[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 kicked up some buzz. Titled I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much, it’s a vent from the author himself. The summary is simple: in his opinion, his boss treated him and his team badly, to the point where he dropped everything and walked out.

The more generic discussions ran along the lines of how Apple must really be a horrible place to work, and that the upper ranks still practice the legendary “Steve Jobs style” of kicking people to squeeze out results. Some even went so far as to say “the only way out is to start your own thing, chase your own dreams without a boss like that stepping on you.”

And that’s the point of this article. With the current frenzy around startups, this is an attitude I see more and more often.

Let me put the common complaint about bosses in perspective. No boss you’ve ever run into, even the worst of the worst, comes close to Henry Clay Frick, who ran the operations of legendary Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills. Working conditions in the late 19th century were terrible, and maybe not even the worst conditions today match the worst of that era.

Several of the great industrial magnates of the period, including Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and many others, exploited workers to the edge of misery. One example of how far it went was the famous Homestead Strike. The result? Seven workers killed and eleven wounded.

Believe me, you would not want someone like Frick as your boss.

That was an extreme example, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t bad bosses today. I’ll keep the context to the world of tech startups we’re part of, and leave out public service, the military, and other areas outside that frame.

The big difference between today and Carnegie’s time is that today there are options. Back then, either you put up with terrible conditions and terrible pay, or you lived in misery with no job at all. Today any good professional has plenty of alternatives. People come and go from companies hundreds of times a day, across hundreds of companies, and you only have to look at the proliferation of job and recruiting sites to see it.

If you’re a student or a fresh graduate, understand a hard truth: you are just like the hundreds of people who graduated alongside you and enter the market every single day. The first job is always hard. And not just the first: the second, the third, and probably the ones after that too. What you “think” you’re capable of is worth nothing until you have a run of concrete results to prove it. That’s what we call a résumé.

I’ve heard plenty of young people say things like “I need to change jobs, I’m not learning anything here anymore.” If you’ve been at the same company for ten years, it’s probably past time. In the first or second year? That’s nonsense. The company has plenty to teach you; the problem is you don’t want to learn.

A programmer, for instance, doesn’t have “programming” as their only job. In August 2013 I wrote that the hardest thing for a Software Engineer is to grasp that software problems often have no solution in software. Learning to negotiate, communicating so others actually understand, managing expectations, working in teams, convincing others that your ideas are good: all of that is part of the job.

In other words, a lot of things that have nothing to do with code. And this holds for any profession, whether you’re a designer, a writer, a cook, or a race car driver. Everyone has to learn and practice these skills to grow.

There are catchphrases repeated thoughtlessly, like “it’s not worth living someone else’s dream as a company employee.” If that’s the thinking, better to resign. A company isn’t a charity: it exists to turn a profit, not to babysit employees. And unless we’re talking about a non-profit, no employee is there 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 it; if you accepted, honor it; if you think the situation has changed, renegotiate. Renegotiating is an option, and the company can say no. If you’re not satisfied, resign, honor the terms to the end, and leave like any good professional. Walking off the job, like in the blog account, is a unilateral breach of contract. It’s wrong.

You have several reasons to hold a job. There’s the salary to pay the bills at the end of the month, assuming you’ve grown a spine and stopped sponging off mom and dad. And there’s the learning: you’re paid not only to do your job, but to explore everything established companies have already figured out, which you soak up “for free.” Every criticism you get, every complaint, is a chance to sharpen something you didn’t even know you were missing. “No pain, no gain.”

The very fact that you struggle to find another company willing to hire you already shows you’re still short on skills. Another common line is “I’d do more, but nobody gives me a chance (or pays me more).” If you’ve caught yourself saying that, you still have a lot to learn. And even to be an entrepreneur, this is the most basic lesson: nobody gives you anything for free, everything is a voluntary trade for mutual benefit. No benefit, no deal.

And I’ll tell you the worst place in the world to learn all of this: your own first company. The most common outcome when someone completely inexperienced decides to open their own shop? Becoming exactly the kind of boss described by the blog author who worked at Apple.

PS: there were plenty of ways the blog author could have solved his internal problem. A company the size of Apple, with more than 80 thousand employees, surely has several paths to solving a problem like that. Not knowing how to find them only shows there's still a lot to learn. After all, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.