Taken from amazonaws.com

For a lot of students like myself, a common dilemma that pops up as we prepare to enter the workforce in a few years is whether it is better to work for a small upcoming startup or a large Fortune 500 multinational corporation. I recall being asked this in my Comm 101 class last term and what really surprised me was how the class was virtually split 50-50 between the two options. Just a decade ago, such kind of debate would no doubt have ended in overwhelming favour of working for corporations. After all, considering the high failure rates for start-up companies, why give up the job security, higher wages and lucrative benefits that corporations can offer right?.

However, with the recent fairytale transformations of once struggling start-ups such as Facebook and Tesla into full-fledged corporations, working for the next big thing is currently a trend for many students and young professionals. Yet, what exactly motivates people to jump from a stable corporate career to the volatile world of start-ups?

Reading the Entrepreneur’s “5 Reasons why working for a startup is a good idea“, I found that the motivations are mainly intrinsic in nature. For instance, the article states that “working in a startup means you are an important member of a small team [and] the unique way in which you approach and solve a problem will be definitely noticed.” In chapter 4 of the textbook, this phenomenon is described as people’s need to satisfy their higher-order needs of self-esteem and self-actualization, which I think is very accurate because working in a smaller setting will inevitably lead to more opportunities of demonstrating one’s skillset and for many, it will allow them to gain the recognition they desired, but could never achieve in the crowded environment of corporations.

Personally, I also think working for a start-up would be a much more enticing option although not because I want to gain recognition. Rather, my intrinsic motivation is that I wish to become well-versed in a broad range of different areas. This requires the job rotations that likely cannot be offered by corporations where the structured environments mean that there are not many opportunities to branch out to do different tasks.

Citations:
1. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 255.
2. PRIYANNKAA DEY, “5 Reasons why working for a startup is a good idea,” The Entrepreneur, Sept. 18, 2015,