

Ask HN: Want to join a startup, only have Fortune 500 experience - anon223

I am a developer with nearly 15 years of experience, and I'd like to join a startup.<p>The problem is that all my experience is in "uninteresting" problem domains, mostly banking. On top of that, all of my recent professional experience is with .Net (since 2000).<p>I live in the Midwest right now, and would like to move to a more startup friendly city to join a company working on interesting problems.<p>The problem is that I don't really have a network in any startup hubs.<p>I have done a little Ruby on the side, and am trying to learn Scala right now. There isn't really a startup community in the city I'm in, so I don't think it's possible for me to try to join one here.<p>What should I be doing to improve my chances of joining a startup that's working on interesting problems? I feel like I can pick up other languages reasonably well, but I'm not sure which language stack is predominant in startup hubs right now. Besides technology decisions, I'm not sure how else I can help improve my chances.
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percept
Ruby/Rails is predominant in the startup world now. Regardless of the language
you're probably going to want to build something for show and tell as soon as
you can.

You can host on Heroku and of course having viewable code on GitHub is
important, too (how about a simple finance-related library culled from your
experience?).

There was discussion earlier this year about the Great Chicago Ruby Developer
Shortage, so that may be an option (and of course SF if you're really willing
to move).

Sometimes I think startups undervalue experience while over-emphasizing open
source contributions; however the flip side is they're more likely to give
someone with less experience a chance if they can see some code, especially in
big cities with the most demand.

Good luck!

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raghava
I feel that am sort of a younger version of you, on the other side of planet.
6 years with an Indian IT major (in a product unit, a million dollar banking
product). Though I don't find my experience to be in "uninteresting" problem
domains; as throughout my stay, I have been in the most technically intensive
track within. Worked on a lot of code generators, internal tools and some
system level stuff.

However, I find it very apprehensive and intimidating interviewing/applying
for a startup. Few startups rejected my application simply because I am from a
BigCo.

Thanks for the post, few of the responses here might help me too!

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andymoe
I think there is a lot of money to be made by startups that take on some of
those uninteresting banking/financial domains - look for one of them. Also,
take a look at Advent Software [1] if you are at all interested in moving to
San Francisco. They are not a startup but they have some things going for them
and they use .Net pretty extensively these days. A move like that could get
you half way and you can then begin to develop your network.

[1] <http://www.advent.com>

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icey
Do you have any open source contributions? If not, are there any projects you
could contribute to? There are many .net open source projects that could use a
hand.

At the very least, it will give people a chance to see what sort of work you
do if they want to see more than what's on your resume.

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rawsyntax
if you're worried about the startup community in your city, you can always try
telecommuting

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jsavimbi
> The problem is that I don't really have a network in any startup hubs.

My company is located in Boston, and we recently hired a guy out of Chicago
based on a posting he made in a Scala forum and a half day of interviews with
the team. It's very competitive out there right now, so a person with fifteen
years experience, eleven in .Net and an interest in learning new technologies
is going to be in high demand. Don't box yourself in as we also do [some] C,
C++, Java and even PHP. They key to being an asset to a startup is having
domain expertise but also being readily adaptable to providing solutions for
the myriad of cases that arise when you're chasing business.

If you're worried about people not giving you your due because you don't
subscribe to a particular language or framework, then you're better off not
working with them as that's a warning sign of entrenchment.

You're at a point where you can basically target the companies where you'd
want to work versus taking whatever is available. Go forth and do likewise.
Good luck!

~~~
mattblalock
This.

