Don't be fooled by recruiters: startup experience rarely leads to a FAANG offer. I had to learn this the hard way: people who work at startups tend to continue working at other startups. People who work at midsize companies tend to keep working at midsize companies. And people who work at giant corporations tend to keep doing that. Jumping between companies of significantly different sizes is like switching industries, so invest your time and energy accordingly.
Vik Chaudhary
6mo
💯 Not True: we are not prisoners of our career history before Meta! I've hired a lot of PMs at Meta, this was not my experience. To test your hypothesis, I researched the LinkedIns of 30 Meta people, just now. - 100% of these people hired in the last 5 years by Meta. - 43% were at a startup - 57% were previously at a public company Here are some of these people and their pre-Meta startup experience, and if they were a startup FOUNDER: Giacomo Lami - Group PM, Ads - GotIt, Joingo, Telenav, FOUNDER Andreas Gross - Group PM, GenAI - Credit Karma, Reddit, Live360 Jon Fischer - Sr PM, Reality Labs - iFit, TomTom, 102Tech, FOUNDER Josh Evans - Sr PM - Wayfair, Brigade, Causes Animesh Dalakoti - Sr PM, AI Infra - FOUNDER, AppDynamics Mark Cramer - Sr PM, ML - Partners Fund, Parc, FOUNDER, NextTag and for me: Vik Chaudhary - Dir PM, Data & AI Infra - Dropbox, FOUNDER, Dynatrace (startup acquired), OpenText (startup acquired) As a tech leader, I hope you can join me in conveying a message that the ability of smart people can help them rise above their background.
Manisha Arora
6mo
A combination of preference and skills here imo. There are different skills needed to be successful at a startup vs a big tech. So with experience, you keep honing up those skills. Having said that, it's totally possible to move across companies of any size, just be prepared for a mini culture shock or a completely different way of doing things :)
Ala Shiban
6mo
Wrong. I did a quick LinkedIn Sales Navigator query set - Looking at the top ~7 largest US companies (Apple, MS, Google, Meta, IBM, Salesforce, Amazon) - here are some stats: People that worked in one of those companies in an engineering function = ~26k people Of those, 5,500 now work in companies with less than 500 employees - so about 21% moved from the largest corps to smaller startupy companies.
I think this hypothesis holds true depending on the market. My experience aligns with the current market trend of employers prioritizing risk-aversion during lean hiring periods. Based on my recent conversations with over 10 recruiters, companies often favor candidates with direct experience in the specific role and a similar work environment. While I've successfully transitioned across industries myself (materials research, retail entrepreneurship, online security in a 700-person company), achieving this requires strategic positioning for the target role.
I've worked in all different kinds of environments, and I disagree with the assessment that they are like different industries. Granted if your end goal is a FAANG offer, maybe you need to focus on a specific size company (likely a very large one) - but if you want to gain perspective and have an idea on how to scale your own businesses getting your foot in several different types of companies makes more sense to me. All depends on the target outcome.
Joe Hsy
6mo
First, any decent recruiters at startups should be focusing on the positives of the particular startup in terms of the opportunity, culture, and mission not as a stepping stone to then go to a FAANG. If to use as resume for FAANG is a big reason for joining a startup, you are joing a startup for absolutely the wrong reason. 2nd, is there a data source that led you to this conclusion? There could be many other reasons many people stay in certain sized companies for most of their career and I have not seen any data that shows that FAANG companies don’t value people that has startup experience. Like others have pointed out, I have seen mostly counter examples to that. But again that is anecdotal as well so to really make any reliable analysis, we need data.
Mark Cramer
6mo
I once asked a recruiter at Meta what she thought was the signal most indicative of PM success. Answer: entrepreneurialism.
Shilpa Vir
6mo
I beg to differ! I have worked at startups, mid size companies and FAANG! It comes down to properly doing your research about the company needs, framing your work and impact in a way that gives them confidence to hire you and having a clear plan on how you would adapt to the new workplace.
Head of Data @ Statsig
6moHow much of this do you think is just a preference? Like if you chose a startup, maybe you want to stay at a startup? Or if you got used to the benefits of a big company, you can't go back?