
Ask HN: Moving from the startup world to bigger companies - tonym9428
I graduated from college about six years ago and have worked at a number of small (20 to 100 people) start ups since then.<p>Startup 1 = 2 years 
Startup 2 = 2 years 
Startup 3 = 1 year (i was founder) 
Startup 4 = 1 year (current employer)<p>I&#x27;ve been re-considering my job history and pathway, and realizing that I want to move to a medium sized company (500-5000 people).<p>For those who have done something similar, what has been your experience? How did you explain any &quot;job hopping&quot;?
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untog
I didn't have to explain the job hopping - they understood the startup job
market, and the fact that I had worked in those environments was appealing to
them.

In short, I wouldn't worry about it. Just make a point of saying in your
interview that you're tired of the unpredictability of startup working life
and are looking for something more significant.

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mchannon
Assuming you write code for a living, most hiring managers (even big 5 hiring
managers) care far less about your work history than you'd imagine- it's
merely a means to an end, the end being how well it applies to the skill sets
(keywords) needed for the job you're applying for.

Assuming you're not living in a backwater, getting to phone screens should be
pretty easy; if you're willing to commit 4-5 hours onsite per opportunity, the
odds favor your landing one in the first 10 onsites. Big co's are different
from startups, but not as much as you might think going in.

I like how some people consider 100 people a small startup (kind of like how
250 employees is still according to the US government a small business). Maybe
my views are out of the mainstream, but I'd say 20 is a better threshold for
small.

~~~
wayn3
250 software engineers is a massive business with ridiculous scale.

250 cleaning staff is just a company in some city cleaning a bunch of office
space with 5% margins.

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c1001
I worked at a mid-sized mature "startup" for 8 years, then a very young
startup for 6 months (then half the team got laid off), then consulted for 3
companies over the course of another 6 months. Hiring managers asked me why I
stayed for such a short time at each company (except the first one), including
why I wanted to stop consulting -- I told them I wanted a bigger engineering
challenge in a less unpredictable environment, and they were fine with that
answer. What matters more is how you prove to them that you're a good
candidate for their position :)

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tixocloud
I focused on the skills that I picked up while being at a smaller company.
Talked about the innovation that we did and the fact that we were responsible
for the entire product as opposed to just a single portion of the process
(i.e. testing).

There are skills that you learn while being at smaller companies and there are
skills that you learn while being at larger companies. It's all a matter of
communicating why those skills matter to where you're applying to.

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mattbgates
After college, about 6 or 7 years ago, after having gone overseas to volunteer
and teach English. I didn't get paid, but room and board was free, I returned
home desperate for a job, and no money.

I applied across the boards on Craigslist and got hired as a programmer for a
small company as a programmer, in Visual Basic 6.0, fixing bugs in autobody
shop software. They weren't new.. probably had been around since the early
2000s. It was a good job, I enjoyed it.. but the boss was a tyrant. Arrogant.
Annoying. There were less than 10 employees working there. I spent over a year
working for him and then we had a slight falling out, or really, I just
couldn't take the stress of him (not the programming job itself), and I left.

I got another job working for another software company that developed software
to read and display data from solar panels on corporate buildings. It was all
in Flash, which as you now know, is mostly obsolete. There were around the
same amount of employees working at that company. Unfortunately, because they
refused to update their technology, they couldn't keep up with the competition
and I was laid off.

For these first two.. I wrote about it if you are curious to know the details:
[http://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-
opportunity/](http://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/)

My current job was something totally new in regards to environment, as a web
developer: I began as a remote worker. It was awesome.. working from home! We
were a team of about 12 people from a single department, probably the smallest
of all the departments. We build landing pages for corporations... think
advertisements and information as news distribution.

Little did I know how big this company actually was... eventually they'd give
me the choice: move across the country or get laid off. Why not? I negotiated
a nice raise and they paid for my move. This was offered to everyone too..
because there were dozens of remote workers. Unfortunately, most did not take
up the offer. There are just a few remote workers left today.

So I went into this huge office... hundreds of cubicles on either side of the
building.. over a hundred people or more throughout the day including
overnight shifts. There are about a half dozen offices across the country. In
the other office, I think there are so many workers they are even sharing
cubicles.

Since I've been working at this company, we were bought out by a much larger
media corporation that keeps buying up smaller companies to eliminate their
competition, aside from the few things that they did have to sell off to avoid
those legal monopoly issues. So you could say.. there are 500+ workers in this
company. It is interesting... half our team is here and the other half is on
the other side of the country. I've never met some of the people I work with
everyday, other than some communication through Slack.

As great as it is and as much as I love my job.. I do have dreams of starting
my own business someday. I wouldn't consider anything I did job hopping.. the
escape from a tyrant, the layoff from an obsolete company, and the last
company, a choice: move or get laid off. No regrets.

Keep building your journey.. it sounds like you have a lot of experience in
startups and it'd be very interesting to read about it!

