
Ask HN: Is Silicon Valley Becoming an Insiders Club? - svreject
I&#x27;ve been a web developer my whole career, with a CS degree, and 16 years experience. In 2007 I joined a new VOD startup and quickly rose to CTO position, then over the next 9 years grew it to 7-figure users and revenue, 16 engineers, and a highly respected brand in an industry niche. We hit a rough financial patch, so I left for another seed-stage startup which failed to gain traction.<p>Now, for the first time in 16 years I find myself looking for a job in SV without a direct reference. I was assuming that my broad experience, ability to bridge the technology-business gap, natural programming ability, and entrepreneurial spirit and tenacity would make me the kind of sought after employee that all growing SV companies claim they can&#x27;t find enough of.<p>Unfortunately after interviewing at ten top companies (mostly later stage YC), I&#x27;ve been declined nine times. The last company where I felt the onsite went flawlessly and I had great rapport with every interviewer still thinks my experience isn&#x27;t exactly the right fit for a tech lead position (even though this is exactly what I&#x27;ve done for the last 9 years!).<p>The things I think are hurting me are that I&#x27;m not great at whiteboarding, my experience is not at massive scale, and it&#x27;s hard to summarize the scope and impact of what I&#x27;ve done as CTO growing a team from 2 to 16 engineers. Also the majority of interviewers are in their mid-20s and have come from Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Uber, etc; I doubt they even have the context to understand the strength of my accomplishments. They seem to have fat hiring pipelines and value either top-1% algorithm brainteaser performance or specific large-scale experience at brand-name companies.<p>I&#x27;m coming away with the impression that SV is starting resemble the world of finance where pedigree is utmost importance. Is there anything to this assessment? Does anyone have any insight on the young hiring manager mindset in top YC companies these days?
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analyst74
I understand your frustration, because I am going through a similar phase,
looking for a new job without references after many years not having to. I've
also been rejected after what I thought to be very successful interviews,
without real feedback on how I fell short.

I believe one or more of following factors are at play, keeping in mind that
one company would not be the same as next:

\- people have high bars for experienced hire, you can't just be smart and get
things done, but also be able to wow the hiring manager/committee in some way.

\- related to point 1, someone with 5 years of experience will have a
difficult time evaluating someone with 15.

\- if engineering expertise is hard to interview for, leadership skill is even
harder. And companies are definitely more cautious when hiring for leadership
roles.

\- there are a LOT of people wanting to join those top startups, so
competition is fierce, and there is less pressure to hire a good but not
amazing candidate.

\- interviewing is a skill in itself, just because you had so much experience
does not mean you can ace interviews without preparation, especially with high
expectation/competition positions. You should sit down and think hard how you
can best demonstrate your experience in an interview.

\- lastly, it's actually quite easy to fell into a good job that makes getting
next one harder, especially if that project was a failure, or uses an outdated
technology.

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kasey_junk
Isn't it also possible that it's always been an insiders club & you've only
recently started being an outsider?

What you are describing could be attributed to a component of SV thats long
existed. Ageism.

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evangelista
Hello,

I went through something similar. As a self-taught software engineer with a
business background from a not great school, the hiring process at most large
companies is specifically built to prevent people like me from getting in the
door.

What you are encountering is the "gatekeeper layer" of these major tech
companies. I call this "the front door." To put it mildly: The front door of
tech is configured to reject everything that doesn't match some unrealistic
perfect ideal of a genius savant engineer. To summarize Gandalf's general
disposition towards flaming Balrogs:"Thou shalt not pass!"

Why is the focus on rejection and not acceptance?

There are three reasons. First, everyone wants to work at Google, Facebook
etc. and there are a lot of unqualified people coming in. Second, these
companies can't afford to grow at the rate at which they can gain talent. If
Google were to hire a tiny fraction of the people applying to them every day,
they would rapidly grow far beyond a size which makes sense. Third, they are
very strategic about which directions they plan on growing in. They would
rather acquire talent in groups focused in strategic topics like automotive
than bother letting in single general-purpose individuals based on some brain
teasers. Fourth, the actual volume of truly qualified people is even too high!
The big companies can't afford to hire every qualified person who actually
wants to work for them in some cases.

Therefore, anyone who possesses a diversity of skills beyond pure programming
should completely avoid the front door, it isn't going to value your whole
person (as you have seen).

Instead, you need to be using the "side door." That means you go and find
people who you like (want to work with, resemble, build interesting stuff you
like to use) and approach them personally and sit down with them like a
regular human being and talk about building cool shit together.

If you are really great, people will recognize your greatness and they will
help you get in the door.

Using the side door is about creating your own interview process rather than
letting someone else define your interview process for you. Shoot high. Pick
people who can hire you or have influence directly over hiring decisions. You
don't need the gatekeepers.

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notfreeyet
It's always been yes and no. It's class-based.

Yes, the management class (or officer class) is for the pedigreed elite.
You're trying to join the manager class and they have a line out the door of
people with pedigree. What school did you go to? Yeah, so why would they pick
you...they're themselves incompetent so why would they use competence as the
criteria? VCs invest almost exclusively invest in this class and so the cycle
continues.

The technical class (or soldier class) does all the actual work and so they
have to be competent. This is almost entirely meritocratic in Silicon Valley.
Anyone even moderately competent can get well paying some job, even if it's
not at one of the big adtech companies like Google/Facebook that can afford to
mostly require pedigree from even their soldiers.

What's neat about Silicon Valley is that anyone of the technical class can
simply promote themselves to the manager class given sufficient effort and
luck. This alone is what makes it so special. It's very rare but it does
happen.

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DoodleBuggy
Connections can always make a difference, but are not everything. Here are a
few thoughts on your scenario:

>>> The things I think are hurting me are that I'm not great at whiteboarding

I don't know about that. I have a friend who stopped an interview when asked
to whiteboard and instead referred the panel to review github together, they
ended up hiring him.

>>> it's hard to summarize the scope and impact of what I've done as CTO
growing a team from 2 to 16 engineers

That is more likely to be the issue. Find a way to explain your value, what
you did, and what you can do.

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abraca
My two cents is that your skillset is not quite the right match for the
companies you are interviewing at, and so it's going to be tougher to find a
position. Not impossible but you'll have to interview around a lot more and
have a good reference (as you suggest. Basically to get a stretch position you
need an "in.") The easiest jobs to get are those where you are essentially
doing exactly the same thing you did before, in a similar space. So - a
company doing related work, of similar size (less than 15 engineers.) It
sounds like you are interviewing at much larger companies than places you have
experience as a tech lead at - and it is a different skillset. Large-scale
experience IS different. Tech leads at a large company do different kinds of
work than a CTO at a startup. A lot of the work is around working with other
tech leads, and working with cross-functional leads across the company who
have growing teams of their own, managing politics, scaling etc. Figuring out
communication structures, reporting up and across and so on. Other on HN could
elaborate on this better than I can. To get this kind of job you have to
convince the interviewers that you can work well in a huge company as a tech
lead even though you haven't done that before. Find ing someone who can vouch
for you in that respect (a VC, executive at the company etc) will help you get
there. Good luck

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nicholas73
I had a similar experience recently with a well funded startup. There is no
doubt that I can do the job well, as I helped with one of their engineers as a
vendor. I corrected one of their components several times, when my contact
there reached out to me for advice.

But my resume wasn't bulletproof (decent school, some job hopping) and I
didn't express the requisite awe about their product or technical tasks (I
gave my assessment that they have a good business plan but should expect
modest growth, and the engineering tasks needed would be tedious to anyone
honest). That's all I can think of, because I sure as hell didn't answer any
questions incorrectly.

Also, for all my efforts, they ghosted on me afterwards.

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leninfish
I think you're right - it is an insider's club. Looks like you have pretty
solid credentials. Unfortunately the corporate-capitalist system has more than
enough resource (despite their whining about STEM shortages - debunked here:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-
crisis-i...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-
myth)) to enable them to play around with people and cause this soul-searching
angst. Stories like yours break my heart and make me fear the future.

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imauld
To play Devils's advocate here:

"My experience is great and perfect and in demand and they just can't see it"

Have you considered that you may not be presenting your experience the best
way? You said you grew a team from 2 to 16, over what period of time? A month?
A year? Expanding a team by 14 people over a month is very different
experience than doing it over the course of a year. Perhaps instead of framing
your experience as "I have what you're looking for" you can frame it as "I
haven't done exactly what you are looking for but I am ready to step up to
it."

Speaking as someone completely on the outside of your situation it's possible
that the people doing the interviewing are looking for X and your offering
them Y and telling them it's X. This may make them feel like you don't really
know what they are looking for.

Once again, I'm just trying to look at your situation form the other side. I'm
not trying to belittle your experience.

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sjg007
No.. but it is a tribe, "are you one of us" e.g. white boarding +
algorithm/data structures. You may have better luck at slightly larger
companies that are past the startup phase. Buy a whiteboard and have some (CS)
friends over, practice. My experience has been that "experience" doesn't
matter as much as the fundamentals do and being a nice reasonable person. The
experience and degree get you the interview... the fundamentals land the job.

When explaining your accomplishments, put them in context they can understand.
This isn't technical specific (unless shared) but rather at the more abstract
(business) level.

There's the interview kickstart guy on here too. He runs a course that gets
you in shape. You get interviewed by employees at the big companies which can
only help. Triplebyte here also does a pre-screen for YC companies.

Good luck!

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DrNuke
Apart of interviewing as a skill that can be improved, do not overthink your
situation, it may be much simpler than that: getting chosen and hired from the
unemployed pool is much more difficult than jumping ship while being employed.
Your failure, if you want to use this term in this context, may be being
unemployed, especially true in tinderised environments aka startups and/or
very young workforce. Your best shot is probably restart a bit lower in the
ladder and therefore make your way up again from within.

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tucaz
I'm a Brazilian guy with no experience in SV or the US market for that matter
but with some experience working and hiring people. I have one question for
you and forgive me if it sounds blunt, but it's an honest question.

How come that after 16 years in the same market you have no reference or
contact with people in a position to help you find a job?

I find it very hard for a person with so many accomplishments to not have a
single contact to vouch for you or that wants to work with you. Have you
thought about it?

~~~
svreject
Olá! Interessante notar que é brasileiro porque também sou.

To answer your question, of course I have references, amazing references even,
just not anyone inside the companies that I'm applying to. One of the weird
things is how none of these companies even care about my references,
everything boils down to a series of 45-minute 1:1 interviews.

~~~
tucaz
Opa!

What I meant is, none of the people you know has asked you to come work
with/for them?

I have some 12 years of experience and after my first gig I never had to take
an interview and go through hiring process again.

Now I'm working as an H1B in the US and even this happened because of someone
I worked a few years before. No interview or weird process except for the VISA
thing.

And I don't think I'm an exception. What I learned is that people usually
build a network of people and work with them most of their life.

~~~
svreject
Well a big part of this is that I'm trying to get into slightly larger
companies than I've been at in the past, and the companies are brand name SV
companies with very high standards where they tend to have pretty rigid hiring
processes even for referrals. I know a handful of people at these companies,
but none of them are hiring managers, and none of them are from my most recent
two jobs (ie. the last decade) to be able to vouch for my recent experience.
Also, out of a 16 year career, only 5 of those years were in SV, the other 11
were split between London and US flyover country, so my network is pretty
dilute in SF.

Truth be told though, I haven't reached out to much of my network because I
don't just want any random job to pay the bills, I am looking for a specific
kind of company and experience. If it keeps going like this though I will
probably need to broaden my selection.

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crypto5
I think it is not about SV, but about CTO level positions..

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auganov
So you did get an offer from 1? 1 in 10 is not that bad?

