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Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#51

Post by barnacs »

Just skip the resume. They're worthless anyways.

If you find a position you like, send an email. Tell them why you're interested, what you could bring to the table. You can mention your history if it's relevant, casually, just like you wrote it up here.

If they don't like it, fck them, their loss, try a different company.

edit: Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you skip the resume because of your specific history, rather because the whole concept of presenting resumes is utterly inhumane and counter-productive.

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#52

Post by boxcardavin »

jest3r1 wrote: post #40

I went through this a few years ago. Ran a semi-successful web / mobile app development company. We were a small team of four, hitting early to mid thirties. From the outside anyone would have thought our company was successful. Good brand recognition in our geographic region, finding clients was easy. They found us. We paid ourselves decent salaries, paid the bills on our dev infrastructure, we all worked in the tre…

Thank you for your post.

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#53

Post by justincorbett »

jest3r1 wrote: post #40

I went through this a few years ago. Ran a semi-successful web / mobile app development company. We were a small team of four, hitting early to mid thirties. From the outside anyone would have thought our company was successful. Good brand recognition in our geographic region, finding clients was easy. They found us. We paid ourselves decent salaries, paid the bills on our dev infrastructure, we all worked in the tre…

I'm partners with @boxcardavin (OP) and this is pretty much us exactly. Thanks for a great response!

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#54

Post by AustinBGibbons »

Hey! I'm an engineer involved in recruiting at Periscope Data. We see resumes/LI from people who've been doing startup things all the time. It's definitely not an issue, usually the opposite - I love talking to people with less structured backgrounds, they usually have interesting stories to tell. We recently hired someone who had been "technical co-founder" of a successful startup for the past six years. He wanted to join a larger team, and we were totally comfortable with him having been in a more jack-of-all trades scenario because he is very obviously brilliant.

Shamelessly, don't hesitate to reach out if you might be interested - we're hiring in all areas, and I would especially love to chat if you or your co-founders are looking for engineering, PM, or marketing roles :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#55

Post by flukus »

louthy wrote: post #45
segmondy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 years is pretty much a unicorn nowadays. I've been at my company for >= + years, but I can tell you that 4 years is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes people that stay for a long time are people who are no good and know it, they have found a safe environment that tolerates their incompetence so they never leave! I say this as someone who has interviewed people with 10+ yrs experience and who have stayed at o…

That's unlikely (but not impossible) to be true for founders. Anything that's going 5+ years has some semblance of quality behind it.

Not in the enterprise world, a lot of terrible stuff lumbers along because of the huge gap between software users and software purchasers.

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#56

Post by jimmaswell »

flukus wrote: post #46
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that the type of person who "[doesn't] put up with crappy work environments" is often the type of person who finds all sorts of perfectly fine work environments to be crappy.

I'm that person. For me it's the code quality, attitude and direction that matter the most. There is an awful lot of terrible code out there and an awful lot of companies that are either oblivious to it or lying about it until post hire. I can handle terrible code, but if there isn't a solid plan in place to improve it for whatever reason (or if it's getting worse) then I'm out of there.

Personally, I don't foresee caring this much about the quality of the codebase I'm hired onto, the direction of the projects, etc. as long as I'm getting paid for it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#57

Post by MyNameIsFred »

flukus wrote: post #55
louthy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's unlikely (but not impossible) to be true for founders. Anything that's going 5+ years has some semblance of quality behind it.

Not in the enterprise world, a lot of terrible stuff lumbers along because of the huge gap between software users and software purchasers.

Sometimes its just funding decisions made years in advance and "we've already spent too much on this to not to put up with it".

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#58

Post by MyNameIsFred »

flukus wrote: post #46
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that the type of person who "[doesn't] put up with crappy work environments" is often the type of person who finds all sorts of perfectly fine work environments to be crappy.

I'm that person. For me it's the code quality, attitude and direction that matter the most. There is an awful lot of terrible code out there and an awful lot of companies that are either oblivious to it or lying about it until post hire. I can handle terrible code, but if there isn't a solid plan in place to improve it for whatever reason (or if it's getting worse) then I'm out of there.

So you're an example. What's your rate of job turnover with a policy like that?

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#59

Post by flukus »

MyNameIsFred wrote: post #58
flukus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm that person. For me it's the code quality, attitude and direction that matter the most. There is an awful lot of terrible code out there and an awful lot of companies that are either oblivious to it or lying about it until post hire. I can handle terrible code, but if there isn't a solid plan in place to improve it for whatever reason (or if it's getting worse) then I'm out of there.

So you're an example. What's your rate of job turnover with a policy like that?

It varies from years to months/weeks, although a lot of the months ones were contract jobs. My longest stint was 3-4 years, which I only left because I relocated.

The shortest is weeks, this is at places that have mountains of technical debt as well as other problems, like managers that don't understand the limitations of that technical debt and want everything done yesterday.

The last job was 18 months. despite a lot of bad code I had a free hand to add gradual improvements. The current one is looking to be considerably shorter.

Re: Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

#60

Post by MyNameIsFred »

barnacs wrote: post #51

Just skip the resume. They're worthless anyways. If you find a position you like, send an email. Tell them why you're interested, what you could bring to the table. You can mention your history if it's relevant, casually, just like you wrote it up here. If they don't like it, fck them, their loss, try a different company. edit: Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you skip the resume because of your specific history,…

I can only speak for myself, but as someone who interviews developers for a small-medium company (I need some formalized experience document, even if your resume just looks like bullet points. It gives me discrete items/events/projects/education/skills that I can consider and discuss with you. If I don't have that as a reference point when talking with you, all I can say is "So, tell me why you're awesome", which is not useful.

If I'm not starting out with some idea of what we can drill down into, some table of contents, I have too little to work with and I'm not going to bother. Perhaps more relevantly, HR probably won't even bring you to my attention.

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