

Ask HN: What do you think of a founder's apprentice position? - VicT11

I'm interested in working with an early stage venture with a strong founding team, as an opportunity to learn and as a way to get my foot in the door with the industry in SF. I'm looking to get involved, and even work for free (say 1-2 months) for an opportunity to get involved.<p>My questions are: Do you think this is a position that start ups could benefit from and would be open to?<p>Do you have any advice on how to approach them?<p>Any in particular that could use this?<p>Any other thoughts?<p>Any advice and opinions are very much appreciated! Thanks.
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robfitz
Depends a lot on what role you're looking to fill.

There's very little meaningful strategy/business work that can be moved to a
new hire. Most very young companies still have terrible development practices,
which makes it hard to quickly plug in a new technical hire.

I think there are three possible ways it might work.

1) You're willing to act as an executive assistant, doing whatever crap work
comes up (market research, building slide decks, arranging meetings, filtering
email, buying lunch) in return for exposure

2) They see you as a strong potential future hire and are thus willing to
invest in training you up for 1-2 months as a sort of extended job interview.

3) They have a non-critical, self-contained side project you can come in and
completely own. Examples include wireframing/designing a new site or feature,
beginning a real content marketing strategy, understanding & documenting
existing code & processes, etc.

#2 is the best for you, since you'll get "real" work. #3 is good, but I've
seen teams give something which is a little bit too optional and then never
integrate the final result, making it a worthless portfolio piece. #1 is the
most boring and you'll probably have to switch companies after the stint to be
considered a "real" team member, but it's probably the easiest to get into and
would be a chance to trial the startup experience in general.

~~~
VicT11
That's some solid advice and insight. Thank you rob. My challenge is finding
that fit now.

