
Ask HN: Have you had trouble getting a job after a failed startup? - throwaway1979
The article about the successful female Japanese entrepreneur got me thinking. I&#x27;ve been working for the man my whole life. When I was younger, I had someone turn me down for a programming job because they said my GPA was too <i>high</i>. I thought that particular employer was an idiot but it is their call. I&#x27;m curious if there are similar biases that are faced by failed entrepreneurs. Someone can have a bias that if you did a startup once, you will likely not be a stable employee and quit after a little while to do your next startup. I&#x27;m not worried about the major markets (Silicon Valley and New York) but about the rest.
======
jasonkester
The short answer is no. Trying and failing at a startup probably won't ruin
your chances of ever getting another job.

But here's the thing. Hiring is not an exact science. There are tons of
variables in play beyond simple work experience and skill set. There's a whole
art to negotiating employment (from the employee side) that most programmer
types just don't get at all.

Engineers want everything to be a skills test. But in reality, skills come
roughly 18th in a hiring situation, way behind questions like "did this
candidate tell me any amusing anecdotes?", "was this candidate tall?", and
"did this candidate say anything that inadvertently made me look bad?"
Somewhere further down the list you might indeed find "did this candidate try
to strike out on his own and fail?", but it'll be lost in the noise.

So if you want to work on something, work on your "being a guy that a CTO
would want to have a beer with" skills. That, combined with a bit of
networking, will often let you skip the "previous work experience" and
"resume" portions of the hiring process entirely.

~~~
orenbarzilai
Not sure if it's a joke or not... work on your "being a guy that a CTO would
want to have a beer with"... is probably not the best advice.

Starting a startup and failing doesn't look bad in your CV, don't worry about
that. But if you are looking for a job, you should definitely work on your
technical skills, learn new technologies etc instead of your networking
skills...

~~~
RTigger
I don't think it's a joke at all - I know lots of companies and people (myself
included) who stress their culture and fit so much that technical skills often
fall by the wayside. Sure, we want to know if you can code, but that can
usually be figured out with a 15 minute white board test. If you're truly a
pain to work with, unable to work in a team environment, or generally not
collaborative, you probably won't get a job at my company.

Conversely, if you're a self-motivated learner, a good team member, and able
to contribute, but don't quite have the technical skills we're looking for,
we'll gladly take a training hit (usually 2 to 4 weeks) to get you up to speed
on language X in exchange for an engaged and valuable employee.

But that might just be my company.

~~~
orenbarzilai
Totally agree about that, company culture is really important. You must be a
team player, nice to work with, self-motivated, independent etc...

But """work on your "being a guy that a CTO would want to have a beer with"
skills. That, combined with a bit of networking"""

Just sounds terribly wrong.

~~~
no_wave
So do you disagree with the statement, or are you unsatisfied with the
possible reality that it represents?

~~~
orenbarzilai
The statement. When I hire ppl, I check their technical skills, social skills,
that they are smart, good people and nice to work with.

Drinking beer with me after work or good out together in the weekend isn't one
of the requirements.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, as you say, you do check if they're "good people and nice to work with"
\- the post said pretty much that, because "being the kind of person I'd like
to have a beer after work" is pretty much the same emotional reaction as
"being the kind of person that is good and nice to work with", and isn't
related to the fact if you're actually having beer after work with anyone.

------
sfjailbird
For big corporations, having been an entrepreneur is a negative on your
resumé. They will assume (probably correctly) that you prefer to work on your
own, and that you will be less of a heads-down, "team player" type engineer
which is easy to manage/throw around. Like it or not, the IT field is largely
made up of this type of position. If you are applying such a place you should
remove, spin or tone down your entrepreneurial endeavors.

For nimbler and more clued-in companies it will likely be a positive, since
they are usually happy to have someone who doesn't settle for a comfortable
desk jockey position at a corporation, and can handle the turmoil of younger
companies. Only thing to be aware of is if you are applying for a technical
position, they usually want someone who is happy to fill that niche, i.e. not
a jack-of-all-trades who can code but also wants to be a salesman and a
marketer etc. (Unless you are employee number one or two or somesuch).

These are lessons learned over a decade of being a corporate consultant, a
freelancer, a startup employee and a startup founder.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> These are lessons learned over a decade of being a corporate consultant, a
freelancer, a startup employee and a startup founder.

Great advice and something I can confirm. Worked at two smaller start ups and
they loved the idea I could think outside the box and wouldn't be bothered by
a fast moving, sometimes chaotic process.

Since then, I've been in the corporate world. First few interviews I was proud
of the start up work I did. Didn't get either job. Was told by a recruiter to
tone my start up stuff down and communicate that I'm a more of "team" player.
Next interviewed with a fortune 500 corp. Played down my start up experience
while highlighting some of my successes and focusing on the bigger "team"
wins.

Used the same formula in the last two interviews with success as well at large
corporations.

------
USNetizen
Employers find any reason possible to turn someone down if they want to. It
sounds like in your case it was just an excuse on their part. If you just
don't "fit in" with the culture of the organization they will try to find
something tangible to deny you to save face (and for possible legal reasons).

IMO regarding the startup thing, it all depends on what/who/where you are
interviewing for. I've talked with hiring managers who saw it as a major asset
and others who saw it as being akin to an excuse for being unemployed for a
couple years. It all revolves around the manager's perception of
entrepreneurship. It's not a global perspective but rather much more
individual.

------
tomasien
Having done a startup has significantly increased my job opportunities, in
fact took them from roughly 0 to roughly I could have whatever job I want in
my field any time. In the United States, things are incredibly different from
Japan, your resume is rapidly becoming what you're done.

If you're worried about failing as a startup, consider that the company
failing won't mean that the PRODUCT failed - you may fail with a beautiful
product that people love and use that attains reach that many profitable
companies can not. The only way I can see failure as a startup to be seen as a
negative is if you did something unethical or built absolute crap, or perhaps
didn't launch at all.

------
onion2k
After Usable failed I applied for several jobs and was turned down by more
than one for sounding likely I'd get bored and leave after a few months. It's
a fair comment - once you've experienced the freedom of the startup industry
going back to a normal job is tough.

~~~
redspark
I went through the interview process with a major startup and was basically
told the same thing. "You will get bored as a software engineer for our
company. Looking at your past history, you are probably not a good fit for
this position. We like you and are more than happy to support you in any way
we can with your next endeavor."

Leaves you with mixed emotions.

------
paulbjensen
I was let go from a social networking startup because I wasn't implementing
features as fast as they wanted. At the time it felt like a death sentence on
my career as a programmer.

I spent about a week in the doldrums, but then I felt angry, and decided I
wasn't going to let their decision define me. I decided to build an app to
show what I could do.

I spent 2 1/2 months building an app called Dashku. It was a realtime
dashboard, and when I put it on Hacker News, it went to #1 within 45 minutes,
and then the server fucked up because the ulimit config on the app server
(which I had set but not persisted between reboots) was 1024, and got the flak
I deserved for not making sure that the ulimit config has persisted when I
configured the machines.

After doing it, these things happened:

\- Bechtel contacted me and asked if they could use it internally. They did.

\- I had a meeting with Geckoboard. They asked if I wanted to work for them,
and I offered to sell Dashku to them. No bite.

\- I interviewed at Forward Labs in London. I had about 4 interviews in the
space of 2-3 days, but did not get the job offer. I failed to refactor a fill
detection algorithm which was functional and fully tested, but memory
inefficient. I had stayed up all night to crack it, slept for 2 hours and had
no food when I came in for the interview and was asked to refactor it.

ProTip: Sleep well and eat before you go for an interview, otherwise your
brain suffers for it.

Eventually, I got a job in London working for webcasting company, and then
open sourced Dashku. Here's what happened next:

\- Ninja Blocks gave me a free Ninja Block, and asked me if I would like to
work with them.

\- An Indian health startup asked to integrate Dashku into their IoT robotics
app.

\- A BI startup basically took Dashku, slapped a coat of paint on it, and
called it their own.

\- Another IoT startup asked to use it.

\- An energy company told me they were going to drop Geckoboard for my app.

\- I discovered a professional social network (called Viadeo) had created a
wonderful collection of widgets for it.

Then,

\- I got an email from someone at Facebook, they said that they were
evaluating it for internal use, and asked me if I would like to interview with
them in California.

I had to decline as my mother has health problems and I could not move to
another country.

All of this, within 14 months of being fired from a startup.

Failure feels like crap, but don't let it define who you are; you have to move
on and prove to yourself and to others what you can achieve. I've done that
now and found peace with that period in my life.

I should probably thank the guy who fired me.

~~~
kfk
Hey there, very interesting story. Can I ask you if you have any similar ideas
(for a web developer)? I am in a full time job (finance) and I can't get any
attentions from startups even though I am sure I have good junior coding
skills (python). However, I can't seem to come up with anything even remotely
interesting to the startup crowd (I guess that's because I am a finance
dude?).

~~~
paulbjensen
Hi, Thanks.

Working in Finance shouldn't prevent you from working in a startup.

I can recommend trying to scratch your own itch(es) - are there any problems
in particular that you run into on a frequent basis, for which existing
solutions are poor and you feel could be done in a better way?

Another exercise I could recommend is to ask yourself what would you be doing
now, if you were free to work on anything?

~~~
kfk
My itch is that outdoorers and outdoor clubs (climbing, kayaking, caving,
etc.) are still living in the 90'. They have shitty portals and forums. There
is no worldwide directory of people and, especially, clubs and events and it
sucks (especially if you are an expat like me and change often city).

There you go. How would you go about this? Social network? Forums? Magazine?
All of the 3 and more? What about monetization? Don't worry, just being a bit
rant-ish, I know those are tough questions.

~~~
paulbjensen
"There is no worldwide directory of people and, especially, (outdoors) clubs
and events and it sucks"

There you go.

I would recommend asking a few outdoors friends whether they feel the same,
and see if bringing about this worldwide directory would be a great thing to
them.

To me, it sounds like a great opportunity because you have a specific audience
to interact with, and there are opportunities to turn it into a business;
think of outdoors venues and outdoor equipment companies who would want to
promote their products and services to that range of people.

I would recommend asking friends, and in terms of further research, I
recommend 2 books: Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston, and The Lean
Startup by Eric Ries.

Go for it!

------
fmavituna
As an employer I'm quite cautious about hiring people who previously ran one
or more startups. The chances they've got the "Entrepreneurial Bug".

The obvious advantage is that it's quite likely that they'll be well rounded,
knows different stuff and got lots of experience in the world, there are tons
of great skills especially found in founders.

At the same time the chances are he/she will be leaving the company after 9
months, because she just discovered "the next best thing" and want to work on
that because she saved some money in the last 9 months. I try to talk the
person and understand what's the long term plan, whether they are actually
committed or just want to take a breath and get financially better in between
projects.

~~~
pavlov
If the person does great work for those 9 months, why do you prioritize
commitment?

Would you really prefer to hire someone who will perform worse but makes you
feel better because you know he probably won't get a job elsewhere or have
independent ideas? Isn't that the very definition of "B people hire C people"?

~~~
f7t7ft7
Heh, I hear that off and on and I'm curious where that comes from. Is it just
something that people repeat because it sounds good, or is there solid
evidence for it?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
No one wants to hire someone that can take their job in 6 months. People don't
like hiring threats to themselves.

------
VLM
"I'm not worried about the major markets (Silicon Valley and New York) but
about the rest."

I've worked for employers that have gone out of business but not as an
entrepreneur. I've never worked more than 300 miles from Chicago. No one
cares, no resume stain. You're going to have a lot of trouble collecting more
than anecdotes.

Outside major markets, the market is smaller and subjectively better connected
and personal relationships are going to be pretty important. People will know
you and what you personally did and that narrative is going to be more
important than the narrative in company financial papers etc.

------
gozmike
Failing is hard. It hurts. You go into a tailspin of destruction.

If you built up skills that are marketable and achieved great things along the
way, you'll be pleasantly surprised - I came out worth almost 2x on the market
as what I did when I quit. It was incredible.

That said, being an entrepreneur will change you - you will become a maverick,
you will lose your fear of authority, you will be a value creator as you're so
used to the survival mentality you used to foster in your startup. This alone
justifies why any company that cares about innovation would want you leading
their team.

------
timharding
I interviewed someone who had a failed startup. He couldn't tell me what he
would do differently if he was to do it all over again. It didn't fill me with
confidence that he's learned anything during the experience.

Make sure you can answer that question when you start interviewing.

------
mathattack
It would be worth noting geography in the answers to these questions. Japan is
very different than Silicon Valley in terms of work culture and expectations.
Silicon Valley is very different than Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Interesting question, I hope it gets some traction.

------
iends
Craft a narrative about your startup experiences that addresses any concerns
the hiring company may have.

For example, when the startup I worked for ended abruptly while I was out of
the country (and came back without a job), it was easy for me to talk about
wanting more stability in jobs I interviewed with.

I also talked about working til 2am regularly, and hoping to scale back those
hours to something more reasonable so that I could spend time with my wife.

When I knew the company I was interviewing with had better technical
processes, I talked about getting overwhelmed that it was standard practice to
push to production at 3am when nobody was using the service and debug things
live.

Would I use the same narrative when interviewing with another startup? No.
Instead I talk about loving the flexibility to work until 2am, being able to
eat lunch with my wife more while working from home, and not having to jump
through hoops to deploy code to production.

------
peterjancelis
I had no trouble finding a job as a developer after being a business guy
turned startup founder.

And to be honest I agree with the bias that ex-founder types may not be the
most stable of employees.

------
scrdhrt
I had a startup fail a couple of years ago, nothing big but enough to be sort
of known to the local market place. After failing to raise enough capital to
keep it going, I had to pull the plug, and consequently look for a job my
self. This is when I realized that employers who care about the wording
"failed" emphasize the same in the work place. I struggled to continue on to
final interviews in every case where the employer spent more than a couple of
minutes discussing WHY my startup failed, instead of discussing what we did
successfully. This became super obvious when I met with people who asked what
we did successfully, and really didn't care about that it failed. The hard
part is to be lucky enough to meet the people that don't care that my startup
failed, and who believes what I did is more important.

------
jpeg_hero
In a word: yes.

It ain't all roses. You can find that it f's up your resume.

Example: maybe your startup takes 5-yrs to fail. Maybe for year 3 and the last
half of year 5 you just kind of wallowed around the house, and didn't do much.

You will try to start circulating again and trying to get a job because your
savings are gone. You'll find things quite different in 2019 ( do the math).
There are different people in the hiring positions with different mind sets,
looking for different skills.

This is just one example of how things can go bad.

But, for me, it's worth it to take the risk.

------
troels
In big corporates, your startup experience might not count for much, but I
doubt that many places would consider it a downright negative. For SMB's I
would expect it to count as a positive. At least when I have been hiring (in
SMB's) I would certainly prefer a developer who had some non-tech perspective
over someone who's strictly technically strong. A lot of programming jobs are
really something like 20% programming and 80% figuring out what the customer
wants.

------
mkramlich
My general rule is that if someone wants it to work, it will. if they truly
want you, they will. many people, arguably everybody, is interacting more with
the mental contstructs in their head than with the physical reality and true
nature of the other party. Last person with qualities X burned you? The next
person you see with qualities X you'll superimpose upon them that expectation,
and treat them accordingly, perhaps causing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do
both parties want to come to some arrangement where they engage in mutual
tangible reciprocity? Then they will. But if at least one party does not, it
won't happen. The "takes two to tango" phenomenon, or the logical AND
operator. But you only have control over yourself, not another party. You can
try to communicate better, you can try to reduce your exposure to being
falsely bitten/categorized, but you can never eliminate it. Everybody brings
their own baggage to a relationship, whether personal, business or employment-
wise.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Every time I post my failures on HN I get like 3-5 freelance job offers.
Posting my successes doesn't get me anything.

===== Psychological Theory on Why =====

\- Employers may feel threatened by you if you are successful.

\- Employers may feel that you will leave them.

\- Employers want a subordinate they can control.

\- Employers want YOU to empower THEIR company, not them empowering you and
you leaving with the knowledge and experience they helped give you.

------
jmngomes
I'd venture in saying that if recruiters have any kind of idea of what it is
to build a startup, they'll consider it a major plus. That being said, and
considering what you usually see from recruiters, I'd say they'd have to be in
a startup to know...

At a startup you're put into a situation where you are under major pressure
and you're constantly faced with tough/unsolved problems and or all imaginable
difficulties when it comes to sales. This can be an amazing growth experience,
depending on how you deal with it. 7 months into my startup, I find that I've
grown by leaps and bounds when compared to my former jobs, where I was already
quite entrepreneurial.

As to an eventual stigma in the UK, it's only worse in other EU countries; I
know it is in mine. Here, people are more valued for obedience rather than for
entrepreneurial attitude.

------
codingdave
No.

There are always questions of why the startup failed, what your role was, and
what could have made it succeed. Your answers could save you or sink you. But
most people have at least some sense of the ups and downs of startups, so it
will not automatically remove you from consideration for almost anything.

They will want to see that you have learned something. They also will want to
know your personal reaction to the experience, and whether that will make you
a more or less stable hire. Maybe your failure made you hungry for another
startup, more fired up to succeed. Maybe it burned you out on startups, and
you now want a stable corporate gig for a few years. Maybe something in
between.

As long as your answers, your personality, and current desires match their
needs, you can get a job. Maybe you are not a match for every job out there,
but nobody ever is.

------
johngrefe
I've only ever had more job offers, recruiters, even offered a gig at an
accelerator as an exec advisor. This was USA focused.

In the UK attitudes are horrible though, there is a stigma where if you fail
your first entrepreneurial enterprise, you are somehow blackmarked for life. I
think that just because of this there are lots of start ups in the UK, where
the founders have not killed them because they are not working. There is a
point where you know something is not going to work, and you should kill it,
this stigma breeds a lot of waste.

------
rada
_I 'm not worried about the major markets (Silicon Valley and New York) but
about the rest._

I am in Minneapolis and my resume has "founder" on it. I've had no problems
finding employment. In my current job, it actually helped me get hired: my
boss specifically wanted to assemble a team of entrepreneurially minded
people. In my previous job, it didn't help but it didn't hurt either. So my
personal anecdata says it's not a problem at all.

------
tbrownaw
Anything that shows initiative is a large plus (other things we care about are
basic techical competence and, and jasonkester said, whether we like talking
to you). Working at a startup _probably_ shows some amount of initiative,
since said startup wouldn't keep you around otherwise. Showing less initiative
(and less apparent willingness to learn) would mean you would need to show
greater technical skills.

------
Mankhool
No, but I had trouble getting a job after working abroad for 10 years. There
was huge unspoken resentment from most employers that I had dared to leave
Canada to work elsewhere. In her book, "Eight Months on Gaza Street", Hilary
Mantel wrote something like, "It's almost as if by going away that you were
offering some criticism of their own lives". That's exactly what it felt like.

------
frankdenbow
I've been helping folks who are new to the startup world get jobs at startups
in nyc. The short answer is no: having failed (especially in the industry you
are looking for a job in) can be immensely helpful. Companies I have spoken to
like having someone with some skin in the game, and that have learned some
lessons that can be carried over to their business.

------
f7t7ft7
I have been in interview debriefs where people were concerned about a
candidate not advancing enough in a previous position, but I can't imagine one
failed startup being detrimental, at least where I currently work if you get
interviewed by those same exact people. :) The important thing is what you can
talk about from the startup.

------
brianbarker
We interviewed a guy who had a startup and he definitely got rejected for it.
I didn't agree at all and thought he'd be good, but other guys thought he
"wouldn't be able to take directions since he's not in charge now." Bullshit.
Oh well. People are dumb.

------
mnw21cam
Yes, I know it's only a lmgtfy away, but what's GPA? Some American thing?

~~~
gamegoblin
Grade Point Average.

Unsurprisingly, it is a way of averaging your grades (so that the whole of
your academic career is compressed to one real number).

In the American system, the grades A,B,C,D,F are mapped to the numbers 4.0,
3.0, 2.0, 1.0, 0.0, respectively. Your GPA is a weighted average of your
grades from 0.0-4.0

Usually a 3.0+ is considered to be decent.

~~~
mnw21cam
Thanks. I only commented because, well, there's a whole 95% of the world out
there that won't know what a GPA is, and it'd be wonderful if region-specific
stuff was kept out of submission comments. "Grades" is only three more
characters than "GPA".

------
kilocore
Depends on geography and industry. e.g. in Europe/UK it would make it hard to
get recruiters to take interest; but if you're for example a world class
ios/game developer it doesnt really matter.

------
codex
Unfortunately many employers may assume that you're more experienced with
failure than success. Failure can be a teacher, but success can as well.

------
DenisM
There are amazingly few first-hand accounts in this thread, and far too many
"I do/do not think it should, because I imagine blah...".

------
bsbechtel
Yes, for certain industries and positions...most especially outside of
entrepreneurial hotbeds.

------
jsun
no, failing at a startup won't prevent you from getting hired however making
us feel like you're just going to collect a paycheck while waiting for your
next thing to take off probably will.

tread carefully on how much you want to rep your startup experience.

------
igorgue
_I had someone turn me down for a programming job because they said my GPA was
too high_

That's called a lie. Similar to the _it wasn 't a good fit_ one, most of the
time there's another reason, maybe you weren't not that great of a programmer,
or they didn't like your editor or tools.

From 10 years of experience working for a lot of companies and starting and
failing some companies I can tell you, if they like you, they'll hire you even
if you're an ex-convict. At a company I worked at we hired a guy with a recent
conviction (battery). Great programmer nonetheless and he said was trying to
get his shit together. There was something weird about him, like he smoked
crack in the morning... But hey, he wrote good code and was never a problem,
in fact he was the first one in the office.

~~~
michaelt
I've got a buddy who has a mail order business, he hires people to put things
into envelopes and stick on labels.

He tells me when he hires people with degrees and advanced education and stuff
they tend to quit because the job is boring, as well as being poorly paid and
having no career advancement opportunities.

Perhaps the job was the programming equivalent of putting things into
envelopes.

~~~
dismiss21x
I've heard a story that someone with a PhD couldn't find a job in his field
after being laid off, so he started applying to other lower-paying fields. He
eventually removed the PhD from his resume, because he realized he was not
being hired as employers saw him as 'overqualified' and likely to quit.

~~~
igorgue
That's what he said, probably he was a bad programmer too.

We also hired a PhD and the guy couldn't write code to safe his life, he, of
course, applied to the programming position.

It made me sad he complained about us using an editor and not a IDE. Real life
is very different than school, very different.

------
meira
I'm having some bad times seeking for a job after my startup failed. But I can
talk only about my experience and the brazillian startup ecossystem.

I worked on Engarte for the last 2 years. In this 2 years, I learned a lot
about startup management and growth, but on the other hand, my technical
skills stuck in time.

But I don't feel like this is the main reason for the troubles in finding a
job. Headhunters seems to get a little scared when they realize that as soon
as I can, I'll start another project. And so, they think that I'll not be in
the company in the next 1 or 2 years. Perhaps we don't have a lot of
successful startups in Brazil, the failure is threatened in a very bad way
here, very different from the US and SV concept.

~~~
jhhn
Well... I prefer to say that I worked as freelancer or even as a employee,
only describing the project and how I participated technically, strongly
avoiding to mention shareholding in companies or startups. Even doing it, I
already heard from recruiters that the position is not suitable to me because
I'm seeing to be a lot autodidact only due to my diversity of experience in
technical areas without any related formal education.

Sometimes I think that there are not positions in Brazilian labor market for
who is really competent and resourceful. They prefer to hire a bigger set of
poorly prepared people because this is how the corrupt outsourcing market
makes money.

~~~
meira
Agree with it, people here in Brazil prefer to hire 2 bad developers rather
than 1 really good one.

