Pros and Cons of Joining a Startup Right Out of College

While starting up might be the best thing to do right out of college, joining a startup right out of college is probably the next best thing to do. Here are the pros and cons of joining a startup right out of college.You don’t follow the herd

Would you like to be different and try something different? Unlike the rest who sit for a campus placement to join a large corporate company and be one among the many sitting in a long row of cubicles, you could join a startup. Be different. May be even change the world, you never know.

Hands-on learning

Startups have lesser number of employees usually due to the limited monetary resources at hand. Having said that, many of the startups pay as well as many corporate companies and sometimes even offer higher remunerations depending on your contribution to the company. Therefore joining a startup means you get your hands dirty. You get into the middle of it and go all out with all the passion you’ve got to get your prototype out. This definitely gives you better hands on learning experience than any corporate could offer to you. Mind you even the big companies with their great work cultures were once a startup too!

Very steep learning curve

The high learning curve is an obvious result of the hands-on learning experience. You are likely to learn more number of things in a startup than in a corporate simply because you will be required to do a lot of other things outside your KRA. Your role in a startup would most likely involve everything from cleaning the office to buying lunch for the entire team. It is not as bad as it sounds. It is actually a lot of fun!

Higher sense of ownership- Job Satisfaction

Everything little you do in a startup matters. Your contribution is always acknowledged and due credit is given for your hard work – be it building a new feature, product, making a sale, crack a deal or maintaining everyday accounts. All your contributions matter. This also leads to a higher sense of ownership for you with respect to the startup. This may not be the case in a corporate environment where the number of employees is high and multiple levels of management exist. There will always remain a certain amount distance between the company and the employees in a corporate company.

Donning Multiple Hats

Working in a startup means that you learn the real business of what comes in and goes out of an enterprise, the managerial side of a business, accounting, selling the brand of your company, selling the product etc. While only the sales team might know the current progress of the company with respect to sales in a corporate, every employee in a startup knows about everything that goes on in the organization.

While these are only a few pros of working a startup, there are many more. You should ask the Awesome Startup Employees for more. Having said that, working for a startup comes with its list of cons as well. Here are a few:

Lack of structured environment

Working in a startup right out of college might give you a great learning curve but it also means you work in an unstructured environment. This may be detrimental to you in case you want to start working for a corporate at a later point in your career.

Lack of formal environment

The hacker culture in a startup may allow you to have a casual attitude in your work place and walk into the office dressed in shorts. This again might become a problem if in case you decide to move to corporate at a later point in your career. Although the work culture is becoming more informal even in the big corporate companies, some continue to be strict about the hierarchy, dressing and the way employees conduct themselves at work.

Might not have guarantee with your job

Startup ecosystem is one that is volatile. This essentially means that a startup in business today might go out of business tomorrow. This means that you might have no assured job working in a startup. Having said that, the experience and exposure that you get working in a startup is one that will fetch you a job anywhere else in no time.

Work-Life Balance Might Get Disturbed

There are also chances of your work-life balance getting disturbed because you're so engrossed in your job. This of course becomes bigger concern only if you are married and have a family. As students just out of college, this might be a lesser problem. Nevertheless, it would be good to weigh this also while taking up a startup job.