
What matters when searching for a startup job? - hackerme
I&#x27;m fleshing out an idea and would love to hear what the fine folks of HN think about when considering a new startup job? What&#x27;s the best way to find them? What stage is optimal? Who do you want to work for? Things like that would be great!
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dang
If this was your submission, can you please email hn@ycombinator.com? There's
no email address in your profile. I've done something drastic and want to
explain why and retroactively ask for permission and/or forgiveness.

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muzani
Pre-market startups are just about

1\. building things

2\. that users want

3\. faster than everyone else

The larger a company gets, the more it's about other things, like not breaking
things, maintenance, documentation, speed and optimization, scalability, and
so on.

But for the most part, you look at the above 3 points and judge on that.

First, startups have to build a lot. Most of the things will be something that
nobody wants, so you'll need to throw it away and build something new. Avoid
teams where they are inexperienced in building - CTOs whose career was mostly
maintenance or scaling.

Second, you need the marketing/product team to understand what people want.
The startup is screwed if they can't modify the product around user feedback.
Also be careful of those who have marketed in big corporations where they are
completely distanced from users or "data-oriented".

Third, you want something with a good pipeline. Maybe a team that can play in
their own lanes instead of having a few "full stack". There's a balance
between hacky and maintanable. Lean towards hacky when possible, but be
careful where the existing product was built by mercenaries. Most code can be
refactored easily and safely even without test coverage, but it depends how
confident you are with this. Be wary of overengineered code - overfunded or
intern reliant startups tend to do this and get stuck.

Also ask about runway and make sure you're comfortable with it. If someone
says they have 18 months runway, assume that it's 12.

For more senior level startups, it's

a. Scalability

b. Refactoring & documentation

c. Improving pipeline

The code is there. They're expanding to more countries. You'll be scaling code
from 100k users to 1M users. There's going to be spaghetti code from
freelancers, former founders who ragequit, underpaid and overworked foreigners
who used the company as a stepping stone.

Much of the code will have to be entirely rewritten. It could be a monolithic
website split into a mobile API. Creating test coverage. Rewriting the hybrid
app into native.

Next, pipeline. A company starts to go from 5 engineers to 80. Processes
appear. Recruiting is now someone's full time job. Firing, resignation, and
handovers are now a process. Code reviews happen. Scrum appears.

So really, there's two types of startups and you choose according to your
personality.

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askafriend
The team and supporting infrastructure (investors, connections, expertise) has
to be undeniably great. The team has to be so great the specific idea almost
doesn't even matter.

And as a potential startup employee, I'm only looking to work on companies
that are trying to achieve multi-billion $ outcomes.

I can't afford to work at your family business. It needs to go public or have
inherent value to achieve a valuable acquisition. I'm not here to support your
dream of running a small business.

When I accept a job at a startup, I am forgoing guaranteed $300-500k a year
comp at a public large or mid-size company so you have to make it worth my
time to take on risk.

