The Startup Resume

If so, I think you're off the mark a bit when you say this applies only to startups; I think this applies when you are applying to specific roles at a company, regardless of the company's size. I don't work at a startup at all, but resumes with lists of papers with no direct relevance where the candidate is one of 10 co-authors, academic honors, TA positions that are irrelevant to the job at hand, lots of description about a former team's job rather than what the candidate did, etc. make my brain glaze over. I have to spend more time looking for the core nuggets of achievement buried within, and that's generally not time I have. It's not necessarily a killer for someone's interview process, but it's certainly not fun and drains my time.

Meanwhile, people I encounter outside of the normal resume-submission process who simply point out something really cool they've done? If it's something really awesome, they get recruited, no real resume required.

The only thing that's really going to come through on a resume is (a), and I might be able to glean some of (b) and (c) from your cover-letter. It's rare enough to see full-stack RoR programmers on the job hunt though, so (a) alone is enough to get a call from me. Your resume almost doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't violate (c).

For me at least, just put together a generic resume and write a frank, friendly email/cover-letter. Even though I'll probably call you regardless of the cover-letter, a good one may give me enough confidence to skip right to on on-site (or coffee).

Smart people don't play monkey games. If you want a monkey at the very least be honest about it. If you want a rockstar you better have a damn good reason for them to come to your company rather than just start their own. Playing monkey games to see if your possible new team rockstar is good at reading minds through osmosis is the first reason they won't even look at you. Better stick to brogrammers, however I doubt you even see many of them.

[1] http://pragprog.com/book/algh/land-the-tech-job-you-love

Joining a startup is a two way street. If you are considering joining one, you should do as much diligence (or even more) than they are doing on you. I, personally, love startups -- the energy, the diversity of problems, the ability to learn and grow. But, I've also been bitten by all the glitz (early in my career during bubble one) as well as people that thing "it's a startup" is an excuse to demand above and beyond efforts on a regular basis.

In general, you are going to work more at a startup, you may or may not get paid less, and you will need to weigh the whole work/life balance thing, most likely. You might be asked to make a tradeoff between equity and salary.

The tangibles you have control over (salary, time you are willing to commit, etc) are the ones you need to weigh. But, you also need to understand as much as you can about the expectations of those in management.

Poor planning, for instance, should never be excuse by "this is a startup" -- I don't mean pivoting, I don't mean tweaking as new information comes along, I mean those people that can't make up their mind on what constitutes the expected deliverable by a particular date.