Career — Startups, Corporate, Freelancing

Decide upon what makes you happy now, and what will make you happy in the future.

want to become rich ?

No doubt that you will earn a lot of money, but will you be able to sleep properly, enjoy with your family. Remember you go empty handed when you leave the world.
want to earn money that can lead you a work-life balance and some savings for future ?
Let us explore

Joining new Startups

Pros

• Huge learning curve.
• Chances in involving in almost all phases ( Dev , Testing , Devops , Sales , Management).
• Options of more stock.

Cons

• Chances of Firing and chances of getting other jobs becomes difficult if you have no prior experience in some well known companies.
• Company may shutdown.
• Only nominal % of startups succeed.
• Less package during initial phase.
• Less work life balance.
• No proper well established coding or other standards at initial stages

Want to start your own startup ?

• Becoming “ Boss/CEO “ seems to be attractive as glory, power, money comes along with.
  But there are several disadvantages to consider
• Hard to sleep properly.
• No work life balance.
• You might have a lot of talent, but always stick to excel sheets at later stage.
• No well established coding and other standards.
  But above cons can be nothing if you have proper planning .
  Other option would be “Do a startup, make it grow and sell it when you feel like enjoying life “ . The money will be suffice to lead a better life , but you can choose freelancing or join as a adviser to some company or can join corporate company.

Start a startup in early school/college days

Pros

• No need of paying developers (friends) as most of them want to learn or do many projects at this stage.
• No need of investment in office infrastructure

Cons

• More chances of failure, but lessons learnt from them will be a great asset.
• School/college Grades may decrease.
• Scalability problems.
• Less investment of money due to no income, but you can approach venture capitalists.
• Miss a lot of enjoyments in college life

Starting a startup post college

Pros

• You are the boss.
• Huge profit if it succeeds

Cons

• May fail if u have no proper plans, goals, investment, sales and marketing.
• No work life balance at initial phase.
• May Not able to hire highly talented people due to financial problems.
  If you are working full-time, you may go out of money due to no income , investment in office infrastructure and travelling costs at initial stage.

Now Let us have a look at other options.

Freelancing

Pros

• Flexible working hours.
• Work whenever you want.
• You are the boss.
• Work on the projects you like.
• Huge learning Curve.

Cons

• Income and work load are inconsistent.
• No employee benefits.
• You may not find projects all the time.

Joining corporate companies

Pros

• Good work life balance in most of the companies.
• More job security compared to startups

Cons

• More levels of hierarchy in the job roles and usually it takes more time to promoted to next higher level
• Less hikes

Joining Govt. sector jobs

Pros

• Healthier work life balance.
• Much More job security.

Cons

• Less Learning curve.
• Promotion comes with experience, but not performance.
• Average pay

Considering all the above scenarios, I recommend you to go for corporate companies for first few years to learn best coding standards, industry practices and have some well known company on your resume. Then you can choose startups or freelancing.
*** In corporate companies, it usually takes 2–4 years for going to next level unlike the startups which usually depends your performance and the time you joined startup.