
Tell HN: Work at a Startup Expo will be at YC on Saturday, June 29 - ryankicks
Last year, we revived the &quot;Work at a Startup&quot; event for YC companies and prospective hires to meet each other in person (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17367707" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17367707</a>). The format has proven to work well, so we&#x27;re doing it again. The 2019 event will be on Saturday, June 29 at YC in Mountain View: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo</a><p>Many engineers are interested in working at smaller companies. But there aren&#x27;t many efficient ways to meet a bunch of them at once, and it&#x27;s a ton of repetitive work to seek them out one by one. Meanwhile, hiring is the biggest challenge most YC startups are facing. That&#x27;s an obvious matchmaking problem, and bringing everyone together in one big event is one thing YC can do to help address it. It&#x27;s a fun and interesting day, too!<p>This year, we&#x27;re bringing together 40 YC companies in one place. Rapid-fire company presentations—like Demo Day, but for engineers instead of investors—will give you a way to quickly survey the companies. Following this, we&#x27;ll have a casual open house for you to engage one-on-one with any founders and early engineers who you thought were interesting.<p>New this time: We&#x27;ve heard from people who are interested in joining somewhat later-stage startups, because they think their skills may translate better to roles there than at the classic 2-to-10 person early stage. So this year we&#x27;ve included a number of larger startups, like Gusto and Sift Science. These companies have specialized needs across data, infrastructure, security and more. We hope this gives you more options to match your skill set, interests and risk appetite.<p>Working at a startup is for sure not for everybody! Justin Kan covered this in his post here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atrium.co&#x2F;blog&#x2F;work-at-a-startup&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atrium.co&#x2F;blog&#x2F;work-at-a-startup&#x2F;</a>, and HN users are never shy about pointing out the downsides. But I can tell you from personal experience that the upsides are powerful if you&#x27;re in a position to go for it. For me, working at startups has been a unique opportunity to work closely with talented and experienced founders. (Many founders at this year&#x27;s event learned to ship products at places like Square, Google, Linkedin and even Gusto.) The magic of working with a small, closely aligned team and the feeling of true ownership and impact is something many of us long for in our careers. The intense learning curves, the chance to personally grow rapidly along with a company—these are experiences which those of us lucky enough to have would never trade away.<p>Of course, there are no guarantees: it&#x27;s a classic risk&#x2F;reward tradeoff. But if you&#x27;re tired of feeling stuck and uncreative in a corporate situation, or no longer really believing in what you&#x27;re doing, and part of you is longing for greater ferment, impact, and adventure, come and spend the day with us and check out the other side of the equation. 
I hope to see you there! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workatastartup.com&#x2F;expo</a>
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soneca
How do I find which YC companies are in a specific city (that is not SF)?

In particular, I was trying to look for YC companies in _Los Angeles_ , as I
am moving there and I'm very interested in working on a early stage startup

~~~
ryankicks
One option is to sign up for workatastartup.com, which has YC companies that
are hiring for eng roles. When you specify a location, it will show/filter
companies in that area that are a fit for you.

If you're open to contract or remote roles, be sure to specify that on the
site and it'll open up the search to companies that are open to both/either.

Lastly, I'm happy to share roles I'm aware of that might be a good fit. Feel
free to reach me at ryan@ycombinator.com.

~~~
soneca
Thanks! Just updated my profile at workatastartup.com. Great UX btw

~~~
mrburton
Esp Brian Chesky facial expression lol

------
mr_puzzled
A couple ideas/suggestions/questions to the Work at a Startup team:

\- One of the reasons people join startups is when they want to start one
someday. While California has great protections for people to retain IP as
long as it's not directly in conflict with their employer's line of work, the
rest of the world is not so lucky. How about requiring all your portfolio
companies to be explicitly side project friendly by adopting something like
Github's IP agreement. Keep it simple : allow employees to work on their side
projects on their own time using their own resources and as long as it's not
directly competing, it's all good. This seems to be the implicit understanding
already, but make it formal and set a good example for the industry to follow.
More Context :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327)

\- Any chance of expanding this to international remote workers? There are
obvious legal challenges to hiring someone from a different jurisdiction, but
maybe you can start out with simpler solutions like a having a standard legal
template by hiring international remote workers as contractors which greatly
simplifies the paperwork?

~~~
ryankicks
Those are both great ideas.

We can certainly suggest to YC companies that they adopt side-project-friendly
legal in their terms of agreement. Whether they choose to do so is entirely up
to them, but it's worth bringing to their attention.

On international remote: for our Work at a Startup onboarding, we do ask your
location and whether you're looking for remote roles. But I think you're right
that we can go further by trying to help founders lower the bar to working
with overseas engineers -- standard legal is a good starting point.

Thanks for these ideas, and I'll post with updates as I have them/if I get
blocked, as maybe others here have experience in doing so successfully &
smoothly.

------
PorterDuff
I think that's a great idea, it's cool to see someone slice and dice the
problem a different way. An alternative would be a remote work variant.

Being an old fart, I've spent 100% of my career working for (or consulting
for) companies that actually made and sold physical products. I wonder if you
couldn't have a job fair for startups of that type. I suppose that having an
embedded systems startup expo or small manufacturers expo might be too
specialized, but it would be a neat thing.

~~~
ryankicks
Good point. The companies in attendance are definitely focused on software
roles, with a few hardware tech companies mixed in (Volans-i and Standard
Cognition).

If you have a background/expertise in CPG or ops/production and are looking,
feel free to ping me at ryan@ycombinator.com and I'm happy to see if companies
doing similar things are hiring.

Thanks!

------
trustfundbaby
This made me wonder if something like this could be done for Remote companies.
All online of course

~~~
ryankicks
I'm certainly open to trying -- we've been experimenting with mixers and other
methods to put engineers in touch with founders.

FWIW, Work at a Startup allows for engineers to designate that they are
remote, which helps filter companies that are potentially open to such roles.

If you have ideas, happy to explore them!

------
toufka
Is this only for software engineering roles, or could it be appropriate for
roles for YC's other styled companies (synthetic biology, nuclear reactors,
etc.)?

~~~
snowmaker
Some of the companies presenting are hard tech companies like you mentioned.
For example, Athelas (blood diagnostics), Inokyo / Standard Cognition (stores
with cashierless checkout), volans-i (delivery service via drones). Those
companies are all hiring for software engineering roles and also other kinds
of engineering roles as well.

~~~
ryankicks
Additionally, if you need help finding a company that might be a better fit to
your skill sets/interests, feel free to email me at ryan@ycombinator.com and
I'm happy to do what I can.

------
Kinnard
Any chance YC's amazing events will not be on Saturday for the (admittedly
small) minority of hackers who observe the Sabbath?

~~~
ryankicks
Thanks for the input, and I apologize that this is on a Saturday. Given the
design and interactions we're trying to create, this is what happens to work
for both engineers and founders at the moment.

A lot of people have ideas on remote/online events, and I love that idea. I'll
see what we can do there. We're also experimenting with other formats,
including evening mixers.

Lastly, if you're interested but the date is prohibitive, we'll work to get
the presentations online in a format that works for engineers who are unable
to make it over the weekend.

------
an4rchy
This is awesome! Haven't heard of this before.

It's definitely a great way to scale some of the challenges in recruiting for
these startups.

A couple of ideas/suggestions:

\- Clarify what is meant by "Visa Required". Is that an offer to
sponsor/transfer or saying that you wont. I'm guessing the listings were
scraped from AngelList, so it might have gotten lost in translation

\- It would be great to open this up to non-engineering specific roles at
those companies (perhaps in the future) -- It's getting hard to find good
Designers, PMs, PMMs etc who are looking to work at these startups -- maybe
not all roles but product specific ones.

~~~
ryankicks
On non-eng roles: this is something we hope to get to, and soon. If you know
talented Designers/PMs/PMMs, happy to help them find a role at a YC company in
a more bespoke search.

On "Visa Required": where are you seeing this, particularly in the context of
a job listing? If it's a particular company's listing (and it looks
erroneous), I'll have the company update it accordingly.

------
akuji1993
As an improvement of the site, it would be great if I could filter the
presenting companies by technologies (React, Angular, NodeJS etc.) to see
which ones use technology that I can help with quicker.

Nothing more disappointing then reading the pitch, being excited about them
and then reading they use tech that I have no experience with.

~~~
ryankicks
If you click on a company to see more details, you will see an "About the
Technology" section that lists the programming languages, tech stack and other
relevant details.

The individual job postings (also under company details) also include more
detail about the technology, role definition & responsibilities and (in many
cases) salary/equity range.

As a final note, companies may be hiring for more roles than posted. We made
it a requirement to have at least one job made public for the /expo site.

------
jiveturkey
This is great! I'm not in the market but I may attend anyway to see how it
goes down.

Odd location, isn't it? Aren't most of YC's companies HQ'd in SF and didn't YC
recently move to SF?

------
tyagis
Should one expect an invitation after applying on the portal or is this an
open for all event?

~~~
tyagis
Never mind.

------
pebblepoo
Should only engineers show up, or can PMs/designers come as well?

~~~
ryankicks
Hi there!

Currently, the largest demand is engineers. There are YC companies looking for
PMs & designers, but not as many.

That said, if you're looking for roles, feel free to send me a note at
ryan@ycombinator.com and I'll see what I can do. I often have them come across
my email, and happy to refer you when they do!

------
ma2rten
What time is it?

~~~
ryankicks
Doors open at 1PM. The rest of the schedule is displayed on the site as well:

[https://www.workatastartup.com/expo](https://www.workatastartup.com/expo)

------
alain94040
While we are on that topic, 11 days before, if you are interested in startups,
consider attending the startup conference
([https://thestartupconference.com](https://thestartupconference.com)). Oh,
and Justin Kan will be there too.

~~~
ryankicks
Thanks for that post!

Just to clarify -- the startup conference looks to be for entrepreneurs
looking to found new companies. With Justin and Ammon presenting, I'm sure
there's a ton to get out of it!

The YC work at a startup expo is for engineers looking to join early (or late)
stage startups. It won't be as valuable to early stage founders; YC has
Startup School
([https://www.startupschool.org/](https://www.startupschool.org/)) and other
programs for that.

There are various reasons you might want to work for a startup vs. start one
yourself. If you're unclear which you might be more inclined to do, I'm always
happy to chat and share my experiences.

Thanks for posting!

