
Ask HN: Does never having a "real" job hurt me - zbruhnke
So I am sure this topic has come up before, but I couldn't find much on the search feature. I am basically just looking for some opinions on this subject.<p>A little about me:<p>24, college dropout, 1 exit (which is why I dropped out)<p>I founded a small software company while in college as a business/political science double major and accidentally sold it to a much larger company at the beginning of my senior year. They wanted me on as a consultant for a minimum of 8 months and after i finished up almost a year consulting for them I moved back to my home town and began doing mainly freelance work and living off of savings as well.<p>I'm getting to a point in life where I need a daily challenge and I want to get excited about working on a product on a daily basis again. I have a few ideas and always have some sort of small project going on, however I look at a lot of companies out there and think I would love to go to work for a company out there that is already making a dent in their market (e.g. Twilio) but I just don't know if I am "qualified" enough to work for some of these companies.<p>I do not really have a resume and even the one I have put together just consists of the companies I have owned over the years basically.<p>What have you done in this situation? anyone with some advice of what a guy like me can/should do?<p>Keep working on my own things? Apply fo jobs at a few interesting companies and just see what happens?<p>Thanks in advance for your input!
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jasonlotito
<http://www.twilio.com/company/jobs>

There. Go. Apply. Put together a resume. Tell them why you want to work for
them. Tell them what you've done. Email them. Hell, point them to this thread,
about how they were the one company you could think of that you want to work
for.

Let them decide if you are qualified.

The smartest people I know claim to know the least. It's that double-edged
sword: the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

If you want, I'll take a look at your resume and cover letter. My email
address is in my HN profile.

But seriously, if you want something, go for it.

Don't be the 'no' in your life.

~~~
johndbritton
Hey Zach,

I'm 25 and a college drop out as well. I work at Twilio. Shoot me an email,
I'd be happy to chat. jdb at twilio

~~~
jasonlotito
I'm not Zach that you replied to. Just in case this was mistakenly posted, and
Zach doesn't read this, I don't want it to get missed.

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ams6110
_Apply for jobs at a few interesting companies and just see what happens?_

Yes. What's the worst that can happen? You don't get a job? Well you don't
have one now, anyway.

Edit: maybe should say "employment" not job. You sound like the sort of person
who is working on things, regardless. So if you want to try working for
someone else, then apply. There are definitely some employers that won't
consider you because you don't have a degree, but there are many others for
whom your actual accomplishments are much more important.

~~~
sjs
I just accepted a new job last week and my employer sought me out largely
because I am mostly self educated (I did a couple years of comp sci, may go
back eventually). He feels that it shows a hunger for knowledge and lack of
fear to learn new tools or ways to get things done.

~~~
pstack
Exactly. Though I know everyone doesn't share this opinion, I believe that I'd
rather hire someone with ambition and hunger and passion over someone with a
piece of paper or a track record. Your history is important and can prove a
lot and so can an education, but in the overall scheme of things, it means
less than one might think. Count the number of greatest thinkers and successes
who either never attended college or dropped out (from George Carlin who
dropped out of the 9th grade to Bill Gates who dropped out of college).

Sometimes you need the guy with twenty years of project management experience
and huge projects under him who can just jump in and grab the reigns and go
from there. Sometimes it pays to take a chance on an eager person (of any age)
who wants a shot. If it doesn't work out, you get rid of them. If it works
out, you have a diamond in the rough.

And, as someone who was afforded that opportunity myself, there's no better
learning experience than being in the real world and surrounded by incredible
people. Part of what keeps me in the company and position I'm in is that I am
surrounded by many of the people I've known for over a decade that are real
powerhouses. They're smart as hell and work hard as hell and I am constantly
challenged by them. They make me feel dumb and I'm better for it. I might have
a better grasp of some common things a college graduate would walk away with,
but I wouldn't trade it for anything and I think I'm a better employee now,
because I was molded here and not in a class room.

Not that I have anything against "the system" or against "college boys" (well,
maybe just a tiny _little_ biase). I'm just a really huge fan of self-starters
and nothing makes me as sentimental as stories of successful self-educated and
self-motivated people.

------
SemanticFog
I say this as a person who has read thousands of resumes and hired hundreds of
people at multiple startups: Your record will hurt you badly at places you
don't really want to work. It will help you at the places you want to be.

Make it clear what your passion is, what you've learned already, and what you
want to learn. Then apply everywhere that looks good. You'll do fine.

------
njs12345
'I do not really have a resume and even the one I have put together just
consists of the companies I have owned over the years basically.'

Sounds like a resume to me..

~~~
mrleinad
Sounds much better than my resume.

Really, go for it. They'll be fighting over who hires you.

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kemiller
As a hiring manager, the only concern I'd have is whether you can work
effectively on a team. If you can demonstrate that you can, then it's not
really an issue.

~~~
bigiain
There's an important distinction.

It almost certainly won't matter to the right kind of hiring manager at the
rig kind of company.

It will 100% matter to just about any recruiter. Many vacancies only path to
an interview with a hiring manager is via a recruiter - if you want any of
those jobs, you've got a big hurdle to overcome. But I'm guessing you don't
want those jobs anyway (well, except perhaps that mythical 2004 Google
offer...)

~~~
OstiaAntica
I do think it is a fair concern for any hiring manager. The qualities that
make entrepreneurs successful also potentially make them unmanageable or
unable to take mid-level assignments in larger organizations.

I've also interviewed entrepreneurs and the other side of the coin is a
concern that they want to return to an organization because they are burned
out.

Finally is the fear that you will work there for a short period, understand
the business, and raid staff and launch a competitor.

------
kloncks
Since when has being a truly unique candidate with a previous track record of
success and a genuine entrepreneurial spirit hurt in job hunting?

I'd say that should make you stand out, not hurt you in any way.

If that's not the case, there's no hope for the rest of us.

------
dmor
I work at Twilio, and we'd love to talk with you. Please get in touch with me
if you haven't already reached someone in the company at danielle@twilio.com

I'm 26 and a college dropout. We've got several college dropouts on the team -
we're about "doers", the people who get it done. <http://www.twilio.com/doers>

------
nosignal
It so happens that Twilio's posted on the "Who's Hiring" thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504127>.

You have to at least give them the chance to reject you. It's tacky, but the
only motivational poster quote that's ever resonated with me is "You miss
every shot you don't take". Truer words have never been spoken.

Go get 'em!

------
pstack
I don't normally share much personal information for the same reason I post
with a pseudonym, but I'd like to share a story with you about someone far
less qualified than you with far less going for them than you that made
something out of nothing. The short version of all this will be "If a jackass
like me can get where I've gotten, then _anyone_ can get _anywhere_.".

I dropped out of the ninth grade and by the time most of my peer group was
packing for college, I was flying a thousand miles from home, to SF, with only
the clothes on my back to sign a contract with Netscape. I had no formal
education, no college, no diploma, and no family connections of any sort. Just
an interest, ambition, work-ethic, and minor experience that I was able to
cull from limited resources (an underfunded public school that still used
Apple IIs, a single mom with three kids a low paying job and no child support,
and a history of being a real legitimate troublemaker).

Through the iPlanet Alliance of the late 90s, I was able to parlay that into a
career at Sun and I've made great money, worked with incredible people, made
valuable contacts, and had the satisfaction of helping big companies and
organizations around the planet do some pretty sweet stuff that, while
meaningless to most of the world, makes _me_ feel like I'm doing something
important.

I don't have any specific steps that I can list out to take you from where you
are now to where you want to be. Only a tale of my own path and what I found
important and not so important along my way which will hopefully dispel many
of your fears and self-criticism. I also don't want people to take my story as
bragging. Seriously, please understand that I was the family's trouble making
black sheep with little ahead of me as a teenager. I just want to convey to
young people out there that you can do what you want, despite perceived
hurdles. An expensive college education is valuable; not necessary.
Connections and a well-off family are valuable; not necessary. Even something
as simple as a high school diploma is valuable, but not necessary.

If I can get where I am (a good position to be in life, though nowhere near as
awesome as most of the people reading this, I suspect) with all of those
strikes against me, then you -- with some college and some startup experience
-- can get where _you_ want to be. You just have to build on your best traits,
like having a strong work-ethic. Find something you enjoy doing and do it so
well and with such obsessive gusto that people can't help but notice you. Even
if it's in writing opinion pieces, writing code, advising startups on
technical issues, helping in popular forums. Whatever gets some people to
notice you. Get your foot in as many doors as possible. Even if it's only
networking, for now. And when you get an opportunity, exploit the hell out of
it.

Oh, and have balls. Seriously, it can pay to take brash and bold actions, in
life. Especially when you're younger and the older folk can see you as a real
bundle of potential just waiting for a nudge and a chance. (I think that when
you're outside of your 20s, people start to react to that attitude with "if
you were going to do something, you'd have already made your grand moves by
now").

By brashness and exploiting opportunities, let me give a real brief example:

Before I went to SF, my only experience was - believe it or not - call center
work. People called up and I helped them fix stuff. Mostly end users, even.
Nothing complex and nothing that special. It paid less than $10/hr, had fairly
high churn, and for a lot of people was a position they were filling because
they had to fall back on something (that is, a lot of people working around me
were in their 40s and 50s while I was not even drinking age and this was
something they had fallen back on from something else).

For many, an apparently going-nowhere hole. For me? I worked hard. The job was
very 9-5, but I worked well into the night as well as weekends and holidays. I
took on jobs and tasks and projects that I didn't have to. I put out enough
fires that I became the go-to guy when you wanted things done right. Some
contacts I'd made through the job saw this pattern of behavior and after a
year in this position, offered me an interview. Overnight, I dropped
everything to take the interview away from home. Two weeks after that, I had
emptied my apartment and left my town, family, and friends with literally
nothing except the clothes on my back and $900 to my name. I moved to the bay
area, where at the time getting a place to live was impossible. There were
actually bidding wars for low end crappy apartments in average or worse areas
of town. And there was me, with no real rental or credit history just getting
started.

I was too focused on work to fight through the tape of getting someone to
finally rent to me, so I lived at work, instead. I worked sixteen hour days
plus weekends and holidays. I slept under my desk and lived out of the free
vending machines and soda machines. I used the employee showers and since I
didn't have a place nearby to wash clothes, I just kept buying more so I
always had fresh clothes in the morning. Hell, there was a mixup with my first
few checks, so for two of those first months, I didn't even have money. I
remember one time I actually had to borrow $20 from a coworker just so I could
get a cab to go to the DMV and get my ID.

Anyway, the point is - your lack of degree or resume doesn't have to stop you.
None of what you listed has to. Put together a good resume that emphasizes
your strengths (read up on writing a resume - there are ways to focus your
resume if you have experience but no education or education but no experience
and so on). Shop it around. Talk to as many people as possible. Build up a
portfolio and reputation online that people can refer to and become familiar
with you through. If there's a project you really dig, participate in it
(you've probably seen recent articles on HN about how you can leverage your
github records and open source experience on your resume). And if there's a
place you really want to work or a particular project you really want to be
part of, reach out to them.

Seriously. Read up on Twilio if that is an interest. Check out their rules and
requirements so you can avoid hitting an obvious speed bump and get
disregarded for ignoring something in their process -- but contact people
there and tell them of your situation and ambition. Startup-ish companies are
even more likely, I think, to appreciate ambition and work-ethic and
enthusiasm over "but how many companies have you founded?" or "when did you
get your degree?". Bigger companies are often far harder to approach, because
they have rigid processes and discard applications over any minor deviation
quickly. Frankly, I'm a bit lucky that I skirted that problem in my case,
since I went to well established big companies with more corporate culture
than startup culture.

Also, as jasonlotito points out in his comment here, the smartest people seem
to have the least appreciation for themselves. That isn't just in this field.
It's like that in all fields. The best people most often are the most self
critical. Musicians, actors, writers, programmers, CEOs. Part of what makes
these people the greatest is the fear that they're not. The fear that they are
defrauding everyone and they've merely lucked into their situation and any
day, someone is going to discover it and call them out on it. So they work
hard to stay ahead.

This was long. I said I had a good work-ethic; not a sense of brevity. :D

~~~
autalpha
Thank you for sharing. I really appreciate your story. Reading it reminds me a
lot about some of the "wild" decisions I've made along the way.

I was also my family's black sheep. My story is different I suppose (briefly):
I left full time scholarship to study arts--I went to Florida with $500 my
brother lent me. I didn't have money for food so I ate Starbuck's left over
pastries for the first 2 weeks. I ended up taking 6 courses that first
semester and worked 2 jobs to support myself. It was tough time but it was the
most lucid time in my life.

While I did well at the arts school, I didn't end up doing arts after all. I
am a web developer now--happy hacking my after-hours projects and chasing
dreams. Taking good care of my family is also one of my dreams!

I usually think to myself, people should have ambitions and dreams. But only a
real man/woman is willing to lay his/her life down for those dreams.

------
akavi
"Accidentally sold it"?

How does one accidentally sell a company?

~~~
zbruhnke
"Accidentally sold it"? How does one accidentally sell a company?

ok so this is a fair question.

What I really mean by this is that I was not looking to sell I was not out
actively marketing the company or anything like that.

We had a product that made a dent in its market, I liked what I was doing and
I was having fun doing it.

A bigger company with a presence in a lot more markets came along and made me
an offer, I said no and came back with a number I deemed was improbable. They
paid it anyway.

~~~
amorphid
Sounds like a good problem :)

------
wccrawford
Freelancing is a 'real job'. If you actually are freelancing, you'll have a
string of clients to point and say you did work for them, freelancing.

Companies want someone that can do the job. 1 indicator is the resume, and you
simply have to fill it out with work you did.

Be sure to frame the college dropout in terms of the opportunity you had, so
they know you didn't just quit, but had a better offer. If you treat it like a
negative, so will they.

------
cypherpunks
You should have no problem finding a job. Unique skillsets are unique, so
there will be a small number of people who truly want someone with yours, but
you'll be very valuable to them.

Things to do:

1) Make a resume and cover letter. Have many people look over it and give
feedback. Take the feedback.

2) Do some practice interviews. Either a friend can do this, or second-tier
employers can do this (start by applying to places you would consider as
backups, and then apply to the first tier where you really want to work).

The major problem I've seen from people with your type of background is
failure to understand what the employer expects and wants in terms of job
application and interview. On a very high level, your goal is to convince them
that you'll make them more money than you'll cost them, but you have to be
fairly subtle about it in a bunch of ways. You also need to make sure you
don't subtly convey things that will imply you'll cost them money (arrogant,
hard to work with, needs babysitting, etc.)

------
zdw
Professionally, it depends on what you've done - in terms of resume the list
of work you've done for people is exactly that.

Personally, the downsides tend to be limited to activities where you want to
get credit - for example, buying a home or similar where they want to see that
you're capable of making income.

------
vipivip
The companies you have owned should make up your resume.

------
nicksergeant
Depending on the level that your first exit was at, it sounds like you were
missing the essential "first few jobs" where you figure stuff out. For me, my
first few jobs were frustrating enough to motivate me to build side projects.
In fact, I think the day jobs made my side projects more successful and more
rewarding. If I were you, I'd look for a job in your industry and pretend you
don't have a savings to fall back on. Then maybe you'll find what you're
looking for.

------
adriand
I agree with the other commenters that having owned a business is an asset,
however, the one thing you should be aware of going into interviews is that
interviewers may look at you as a "flight risk". Having come up with your own
ideas and run your own company, you may not be as tied down to a job as other
people, and they may want to question you on that. You can easily come up with
good reasons in advance to allay their concerns.

------
dpapathanasiou
Don't let not having traditional credentials get you down.

I don't know if you remember this story from HN a few weeks ago, but you
should keep it in the back of your mind as you interview:

"How MIT Accepted a Student with No High School Degree, Thanks to His
Brilliant Programming" [http://www.geekosystem.com/how-mit-accepted-a-student-
with-n...](http://www.geekosystem.com/how-mit-accepted-a-student-with-no-high-
school-degree/)

~~~
Luyt
_"So when it came time to apply to college, Tom just printed out a pile of
code he wrote and sent it to colleges."_

I would like to see his actual code that got him accepted, but I wasn't able
to find it. Anyone else more luck?

------
fleitz
Look at it like this, you're already a success and if they want to dick you
around because you haven't had a "real" job then it probably isn't going to be
a fit.

I'd recommend not filling out a resume and just talking directly with the
people you'd like to work for. If they have an HR department it's probably
already too late.

You're different than most candidates, embrace it.

------
p-gregory
I've learned that it never hurts to just "put your self out there."

I sit more on the design side of things, but in my experience people tend to
be more interested in what I've done/built/created than simply where I have
worked or went to school.

------
random42
Why dont you put your resume up for HN to review it for you? (Hide any
identification information.)

------
amorphid
I'll help you with a resume if you like. My email address is in my profile.

------
ianthiel
"Apply fo jobs at a few interesting companies and just see what happens?"

Yes.

