Ask HN: Startup to enterprise and back to startups

Post by ryanwaggoner » Sun, May 06, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

cfusting wrote: post #49

amirathi wrote: post #6

> What could I do now to make myself more employable at startups? Startup hiring is a fuzzy science at best. Apart from abilities it's a lot about what impression you make in the first few interactions with the team. Before talking to the team, invest a good amount of time researching on the space the company is operating in. The problem space, adjacencies, incumbents in that space and their offering, know what's uni…

Fluff. It's very hard to find good people. If you're good at what you do you'll easily find an appealing position once you sort out culture. Stay away from the megalomaniacs deluded enough to think you have time (or reason) to do in depth research on their company along with the many others you are applying to. This isn't an internship, you are already valuable.

Rude.

No one said anything about doing in-depth research before applying, and while good people are hard to find, they're not unicorns. If you're walking into an interview without any background knowledge on the company or position that you're hoping to get hired for, you're at a severe disadvantage to those that do show the tiniest shred of initiative.

Your attitude strikes me as remarkably entitled and arrogant: "I didn't spend any time learning anything about this company, what the challenges are, etc, BUT I'm really smart and talented, so you have no choice but to hire me."

Sounds like looking for applicants who show they care even a little bit is a great heuristic :)

Post by siruncledrew » Sun, May 06, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

jpzisme wrote: post #9

Don't get down on yourself, man. I went through a job search last year and applied to ~400 companies and got strung along by several start-ups, one of which even said they were very impressed and asked when I could start, only to change their mind the next day. Eventually, I found one that was a great fit, and I've been here for over a year and am extremely happy. What I've seen at least in the Bay Area startup scene…

I've noticed there's a hiring difference between startups that have at least 2-3+ years of proven financials and startups that don't. At some early stage startups (say Not all do this, but some things I've seen/heard done by a handful of small, "scrappy" startups:

- Interviewing candidates knowing they don't have the budget to even give them a job. It's a shitty thing to do because they are essentially knowingly wasting someone's time only to say "Yea, you're a great fit, we just need a few months to be ready to onboard someone for this role!"

- Putting up unrealistic salary ranges on angel.co to look competitive to attract more applicants, then giving an offer that's 10-20% lower in salary than what was given (or pulling the "another applicant is willing to do the $100k advertised job for $80k, but we want to hire you, would you be able to come down to meet that number?" card).

- Giving applicants "day in the life" interviews, where you sign an NDA, work a full 8 hour day, then don't get compensated for it. Sometimes 6-10 people are given these kinds of interviews for a 1 person job opening, and it's mostly just getting free work.

- Bosses setting an expectation for a great work-life balance in the interviews, talking about how "they value their employees time", then expecting everyone to work 10 hours per day or be on call at whatever whim someone needs work done.

- Assuming that because someone is foreign, they must be used to working long hours for little pay and not complaining about it. Even with contractors, there was a boss who hired a team in Ukraine, was invoiced $20k, then only paid them $15k without any legitimate reasons and said "well, that's still a lot of money for you so just be happy with it." It's amazing how shitty some people are when they make themselves seem so outwardly exuberant or buddy-buddy in person.

Ask HN: Startup to enterprise and back to startups – how?

Re: Ask HN: Startup to enterprise and back to startups – how?

Re: Ask HN: Startup to enterprise and back to startups – how?