Anyone ever worked for a startup

MCPWannabe

Have a potential job.. I haven't been offered anything yet, but I am considering whether it is even worth attending the interview.

A startup job is offering 60K a year to do Quality Assurance on a new platform. I've been job searching now for a couple of months. I've turned down 3 jobs so far because I didn't like what they offered or the role did not fit.

This one, I liked. I got the feel that I could have a very versatile role with this company and pick up all sorts of skills when a recruiter approached me about it.

But on the other end. I've researched the company and I don't think that they are going to make it. I could be wrong, but it just dosen't seem like they have a marketable enough product.

Furthermore, they don't even have professional website! My wife doesn't want me to take this one due to the instabillity but this one actually has the money plus the job function.

famosbrown

I would love to work with a Start-Up...on the side though. have you seen the show called Start-Up on MojoHD? It's pretty cool. I would love to be a part of the startup process and utilize and learn some of the Business skills picked up through school and work. It is definitely a risk and you should weigh it based on your circumstances. Many CIO's of big "unknown" companies were THE I.T. Guy when a business first started and when they made it big, the pioneers are rewarded!

dynamik

In addition to the risk of them going under, you'll probably end up working longer hours. There will likely be more to do and more things popping up unexpectedly compared to an established business. Like Famos said, the payoffs can be great as well, and you'll probably have the opportunity to learn a great deal. Just have a plan in place in case they don't make it. This could be a great experience for you.

homerj742

Back in 2005, I accepted an offer from a start-up. This was after a year of getting out of college and doing contract jobs because the market was really rough. It was for a Networking/Systems Engineering position, there were only 2 people, me and my boss.

The pay was 30K, which is really poor in the New York/Westchester area (lower than my contract jobs!). But I took it and worked there for 2 years.

the PROS - I got a LOT of server experience, with many different enviornments and as the company did better my pay went up to 40K.

the Cons - My boss didn't know his @ss from his elbow. I learned so much, but he didn't even know how to set file security permissions in windows domain. he made all users domain admins! Eventually things started going downhill, and I began looking for other opportunities.

After that I moved on to my current position, in a larger organization (non-profit) as a Systems Admin and my skill set has grown immensely. I hope after 5 years of fulltime work, my resume will be impressive enough to warrant a high paying IT job.

So, because of that one desperate little company, a desktop support guy was able to become a Systems Admin. It was a stepping stone and I believe it played a big part as to where I am today.

I hope my experience helps shed some light on the situation.

MCPWannabe

Interesting points. I'm going to go to the interview and take a look at the company.

jamesp1983

I worked for one and it was great. They took a chance on me right out of college with 0 experience. I was their network admin and I had my hands on everything. I've been bored with all jobs since this one. It was a great chance to build some really in depth experience on many different technologies. I was the everything guy. The company has went on to flourish and actually was purchased by a larger entity. They kept all the original IT guys because they knew the product and infrastructure inside out and backwards. I say go for it!~!