

Ask HN: Shadow at a startup for a day - adamzerner

Hi guys, I&#x27;m 21, learning to code, and interesting in working at a startup. I&#x27;ll be attending Fullstack Academy (S12) starting September 15th, but I&#x27;m taking a trip out to SF this Wednesday for 5 days (7&#x2F;20-7&#x2F;25).<p>I want to get a feel for what work at a startup is like. Would anyone who works at a startup mind if I shadowed them for a day? Or does anyone know anyone who they think would be interested? I&#x27;m not sure if I&#x27;m good enough to be useful, but if I could be of any use I&#x27;d love to write some code for you! (I&#x27;ve been teaching myself to code on and off for the past year and a half or so. I&#x27;d classify my skills as a strong beginner&#x2F;weak intermediate developer. I know HTML, CSS, JS&#x2F;jQuery, Ruby and Rails. I built a few sites before - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;adamzerner?tab=repositories.<p>Edit: I&#x27;m also considering moving to SF after Fullstack. There&#x27;s a lot of good tech companies there, and I really like the culture. So I also want to get a feel for what it&#x27;d be like living in SF. I&#x27;ve visited before and have done all the touristy things, but I want to get a feel for what it&#x27;d be like <i>living</i> there. I was thinking of visiting a hacker house and some co-working spaces, but don&#x27;t know what else would be useful. Any ideas?<p>Thanks!
======
tptacek
You might be heading towards an adverse selection problem here. For every
viable startup, there are 10 that aren't. It's more likely that a non-viable
startup would want code from someone who is going to be gone in a few days or
weeks or even months. So you might be selecting for the wrong kinds of
organizations with an offer like this.

A full-on internship might be a better bet.

