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Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

#11

Post by samzhao »

norswap wrote: post #4

I'm curious, why for three days? I can't imagine you could accomplish much in three days (at least, I couldn't) since you need to setup your environment, get accesses, familiarize yourself with the release system, etc...

I should have asked for just one day only. It doesn't have to be technical. I think this is an easy way to get rejected (inspired by Jia's rejection therapy), rather than asking in person. I doubt people would give me access to anything important. Nonetheless, if someone decide to let me help, it would be a great experience for me, and one more reason other than my resume to hire me.

Re: Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

#13

Post by anu_gupta »

samzhao wrote: post #7
sangupta wrote: post #3

Pick up your favorite framework in the open-source community and contribute to that - either via code, tests, documentation or helping users. This you can continue for weeks and will help you in the long run.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I agree with you that this will help me in a long run for my programming skills. However, what I'm actually looking for is experience at running a business/startup.

How is 3 days going to give you that experience?

Start a startup. Pick a little idea, build it, market it and see what happens. You'd probably learn a ton more that way than working remotely for 3 days.

Re: Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

#14

Post by tempestn »

Hey, I own www.searchtempest.com and www.autotempest.com. And we're actually in Victoria, BC! I expect I could find something for you to do for a day or three if you're interested. Could even have lunch or something if you want to take the ferry over. Feel free to email me through one of our sites' contact pages.

Re: Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

#15

Post by eru »

norswap wrote: post #4

I'm curious, why for three days? I can't imagine you could accomplish much in three days (at least, I couldn't) since you need to setup your environment, get accesses, familiarize yourself with the release system, etc...

In three days you could make an impact, but not so much on the technical side.

Taking the trash out, making coffee and setting appointments; anything that will allow the technical people more uninterrupted concentration.

Re: Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days?

#16

Post by sangupta »

samzhao wrote: post #7
sangupta wrote: post #3

Pick up your favorite framework in the open-source community and contribute to that - either via code, tests, documentation or helping users. This you can continue for weeks and will help you in the long run.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I agree with you that this will help me in a long run for my programming skills. However, what I'm actually looking for is experience at running a business/startup.

I agree with Anu here.

You won't be able to learn too much in 3 days, and also none of the guys at a startup will take a lot of interest making you understand things considering the short tenure.

Pick up a small idea - some pain point that you see in your daily workflow. There are so many possibilities with free infrastructure today, Heroku, Google App Engine, and of course Amazon WebServices.

Start contacting people to see if they are interested and go through the proper way how someone seeds a startup. This will help you learn something that no experience ever will.

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