[issa]

Startup work is much more chaotic than established companies. It is much closer to my creative experiences of directing a feature film and being in a touring band than it is to my time at big software companies. Instead of having clearly set requirements, you have to figure out the requirements as you go, and it's different and unique challenges every day.

[candybar]

One very easy way to disprove this is by looking at the experience of startup employees after acquisition. Now the product is no longer offered by a startup, but by a big company. Do things get easier now that they are at established companies? Do you now have clear requirements?

Of course not - in many cases, things get drastically more difficult. Instead of being able to pursue a clear vision, you often have to deal with tons of inter-organizational politics. You have all these extra stakeholders that are trying to influence you, some with good intent, others not so much. More processes need to be imposed, there's more pressure for standardization/integration both in terms of the product features, implementation, not to mention processes.

And this is about apples to apples it gets.

Another way to think about this is that there's a reason why startups are successful despite the massive advantages incumbents and larger companies enjoy. It's because certain things are harder at bigger companies. Then how could it be that being at a startup is uniformly harder? Startups exist in large part because they are more efficient or make things easier. If you flip that around, it means trying to do some of those same things at a big established company can be objectively harder.

[candybar]

Startup work isn't necessarily more chaotic than established companies. Assuming we're talking about tech companies, working at a big company doesn't mean you have "clearly set requirements" and working at a startup doesn't mean you don't have "clearly set requirements." You can have a well-defined role at a startup or a fluid role at a big company.