thing for a Software Engineer is to understand that software problems often don’t find solutions in software. Learning to negotiate, communicate in a way others understand, knowing how to manage expectations, how to work in teams, how to convince others that your ideas are good.

In other words, many things that have nothing to do with code. And this applies to any profession, whether you’re a designer, a writer, a cook, or even a race car driver. Everyone needs to learn and practice these capabilities if they want to grow.

There are some catchphrases repeated thoughtlessly like “It’s not worth living someone else’s dream as an employee at a company.” Indeed, if that’s the thinking, better to resign. A company isn’t a charity — it exists to make a profit, not to babysit employees. And unless we’re talking about a non-profit organization, no employee is working as an unpaid volunteer. Between company and employee there’s a work contract. Both agreed to the terms; if you don’t agree, don’t accept. If you accepted, fulfill it. If you think the situation has changed, renegotiate. And renegotiating means an option: the company can reject. If you’re not satisfied, resign, fulfill the terms to the end, and leave like any good professional. Abandoning a position, as described in the blog, is a unilateral breach of contract. It’s wrong.

You have several reasons to be at a job: there’s the salary to pay your bills at the end of the month — assuming you’ve already gotten a backbone and stopped parasitizing mom and dad. But there’s the learning: you have the opportunity to be paid not only to fulfill your responsibilities but to explore much more of what established companies have already learned and you can absorb “for free.” Every negative critique you receive, every complaint, is a chance to refine something you didn’t even know you lacked. “No pain, no gain.”

The very fact that you find it hard to find another company to hire you demonstrates that you still lack capabilities. Another common phrase to hear is “I’d do more, but no one gives me a chance (or pays me more).” If you’ve heard yourself saying this, you still have a lot to learn. And even to be an entrepreneur this is the most basic thing: no one is ever going to give you anything for free — everything is a voluntary trade for mutual benefit. If there’s no benefit, there’s no deal.

And I’ll tell you what the worst place in the world is to learn all this: at your own first company. The most common result when someone totally inexperienced decides to open their own company? They become exactly the type of boss that was described, according to the blog author who worked at Apple.

PS: there are several ways the blog author could have solved his internal problem. A company the size of Apple, with more than 80 thousand employees, certainly has not one but several paths to solve problems. Not knowing how to find them only demonstrates that there's still a lot to learn. After all, "if you don't ask, you don't get."