Had a few long term career discussions with a couple folks this week. We talked about shifting back and forth over your career between:

Big company roles (work on things that matter now)

Startup roles (work on things that can matter in the future)

The benefit of big company roles is you get to operate at massive scale, see huge data, and every decision you make can benefit the lives of so many people. And you don’t just have to worry about trying to find the next customer, or proof for the next round of financing

The benefit of startup roles is you get to make a lot more decisions and usually move a lot faster. And you get to build the foundations of something that can get a lot lot larger. And dream of the upside that comes from that.

After a healthy run at a big company, a startup role can be a real refreshing change.

After a run through the intensity of a startup that hasn’t grown huge, a big company job can help provide stability and chance to work on things that really matter

So you can go Big -> Small -> Big -> Small across your career

Of course the real dream is that the “Small -> Big” transition is with the same company making it all the way ;). Or an acquisition too…