StartUp vs Big MNCs - What to join in the start of your career?

Well its said that its the best place to be in the startup ecosystem in India right now. Due to a large surge in the startups funding and the cool quotient associated with it, many of the young and talented workforce now prefer joining to work in startups indeed.

Some of the matured startups of the industry are even beating the traditional Consulting firms and the Investment banks when it comes to lure bright campus grads from elite institutions for placements as they offer compensation at par with the established MNCs or sometimes even better.

People want to join startups primarily due to fact that they will have own creative space plus a much more challenging/rewarding role. One of the other factors is the ESOP (Employee Stock options) wherein the employees feel that they too are part of the entire business and they would be rewarded hugely if they perform to their best capacity.

And then there are some people who do not want to follow the hierarchical structure of the large organisations and wait for 10-15 years to go top management or at least the middle management if they start their career from scratch while in startups which are believed to be less hierarchical and transparent, it can be achieved even in the span of 3-4 years.

Startups provide another opportunity for overall development as people here have to wear many hats at the same time and there have greater responsibility and accountability, plus the teams being comparatively small and younger they have greater bonding at an organisational level and they also do some wild parties after even some minor goals achievement.

So this is the glossy picture of the startup scenario which is drawing away some bright and talented people away from joining the MNCs. But one point to note here is that not every startup goes on to become a flipkart, Zomato or OLX. Startups have a failure percentage of 80-90% which makes it a comparatively riskier job to take.

And absence of large HR entitites within the organisation in early stage startups makes it an obvious place for quick hire and fire decisions, some startups even fail sometimes to pay salaries to the employees on time. Also acknowledgement wise,the society recognizes even a Software engineer of Established IT company in good light whereas even after being the CMO of not so much known startup would fail to please them.

Also if at all you or your company fails,then it becomes really difficult to go the same norms driven and hierarchical/political MNCs again which has the same kind of work for years whereas in a smaller startup you would have handled 10 different profiles within in a year even after being at the same designation. So yes, big MNCs have an upper hand when it comes to stability and the compensation offered plus the brand value associated with them increases the weight of your profle. But then people who want to startup their own companies or want to work for one, mostly have an entrepreneurial bent in their attitude.

Some are rebels who simply want to change the world.
Some people want their space to try out every possible innovation that can be tried in their respective domains.
Some want to grow fast in designation and see themselves CEO, CTO or CMOS in the next 3-4 years.

So in the end, its your personal trait which can specify which is a good option for you. Its whether you want to follow the rules of success and live a well settled life or you want to make/change rules and achieve the success which might be different from the normal parameters but definitely meaningful and enriching for you.