

Looking for a cool job? Forget job boards, talk to angel investors - shazow
http://shazow.posterous.com/protip-for-ambitious-engineers-looking-for-a

======
joshu
Yep. I've invested in 40 or so companies and many are hiring. Job boards are
hard for early startups because the early employees are so formative that it
really is about hiring exceptional people rather than filling headcount.

------
MC27
If they are "desperately hiring," why aren't they promoting the positions?
Even mentioning them on their own websites? Putting the word out to
recruitment agents etc. Just seems strange, that's all.

~~~
shazow
They do. Many institutional angel investors have their own job boards,
especially since they hold dozens of companies in their portfolios:

<http://www.ventureloop.com/foundersfund/>
<http://www.felicisvc.com/jobs.aspx>

Smaller individual angel investors have more ad-hoc operations and haven't
bothered with streamlining hiring for their investments. This may change.

~~~
MC27
Interesting links, thanks. Start-ups interest me, but given where I live, the
development work is nearly always from new media agencies.

------
WillyF
I find a decent number of the companies that I cover (I write about companies
that are hiring) by following investors. Their job is to be up on what's next.
The only quibble that I have is that it may be tough to get an angel
investor's attention. That doesn't mean that you can't follow them on Twitter,
read their blog, and stalk them in myriad other ways.

------
shykes
If you're looking for a challenging engineering job, the Contagion Health team
is truly awesome. They think big, and with Andrey you will learn _a lot_.

~~~
contagionhealth
Aww shucks. Thanks shykes.

~~~
qq66
Out of curiosity, how did you pick the name? The word "contagion" gives me the
chills and I imagine boils on my skin. Although now, imagining this, I'm
motivated to exercise to keep myself in good health =)

------
Cmccann7
Second this. Most of the VC backed and Seed funded startup CEO's I know are
desperate for good engineers/developers/designers.

It's a good time now if you are in the job market.

------
toxicflavor
I would say the only startup worth working on is your own.

Working at someone else's startup is a recipe for getting exploited -
overworked and underpaid. And the worst thing about it is that it's all
couched in an atmosphere of guilt trips and taking-it-for-the-team.

I'm sure there are exceptions. I just haven't seen any.

I'd rather work for The Man in my day job in a cold corporate environment
where everything is explicit from the get-go, get well paid for it and crank
out code for my own startup in my free time.

~~~
jnovek
I've read this complaint many times on HN, but my real world experience just
doesn't match. All the employees from startups in our YC round, that I've met
at parties, meetups and other events seem to be pretty amped about what
they're working on.

Our engineers are free to work however many hours they choose; all I care
about is that we get stuff done. My co-founder and I certainly put in long
weeks, but I would be deeply concerned in any of our engineers put in as many
hours as we do. In fact, I am constantly reminding our engineers that they
need to maintain work/life balance because I don't want them to burn out. To
put in another way, they volunteer to work long hours and I tell them to work
less.

It doesn't makes sense to overwork engineers. Talent is hard to acquire in
Silicon Valley, so I (and most other startup founders I've met) put effort
into retaining it.

(By the way, we're hiring Ruby hackers, learn more at
[http://seeinginteractive.com/company/jobs/software-
engineers...](http://seeinginteractive.com/company/jobs/software-engineers/))

~~~
shazow
Completely agree. I totally think this is the right way to do it, and I really
hope we can sustain that model. At the very least, it'll be awesome while it
lasts. :)

