
How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone - swighton
http://shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-when-you-don-t-know-anyone
======
patio11
An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one
reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well
bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is
"convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there."

This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with
hiring authority are on the same Internet you are. They use the same email /
Twitter / etc. THEY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Engineers are in incredible demand.

They get a steady stream of resumes from people who are wildly unqualified for
the job. That is one reason why they're not going to read your resume when you
send it in unless their prior expectation is that you're interesting.

It is not harder to be interesting than "someone I've never heard of or met."
"Hey Bob, I watched your presentation at $CONFERENCE last year on Youtube.
Great stuff; loved what you did with $FOO, in particular
$COMMENT_PROVING_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOU'RE_TALKING_ABOUT. I'm also a $FOO
developer. Do you have a few minutes to chat on Thursday about what you guys
are doing?"

You're not proposing marriage here. You're asking for 15 minutes to get to
know them. You do not have to author a heartbreaking work of staggering genius
to make this call happen.

Your goal for the chat: get Bob enthusiastic enough to either suggest "Hey you
should apply here" or be receptive to you suggesting "Hey, I really like what
you're doing, and would like to see if I could be a part of it. Can you get
the ball rolling for me?"

n.b. If you want to knock someone's socks off with a demo of e.g. an
application which uses their API, use the above to get one person enthusiastic
about reviewing the demo, _then_ implement. If you can't get one person
enthusiastic about the prospect of looking at your work, there's sharply
limited odds that actually doing the work meaningfully advances your
interests.

~~~
leeny
As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like
shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest
content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

~~~
dominotw
>Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like
they're a person is so much better.

I was a bigtime Rdio fan. I loved their clean design, discoverability. I
pinged a real person with big list of improvements and bugfixes that was I was
collecting over many months. I told them I wanted to work for them and sent
them my resume.

They got back to me with "We have sent over your suggestions to our engineers,
but we can't hire anyone without Python experience" .

~~~
leeny
And look where they ended up :/

~~~
dominotw
yea, apparently their CTO didn't like anyone without python experience.
bizarre.

------
blairbeckwith
This is so true. It's really shocking how little effort and originality
some/most people go to in getting the job they want.

I have a similar story, although nowhere near as much effort. When I was 20
and hating life in school, I really wanted to work at Shopify. At the time,
they were maybe 80 people. I've never made a resume and didn't feel like that
would get me noticed. Sio I simply sent a cold email to Tobi, our CEO. It was
basically "Hey, Tobi. I don't know anything, and I have no skills, but I love
your company and I want to be involved. Give me a chance, I'll work for free."

I got an email a week later from someone else on the team saying that I
started the next week.

When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to
think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the
most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm
thrilled it's worked out.

~~~
vinceguidry
Naiveté is a useful quality in a candidate for the right company. It signals
the potential for loyalty. Once you've had your idealism broken by corporate
bullshit, there's no easy way to get it back.

~~~
blairbeckwith
I think this is definitely true. Initially I felt like my loyalty was a result
of having no other options, but it's proven untrue. I've had offers from all
over the place since I've grown within Shopify, and I have no desire to leave
this place. It's been fulfilling, challenging, and it will always be the place
that took a chance on me when there were very few logical reasons to do so.

~~~
LunaSea
That's awesome, but please be careful. I was in the same situation as you but
I was 19, hired as the first engineer (second employee) in a company of 5
people and I quit after almost 3 years.

Even though it's still fresh, when I look back, I really think I should've
quit earlier.

When I joined I wanted to reward the company by showing that I was a hard
worker but this resulted in just increasing the expectations without any
return. Loyalty and overtime was almost expected of me after a while without
any return besides the usual, low startup salary.

I hope it's different for you than it was for me. Just remember that it should
be a two-way street and your loyalty should be rewarded.

~~~
amyjess
I was in a similar situation.

I was suffering from long-term unemployment after a layoff, and my experience
was so specialized that no company really wanted me (and if a company didn't
want experience, why not just hire someone fresh out of college?).

I wound up somehow managing to land a job at a year-old startup that was still
in early stages. I was making barely more than what I made at my last job in
pure cash ($45k vs. $42k), when I'd been underpaid at my last job, and I
received no insurance whatsoever. Still, I was grateful because I needed a
job: the long-term unemployment had destroyed my mental health, plunged me
five figures in debt, left me barely able to afford to live, and I was about
out of extended unemployment (I found out I'd exhausted it the day after I
accepted the offer -- and I got this job in early 2012 when extended
unemployment was still a thing). It was this job or suicide, basically.

When I joined, I was one of the only employees who wasn't Director-level or
higher. I stayed way longer than I should. Ended up working there almost 3
years. The company was about to kick off the pilot program for their first big
product when I left (we had another product before that, but it wasn't
suitable for mass production and was discontinued long before the replacement
was ready). The owner/CEO was insistent on keeping control of the company, so
he never sought VC funding. Instead, we went through an endless cycle of
constantly demoing our product to small-time investors. It was a constant
scramble of getting things ready for the next demo.

The company stayed small, raises were almost nonexistent (I somehow made it to
$47k about a year in after I was rewarded for a huge flash of inspiration
where I designed and wrote the product's infrastructure in like two days, but
that was it, and I never got another), we never got insurance, and after a
certain point we began hiring all new people as contractors to skirt under the
federal 15-employee limit (which affects mandatory insurance and EEO matters).

Management was terrible. My boss had no management experience and simply
didn't know how to manage anything multiple people worked on. He was a
brilliant engineer himself, and everything he wrote solo was a well-designed
work of art, but he had no clue how to manage other people. Code breakage
issues were constant. The co-head developer was utterly terrible at both
design and coding, and my boss (the official head of development -- though he
treated the co-head as an equal) insisted he could do no wrong and got
irrationally angry whenever his friend's design or coding ability was
questioned. My and a co-worker's complaints went unanswered, and said co-
worker eventually snapped and dropped his notice on our boss' desk without
anything lined up when he realized the problems would never be resolved.
Another co-worker left for similar reasons. Neither were replaced. Also, my
boss couldn't handle stress, and he'd take out his stress by screaming at his
subordinates and treating us like incompetent children.

Oh, and during my employment there, I began my gender transition. While my co-
workers and my boss were totally accepting, our landlord wasn't, and they
began illegally discriminating against me. My company just rolled over for
them and refused to lift a finger to help me. That was when I really started
to sour on the company, but it took eight months for me to actually bring
myself to leave. I wound up fighting the landlord myself and filed a
discrimination complaint with the city. Everyone with the city I dealt with
was nothing short of excellent to me, much better than my employer. At one
informal mediation session, I brought in the owner/CEO, and in his bumbling
ignorance, he almost sabotaged my case. Finally, the landlord backed off, and
I won, but I will never forget how poorly I was treated by my own employer.
What's funny is that I was told by the city that if my employer had been over
the 15-employee threshold, I could've filed both a municipal discrimination
complaint and a federal EEO violation against _them_ for rolling over for the
landlord.

Still, I stuck with the company for a few reasons. One, I still felt like I
owed them something after how they rescued me from long-term unemployment.
Two, their treatment of me shattered my self-confidence, and now I was afraid
to put myself out there (doubly so since I'd never gone job hunting as a woman
before). Three, as bad as this place was, it was the devil I knew; my next
employer could easily be _worse_. Four, my immediate co-workers were wonderful
people, and I didn't want to leave them behind (when I finally left, I
friended some of them on Facebook, and we still keep in touch).

The final straw was when my boss spent several minutes shouting at me for
something that was his fault and then spent the next week screwing with my
desk arrangements before finally putting me on a PIP. I started searching for
new jobs that day. Soon, one of the jobs I applied to that day got back to me
with a programming test, then a phone interview, then a real interview. Within
a month, I received a formal offer from them, and I put my notice in the day
before the PIP was to expire.

I like my new employer much better. I was right to apply for this job, and I'm
never working for a startup again.

Getting out felt like leaving an abusive relationship. I've talked to spousal
abuse survivors, and their stories about how their exes treated them and how
difficult it was to get out remind me of what I went through with that
company.

~~~
leeleelee
I am slightly confused -- who's landlord was illegally discriminating against
you? The landlord for the office your company rented? How were they singling
you out and discriminating against you?

~~~
georgecmu
Not familiar with the story, but from the text it follows that it was the
company's landlord that was discriminating. Typically, in cases like this,
conflict revolves around bathroom use and exclusion due to gender
assignment/reassignment.

~~~
amyjess
Bingo. There was only one bathroom on our floor, and we shared the floor with
another company, some busybody at the other company complained, so the
building manager banned me from using the women's restroom.

That's illegal in Dallas.

~~~
leeleelee
So you are biologically a male, you identify as a female, and you wanted to
use the female bathroom?

I think that if, as a society, we decide that gender access to restrooms is
not based on physical gender but instead based on how you self-identify --
then as society we should completely eliminate the separation of bathrooms for
males and females.

Agree or disagree?

~~~
Kluny
Yes. Though in practice, I still feel more comfortable with gender segregated
bathrooms, and I (female) would rather just share with female-identified
persons than with males.

Interestingly, a local university (Uvic) has gender non-specific public
washrooms. The kind with 4-5 stalls and sinks. Everyone welcome.

------
krschultz
Great story, and I love the author's initiative.

The author overlooked the first major factor in their success - finding the
startup they wanted to work at! I actually think the more specific you get in
your job search the more successful you will be. People often think that by
being 'flexible' in what they want to do they are increasing the number of
companies they can work for. That is true, but you aren't trying to work for a
bunch of companies, you are trying to work for one. By being that general you
will never find the place where you specifically are the best candidate.

To be concrete, I'd rather find the 5 companies that are really aligned with
my skillset and target them very specifically than apply to 50 random
companies looking for someone kinda sorta like me.

------
samstave
Years ago we were working on the first PC-based phone gateway, which allowed
you to use your phone line and computer as a call gateway over IP.

A guy called up because he wanted our linux drivers.

We didn't have any linux drivers.

So he called back a while later and said ___" Here I wrote the linux drivers
for you."_ __

He had reverse engineered the board and wrote the drivers to make it run on
linux based on all the specs of the various chips on the board.

We hired him on the spot.

------
rubidium
It's a high risk method. But it's much more effective than traditional job
applications. So if you weigh the time spent (10-20 hours building custom
thing for company) vs spending 10 hours filling out 30 applications, I would
guess this is a better approach.

It's also a method described in "guerrilla marketing for job hunters". There's
others in the book if you're looking for a little lower effort non-traditional
methods.

~~~
mschip
I put a much higher priority on the people I work with. So I would add to that
risk the scenario where I get the job but it turns out to be a bunch of bros.
Maybe there was some public insight to the kind of people this person would be
joining to mitigate that risk.

~~~
swighton
I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the company, the
people, their product, etc. I knew half the engineers by name from various
videos they had posted and was fully convinced it was a company of amazingly
talented people.

~~~
tedmiston
Just curious -- were there other companies you put this much effort into
studying and making such a stellar first impression? Did you feel sure enough
you would get this position that you didn't need to?

------
lemiffe
I once applied to Heroku; I wrote a song about deploying to Heroku, made a
video for it on Youtube, deployed it to Heroku (of course), and applied (via
their site and Twitter). Never got an email back, not even a "we received your
application". Was bummed out for a while afterwards.

------
dbalan
Hug of death. Cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-
koH...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-
koHwskgMJ:shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-when-you-don-t-
know-anyone+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in)

------
jes5199
I got my first real startup job by submitting a bunch of bugfix patches to
their open source offering. It was relatively easy - they had a public bug
tracker, and I just picked the things I thought I could figure out, and after
one weekend, I had a job offer.

I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that.
We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people
got turned down because we didn't have an effective way of measuring their
abilities. If they had gone through the code review process, they would have
had a much better chance of getting the job. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why
we didn't include "submit a bugfix to our open source project" as part of a
standard interview process)

~~~
personjerry
"submit a bugfix to our open source project" might be looked down upon as
trying to get people to work for you for free

~~~
djcapelis
So pay them?

------
steven2012
At my previous company, someone walked into our office and asked if we had any
openings for engineers. Given that we were hiring anyway, we said sure so we
talked with him. Unfortunately because of visa issues we couldn't hire him but
if not for that, we definitely would have. It was a case of right-place-right-
time, but it definitely was something we talked about for a while afterwards.

~~~
gaius
My first startup job I literally walked in the front door and asked if they
needed a Unix hacker. They interviewed me on the spot. Not enough office
furniture so I got a chair and the engineering lead sat on a DEC Alpha he had
in his office.

------
gravypod
The largest thing that stops me from being able to apply for a job as a
college student is that every job I am interested in, mainly back-end/low-
level software development, say that they require a "MS in CS and 5 years of
experience."

These job postings are for entry level positions and internships, nothing
higher.

Is this something I should be worried about? Should I just apply to this kind
of work anyway?

How do I find companies willing to hire me as a college student with no
official experience?

~~~
jpmw
Having hired a bunch of people, including juniors out of school, I'll tell you
this: apply, just apply.

A job description and requirement is their picture of the ideal candidate, but
they will hire the person that's the closest to that, and other things not
mentioned in the offers like how you would fit culturally in the team, work
with others, and so many other things.

Just apply to what you want to do, what's the worst case again? Ah, you spent
time writing a cover letter.

Btw, keep your cover letter short. People might not read it if it's too long.

Another last tip: apply even if you are almost certain you won't have it.
Never say "I'll apply when I get more experience". You know what? By then, you
will change, the company will change, and it might not be a good fit anymore.
I wanted to apply to a couple of specifics startups in the past that I never
applied too because I felt like I was not up to it, in the end, I was wrong
and the company changed so much that I don't want to work there anymore at
all, but I'm sure that would have been great for years.

Apply. Just apply.

~~~
Namrog84
I couldn't agree more.

In school there was a scholarship I was almost eligible for. I needed a 3.5
gpa but only had 3.2 so I didn't apply thinking I was disqualified. A few
months later I found out someone with a 2.3 got it because lack of entries.

Then again later I entered a programming competition with a $5 entry fee. Only
2 people entered and we each won $100 and $75. A 3rd place prize of $50 went
unclaimed. Anyone who entered and earned 0 correct would have gotten it. As
second place dude didn't get any right.

If it's low effort or something you enjoy, always apply. It's almost always
worth it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

------
groundCode
This is a great story and kudos - it looks like an awesome piece of work for a
weekend project.

As a counterpoint, I did something similar (replicated a barebones version of
a tool that a company I wanted to work for had) and sent it off and didn't
even receive a courtesy "thanks but no thanks" email. Them's the breaks I
guess.

------
k-mcgrady
I don't get why you have to go to such extremes to get hired. In my experience
getting hired at a startup is like getting hired anywhere else - in fact
generally it's easier. You send in a CV, attend one or two interviews
(personal and technical), and get a decision. I'm not sure what it's like now
but weren't companies finding it really difficult to find engineers in SV not
that long ago? That should make things even easier.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire was a disaster for a
company, it has been a lot more difficult than that. It is probably a major
factor in the talent shortage, as companies are no longer willing to take any
chances or train anyone, even for jobs that would take four hours of training!

I've watched companies in the last year I interviewed with wait and suffer? a
year to fill a position, even though I could have done their silly rest-api
job with one arm behind my back, haha.

~~~
rlonstein

      > Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire 
      > was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more
      > difficult than that.
    

I experienced this first-hand a few years ago. I had a few friends and former
colleagues working there and was qualified. One of the six interviewers was
known to be difficult (even to outsiders) and sank me. The CTO personally
apologized to me face-to-face but decided to uphold the 100% agreement
tradition.

------
Riod
I think everyone is ignoring the fact that he really wanted to work there. If
you're in that boat then yes this makes sense. But if like most people you're
not exactly gaga over the company but value other factors like pay and
lifestyle then the traditional approach could yield more dividends. Return on
time invested after all is important.

------
starving_coder
I did something very similar and approached the hiring manager to show him
what I've done. While he appreciated my work, he wanted me to work (for free)
on the company's Github stuff and said he will call me if that something opens
up. PS: I am okay spending my free time on his cool project but it
progressively looks unsustainable.

------
forgetsusername
This boils down to being able to show the potential employer than you can be
of immediate, tangible value to the company, which _should_ be the main goal
of anyone looking for work. A resume is one way to do this (albeit not great),
building a valuable, relevant prototype is another. There are many
alternatives along that continuum.

But really, are talented, creative software people really having trouble
finding work?

------
lucio
You developed in a long weekend a MVP which does more than the startup's soft?

~~~
iammaxus
Formlabs cofounder here.

Of course, there is a difference between a demo focusing on implementing new
features then the software that we are shipping. But yes, it was extremely
impressive and it's no surprise that he is leading much of our engineering
team (beyond software, as well) today.

~~~
niij
You're the best boss in this thread.

On a side note, what are higher ups looking for in a young applicant? I'm
graduating in the fall with a CS Undergrad and don't have any startup contacts
(I live in a smaller town in Missouri) and am trying to get my foot in the
door somewhere that is doing interesting work.

~~~
elliotec
Projects. Contribute to open source as much as possible and build as much
stuff as possible that you can show off. Then you should have no issue finding
something interesting. Might have a better chance searching outside your
hometown though.

~~~
niij
Thanks! I've been meaning to carve time out of my school schedule to make some
contributions to a few projects on Github.

------
motdiem
Anecdotally, that's how we hired our designer - her last "mockup" project
matched exactly what we were working on next - the hiring process was super
fast, and there are a lot of benefits to hiring someone who has already spent
time thinking about the same problem space as you did.

------
pibefision
Why the goal is a startup? I don't undertand the obsesion of being part of
something so fragil.

~~~
goldbrick
For one thing, it's probably much harder for these types of moves to make an
impact when your stereotypical HR drone is handling incoming resumes -- hell,
I can practically see them filing the cover letter in the standard way, the
resume in the standard way, and the random hunk of metal in the standard way
(garbage).

~~~
notahacker
True, but then if it's a 10-person startup there's also the danger that
they're so amazed by your ingenuity they decide they definitely want to hire
you as soon as they've closed that next round so they can afford a few more
people.

Now it might be the case that you're so engaged with their mission you want to
wait a few months for a below market salary offer (hey, you're obviously far
too keen to negotiate it) but it might be a trick that's easier to
consistently pull off with a maverick-friendly businesses with more
substantial funding or revenue

------
dharma1
Great approach. I would hire someone like this. You're gonna be a legend the
day you join. Probably easier to be noticed/hired this way with smaller
companies.

Even if you don't get hired, you've learned something new and produced
something cool which you can show in your next interview, and only lost a
couple of days of your time.

------
shloky
Yep. I think people are getting caught up on the 'startup' part of this.

Roughly this is how I've met every mentor I've wanted to and then gone on to
work with them.

Demonstrate value by investing time/effort in your interest, and build on that
through communication until an opportunity to work together presents itself.

------
wcchandler
I've done something similar. I wanted to branch into a new discipline, so to
show off my ability to pick up a new skillset, I learned how to juggle. At
first it started off as a joke, because their jobsite said "juggle multiple
things."

I spent a couple of hours, recorded video of my progress and posted it to
YouTube. I didn't get the job. I actually went out on a limb and reached out
to somebody privately to make sure it wasn't too "out of the ordinary" and
that I didn't ruin my chances for anything in the future. Thankfully, mostly
everyone forgot about it. I guess it wasn't unique or clever enough?

------
cahoodle
Thanks for sharing. I agree with doing the unconventional, and I think it
comes down to making a very clear case to the founders that you can add value
off the bat when joining the company. Given the limited time and resources,
it's hard for the company to pass on hustlers who can get shit done right
away.

------
pravj
I was interested in working with the Data Science team of one of India's
leading e-commerce startups.

Later, I ended up doing a project[1] where I have collected and analysed the
user order data from their order tracking portal.

Now I feel that they won't take me back because I kind of played like a Black-
Hat instead of a White-Hat by not notifying them about the little loophole
that made it possible for me.

Before this, I was an intern there and got that because of one of my past
project. This method does work.

[1] [http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-
ecommerce](http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-ecommerce)

~~~
justinclift
Heh Heh Heh

It's kind of sad you sound surprised. :(

If you were in their shoes, how would you have handled someone doing that? :)

~~~
pravj
Yeah, agree with you.

Although it was not that I stole some secret key or something.

It was just that there was data in public, and I used it for good.

------
cushychicken
The short version: show that you fucking care!

People love to hire people that care about their mission and show that they're
capable of supporting it. It's really that simple.

------
xivzgrev
My approach. Either do the job (I'm a marketer and built a landing page for
one company with bootstrap to show I could), or find a common connection. In
my current job, the hiring manager formerly worked with a good friend of a guy
I helped out 4 years ago evaluate two job offers. that's how weak ties work.
Also the benefit of paying it forward, never know how that connects back to
you.

------
JonLim
Shane, you build a slicer in three days? Good lord.

Hats off to you, sir!

------
sinnet11
I feel like this approach is easier for smaller startups. But what about
bigger places like google, apple, or facebook. My background isn't your
traditional CS background but I have over 4 years of experience on a site that
does million+ in traffic but I can't even get my resume sniffed at by those
companies.

------
berfarah
If you're the author: Typo here (I assume): > At they time they had 10
employees

I found the Raleway text really hard to read, personally changed it. It might
just be how it looks on Mac or Mac retina, but it was very light.

I think there's a middle ground in there somewhere

------
osullivj
Years ago, during the original dotcom crash, I was working in banking. All the
banks were firing, not hiring. I got an interview at Morgan Stanley by
contributing a feature to their open source A+ project[1]. Running code counts
for a lot!

[1] aplusdev.org

------
FallDead
Yeah so good, he basically could have started his own company but instead ...
gave his soul to another.

~~~
mikekchar
Or to look at it another way, "I can make all the newbie mistakes on somebody
else's dime? Sign me up!"

------
kazinator
Get famous; then you still don't know anyone, but they "know" you.

~~~
hawleyal
I'll just put on my fame helmet, squeeze down into a fame cannon and fire off
into fame land where fame grows on fame trees.

------
nerdy
I've done something similar by creating a 3rd party companion website for an
online marketplace (which has ~50 employees), but haven't contacted the
company directly. Now I'm stuck. What Shane did requires not only hard work,
but the guts to engage the company and knowing what it is that you really
want. If you're considering this, make sure you're resolved to a particular
course of action.

My site targets sellers from that marketplace and provides a search of
information scraped from the official source as well as detailed sales
statistics which are not available from the official source. For active users,
these two things can easily save several hours per week.

The 1st party company has acknowledged the existence of my site and indicated
to their users that they'll allow it but are unaffiliated, which is completely
understandable since they have no idea who I am. My companion site was created
out of necessity and receives about 20k pageviews a month (approx 2000 users).

Currently, I am not charging for the site but a half a dozen people have
suggested charging for its use or contacting the 1st party site to license it
to them. The people making these suggestions are the marketplace sellers from
the 1st party site (the users who are common to both sites).

But now there are difficult decisions to be made. I've worked from home for
over a decade and loathe commutes, even those measured in minutes. This
company is 2.5 hours away and best-case public transportation would have me
out for 12-14 hours per day. This company makes no mention of any kind of
remote work possibility but my impression is that it's done some of the time
by some of their employees. I wouldn't want special treatment even if they
offered it. With all of that said, if I did have to travel to work... this
place looks like the kind of place I'd enjoy working. It was relatively easy
to find about 1/4 of their team on social media and get a feel for their
culture, even found some video of their office on a regular workday.

If I did join them and the commuting situation were overcome, would that
constrain my freedom to make the new features and enhancements that the
community wants? Contacting them with a laundry-list of questions feels wrong.

If I didn't join, would enough of my currently free users convert to paid to
make it worth continuing? What's the optimal price to balance the seesaw of
retention vs dollars (number retained free users * price per month)? Is it
unknowable? What percentage of the existing users might actually pay? It's all
very uncertain. It'd be great to get some feedback from everyone, maybe with
your own experience(s).

Shane's idea is great but it doesn't magically fall into place, relationships
are complicated!

~~~
rwallace
Contact the company, show them your site, explain your situation, explain that
you're looking for remote work. If they offer a compromise like being in the
office one or two days a week, take it. If they won't go for it at all, thank
them for their time and go to plan B.

> I wouldn't want special treatment even if they offered it

That's a bad thought that you should get rid of before it has a chance to harm
you. Life is hard enough as it is; you don't want bad thoughts creeping into
your head and handicapping you. (I'm not saying they'll offer special
treatment, of course, only that you should certainly take it if they do.)

For Plan B, go ahead and charge for your site. If people are willing to pay,
great! If not, chalk it up as an experiment worth trying and shut it down. I
don't know what the price should be, but I do know you should not trust your
instincts; us geeks always err on the low side. Either charge significantly
more than you think you should, or ask some non-geeks and follow their advice.

------
known
Volunteer/Intern

~~~
dominotw
i have mouths to feed.

------
a_lifters_life
Logically, I'd think try to meet people. Meetup.com is a great start!

