Good time to move jobs?

I think it's a reasonable time to leave a job. Since the market is so contracted, you can effectively get a discount in equity if you are able to land a big tech job.

In your case, I'd carefully evaluate the startup. If they raised money in 2021 or early 2022, they likely got a bunch of money and a valuation that they're not actually worth. Double check what valuation your equity is granted at. In a startup, the people become much more important.

The other consideration is job stability. You can't expect more stability in a startup in general, and this is especially true in this environment. So if you have special needs around immigration, for example, the large enterprise will certainly be safer.

What do you think of moving into early stage startups at this time?

In a vacuum, I think this is a good time to work for startups. Here's why:

1. The startups that are able to survive this brutal economic climate will be extremely well-geared to succeed overall. If you can survive this economy, you should be able to survive anything.
2. Since startups aren't beholden to shareholder pressure like all the big public companies are, they can (and will) actually take care of their employees. Of course, startups do layoffs too, but it's not like the FAANG layoffs where extremely profitable companies are heartlessly cutting workers even though they don't have to.

That being said, not everyone has the luxury of working for a startup, especially immigrants who have visa restrictions. Most smaller startups won't have the resources to sponsor immigrant workers.

Given the economic climate and the possible transition to a more mature AI space (read organisation restructuring / layoffs), do you think its risky?

Startups are always risky, and they have gotten even more risky in the current economy. The question is how "YOLO-ey" you feel right now 😉

Here's some great resources around evaluating startups:

• "How to evaluate a startup?"
• "What sort of questions should I be asking during an interview for a startup?"

One of the benefits of working at a startup compared to larger tech company is that the learning is far richer in many ways. Here's 2 great case studies from Taro community members walking through that in-depth:

• [Case Study] Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups
• [Case Study] Hypercharging Your Growth At Early Startups (w/ Staff Engineer Seed Zeng)

Here's some good discussions around AI/ML and thinking about it with regards to your career direction:

• "Is it worth transitioning to become a Machine Learning Engineer?"
• "Does it make sense for me to choose a specialization like ML? If so, what's the impact?"

Lastly, I recommend watching the 1.5 hour masterclass we gave around finding the best career opportunity: [Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer