Above all these helpful hints ..this quote should ring true #passion
"When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute."
@simonsinek ht: @danmartell
Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
A million times this. I'm in Auckland, New Zealand and it's quite scary sometimes when you run in to people trying to pretend they're in the valley the way they run their startup. It just is not the same out here: less money, less funded startups, less startups in general, very few supporting anything more than the founders, if they even do that. SV and NYC are outliers globally.
I'm in Brisbane and I'm doing some freelance for a US start-up right now. I kind of stumbled into this work, but would like to take more of it on in future. I think it would be great if there were some better tools for tracking and working with remote hackers. I think the virtual office is so close to becoming a reality.
I would agree, to an extent. (Even) in tech work right now there's a huge bias against remote workers.
The market is hot.... Assuming you live in SF or NYC. It's pretty dry - even for tech - if you live somewhere else. (just look on github jobs and count the number of jobs accepting remote workers)
I'm not sure better tools would solve the problem. Between web based trackers/document collaborators/Skype/Google Hangouts, it feels like we have most of the tools we need (except maybe a good whiteboard tool).
There are biases against remote work (in most cases). In some cases it might be, "oh, we neeeeeed high Bandwidth of seeing people in same room" (maybe, maybe not). In some cases it might boil down to someone equating "seeing butts in chairs" with "working". Or, "we've always been in one room, why change?"
The tools are there: Web based bug trackers, email, Skype/Hangouts, pairing via screen/tmux (granted pairing is an market ripe for even better tools), GitHub... And yes it's some effort to use these tools, but it's a pretty low barrier.
I think the virtual office will become a reality once people overcome their bias... Which is a human problem, not a problem we can solve with Mr Turing's Machine.
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#53My top advice would be to go for a company that is doing something a little different from the rest. Do you really want to put your blood, sweat, and tears into developing the 1000th photo sharing service? Find a company that is pursing something unique and interesting and that seems like it has real business potential.
Make sure the founders / executive team are on the same page. Make sure they have the same vision about what they are looking for in a new employee. If you pick up on signs that they are not quite in unison then your time working at their company will probably not be happy.
Ask yourself what is so special about the founders. What special skills or knowledge do they bring to the table that will crush the competition? If you don't think they have an edge then don't join their team. Try to find founders with some type of deep domain expertise.
As an employee you are investing your time in a company. Ask yourself if you want to work day in and day out with the people who are interviewing you. If you get a bad personality vibe from the people you're talking with then don't join. All personal conflicts will get blown up in the pressure cooker startup atmosphere.
Take this into consideration: remember that all that glitters is not gold. The odds of success are decidedly not in your favor at a startup. Startups are the trendy thing to do (especially here on HN) but know that they have their downsides just like any other company. Often times the downsides to startups can be particularly brutal. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#54Only two things are important.
1. Do you believe that their first product/service is going to be really popular if they do it right?
2. Can you want to live and work with the current company?
If the answer to either of these is no, or even meh, politely disengage and find something else.
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a tough job market, I agree that would be an important factor to consider. But it's not a tough job market for hackers now, to put it mildly. I've never seen such demand for hackers. A good hacker who wanted to ditch a dying startup today could find a new job more or less instantly.
This is not universally true. I for example cannot leave Perth, Australia. I'm doing the startup boogie from here. And there aren't many dance partners. So the dynamics of hiring in Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York hold about as much validity for me as the far side of the moon. (Wherein I partially sink my own argument).
Ok, yes, that's true; lack of job "liquidity" can negate the effects of a hot market. If there are only two places to work in your town, you have to think twice before leaving the safer once.
I never considered it before, but this is another benefit of startup hubs for the best startups: it's easier for people to leave their employers to come work for you. Of course you die by that same sword when you get sufficiently big, but that's a good problem to have.
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#56On a related note, how do I evaluate a startup from the inside? I'm currently interning there, but its my first internship, so I have little basis for comparison besides my friends experiences.
What happens when you make a mistake? How do your manager and peers react?
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#57Most people here have had good advice. The only thing I would add is that there's a difference between vision and delusion. Visionaries have a strong and clear focus, but are grounded enough to recognize the merits of their competition and work within the ecosystem that customers / users already enjoy. Delusionaries pour scorn on their competition (or even claim to be so revolutionary that they HAVE no competition), and try to create a walled garden or vendor lock-in with zero install base. Even Apple made iTunes for Windows.
My first job out of college was at a startup. The founders were reasonable people who were heavily influenced and invested in by a delusionary, who saw their company as a vehicle to realize his "vision" of how technology should work. As a result we never really managed to grow beyond a couple of million in revenue, and that mostly from what amounted to R&D outsourcing from large firms with technically naive execs. Said delusionary repeatedly vetoed our attempts to make our product more relevant to a wider range of customers since it would compromise his vision. I bailed out of frustration, and a year later one of our customers just outright bought the firm to acquire the founders. I heard the delusionary was very satisfied with his exit. :p
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#58Financially, as if you were an investor. They're the people whose job it is to evaluate startups' prospects, and they care above all about two things: the founders and the market. The founders should be relentlessly effective, and the market should ideally be of a size that can only be obtained by riding on trends beyond the startup's control (but visible to few besides the founders, or the market would already be fu…
Unless the OP will be getting a significant portion of preferred stock (viz. it won't be clawed back and it will receive money in the exit), I doubt that evaluating the company as an investor would is a good idea. Piggybacking on the YC filter would mean joining a company that already has VC money, so potential employees should be doubly careful about their percentage of stock and their stock options. It would be muc…
That article has some dangerous inaccuracies. For example:
If the first technical hire gets 1% while the CEO gets 5% and the other 94% has been set aside for employees and investors, and the CEO has been going without salary for a year already, well, that’s much more fair.
Any startup that's keeping 94% of the stock for future employees plus investors has a serious problem. The CEO has very little incentive to continue working on the company, as opposed to either selling out early for a deal that gives special treatment to the CEO, or just directing resources from the company to himself. You don't want to work somewhere that the founder gave himself 5% of the company.
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#59Financially, as if you were an investor. They're the people whose job it is to evaluate startups' prospects, and they care above all about two things: the founders and the market. The founders should be relentlessly effective, and the market should ideally be of a size that can only be obtained by riding on trends beyond the startup's control (but visible to few besides the founders, or the market would already be fu…
Surely I can't be the only person who would be fascinated to read an essay about distinguishing between the talkers and those with real substance. I sometimes wonder myself which one I qualify as: sometimes I feel like a genius sometimes like a fool. Part of the startup mood swings, I suppose, but I see talkers sometimes and think to myself, "Please let there be more substance to me than that."
Re: Ask HN: How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?
#60On a related note, how do I evaluate a startup from the inside? I'm currently interning there, but its my first internship, so I have little basis for comparison besides my friends experiences.
What happens when you make a mistake? How do your manager and peers react?
I haven't made any mistakes yet as in I'm working on a completely new project - I haven't interacted with any of the pre-existing code at all, so I haven't had any chances to screw something up. When I'm done, I'll merge my project into their codebase and that'll be it.