New Grads, Optimize for Learning
And… maybe don’t work at a bank
Bram Belzberg is wrong. Reading over his recent piece titled Millennials Shouldn’t Treat Their Careers Like Lottery Tickets, it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t satirical. His message is clear; startups won’t make you rich, and they won’t teach you valuable skills — I disagree.
I started my career in my early 20s at an 18-person accounting startup. It was a gamble at the time. The company, Wave, hadn’t yet raised their 12 million investment round, and the job was a 3 month contract for low pay. Fresh out of grad school and scared of toiling away in a cubicle, I took it. It was the best decision of my career.
I’m a millennial, and I’ve hired and worked with millennials throughout my career. They’re thriving in Toronto’s growing tech sector.
Traditional advice like this often takes aim at startups ability to provide new grads valuable experience. Bram asserts that new grads are doing “grunt work” at startups, and won’t learn useful skills. The truth is, startups don’t have the luxury of hiring staff for coffee runs. Each team member has to contribute something meaningful, or the company won’t survive. As a 22 year old new grad I was building partnerships with Etsy and Microsoft. I also took out the garbage and built my own desk.
Working at a startup isn’t a guarantee of wealth and prestige. The 30 year old tech millionaire trope is more an SNL punchline than a reality, and new grads should know that. Let’s be honest though, taking an entry level position at a bank also doesn’t guarantee riches. New grads should choose jobs they way they’d choose an education: how much can I learn and grow here, and how fast?
Tech leaders have some growing up to do, and yes, there is evidence of bad behavior. As the ecosystem matures, so do our leaders. Working with Toronto startups on growth leadership and strategy, I see first hand their commitment to their teams. They are young leaders, but they’re deeply engaged with their teams. How much time are bank CEOs and executives spending with their entry level hires?
The most misguided concern cited by execs at large companies is that working at a failed startup leaves your resume worthless. Until 2017 I worked at Tilt, a San Fransisco payments company as Director of Community Growth. In my third year, Airbnb acquired the company. The email addresses and phone numbers we had no longer exist, but that didn’t make any of our staff unhireable. The day the press release went live I received dozens of Linkedin messages, and countless emails. Companies across Toronto were looking to hire members of my team who didn’t take a role at Airbnb. The recent grads trained at Tilt with are now employed by some of the most impressive tech companies in Toronto.
The tech community in Toronto doesn’t punish failure as harshly as traditionalists would have us believe. No healthy tech ecosystem should. Tech communities understand that failure is a statistical inevitability for most companies. Strong executives understand that it’s valuable to hire employees from closed startups to absorb their learnings. Building something from scratch is a highly marketable skill, no matter where you learned it.
The talent war in Canada is only getting more competitive. CEOs and hiring managers across my clientele are working hard to attract talent. They are raising salaries and offering substantial perks. STEM is the fastest growing job sector in Canada, and by 2020, we will face a talent shortage of 220,000 workers. New grads see this market reality, and are seizing it as they should.
It’s scary for c-suite executives at large traditional companies to realize that young people don’t want to work for them. They don’t see themselves and their values reflected there. That’s not who they want to be when they grow up.
Working at startups isn’t for everyone, and that’s OK. It’s not all ping pong and branded hoodies. Working for a small company requires flexibility, aptitude and incredible empathy. Startup environments are often unstructured, fast-paced, and imperfect. They require a commitment to constant learning and personal growth.
If that sounds like a place you’d thrive, please ignore the well intentioned advice of people who don’t understand us. This is my invitation to join our community, it may just be the best decision of your career.
If you found this useful, I’d be go grateful if you 👏🏼
