

Advice for wannabe startup employees - sammcd
http://blog.synack.me/2011/advice-for-wannabe-startup-employees

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sthulbourn
I've worked for a number of startups over the past few years.

Normally, in early startup life (<= 5 people), they hire people who have a
broad knowledge about a lot of things. Sooner or later, the startup will start
hiring people with specialist skills.

You won't get paid well, you'll be paid the bare minimum until they have gone
through some sort of funding process (probably angel investment).

Being in a startup isn't like working for a large web firm like Facebook or
Twitter, it's more like working in a small office with a group of people
trying to find the fun in everything (some startups never become fun). It's
also not about doing everything correctly, it's about experimentation with
things, finding what's useful.

Joining a startup and hoping for some big IPO payout might not pay off and
isn't in the mindset of a startup.

In the end, it's about trying to make some kickass product that does something
awesome whilst trying to have fun on a small salary (at least it is at the
start)

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petervandijck
Code on github is undeniably good advice. Anything. It's like having an online
portfolio if you're a designer.

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joshu
This is BIG for us.

Also, we like people with interesting pet projects. It helps us easily get a
sense of what kind of engineer you are.

(ObPlug: Tasty Labs is hiring. <http://www.tastylabs.com/>)

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MortonC
What is the latest trend in engineering? I have been reading a lot about Ruby
Rails lately.

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notJim
Node.js

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pjscott
Node is also -- and this is important -- fun.

JavaScript may not be your cup of tea, but CoffeeScript is a nice way to
program. The community is great; pretty much all of the open source code is on
GitHub and there's a strong "jump in and start hacking" vibe. You can do some
really neat stuff with socket.io and a bunch of miscellaneous technology. Just
jump in and start hacking. It's easy to learn a lot by accident this way.

~~~
nir
Any pointers to good Node.js code in CoffeScript?

