| People give all kinds of wrong advice when you start out:
Take risks when you're young.
Fail fast, break things. Here's the reality I've experienced as a startup founder. Its not the holy truth, but its been my life and my experiences. If you shoot an arrow even a few degrees off-center, it hits somewhere far from the board. Similarly the decisions you take early on are so much more critical to your life. As an Indian student these are all of the decisions you take: Age 15: Science, Commerce, Arts Age 17: Medical, Engineering Age 18: Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil engineering etc Age 22: US Masters or Local Job Guess what? If you want to realistically be a millionaire by 37-38 you have to take 5 correct decisions in a row (Science, Engineering, CS, Masters). You have to do 5 very difficult things to be a Google level engineer. Even if you do four out of five correct after 20 years your life will be in a far lower orbit with respect to finances. Its sad but true. This is why you should do your startup after you clear this early minefield of difficult decisions. Once you can comfortably have a good job at your whim. I'd advise people to startup only after 30. And remember, one misstep and the outcome can be wildly different after 20 years! |
However the next question is whether you are 100% optimizing for money, because there are a lot of other considerations. First of all, working at Google with the best tools, at the largest scale, and the smartest colleagues will teach you a certain way of doing things. What it won't teach you is how to bootstrap a successful business with open source and cheap SaaS components. The type of resourcefulness you learn will be around navigating a specific corporate culture, which is arguably less generally applicable than figuring out how to solve problems in startups or more average companies that aren't funded by insurmountable moats built decades ago for which your impact as a late-stage incoming IC will be negligible. Also if you have a twenty year timeline, realize that these companies' reputations are a lagging indicator and the situation on the ground could change a lot and disrupt many of your assumptions.
But my point is not to endorse an alternate path. If you can enjoy your work and also get paid more, that's the dream. However I would very much caution against slogging through something you hate in the hopes of some distant payoff. Life is about the journey not the destination.