
Why you should, and shouldn’t, join a startup - madmax108
https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/
======
kodablah
> If you’re seriously considering both options — a traditional company and a
> startup — here are some points to consider.

There are so many definitions of "startup", but given the common one of "VC
funded trying to get big", I'd say there's a third company type between these
two I dub a "starting-up". It's an early traditional company that's in the
black but is not poised to go through the roof or become bloated with
employees or ask a ton of its employees. Almost like a lifestyle business.
Maybe it has tiny investment, but definitely not big startup monies. It has
half of each including the bad (bad mgmt, unlikely riches, few benefits, etc)
and the good (bit more stability, no overwork, etc).

Maybe it's seen as a startup or traditional by most, but I see them as a
really comfortable niche. You get to work on side projects, go home (or work
from home) with decent hours, and just relax. Often if small/early enough, if
they do strike it rich, you're included.

~~~
nostrademons
I worked for one of those for a couple years that had started as a "startup"
when I did my internships with them but had morphed into "slow-growing
lifestyle business" by the time I left.

I'd argue that you get most of the downsides of both with few of the upsides.
You don't actually get stability with this setup; you're a couple of customer
cancellations away from layoffs at any time. There is no career advancement.
You pretty much don't have a shot at getting rich. It doesn't get you much of
a resume boost (other than being employed) or much cred at parties. The
workload is still fairly high, though not as insane as a fast grower.

The one thing it does have is that your learning rate will still be fairly
high, and you have a sense of independence & responsibility that's akin to
what a startup would give you. For the time period I was there (first year out
of college), that perhaps was just what I needed. I wouldn't recommend making
a career out of it, though.

~~~
kodablah
> You pretty much don't have a shot at getting rich

I agree with most of your points except this one as it's very situational.
Maybe not as an intern, but having real albeit small equity in one of these
tiny things can be negotiated, and they can get sold. Unlikely, sure, but the
possibility is there.

But in general it's about what you're optimizing for. You're points are right
for optimizing for intra-company career advancement, resume material, or party
cred. But if you have other pursuits, especially with side projects, kids, or
just general comfort it can be a good choice.

~~~
nostrademons
My point is that companies that are slow-growing are rarely sold, and when
they are, they usually aren't sold for much. The eye-popping valuations for
companies like Whatsapp, Instagram, and YouTube were all based on growth, and
on strategic fit with the acquirer. When an acquirer wants you for these
reasons, there are large time pressures and asymmetries of information you can
leverage to extract a lot more money than the financials would dictate.
(Whatsapp, for example, sold for something like 1000x revenues.)

Small slow-growing companies almost always sell based on financials, and
typically for lower multiples than an equivalent large public company would
(because their revenue is more concentrated in a few customers and so they're
more exposed to revenue risk). I've heard 2.5x revenues or 15x profits as
numbers commonly batted around; above this and there's virtually no reason to
buy the company vs. invest in public stocks or apartment buildings. On a
typical 10-person company that makes a profit of about $300K on revenues of
about $2M, this comes out to a sale price of roughly $5M by both valuation
measures. Own 1% equity (this is generous, and would usually indicate employee
#1 or 2) of a $5M acquisition and you get $50K, which is probably a lot less
than the salary you forego over a few years by not joining a big company.

~~~
mi100hael
On the flip side, I think there are a higher number of small companies willing
to pay a bit above market + bonuses for real talent vs. large established
companies that are constrained by HR processes. If you're good at selling
yourself, you may be able to make more than you would at a big company.

~~~
eropple
I literally just started a job that corresponds exactly to this. "We need
really good principal engineers and we'll fight to get them."

(We're hiring, btw. Email's in my profile.)

------
mpodlasin
It's funny how my experience is exactly reverse. Since I joined startup I
learn much less, since we can't afford experimentation and there are no other
front end devs here, so I don't get a chance to learn backend stuff, since
someone has to do front end part.

I also hoped to learn some business stuff, but most of it happens behind
closed doors between founders and investors while you code boring crud
application.

~~~
grosjona
I've been back and forth between startups and corporations. I think I know
what you mean in technical terms; that corporations use more advanced
(rigorous) processes and tools and so it feels like you're learning more (it
feels more precise/correct) - That said, I think that a lot of the stuff that
you learn in big companies are anti-patterns when you consider the big
picture; a lot of the time, you learn technical solutions to problems which
don't really need to exist to begin with.

For example, one reason why many corporations push really hard on having 100%
unit and integration test coverage is because they have such high employee
turnover that they can't rely on their engineers to maintain their own code;
corporations have to assume that engineers who work on their projects are
completely unfamiliar with the code - In this case, automated tests are the
only way to maintain the integrity and stability of the code base. The time
cost of maintaining all these trivial unit tests is ignored (even though the
cost is actually very significant; not to mention that these tests lock down
the code and thereby discourage refactoring and experimentation).

Corporate processes are designed around the assumptions that engineers don't
care and can't be trusted. This is a very inefficient approach to building
software. Personally, I'd rather my project have code with 0% unit test
coverage written by a team of involved engineers than code with 100% test
coverage written by a team of indifferent engineers.

~~~
plicense
> For example, one reason why many corporations push really hard on having
> 100% unit and integration test coverage is because they have such high
> employee turnover that they can't rely on their engineers to maintain their
> own code

I'm in a similar situation as yours and have switched between big corporations
and startups and now at a big co again. I used to have the opinion that unit
tests are a time sink, but what changed my mind was the iteration speed unit
tests gave me. Without them, to test that my code actually worked, I would
either deploy to a test environment (or prod in the worst case) and if it
didn't work, then that just meant a longer feedback loop. What I realized
after starting to have solid unit tests was that I catch issues much earlier
in the pipeline and when I finally release code to test, it works 99% of the
time. The only time I've had bugs in test env was because of some implicit
assumptions in my mocks in the unit test. If you think about it, that lets me
iterate faster by pooling in lots of changes and releasing with confidence.

I think its natural to be biased towards testing in a real environment as
opposed to unit tests, as it is more rewarding to see your code work and do
what its supposed to do versus seeing it work in a stubbed out environment.

Unit tests to me are more about iteration speed and release confidence, than
about corporations not trusting engineers (which is also true).

~~~
grosjona
I would only write unit tests for very complex classes whose logic cannot be
simplified into something readable. Personally, I rarely introduce bugs at the
unit level, almost 100% of my bugs are related to how classes/functions
interact with each other - I find that bugs at the unit level are easy to
track down (and often they will be caught by integration tests anyway). I
prefer integration tests because they traverse more code paths and don't need
to be updated so often. The main complaints I hear about integration tests is
that they're slow and brittle but this is only the case if they rely on
external microservices (or external data stores) and if test cases aren't
properly isolated from each other. I use integration test cases as part of my
development flow.

------
j_m_b
One thing that seems to be very common in startups is nepotism. People often
start companies with their friends and family. This leads to the company
having a built-in clique. If you are an "off-the-street" hire, meaning someone
who came in because they submitted a resume and not because they knew someone,
expect that you're going to be second-guessed while the original people are
going to love each other's ideas.

~~~
mizzao
The flip side of 'nepotism' is that you're much more likely to be successful
working with people that you know well or have worked with before.

------
jinonoel
"Why join a startup #1: Acccess to jobs you're unqualified for"

Had a good laugh at this, because it's completely true in my case. 7 years ago
became the "data scientist" at a 4-person startup before I even knew what a
data scientist actually does. Parlayed that into further data science jobs at
somewhat bigger startups. Now I'm Head of Data Science at a stable traditional
tech company making good money and this likely wouldn't have been possible
without that first startup job.

~~~
therealdrag0
Happens at other companies too. I have a friend who studied and worked only in
EE, then got a job at Microsoft doing data-analytic focused work.

I had only done BE work, then at mid-sized-co I started taking front-end work
for fun, and did that full time for 4 months. My work was appreciated even
though I had no FE experience.

Big companies might care more about qualifications, but they can also float
longer ramp-up times if you're not qualified.

------
colechristensen
>But when you compare it to the defined structure of an established company,
it just doesn’t compare. Big companies have employee onboarding, management
training, goal setting they’ve been doing for years — all of the things that
give people guidance and mentorship on what they need to do to be successful.

Goal setting, training, onboarding... these are processes, process doesn't
make good management. The problems with startups is many of them are filled
with employees who have had little experience outside of that company. Good
managers are created with experience. Experiencing good and bad managers and
employees in a few different environments is what creates good managers. Not
HR policy.

It is a good idea for your career to work in a few places for a few years a
piece before starting a new business or joining a small startup. Good managers
can't be created with policy and training.

~~~
paulie_a
A good manager is also actively coaching their employees too. Training is
important, but there is a distinct difference between the two.

~~~
scarface74
In 20+ years at 7 companies with 10 managers, I’ve only been “coached” by one
and that was 20 years into my career as the software architect.

Part of the problem was that I came into my first role as the only developer
and I was responsible for building a fairly complex system from scratch. I
then left and spent another 9 years at another company where I became an
“expert beginner”. ([https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-
of-th...](https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-
expert-beginner/)).

10 years and five jobs later, I have a manager who is technical sound, keeps
up with the latest functionality of the cloud platform we are using, and can
give good suggestions about what areas I should research to implement
something, but I still have to do the nitty gritty details. I actually enjoy
that from a manager.

------
jonny_eh
A big advantage to working at a BigCo is how it looks on your résume, or the
"About Us" page of your own future startup.

I've seen so many hiring managers trip over themselves to hire former FANG
employees, without knowing anything else about them. It's like graduating from
an ivy league school.

There's also way more networking opportunities at big companies, merely
because there's so many more people.

~~~
gaius
_It 's like graduating from an ivy league school._

It is exactly like that. An optimal start to a career would be graduate from a
top 10 college, 2 years at Google and/or 2 years at Goldman Sachs. That person
would be guaranteed an interview anywhere they wanted probably for the rest of
their careers. Not saying it’s good or bad but there is no denying the power
of that kind of signal.

------
dumbfounder
I think it's interesting that the major point is that you will learn a lot,
but he also says that you should not expect to be mentored or given any real
direction. This is definitely my experience, but it doesn't mean that startups
teach you these things, it means that you have to teach yourself these things
and you are in an environment where you are forced to do it.

You can also do this and keep your day job if you start your own side project.
Obviously it might not be an intense as joining a small startup, but you get
to keep your day job pay. Self-motivation is a requirement though.

~~~
mkozlows
There are a lot of things that you simply can't learn by yourself, though. The
practicalities of doing things on a team, at scale, are just out of scope for
personal side projects.

~~~
meesles
Agreed. The more I grow, the more I realize it is unrealistic to develop
skills in scaling architecture, massive-scale software, etc. with only your
own projects.

You either need to contribute to large projects, find large projects to hire
you, or push for scaling patterns which may be out-of-scope for your current
job.

This is actually something I've been thinking about lately: how can I
train/practice these meaningful skills without the risk of damaging a
reputation or losing sensitive data in real systems?

~~~
strikelaserclaw
This is a real problem in trying to learn how to scale systems. I love
learning about scaling but I've never personally worked on high volume
applications, there's only so much you can do by reading stuff or watching
tutorials or emulating high volume in your side projects. There's so many
x-factors that come into play that you can only learn on the job.

~~~
wolco
Using services like loader.io I could simulate high traffic. That opened up a
new world. I was able to test different configurations under stress to find
the setup that performed the best for a specific application. Highly recommend
stress or load testing.

------
munchbunny
There's an important implied point that isn't really talked about in this
article: the points about learning in startups are mostly only true if you are
a founder or an early employee. The definition of "early" depends on the
eventual size of the company.

If you are employee #10 and the company grows to 500, you will have learned a
_ton_ from the journey. But if you are employee #100, likely not much actually
changes for you, and if you join as employee #500, you likely won't learn much
from the journey to 1000, if your company makes it to 1000.

After spending a bunch of years in startup land without seeing great success,
I still learned a ton as a founder/early employee though, and I absolutely
don't regret doing it. However, I've concluded that if you're looking at
opportunities to be a mid-late employee, either make sure you're paid well for
it, or go to a big company.

------
k__
Good points.

You'll end up in chaotic work environments, but you'll learn so much,
especially how to solve the problems that arise with these environments.

These are the skills you need for your own startup.

If you "just need a job to pay the rent" it probably isn't for you.

------
sbinthree
I think the argument about existing at the extremes probably applies here. If
I am going to work for an unreliable, unknown, unstable company, I'd rather
own a big chunk and have serious skin in the game and control of my destiny.
If not, give me the most well funded, monopolized, cushy job possible where I
can accept that my agency is a small price to pay for very high standard of
living. Applies to apartments too (live in a giant building downtown, for the
benefits, or in the middle of nowhere, but not in the suburbs where you are
lose-lose).

------
jamestimmins
There's an unspoken thread here that shows the benefit of startup communities,
which is that they help you survive failure much more easily. It would appear
that the unsuccessful ventures didn't severely limit access to opportunities
and compel him to go work for a big company. If his community had been
different, or if he had listened to the well-meaning people who undoubtedly
recommended that he get a 'real job', this likely wouldn't have been the case.

------
marsrover
I’ve learned much more at a normal company (1) than startups (2).

I think giving people jobs they’re unqualified for is a large part of that.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I've worked at several startups and some big companies.

Doing things you've never done before, and being thrown into the brink is I
think the best opportunity to learn.

This happens without necessarily being pushed into roles, merely by the scope
of activities one might be involved in.

You can work at a large company, as an Engineer, and literally never learn how
a company actually works.

A lot of things that go on at big companies are dumb - but so many people
there have no context for knowing one way or another, they think it's normal.
What they are 'learning' is bad behaviours and some things on courses etc..

Granted - in a specialized discipline - you may have the opportunity to work
on projects that fly or not, or take time. For example, if you are doing some
kind of big data implementation that's going to take 2 years, but it takes 3
but the company has the resources to handle it and you've been able to do it
'properly' \- that's great and it's a kind of learning you may not get at a
startup.

~~~
fyfy18
> A lot of things that go on at big companies are dumb - but so many people
> there have no context for knowing one way or another, they think it's
> normal. What they are 'learning' is bad behaviours and some things on
> courses etc..

Working at a startup can be exactly the same. Especially if it’s staffed by
inexperienced people full of ego :-)

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yes but you see the effects immediately. Small means outcomes are a function
of the people there.

In big companies, people can do nothing and the gears keep turning.

------
TomMckenny
> ...because they just wanted to work on interesting frontier projects...

This is the exact reason I have exclusively sought out startups in the past.
But quite frankly the Bay Area is simply to expensive to do that anymore.

I deeply miss that life and still tinker with side projects. But if that city
can not solve it's cost of living crisis, there will continue to be a smaller
and smaller pool of people that can afford the startup life.

~~~
justinzollars
This is a big problem with the Bay Area! I often wonder if I need to move for
a few years to get something started elsewhere.

~~~
justinzollars
Also I had a question on this very topic if anyone has any insight:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744930)

------
markatkinson
An anecdotal experience I had was that working at a large corporate was an
incredibly pleasant experience. This is obviously due to where I worked being
the type of company that was very generous to its employees, in all ways
except remuneration which is why I eventually had to go elsewhere.

I still dream of going back there. Due to the size of the company and it being
around for so long. I found my job was incredibly well defined and my
deliverable's where always right in front of me and measured regularly. This
made it very easy to deliver more than was expected of me. Due to this really
tight feedback loop between you and the company your career moves forward at
an encouraging pace.

It can take some extra effort from your end to move horizontally within the
company but where I worked it was a massive stepping stone and I found I could
really leverage off of the mechanisms put in place by the company to reduce
employee turnover.

My point is you really feel pampered and cared for. I reckon this has a lot to
do with the company, as well as my immediate managers being total rock stars
at their jobs.

Anyway, now I am in a startup in the truest sense of the word. First employee
through the door. Second developer and third person on site. This is not
comfortable, and I do not feel pampered. In fact I am considerably more
stressed but hell's teeth, nothing makes you up your emotional
maturity/expertise/business game as much as this. Much like the post eludes to
I suppose.

------
WilliamEdward
The problem with startups has always been a fundamental one, and not really
one you can change without redefining what a startup actually is - people try
way too hard to start them.

Let me explain; it's reported very very often on YC that 90% of startups fail,
and while a lot of these points in the article are disguised as separate
ideas, they're all part of the same problem being that people want to make
something from nothing, hence why it is called a startup. Traditional
businesses begin by pivoting off an exiting business or product, whereby if
you're a chemist working for DuPont and develop a new chemical, they might
make a subsidiary to produce that. That process is way easier, the money and
infrastructure is already there, and everyone is already neatly on board.

Contrast this with a startup. You're probably young, lacking financial and
networking support, education, and many other things. You want to make a
product the world has likely never seen before, completely from scratch. Well,
of course your management is going to be shit. Of course you're going to find
shit employees. Of course it's unlikely to succeed. This article was
completely unnecessary because everyone should know by now what a startup
entails, and that it is fundamentally unstable, but that doesn't mean it's not
important as a venture and concept.

~~~
aaavl2821
In non-tech industries big companies actually have a lot of trouble
innovating, or driving resources and infrastructure to new initiatives.
Startups exist to overcome this lack of maneuverability at big companies.
Often the entrepreneurs are seasoned execs from these big companies who can't
realize their vision under big company constraints

Biopharma is a perfect example. It represents over 20% of venture funding.
Most entrepreneurs are 50+ years old. Big companies get orders of magnitude
lower return on r&d investment than VC backed companies. And the returns have
actually been better than tech startups in the last few years

~~~
slededit
An incumbent's return will be weighed down by lost share from their legacy
business. Colloquially known as the innovators dilemma.

Even if they overcome it they will still have lower returns than a startup who
steals 100% of their market share from incumbents.

------
lkrubner
I hope I won't bore people if I repeat a point that I've made before: far more
startups die of suicide than homicide. The tendency to self-sabotage, among
entrepreneurs, is surprisingly strong. And I’m hardly the only one who has
noticed this odd fact. The great business guru Peter Drucker made the point
repeatedly. In his 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker includes
a long chapter on the tendency of entrepreneurs to destroy the innovation
they’d created.

For those interested, I've written about this elsewhere:

\-----------------------------

We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and
resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses
that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds
healthy ways to deal with the stress.

Each person matters. Established firms will have a bureaucracy that can ensure
some stability, even when an eccentric individual is in a leadership position,
but when a company consists of just two or three people, and one of them
reacts neurotically to challenges, the company is doomed.

From 2002 to 2008 I worked with an entrepreneur who had inherited a few
million dollars when he was twenty-five. He admired musicians and considered
the music industry glamorous, so he built a sound studio. It never made money.
The bands that stopped by were broke. Those few who came up with a hit song
mostly signed with a major label which, typically, had its own recording
studio.

I met him in 2002 when his focus was shifting to the Web. I had developed some
software that allowed people to create weblogs. Typepad, which fostered
something similar to what I’d built, had just raised $23 million in funding.
Surely we could do the same?

Our difficulties were self-imposed. We might go like maniacs on some project
for four months, and when we were on the brink of unveiling it to the public,
he would grow bored with it and move on to something else. The first time this
happened, and I asked him his reasons, he improvised some arguments that
sounded plausible; there were already too many startups doing the same thing.
But this pattern, where he walked away from a project just when we were ready
to introduce it to the public, repeated itself.

What led to this self-sabotage? As I met his whole family over the years I got
to see the sad dynamics that ate at him. A modest business success would not
be enough, in fact, it would leave him embarrassed. Only the creation of
something as big as Google would suffice. But to grow that big, we would first
need to be small, and that was the step he had no patience for.

As the years went by and he burned away all the money he’d inherited, the
stress wrecked him. His self-image became increasingly grandiose. He told
people that he was a visionary, someone who was able to tell what the future
would look like. Late at night he would smoke weed and read articles on
Slashdot and TechCrunch and then put together an amalgam of words that seemed
full of the bright hopes of humanity, which he offered up as our marketing:
“The Universe is fundamentally electromagnetic yet non-sentient, and we are
sentient but only partly electromagnetic; the Internet is the ultimate
harnessing of sentience to the fundamental forces of the Universe. Therefore
our software will put you, our customer, in the driver’s seat of real-time
conscious human evolution.” Later, when he wrote up our business plan, he put
these two sentences in the executive summary. I’m not joking.

We had one modest success, in 2007. His girlfriend, a yoga instructor,
suggested we build an online marketplace where yoga instructors could sell
videos, as well as other health advice. This site was an immediate success.
Within the first month it was profitable. We were written up in all of the
major yoga magazines. It seemed obvious to me that we should use the same
technology to build a series of similar sites. We could do a site devoted to
cooking videos, another devoted to tennis, another devoted to golf. Indeed,
just a few years later, the team behind Revolutiongolf.com did exactly what we
could have done.

My business partner, however, was enraged by the success of the yoga site. He
had burned through several million dollars chasing ideas that he felt were
“visionary” and then his girlfriend came up with a simple idea that turned
into our one true hit. To this day, it remains a popular yoga site. We could
have built an empire around that site, but instead his girlfriend’s success
left him bitter.

[https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/0998997617/)

~~~
sonnyblarney
" “The Universe is fundamentally electromagnetic yet non-sentient, and we are
sentient but only partly electromagnetic; the Internet is the ultimate
harnessing of sentience to the fundamental forces of the Universe. Therefore
our software will put you, our customer, in the driver’s seat of real-time
conscious human evolution.” "

Ah ah ah shha hshhs ahaha.

That's golden!

I'm sorry that you mightn't have had the life experience to realize how
clueless this guy was earlier, but hey - you learned.

Though, sometimes the most offbeat people truly have the greatest things
going, it's really hard to tell sometimes. It gets easier with age, I think
the 'crazy realists' tend to have deep knowledge of something and focus on an
actual problem.

------
PeOe
I started a startup together with a colleague. It´s a lot of work and you
don´t get rich (as you said) but there are so many other points that matter.
The teams are friendlier, open-minded and are more family than employees. You
share time together and work is not strictly planned. Yes, you can learn a lot
but you need to work hard to do so and failure is part of it.

------
exabrial
I work for startups because middle management is a mind numbing disease. I
certainly am not maximizing my potential earnings, but I'm maximizing my
happiness and I find it really fulfilling to take pride in my work and leave
the office knowing I accomplished something.

------
telltruth
Just love Justin's "no BS" style. When I see folks straight out of college try
to get hired at FANG (or even worse, tier 2/3 companies), I feel sorry for
them. They would have little clue about getting in to daily grind that sucks
their soul away little by little for some whims of incompetent higher ups. At
starups, you would get in to even more grind but it's just of different kind
and everything you learn and experience would be 2X-10X faster. If you are
straight out of college and try to join a company with > 1000 people, you are
not doing yourself a favor. On the other hand, if you have kids, mortgage and
car payments then FANG is your best friend.

------
jonathankoren
I joined a startup for stability once. It was _way_ more stable than the
megacorp I left.

~~~
gkoberger
I think it depends on your definition of stability.

Megacorp: The company won't disappear overnight, but you might get tossed
around different positions and have projects you've spent a year on shut down
out of nowhere.

Startup: The company itself may shut down, but in the meantime everything is
more focused and transparent.

~~~
tlb
In some sense the startup is lower cognitive load, because everything is great
until it all implodes and then you look for a new startup. A punctuated
equilibrium. At a megacorp, everything is vaguely doomed all the time, but
never so clearly doomed that it's obvious when to make a move, and you spend a
lot of time reading political tea leaves so as not to end up on the wrong
project.

The worst thing that most big companies do is continue to employ good people
on long death marches.

~~~
titanomachy
"Vaguely doomed all the time" nicely much sums up my most recent bigcorp
experience.

Easy to end up on a soul-destroying maintenance project that you can't leave
because it's business-critical and nobody else wants to do it.

------
yashap
This piece did feel a little PR/recruit-y, and a bit name drop-y (though
obviously the author is a bit of a startup celebrity himself), but even still,
it really resonated with me. All the pros and cons have been dead on with my
experience. Especially “do work you’re unqualified for”, and that being a
great way to learn super quickly.

------
strikelaserclaw
how does one find startups to work for? I enjoy intensity, chaos, and learning
in my job and my big corp job is just not providing that. I'm planning on
moving to one of the tech hubs next year and trying to work at a startup of
sorts, not sure where to start

~~~
gkoberger
I've never met a startup that wasn't desperate to hire :) That being said,
many startups ignore inbound applications, because the signal to noise ratio
is so bad.

If you want to work at a startup, I'd recommend a few of the following:

1/ Apply for A-List, Hired.com or Triplebyte

2/ Look at Who's Hiring posts on HN

3/ Update your LinkedIn and AngelList to seem hire-able (but not TOO hire-
able!) Use a real pic of yourself, have a personal website with a resume, and
fill out info about jobs you've had. (Related: put your name/info in your HN
profile!)

4/ Have friends at startups? Talk to them! Everyone at a startup knows someone
who is hiring.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
awesome points, in your experience does having experience in big corp tech (am
a .NET dev) hamper your success in getting hired at a startup? I really do
enjoy the .NET world and invested many hours in it, i would hate that to be a
crutch.

~~~
gkoberger
Good and bad news! The bad news is there's way fewer .NET startups out there
(most are Ruby/Node/Python). But the good news is that you'll have a lot less
competition for jobs!

StackShare has a way to search job listings by language:

[https://stackshare.io/match?selectedTools=dot-
net&searchOper...](https://stackshare.io/match?selectedTools=dot-
net&searchOperator=AND)

------
curo
I got rejected from YC at the interview stage, and Justin sent me the
rejection email. Great frigg'n guy. I protested and he out-classed me by
replying to my objection.

Also, this article is spot on. This is a back pocket article because this
question comes up a lot.

------
nikhilkalegregg
join a startup if you are a founding partner, believe in the product, have or
believe in some vision or value that you can add to a product, and if you get
along with the people (and are ideally around the same age as the main
founders). Otherwise, in my opinion, do not join that theoretical startup--and
start your own project.

~~~
nikhilkalegregg
also id add--regarding picking partners--one thing to be aware of is how your
partner treats others--as nice as he/she treats you initially (whilst trying
to recruit you) keep an eye on how he/she treats others he is not trying to
recruit, because at the end of the day, that will ultimately determine how
he/she will treat you. I overlooked these red flags to my detriment--and as
soon as our company got required my CEO (who did next to nothing) sold our
company's IP (which I as the CTO and only software engineer wrote alone) and
cut me out --leaving me with nothing except the distinction of having sold a
startup--while he pocketed all the profits, earned that distinction and went
to business school (with all the other twats who train to do the same thing).
For all the technical founders out there, do not join a business founder
without vetting him/her in a variety of situations and trust his/her heart
with your destiny.

------
bradlys
I get that this is a just a PR piece to attract new talent but I think you're
selling a startup short still.

Learning is hardly a thing at startups. So many people are incredibly junior
and know nothing about the industry or tech to begin with. (I mean, who else
would take such low pay?) Yes, you can get to get pushed into unqualified
roles and learn from it - depending on who you are. But that's really only at
the cost of others - you're maximizing for one person and not the group. So
it's really a startup is a system that maximizes the happiness of only a few
individuals - which we already know with how stock gets treated. (Founders
frequently being the only ones who get rich no matter how early on an employee
you are) e.g. Wow, X got promoted to be the team lead/manager. X is definitely
not qualified and, in fact, makes the most productive members of the team more
unhappy by being a manager now. This only happened because the rest of
management is desperate, broke, and can't afford anyone who is a good manager.
People under X will leave the company. I've seen it happen a lot at startups
and it results in crazy churn. Same with more technical decisions. Seeing
people promoted to Senior/Staff who have are barely better than their junior
counterparts (just more arrogance). A lot of folks recognize dumpster fires
when they see it and bounce. They're is also so little growth opportunity once
those positions are taken unless you're on a rocket ship.

In terms of learning tech: A lot of tech is also outdated at startups compared
to big N. There are large enterprise companies that are using even older tech
but there's no reason to join those as they pay on the same scale as startups
(And your job security is no better than at a startup). Scaling problems only
exist once you've hit rocket ship status (so who cares about anything) -
whereas they're everywhere at a big company. There are startups that are
trying to use the latest and greatest and do interesting things but the number
I interview with who are using outdated tech seems worse than any Big N I've
interviewed with. Big N seems to be way more cutting edge (because they can
afford it in terms of resources and know it attracts talent). Upgrading tech
at a startup only happens when the company finds out no one at $Y salary with
Z options will join the company until the company updates their stack. It's
not like they can really afford it anyway. The company is so focused on
churning out features and pivoting wildly to extract any bit of $$$ that they
can out of the market while they find their cash cow (cash cow being actual
profit $$$ or just magic numbers that can increase their next round of
funding).

Anyway, back to my point about selling a startup short, I think the only
reason I'd truly consider startups is being able to choose the people you work
with and the problems you solve (although that could change easily once the
company finds out it needs to pivot - again). There was nothing about that
here and it's obvious from reading the article that it's all about that but
it's not brought up. You chose to work with your brother and all these folks.
You don't get these choices at a big company. You're mostly thrown together
and just deal with it.

~~~
justin
Good point. I guess I've always taken choosing who you work with for granted.
That being said if you join a startup you don't exactly get to choose who you
work with any more than if you join a team at a big company.

~~~
bradlys
With a startup, you have choice before you even join. You frequently know who
you'll be working with. Not deeply but you've met them and can make some kind
of assessment (to the same degree that they do about you). I can filter out
companies when I meet the people and know they're not what I want to work
with.

At a big company, I am saying yes to a company - not the people. Team
selection is later (if at all) and you can be a victim of circumstance. You
don't usually meet the people you'll be working with before you take up an
offer at Big N or what not.

~~~
dagw
At the last three big companies I've worked at I was directly hired by my
(future) boss to work directly in his team. In all three cases at least one
(future) co-worker was involved in the interview.

------
tribesman
I love working at a startup, there is simply no cap on number of hours i can
work.

I can meet any other employee without any appointment.

I can try my hands on accounting and legals. Go meet customers and give them
the demo when i don't feel like working.

I can collect cash from customers, take a photo of the cash and send it to
boss where he sends me a thumbs up emoji.

I often bring kids of my boss or colleagues from their school or drop their
wifes to hospital when they are sick or if their want to go to shopping when
her guy is debugging the server.

I don't have any family of my own other than a girlfriend. Doing all these
things for others give me peace and makes me feel as if i am part of their
family.

For an orphan kid, this is all i wanted.

I've helped my collegues mop whole floor when it's their turn in their
apartment building.

I don't know if i can get all this in a big company.

After this i got 10% equality in a small company. Post sale where i made 15
million and gave 10 to my girlfriend for her support. I still work there and
enjoy everyday.

You need to see where i started when i had nothing, zero saving..... No
family.

Today, I've everything and I can't complain.

~~~
_Microft
.

