Joining an Early-stage Startup
It’s a unique experience with all pros and cons. The experience changes you a lot while you are shaping the product 💻 , the organization 🚀, and the team 👫.
Back in this year I left my job at BiTaksi and joined a new-born startup AI-Solt as #2 employee. My job description is some sort of a combination of Full Stack Developer, DevOps Engineer, Product Manager and Team Lead.
My responsibilities were:
- Deciding on the product features and defining the development steps in order of their priorities
- End-to-end development of the product and designing the system on every level
- Deciding server providers and maintaining servers
- Taking some managerial responsibilities, creating a company culture with my colleagues
- Interviewing with the applicants and reaching the ones who could be good fit to the team
- Visual design, when things must done in a short time
at the beginning. By our team starts growing up, my responsibilities are also leveraged to the leading part:
- Creating a team work-flow
- Assigning and following up the tasks
- Developing a learning path for interns
- …
This is not a post to complain about my job. In fact, the main reason why I left my previous job and joined AI-Solt was the challenging nature of working at a startup. Also, it was a sure thing that joining a startup at the early-stage will be much more challenging. I also knew that I’d be the only one working on the product development for a while (Our first project was a web based NLP project and #1 employee was working on the NLP part).
Regardless of all the things I thought I know, it was the most challenging 6 months of my life. I faced a lot more difficulties than I’ve expected, on the other hand I’ve learnt much more than I’ve expected. Let’s take a look at pros and cons of joining an early-stage startup from my experience:
Pros 👍
It’s a unique experience 🎉
As taking a lot more responsibilities than a regular software engineer / developer, last six months was the most efficient time period of my life in professional aspect. Besides all of the technical development of myself, I’ve gained experience about leadership and business.
You feel your impact 💥
I had the chance of putting my ideas not only into words but also into action almost anytime if they are feasible. This is a general pro for working at startups, employees have the license to show off their brilliance.
Experiencing how it’s like to be an entrepreneur 💼
I’ve seen the real face of the business life. I put my entrepreneurship dreams aside at least for 5 years. And this is a pro because now I know that I am not ready for that kind of adventure yet.
Raising the organization like it’s a baby 👪
There wasn’t even a robust company culture when I joined. This is both a pro and a con. The good part is, it’s a great opportunity to see the stages of a business and always contributing to the organization. I believe this is the reason of feeling like a family at startups.
You need to work a lot 👩💻👨💻👩💻👨💻👩💻👨💻👩💻👨💻👩💻👨💻👩💻👨💻
You just need to.
Cons 👎
You need to handle problems all by yourself 👾
If I had to mention about only one con, it would definitely be working without an experienced colleague. I’m a software developer at his early twenties and I know that there are lots of things going on I don’t even know they exist. Solving the problems by myself (with the help of my beloved friends Google and Stack Overflow) may become really tough.
It’s hard to have a good work-life balance 👔🍺
At the beginning I was working remotely, that’s a bit more personal con but it was hard to manage time. After that, things have always been a bit easier but not perfect. I guess it’s always an issue at small businesses.
Raising the organization like it’s a baby 👪
As I said earlier, this is both a pro and a con. The bad part is, trying to handle all of the issues caused by being a new-born company sometimes felt like ‘Why the heck I am doing this to myself?’.
You need to work a lot 😓👩💻👨💻😪👩💻👨💻😫👩💻👨💻😓
You just need to.
You’ll always be in a cycle of innovation, experimental stuff and learning. This cycle is both in the engineering part (your real job) and everything else you face. By the time, you just love the way the things and you are evolving. Like I said earlier, it’s a unique experience with everything and I believe everyone should taste it.
At AI-Solt we develop the best quality high-tech solutions. If you want to work on an early-stage startup based in Istanbul and help us to follow our dreams you can check out our openings.
