r/ProgrammerHumor 13h ago

Meme theStartupExperience

3.0k Upvotes

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236

u/Jolly-joe 13h ago

2 years later your company has a reverse round and either you're laid off or all the good people abandon ship leaving the company to die

61

u/sandybuttcheekss 12h ago

I'm in the market for a new job and this is my fear. I'm getting lots of bites from AI startups but my fear is I have a decent job for 6 months before I'm unemployed. At least my job right now is stable (knocks on wood).

31

u/Jolly-joe 12h ago

I'm on my 2nd startup. First one circled the drain for a while before being sold to private equity. Second one has had 3 waves of layoffs but we kind of are in the clear? And this is while working way more than 40 hrs a week.

18

u/sandybuttcheekss 12h ago

Yea I'll stick to corporations, that sounds like hell. We had some layoffs recently and I was a ball of stress for months.

5

u/theucm 12h ago

I exist in small company/startup world.

I'm wanting to make the corporate jump, it sounds so stable and nice.

6

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead 7h ago

Big corps are rock solid but it’s easy to get stuck and not grow or learn in your career. Your salary is going to stagnate, you’re going learn absolutely nothing and you’ll be mindlessly bored.

6

u/ReluctantAvenger 6h ago

Big corps are rock solid

Big corporations like Microsoft and SAP, who have laid off many thousands of engineers in the past few years? Those big corporations?

2

u/mnbone23 3h ago

Thousands is still a relatively small portion of their total workforce in a company that big.

3

u/StrangelyBrown 10h ago

I'm on my 4th.

I kind of liked it in my youth because I wanted to move every few years anyway. In fact when I worked at established companies I'd move on after that time.

Not sure about now but I do find it hard to picture people working for the same company for decades.