For the ones who taken the freeway on an early morning for their journey to the countryside, the sight of sheep or cows flocking together would not be uncommon. Swarming together, they are led to the fields for grazing, an exercise that defines their daily routine. If one can visualize a fancy glass building instead of a green pasture, they can experience the visual reality of a corporate job. People, like cattle and sheep, flocking together each morning, without any thought process that belongs to them, without any innovation on their minds, and with nothing but orders that come through emails in words that are mustier than the food in their office canteen.
Corporate jobs can be fun if you are a no fun person, and can be an excruciating affair if you are seeking excitement from your work. Yes, startup jobs are not for everyone, but for the ones who do not wish for their knowledge to be dictated or the pace of their growth monitored. Startups are for the ones who are looking to change themselves, and more importantly, looking to change the world.
Here are the 7 Reasons that should motivate you to work for a startup:
1- Knowledge: A Corporate job can give you a fancy cubicle, a nice work atmosphere, but not the knowledge that can set you apart from the crowd. While working for a startup, you have the opportunity to learn more than you could have in a conventional job. This can be attributed to the various roles and responsibilities that would be assigned to you, thus motivating you to expand your knowledge base.
2- Roles and Responsibilities: At your corporate job, you are one of the many, and at a startup, you are many into one. Startups often take their time to put a team together, and this involves a period where a single person is trusted with multiple roles and responsibilities. Not only does it boost your confidence, but it also adds to your skill and personality, thus making you a better professional.
3-Getting the Basics right: From installing Windows on the new laptop at your workplace to fixing the coffee machine, and to having the code compiled at midnight; startup means getting the basics right. Unlike a corporate job, you would be required to focus on the basics here, and that includes the basics of everything. When done with a team, this adds to your personality traits, enabling you to become a better professional.
4-Flexible Work Environment: Tired of sitting? Lie down, sleep, play, eat or do whatever you wish to. Startups inculcate a flexible work environment as they want you to feel comfortable. The working hours aren’t that rigid, given there are days when you have to invest extra hours. For the creative ones, flexible working hours of great help as they are not required to constrain their creativity by the clock.
5-Innovation: Stay hungry, stay foolish; the motto of probably every 2nd startup in the world. Steve Jobs, even in his death, has been successful in inspiring a generation of startups to keep innovation their first priority. Being at a startup, you’ll find yourself brainstorming over the smallest prospects and the best part is that your perspective is not treated like those suggestion mails in the overstuffed corporate letter box.
6-Improvisation: There would be plenty of mornings when you’ll wake up to a crashed server, a hacked website, an irritated client, or an urgent project. Startups do not work within a fixed time limit, and with limited resources, therefore there are plenty things that are required to be fixed at a short notice. Improvisation is the key to the success of any startup, and working at one enables you to master the art of it.
7-Failure: The biggest lesson on the path to success is a failure, and while working at a startup, there will be countless instances when you’ll fail as an individual, as a team, and yet all these failures will come together to make you a better professional. Corporate jobs, on the other hand, offer a secure environment where one has enough to support to fall back on. With startups, you fail as a person to rise as a professional. At a startup, there is no shame in fail, but only an opportunity to learn.
