A year ago, almost to the day, I was packing up my home to move from New Jersey to Tucson, Arizona. Goodbye amazing pizza and hello cowboy boots!
While it was exciting, I was nervous to leave my job at a large corporation and find a new one in Tucson. While Tucson has a few large companies locally, it still doesn’t compare to the endless opportunities that the Tri-State area has to offer.
Not to mention, I’ve always worked at companies where the organization charts are so long they take up three screens. I had really grown to love the environment of having a ton of coworkers, an endless supply of resources and of course, a break room where an unlimited supply of coffee was always ready to pour. Tucson wasn’t a place where those big, corporate giants lived.
During my job search in Tucson, I had been freelancing with a few companies here and there and one client I had was a small startup company, called First Look Social, an Instagram marketing agency that was strategically making big moves to dominate the market.
The more I worked with First Look Social– the more I began to see what this start up life was all about and long story short, I gave up my search for the established corporate job and went head first into building a corporation from the ground up.
It’s been about 6 months and looking back on my day to day a year ago to what it is now still shocks me. Now that I have had a little taste of both worlds, here are the biggest take-aways I’ve learned from the crazy world of a startup and the stability of big corporations:
- Process and Procedures are more important than the big, “idea”
Do you ever think at your job, why are we doing this?
We have all been there…myself more often than I’d like to admit. But, when you go from an environment that has a process for everything to an environment where you have a process for nothing…you start to understand why things are the way they are.
The process of a business is the key to its success. While I believe the idea of the startup I work at is important and amazing, it doesn’t go anywhere unless the process we develop is successful. I literally went from being the person who said “We don’t need to document this” to “If we don’t document this I’ll cry”, overnight.
- Routines? Ha, what is that?
Goodbye routines – everyday at a startup is unique and different. The benefit to this is that it’s exciting and boredom rarely ever sets in. The downside – things like eating lunch, taking a shower and making it to schedule appointments tend to fall by the wayside.
- There is no shut down button
Taking an idea from your brain into a tangible product that has no parameters, no boundaries and offers endless avenues to get to the end result means your creativity goes into overdrive. And if you are like me, creativity strikes at all hours – not just Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. It’s hard to sign off and decompress. I have to actually schedule down-time for myself! (I miss you Netflix!)
- Working remotely gets old, fast.
I used to enjoy the days when I could work from home in my corporate job. It was rare but when it happened, I was so grateful to be able to sit in my PJs and not have to worry about the nuisance of rushing to work or sitting in traffic. Now I work from home every day and let me tell you – the grass is not always greener.
Showering becomes a chore (truth) – and I haven’t worn makeup in months. My dogs have become my new pesky coworkers and I miss daily human interaction – in fact, I find myself spending hours chatting with strangers at the grocery store because working from home is lonely! But, as a trade-off, I love the flexibility of working the hours when I’m most productive and being able to travel freely without the stress of counting vacation days.
- You get to start and finish every project.
One of my favorite things about working at a startup is that I get to be involved with every single project the business takes on. In a corporate job, if you are given a project, you most likely have to involve a variety of different departments to take on skills you don’t specialize in. But in my new environment, I’ve become the IT, communications and HR department all in one.
Forcing myself to go outside my comfort zone of expertise has opened up a new opportunity to learn skills I would not have had the opportunity (or motivation) to do. There isn’t one day that goes by where I haven’t learned something new.
- You know more than you think you do
Being young in my career – I always have had doubts about my decision-making skills. When you work in a large corporation there are always individuals you can tap into to find the best possible solution for a project you are working on. But working at a start up, you may not always have experts handy.
Sure, Google can give you some ideas but most of the time, you are making decisions yourself without any experience or proper knowledge. There are days where I have no clue what I am doing or if what I’m doing is going to pan out for the best. Sometimes I am wrong and sometimes I am right. But the most important thing I’ve learned is that I know a lot more than I thought I did. The confidence I’ve acquired is an amazing and empowering feeling.
So, the question remains… is working for a start-up better than working for a large corporate environment?
I think the answer to that really depends on the person and what that person is looking for.
There are days I miss the stability and resources that corporate life offers and I’m sure eventually I will find myself back in that environment, but then I have days where I’ve been so busy working on a new idea, still in my pajamas, I sit back and think – I wouldn’t trade this for anything, not even a break room with all-you-can-drink coffee.
Ryan is the Vice President at First Look Social and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Want to connect with her? You can do so here.
