On human capital

Being in a happy position of still retaining the title of student I've been able to talk to a fair amount of different companies and their representatives. On top of the network of people who you've sat with and solved differential equations in Mat-1.1120 also talk a bit about where they've ended up and what they're doing. The insights about how the market and employers work is a rather illuminating experience and it seems that the age old rules of thumb still apply...

Some say that if you truly want to learn, go to a small company or start your own. You get your hands dirty and learn by doing. The salaries aren't that great, but you get a sense of accomplishment when you ship something to the customers or finish a project and see how you've made a tangible difference somewhere. It's also a world where bullshit doesn't fly; the small companies don't have the luxury of employing the standard mid-level management. If it doesn't contribute to the bottom line in one way or another, it won't fly.

On the other end of the scale we have the multinationals. Compared to the startups the difference is drastic: you actually get paid every month regardless of the financial success of your company, which is sort of cool. The nature of the game also changes: you start doing more abstract things and at times it may not even be clear who exactly is paying your salary and why they are doing so. But it enables you to spend a lot more time just thinking about things instead of having to run around trying to ensure that the company will survive next month as well, which is often the top priority in smaller companies.

Salary-wise it's actually interesting. I guess with large companies the salaries follow a bell curve with the average being some decent middle-class figure. The start-up world in turn may also follow a bell curve, but the average is way lower and the variance is very much higher: you get shitty salary but if things go will, your equity stake will be worth a nice and tidy sum... Something that doesn't typically happen in the Fortune 500 companies. Or that's anyway the feeling I had. Recently I've started to think that maybe even the large companies are not that uniform: some get a totally shitty salary, more people get a decent salary, then there's a gap, and finally the few get paid enormous amounts in various types of compensations.

But the practical implication, then, is the age old notion that if you want to do cool stuff, go start companies or join small companies. You won't necessarily get great financial rewards, but it'll be pretty goddamn fun. If, on the other hand, you want to be sure that you'll never make a difference in anything but aren't hanging by a thin thread either, go to a big company.

The question is thus the following: having experienced both worlds, which one do I actually want to belong to? The sense of accomplishment is far greater in the startup world, but the big companies are places where you can grow old and fat without having to really worry about anything...