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I'm interested in hearing the stories of people who had the opportunity to work for companies that are well known before they became well known (and it was less obvious they would become well known).
You decided not to take the opportunity. What was your reason?
You don’t decline a “well known company before it was well known”. At the time, you’re declining an unknown company. Unknown companies are inherently riskier than established companies. Established companies are almost always messier, less organized, and less impressive when they were young.
The funding environment has also changed substantially over the last decade. In the past, working for an unknown startup didn’t automatically mean market rate salary plus lucrative options. It was common for startups to pay people a lot less than big companies because they just didn’t have the money.
They've now got 400ish engineers and are worth over 1bn at the latest valuation. I'd probably still consider working there now.
They break laws because they're the visionaries and laws are slow. They lie and cheat because everyone fakes it before they make it. Employees are paid low because they're not the ones taking the risk, in fact they invested in you. It's a privilege to be working for them!
People try to emulate them because they succeeded. I think it's just important to make sure companies like them don't succeed. I'll be happy to join any number of companies that died trying to make an honest living and treating their customers and partners well.
Because they had an absurd take home assignment that was basically recreating their entire mobile app.
That's the difference between startup culture and big company culture. Big companies get away with accurate estimates, story points, burndown charts. Work is rounded down to what's accomplishable in a week. Startups just have an infinite blob of things to do and need those who can deal with that.
Because they had an absurd take home assignment that was basically recreating their entire mobile app.
You're often not expected to complete these. It's just comparing to see how far you get, what engineering tradeoffs you pick, how you do vs that other guy. That's the difference between startup culture and big company culture. Big companies get away with accurate estimates, story points, burndown charts. Work is rounded down to what's accomplishable in a week. Startups just have an infinite blob of things to do and n…
They paid low and worked people hard. There was a lot of arrogance amongst the founders as well. They break laws because they're the visionaries and laws are slow. They lie and cheat because everyone fakes it before they make it. Employees are paid low because they're not the ones taking the risk, in fact they invested in you. It's a privilege to be working for them! People try to emulate them because they succeeded.…
Because they had an absurd take home assignment that was basically recreating their entire mobile app.
You're often not expected to complete these. It's just comparing to see how far you get, what engineering tradeoffs you pick, how you do vs that other guy. That's the difference between startup culture and big company culture. Big companies get away with accurate estimates, story points, burndown charts. Work is rounded down to what's accomplishable in a week. Startups just have an infinite blob of things to do and n…
Which is a BS rationale, of course. If you (at lease claim to) respect the candidate's time, then you don't give out slippery-slope assignments with fake / unknowable goalposts, period. There is no benefit to this tactic that can possibly outweigh the basic insult and the egregious waste of their time.
Startups just have an infinite blob of things to do and need those who can deal with that.
Which, face it now -- you will not be able to measure the capacity for in the interview process. And the fantasy that you are somehow able to is no justification for willfully and knowingly burning through their time like this.