Adit Abraham’s Post

I left Google after 2 years to start Reducto, and I often get asked by new grads whether I think founding a company is "better" than working in big tech. The honest answer is: it depends entirely on what you're optimizing for. My first year at Google on YouTube ads was incredible. I had real scope, worked on projects that drove meaningful revenue impact, and had clear business metrics month over month. There was no room for fluffy work because we had concrete targets for what our product releases needed to deliver. It felt reminiscent of work I do now at my company. But my second team was completely different. I moved to work on Google Search, where the work was much more abstract. The end impact was harder to feel — my role became more about coordinating across teams rather than driving toward the direct business outcomes I was used to. The difference wasn't the company, it was the nature of the work. It showed me that I needed to prioritize the type of work and learning opportunities over everything else. When you're young, you have an incredible opportunity to learn rapidly and take on outsized responsibility. Every month you spend in a role that isn't pushing you to grow is a month you're not maximizing that window. I didn't leave Google because I thought founding was inherently better. I left because I saw an opportunity to work on a problem I was excited about, with the potential for massive impact on real businesses, and I knew that if I didn't act on it, I'd regret not trying. Some of the smartest people I know have built incredible careers within big companies. They've found teams with real impact and developed skills that would be impossible to build elsewhere. If you're learning rapidly, working on high-impact projects, and building skills you couldn't develop elsewhere: stay. If the work feels disconnected from your interests and growth, have the urgency to act on better opportunities. What matters most is that you're learning, growing, and working on problems that energize you. Everything else is just details.