a) The likes of Morgan Stanley, PWC and suchlike put a lot of effort into always being at the forefront of student minds, by sponsoring societies, etc. That often means they are the default first choice. They also organise a ton of events to show students how nice they are.
b) Money. No getting away from this one. A decent starting salary might be in the region of 25k, the companies mentioned above usually pay somewhere around 35k. That 10k makes a huge difference after 3-4 years of living in squalor.
c) Inexperience. Coming out of university a job is more-or-less a job. You write some code, get paid, that's it. It takes a bit of personal experience to fully appreciate the corporate reality of legacy code, bureaucracy and incompetence. In my experience it often takes those encounters with the beast that is corporate coding to make you run for the hills or startups.
d) Peers and parental pressure. Your mates are all getting golden hand shakes and nice lunches at Big Corp, it is natural to want the same. Also, when you get that job offer from PWC or similar, your parents' eyes light up with excitement and they run off to tell all their friends about it. When you get a job at a three man company, their reaction is likely to be mild confusion at best. Sad but true.
As a soon-to-be graduate in Germany I can second all of your guesses. ANYONE I know is going to either join BigCorp Inc or staying at Uni. I had a feeling for a long time that that was not for me and I started looking into doing a startup. For now I am not ready so I am going to work for one, but I am really the odd one among my peers. Parents also think it's weird when you had this opportunity to work for a big name. So in Germany a lot of it is definitely cultural and perception, I imagine its similar in the UK.
These are all great points. On a) perhaps we need to use the milkroundabout brand to start sponsoring stuff during the year, similar to how the larger corporations do. On d) I totally agree with that. My main hack around that has been to try to have dinner with the parents/partners of those joining us to try to get them to buy into the opportunity and people behind the start-ups as well. That's also one area where in the UK, having brand name investors like YC and Index behind you really helps.
Definitely makes sense for milkroundabout to sponsor events and build awareness of startups in general. Individual startups don't have the resources and longevity to continuously be building awareness over the long term.
a) The likes of Morgan Stanley, PWC and suchlike put a lot of effort into always being at the forefront of student minds, by sponsoring societies, etc. That often means they are the default first choice. They also organise a ton of events to show students how nice they are.
b) Money. No getting away from this one. A decent starting salary might be in the region of 25k, the companies mentioned above usually pay somewhere around 35k. That 10k makes a huge difference after 3-4 years of living in squalor.
c) Inexperience. Coming out of university a job is more-or-less a job. You write some code, get paid, that's it. It takes a bit of personal experience to fully appreciate the corporate reality of legacy code, bureaucracy and incompetence. In my experience it often takes those encounters with the beast that is corporate coding to make you run for the hills or startups.
d) Peers and parental pressure. Your mates are all getting golden hand shakes and nice lunches at Big Corp, it is natural to want the same. Also, when you get that job offer from PWC or similar, your parents' eyes light up with excitement and they run off to tell all their friends about it. When you get a job at a three man company, their reaction is likely to be mild confusion at best. Sad but true.