Is it okay for a junior engineer to go to a seed stage startup?
Hey Taro community. So I saw on the zoom meeting earlier today and Alex touched on seed startups being not really good for early careers. I wanted to ask: So I met this person at a tech meet up and we exchanged twitter names over the summer. She’s currently building in health tech now. She made a tweet asking if any engineers wanted to work at a seed stage AI devtools startup (round led by top tier technical firm) and to DM her if you were interesting.
Should I do it or just leave it? Knowing how the climate is now just thought about beggars can’t be choosers.
![Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Famazon_logo.jpg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Dff5f2302-08be-43bc-b7b1-d381ba508d99&w=48&q=75){kind=logo}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 1a year agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
It feels premature to disqualify yourself from the opportunity -- you haven't even talked to her!
You should absolutely DM her and learn more about the role. Whether a junior engineer is a good fit at a seed-stage startup depends a lot on the engineer and the startup. Even if you don't get the interview, you'll likely expand your network in a positive way.
- 0a year agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
At the end of the day, a job's a job. Unless you're currently swimming in job opportunities, I would follow up on it. It's a warm lead, and based on what you said about their funding situation, they can probably pay you a solid salary (equity's not a big deal anyways as you're earlier-in-career).
Seed stage startups are the most risky and have the least developmental infrastructure for a junior engineer like yourself, but they are still places where you can build lots of cool stuff and learn a ton. Sometimes a trial by fire is the best way to grow, and in this economy, it might be your only way to grow.
When it comes to growing in a startup, I recommend these as well:
- "How to have FAANG level of career growth in startup?"
- "What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"
Best of luck!
