
Does a failed startup count against you on your resume? - thorax
http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2008/08/28/does-a-failed-startup-on-your-resume-count-against-you.aspx
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timr
Ugh. Every time I read something from the MSDN jobs blog, I come away with the
same, greasy feeling that I get when I've spent more than 30 seconds talking
to a recruiter who cold-calls people for jobs requiring fifteen years of Ruby
experience.

If you want to know what a pirate thinks of your sailing skills, you don't ask
his parrot.

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jrockway
Yes. Why would a big corporation want to hire someone who can come up with
ideas and implement them without "adult supervision"? That would make the 100
layers of management useless, and nobody wants to be useless.

The ideal candidate will be smart but have no ambition to do anything on
his/her own. A failed startup means he has that ambition.

~~~
known
Isn't this sarcastic?

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maneesh
uh, yea

~~~
known
Thank you because I am autistic.

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__
_I love people who take risks and follow their passions, but if your resume
lists a series of short stints at failed startups, I think it’s natural to
question a person’s career management skills._

What are "career management skills"? Two interpretations come to my mind.

The author could mean a tendency to constantly worry about how one's resume
will look to big companies. If this is the case, why does Microsoft care? A
person who, whenever considering a new project, worries about how it will
affect his resume is more likely to get stolen by a competing big company,
since big companies generally prefer conservative resumes. However, a person
who isn't scared to have a resume with many jobs at failed startups is more
likely to get stolen by a startup, since they generally don't care if a person
has such a resume (they may even prefer it), and also because the person
probably has lots of contacts in the startup world. In the American technology
industry today, headhunting is a danger _regardless_ of how conservative the
employee's resume is.

Another interpretation is that by "career management skills" the author means
a willingness to take a steady, well-paying job when one has a family to
support. This makes sense: what would you think of someone who insists on
working for startups, even at the cost of having trouble feeding his three
children and being forced to live in a dangerous neighborhood? But perhaps he
doesn't have a family. Or perhaps the spouse has a steady job to support the
kids. Or perhaps he has a trust fund or a bunch of money from a previous
startup. There are so many exceptions that a resume full of failed startups is
not a reliable signal of this kind of irresponsibility.

Neither of these interpretations makes much sense. But there's a less
charitable interpretation: "I love people who take risks and follow their
passions, _but not too much_ , because then they'd balk at the crap we'd make
them do."

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JeremyChase
_I love people who take risks and follow their passions, but if your resume
lists a series of short stints at failed startups, I think it’s natural to
question a person’s career management skills._

I'd rather keep working at failing start ups than apply to a company with that
attitude.

Jer

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IsaacSchlueter
Whenever I hear about whether doing this or that counts for/against you on
your resume, I'm reminded of this:

    
    
      This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can:
      FUCK.  THAT.  SHIT.
    

<http://xkcd.com/137/>

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gscott
In concentrated high tech areas it might not count against you, but for me in
San Diego it is something employers find to be a negative. To them it shows
that I might not be "dedicated" to the job I am applying for. I get a lot of
"How do we know if you are going to stay" and in general a lot of questions
that just start with "How do we know (whatever)", it really starts going
downhill once that starts in.

~~~
gaius
It's a reasonable question to ask; I ask it every time I interview a
contractor who suddenly wants a permie job after years of contracting. They
all say something about wanting to settle down and build a career. In the
majority of cases, they just can't find a contract right now, and when they
do, they scarper.

A failed startup I'd count as valuable experience (supervising people is a
pain for me, I _want_ people who can think and act on their own initiative)
but at the same time, I'd want a decent explanation for the abrupt career
shift. "Because I need to make some money" is perfectly valid, and gets top
marks from me for honesty.

~~~
gscott
If a person had been a contractor for some period of time I agree that is
perfectly reasonable.

Myself I have never been a contractor and really do hate side projects of
which I have taken a few and found myself tied to them far beyond what I could
charge so I quickly got out of that. I did make the mistake of mentioning I
have done some web sites in the past directly on my own. That is a job
interview killer because employers do not want you to have any other
responsibilities other then for the company, so even if you have done a few
websites on the side in the past, just don't mention it. It didn't help me to
mention that, it was not a positive like I thought it was. If you want to use
that experience, say you did it not for someone else but to learn how to do
"x" because it seemed interesting (might be modifying some cms, shopping
carts, etc whatever) and there can't be any business reason, you just did it
for fun and not for anyone else.

Even little things can be a job interview killer. Right out of High School I
decided I would get a simple job as a person who takes telephone sales at a
company that sells cpu's and memory. It was entry level with entry level pay.
I had relatively no experience so I mentioned I had helped few people with
there computers (innocently enough, not even as a business, just the 'hey you
know computers help me with x' type thing). The 3 women (I have no idea why it
required 3 people but...) said that the company was going to go into computer
repair and that they couldn't possibly hire me because I would take all of
there business. Then they started making jokes at my expense, I have to say I
nearly cried. I have never desired to be in the computer repair business
myself

I have more stories like that, it gets really bad when you work on your
startup for two years and then need to get a job.

I have some simple suggestions if a person is NOT applying at a startup or a
web only business:

1\. You didn't own the startup, working at the startup was a mistake you would
never want to repeat. You were told that there were paying clients and that it
was cash flow positive. They lied to you and you don't like being lied to.

Reason: You might leave there employment for some startup opportunity or that
you might be a free thinking human being and somehow impervious to
instruction. OR even worse you will compete with your new employer, your a
mole out to steal there business.

2\. You do not have any side projects, you have never taken any side work like
a simple website project. You would never think of doing such a thing! If you
are married say your wife forbids it, then laugh and talk about how much
trouble you would get into!

Reason: Employers want your full attention, if they think you are going to
make any money on the side then heck you might even start doing that work
during work hours or there work is going to be less important. None of that is
true but people are plain stupid and you cannot afford to "chance" that the
person might be a thinking human being.

I have more sage advice but this is already getting a bit long and I am pretty
sure most of the people here live in areas where it is ok to have "outside"
learning experiences. Not where I live :)

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byrneseyeview
I recruit for investment banks and hedge funds; it's a positive, even if it's
not a tech startup.

~~~
gaius
Investment banks are not really like other large companies, tho'; they're more
like a a federation of independent entities. You don't work for the bank, you
work for the head of whatever desk or P&L. If a head of desk makes money, no-
one cares what he does, he can run his own little fiefdom, a business within a
business. This is one reason that banks infrastructure is such a mess, if the
head of Dollar-Yen wants something he won't wait for central IT to get round
to it, he'll give his geeks a budget and say _make it happen_.

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ShabbyDoo
I have a year of "failed startup" on my resume, and it's always either been
positive or neutral in the eyes of employers.

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vaksel
no, you probably learned more by failing at your startup for 3 years, than
your peers who spent it working as low level corporate drones doing useless
things.

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mechanical_fish
Only if it appears under "Objectives".

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sown
So how about when you have a startup on your resume that didn't fail and got
acquired?

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raganwald
My experience: _Yes_ , a series of failed startups counts against you with
many companies. Then again, if any of those had succeeded you wouldn't be
applying there, and if you applied there on a lark they would have counted the
successful startup against you.

My conclusion: Certain types of companies do not care to hire the kind of
risk-taking individuals who chose to work for startups instead of putting in
their five-to-ten at a more stable company.

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gamble
In my experience, no one really cares which companies you worked for unless
they've heard of them. Well-known companies a plus. Failed ones are neutral,
at worst.

