Startup to Mid-Market Tech: What I Learned in 3 Months
I failed as a software engineer.
This thought has crossed my mind daily over the past year.
Why?
I felt stuck. I worked pretty much the same job for years.
I wish I could say I became an expert in it, but I didn’t. It's the kind of thing you want to get done and then move on from.
It’s refactoring.
And when I didn’t refactor projects I was building SaaS applications.
Building custom SaaS for clients is fun. Launching stuff is fun.
But over time, if you build apps of the same sizes and build them for the same workloads you figure it out.
Now you say, you could have used more tech to accomplish a SaaS of the same size, but I don’t think that’s the case. Apps serving < 100 users shouldn’t need more than a VPS. Yes, not even load balancing.
So out of curiosity, I started looking for mid-size companies, around 1k people, with a solid product, meaningful profits, and tackling interesting problems.
So in May this year, I accepted an offer from ABBYY. Of course, to succeed I had to rewrite my old CV. If you’re interested in seeing how I did that, check out
Three months have passed since, and I have a list of differences between startups and mid-tier tech companies.
⚡️ Culture Shock
Working solo was mostly about the money. Even after my first hire, our approach was simple:
Work during work hours and then do whatever you want for the rest of the day.
In the mid-market tech world, things are a bit different. It’s completely normal to have:
meetings where you discuss how meetings went with future clients
office gatherings when C-level people visit your branch
fruit day and other activities that encourage meeting with others
Freelancer mind can’t comprehend this.
These are completely non-billable hours, yes. But if your company values “face-time” these gatherings can be good. It’s essentially networking and making a first impression with people you’ll work with for some time.
In startups and freelancing, you have control and can make most decisions yourself. At mid-market tech, your control is limited. For example:
If you need a new server (EC2 machine), ask DevOps.
If you need a software license, request it from the support team.
If you want to upgrade a cluster to test something quickly, go through DevOps again
This structure means you have fewer responsibilities and less authority to act independently. As a result, things tend to move much more slowly compared to the fast-paced startup environment.
⚖️ Work-Life Balance Reality
People thing, you’re a freelancer so you work whenever you want.
Yes, I ended up working all day.
If it wasn’t for client work, I worked on my marketing copy or looked for leads. My mind was set on making more money. This also meant stress because the outcome of a meeting or a proposal decided how much you bring home.
Things are different in mid-market tech.
I get paid less than as a freelancer but my work hours are not completely rigid and I can drop off if I have something to do, as long as I coordinate with others. I’m happy to close my laptop at the end of the day and don’t think about the project until the next morning.
This gives me a lot of extra time to work on writing quality newsletters and work on my books.
⚙️ Impact vs. Process
In startups, your impact is almost immediately visible. Depending on which phase you’re at, it can be as direct as changing something in prod or pushing something to main. 😃
Mid-market tech already has processes and multiple layers of people are involved in deciding how you’ll have an impact.
You might feel that you don’t contribute as much to the process as in a startup setting, but these companies have to coordinate the efforts of hundreds of engineers.
💸 The Truth About Compensation
As a freelancer, making better deals or finding ways to do your job faster results in an immediate change in how much money you can make in a given timeframe.
If you are good, you can accomplish more, faster. For example, if you estimated a project to take 10 hours and charged $1000, but it took 5 hours to do it, you just earned yourself a 100% pay raise.
You’ll never see this as an employee.
If you complete your Jira ticket in 5 instead of 10 hours, you're welcome to start working on your next ticket. You can also put this on the list of your promotion document, that one day will earn you a 10% pay raise.
What can be seen as a perk, contains an implied drawback in freelancing, and that is responsibility.
When you charge the client for what you estimated to be 10 hours of work, they really don’t care if it took you 20 to complete it until you delivered on time.
As an employee, it won’t make a difference in your payroll if it took twice as much time to complete certain tasks.
One might accept less responsibility for a more stable, and sometimes lower pay.
I did exactly this so I can spend more time with my family and newborn, taking a break from finding clients, estimating projects, and making deals because it can be taxing.
🔨 Skill Development
In freelancing you can stuck working on projects of similar size and flavor. And if you’re a solo this also makes economic sense because you already know how to do them and have most steps figured out and can work more efficiently.
As an employee, you can be included in projects of different sizes and experience, building software at different scales for different purposes.
This something I always missed as a freelancer.
🗣️ The Social Shift
There’s a lot more “talking” going on in a company structure. Not just the meetings, but engaging in different events such as on-site visits, organised team activities, or volunteer days off.
Many consider this as a waste of time, I see it as a chance to network with people and build a capital of connections.
🧑🏭 Career Paths
As a freelancer, your career path is dictated by market trends, as an employee probably by your company’s handbook and structure.
This can be good or bad depending on what you think your future will look like.
One important thing to note, from personal experience, is that when you’re applying for a full-time role after freelancing it can be difficult to estimate your skill level and fit into one of the Senior Developer, Architect, DevOps, etc. boxes. Mostly because as a freelancer you must wear many hats.
So, is it freelancing or full-time or a mix of the two? Have you tried both them? Let me know in the comments below!
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Great article Akos.
"Freelancing looks gr8 until you start doing it" is how I've felt about it for a long time. It can be rewarding for certain personality types but it's also quite demanding.
With mid or large companies, the biggest problem is the lack of direct impact and the motivation you might get out of it. Often, by the time, the impact is seen for a project you executed several months back, you've moved ahead and it doesn't seem to matter. Second, as you mentioned, the reflection on pay is also not proportional and immediate. Also, there is often frustration with decision-making being slow if you are of the action-oriented type.
I think, as with most things, the choice boils down to what kind of person you are and in what phase of life.
Btw, thanks for the mention as well! Much appreciated.
"If you complete your Jira ticket in 5 instead of 10 hours, you're welcome to start working on your next ticket."
Oh man, I felt this, I have seen it said somewhere as "the reward for good work is more work" or something.
Did you ever manage to make being quick significantly more profitable as a freelancer or was it marginal?