building the rocketship

Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia, tweeted that a common failure pattern for young people is joining a smaller startup for "more ownership," and that you should join the known rocketship instead so your learning and network compound sooner

when i first read it, i took it to heart, and i contemplated my life decisions. i understood the logic, but i realized that “optimizing for learning” is completely subjective

this past spring, i had an internship at Melius lined up for summer, then i was gonna go back to school. suddenly, Melius gave me an offer to join them fulltime and ditch school. i lingered on it for a day, but my gut told me this would be the best decision to make

i joined as an engineer, and while we are not what would widely be considered a known rocketship, i have conviction that we will be, not to mention that i’ve learned more here than i could have learned anywhere else at this stage of my life

at a known rocketship, you learn how a great machine runs. but at a small startup, you learn how to build the machine. to Alfred Lin’s point, no one tells you the playbook, but i think that’s the beauty of it. i’ve made many mistakes, but i think those mistakes are what have shaped me as an engineer and help me operate daily

i think that’s where a young person at a startup will learn more than a known rocketship; being able to quickly iterate on feedback is a skill i focus on, and it’s what has helped me keep up at a company that moves so quickly

i am on the engineering team by title, but in practice that is only a segment of what i do. i’ve made demo videos for launches, i helped create social media posts when we had no planning for it. i’ve picked up random tasks that would never be expected of a software engineer elsewhere, which was super fun and gratifying. none of that would have been necessary at another company, but everything i had to do taught me something that writing code never would

this is where “joining the rocketship” doesn’t make sense to me. ownership is not just another word for more responsibility, but exposure. i’ve seen different sides of the company, and i’ve figured out what i’m actually good at besides engineering (mainly SSBU)

all of this is to also say thank you to Joowon, Young, and Arnav for letting me join so early, stoked to keep building the future 😎

(is it different if i know our startup will be a rocketship? food 4 thought)