Most conversations about founders versus corporate roles are framed as exits.
As if leaving corporate life is proof of courage, and staying is a lack of it.
That wasn’t my experience.
I didn’t leave a corporate role because I was tired of it or because I “couldn’t do it anymore.” I left because I wanted to try something else alongside it. Something that had been running in parallel for years.
Training people on the floor.
Running group sessions.
Being physically there in a gym, week after week.
Not because it was fashionable. Because I enjoyed it.
What often gets missed in these conversations is how much a good corporate role teaches you about systems. Process. Repetition. Coordination. What breaks when scale increases. What holds when people change.
Ironically, I realized how much of that learning I had taken for granted. This realization came only after I stepped into a founder’s role.
The systems I now think deeply about as a founder were once invisible to me when I was inside them.
I also think we need to normalize choosing corporate work, especially in India. Not everyone is meant to improve for flexibility or risk. For many people, a corporate role is not compromise. It’s stability. It’s growth. It’s dignity. It’s a structure that supports life outside work.
Work–life balance itself is subjective.
For some, balance means fewer hours.
For others, working hard at something meaningful is balance.
The problem starts when we turn personal choices into moral hierarchies.
Founding isn’t braver.
Corporate work isn’t lesser.
They’re different environments that reward different things.
What matters more is knowing why you’re choosing what you’re choosing. It is important to assess whether the setup you’re in actually supports the life you want to live.
This is something I’m still paying attention to.
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