11 ms·

How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

419 points by swighton 11y ago

rubidium 11y ago
It's a high risk method. But it's much more effective than traditional job applications. So if you weigh the time spent (10-20 hours building custom thing for company) vs spending 10 hours filling out 30 applications, I would guess this is a better approach. It's also a method described in "guerrilla marketing for job hunters". There's others in the book if you're looking for a little lower effort non-traditional methods.
- mschip 11y ago
  I put a much higher priority on the people I work with. So I would add to that risk the scenario where I get the job but it turns out to be a bunch of bros. Maybe there was some public insight to the kind of people this person would be joining to mitigate that risk.
  - swighton 11y ago
    I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the company, the people, their product, etc. I knew half the engineers by name from various videos they had posted and was fully convinced it was a company of amazingly talented people.
    - tedmiston 11y ago
      Just curious -- were there other companies you put this much effort into studying and making such a stellar first impression? Did you feel sure enough you would get this position that you didn't need to?
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  High risk? Really? What do you have to lose? Time spent doing what you love?
  - rubidium 11y ago
    When you're looking for work and need to get a job (e.g. to support a family) spending 10-20 hours working on a single job opportunity is risky because they may just say "sorry, we like you but _____". where _____= {there's a corporate headcount freeze, we don't need that skill, we already have something that does that better, we're not good at hiring}. I still think it's likely a good strategy, just worth acknowledging the inherent risk. If you have oodles of free time, then sure, it's low risk.
- imh 11y ago
  It's not too high risk. Worst case, it becomes a pretty portfolio piece, which is useful enough.
cahoodle 11y ago
Thanks for sharing. I agree with doing the unconventional, and I think it comes down to making a very clear case to the founders that you can add value off the bat when joining the company. Given the limited time and resources, it's hard for the company to pass on hustlers who can get shit done right away.
dbalan 11y ago
Hug of death. Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-koHwskgMJ:shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-when-you-don-t-know-anyone+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-koH...
dharma1 11y ago
Great approach. I would hire someone like this. You're gonna be a legend the day you join. Probably easier to be noticed/hired this way with smaller companies. Even if you don't get hired, you've learned something new and produced something cool which you can show in your next interview, and only lost a couple of days of your time.
pibefision 11y ago
Why the goal is a startup? I don't undertand the obsesion of being part of something so fragil.
- goldbrick 11y ago
  For one thing, it's probably much harder for these types of moves to make an impact when your stereotypical HR drone is handling incoming resumes -- hell, I can practically see them filing the cover letter in the standard way, the resume in the standard way, and the random hunk of metal in the standard way (garbage).
  - organsnyder 11y ago
    In my experience, your typical startup has its own drone handling resumes. It may not be a dedicated HR person—it could even be a fellow developer—but it's still someone with their own biases and blind spots. Engineers can certainly better understand how the demands of a position map to a candidate, but there's a tendency to "hire someone like me" that doesn't exist to the same extent with dedicated HR people.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    True, but then if it's a 10-person startup there's also the danger that they're so amazed by your ingenuity they decide they definitely want to hire you as soon as they've closed that next round so they can afford a few more people. Now it might be the case that you're so engaged with their mission you want to wait a few months for a below market salary offer (hey, you're obviously far too keen to negotiate it) but it might be a trick that's easier to consistently pull off with a maverick-friendly businesses with more substantial funding or revenue
- ejcx 11y ago
  As an engineer, it's great being able to push code daily and see people using your work. Young engineers normally have more responsibilities at a startup, more trial by fire. It's great fun and good for career advancement. There are tons of reasons for and against
dlsx 11y ago
I am curious as how this .engineer TLD plans to keep it's doors open if it only hosts a few websites? What happens if .engineer can't pay the bills? Why would anyone register such a terrible TLD? Engineers have poor taste.
forgetsusername 11y ago
This boils down to being able to show the potential employer than you can be of immediate, tangible value to the company, which should be the main goal of anyone looking for work. A resume is one way to do this (albeit not great), building a valuable, relevant prototype is another. There are many alternatives along that continuum. But really, are talented, creative software people really having trouble finding work?
blairbeckwith 11y ago
This is so true. It's really shocking how little effort and originality some/most people go to in getting the job they want. I have a similar story, although nowhere near as much effort. When I was 20 and hating life in school, I really wanted to work at Shopify. At the time, they were maybe 80 people. I've never made a resume and didn't feel like that would get me noticed. Sio I simply sent a cold email to Tobi, our CEO. It was basically "Hey, Tobi. I don't know anything, and I have no skills, but I love your company and I want to be involved. Give me a chance, I'll work for free." I got an email a week later from someone else on the team saying that I started the next week. When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out.
- wdewind 11y ago
  > When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out. When I was half way through college I decided I no longer wanted to be in school. I emailed a bunch of startups saying essentially "Your company sounds cool. I'll come work for you for the summer for free as long as we set up some kind of goal system where I can get a job offer at the end of the summer." I ended up getting two offers from that and never looked back. I didn't end up lasting 4 years there like you, but I am definitely glad I did it. Ironically enough, now that I'm somewhat into my career I can't see myself doing something like that again, which is too bad. I've picked up some risk aversion along the way :(
  - dasil003 11y ago
    I think it works a lot better when you're 20 because people hire you based on potential. But when you're 30 hiring managers want to see skills. I suppose it could still work if you're changing careers, but you would need to demonstrate an even higher level of hunger and dedication.
FallDead 11y ago
Yeah so good, he basically could have started his own company but instead ... gave his soul to another.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Or to look at it another way, "I can make all the newbie mistakes on somebody else's dime? Sign me up!"
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  Not everyone wants to run a business.
a_lifters_life 11y ago
Logically, I'd think try to meet people. Meetup.com is a great start!
k-mcgrady 11y ago
I don't get why you have to go to such extremes to get hired. In my experience getting hired at a startup is like getting hired anywhere else - in fact generally it's easier. You send in a CV, attend one or two interviews (personal and technical), and get a decision. I'm not sure what it's like now but weren't companies finding it really difficult to find engineers in SV not that long ago? That should make things even easier.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more difficult than that. It is probably a major factor in the talent shortage, as companies are no longer willing to take any chances or train anyone, even for jobs that would take four hours of training! I've watched companies in the last year I interviewed with wait and suffer? a year to fill a position, even though I could have done their silly rest-api job with one arm behind my back, haha.
  - rlonstein 11y ago
    > Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire > was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more > difficult than that. I experienced this first-hand a few years ago. I had a few friends and former colleagues working there and was qualified. One of the six interviewers was known to be difficult (even to outsiders) and sank me. The CTO personally apologized to me face-to-face but decided to uphold the 100% agreement tradition.
JonLim 11y ago
Shane, you build a slicer in three days? Good lord. Hats off to you, sir!
shloky 11y ago
Yep. I think people are getting caught up on the 'startup' part of this. Roughly this is how I've met every mentor I've wanted to and then gone on to work with them. Demonstrate value by investing time/effort in your interest, and build on that through communication until an opportunity to work together presents itself.
osullivj 11y ago
Years ago, during the original dotcom crash, I was working in banking. All the banks were firing, not hiring. I got an interview at Morgan Stanley by contributing a feature to their open source A+ project[1]. Running code counts for a lot! [1] aplusdev.org
krschultz 11y ago
Great story, and I love the author's initiative. The author overlooked the first major factor in their success - finding the startup they wanted to work at! I actually think the more specific you get in your job search the more successful you will be. People often think that by being 'flexible' in what they want to do they are increasing the number of companies they can work for. That is true, but you aren't trying to work for a bunch of companies, you are trying to work for one. By being that general you will never find the place where you specifically are the best candidate. To be concrete, I'd rather find the 5 companies that are really aligned with my skillset and target them very specifically than apply to 50 random companies looking for someone kinda sorta like me.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lucio 11y ago
You developed in a long weekend a MVP which does more than the startup's soft?
- iammaxus 11y ago
  Formlabs cofounder here. Of course, there is a difference between a demo focusing on implementing new features then the software that we are shipping. But yes, it was extremely impressive and it's no surprise that he is leading much of our engineering team (beyond software, as well) today.
  - zerr 11y ago
    Do you think he would've been better off with starting his own business with that MVP? If no, why?
  - niij 11y ago
    You're the best boss in this thread. On a side note, what are higher ups looking for in a young applicant? I'm graduating in the fall with a CS Undergrad and don't have any startup contacts (I live in a smaller town in Missouri) and am trying to get my foot in the door somewhere that is doing interesting work.
    - elliotec 11y ago
      Projects. Contribute to open source as much as possible and build as much stuff as possible that you can show off. Then you should have no issue finding something interesting. Might have a better chance searching outside your hometown though.
      - niij 11y ago
        Thanks! I've been meaning to carve time out of my school schedule to make some contributions to a few projects on Github.
    - brey 11y ago
      Passion. Engagement. Curiosity. Being the absolute best possible at something - I don't really care what, but being mediocre at lots of things is a turnoff. Ability to learn new stuff, more so than any specific skill (although YMMV with this one). Any interview I walk out of thinking I've had a 2-way meeting of minds, a genuinely engaged conversation as if we're already peers, rather than an attempt to simply answer a list of questions is going to do well.
steven2012 11y ago
At my previous company, someone walked into our office and asked if we had any openings for engineers. Given that we were hiring anyway, we said sure so we talked with him. Unfortunately because of visa issues we couldn't hire him but if not for that, we definitely would have. It was a case of right-place-right-time, but it definitely was something we talked about for a while afterwards.
- gaius 11y ago
  My first startup job I literally walked in the front door and asked if they needed a Unix hacker. They interviewed me on the spot. Not enough office furniture so I got a chair and the engineering lead sat on a DEC Alpha he had in his office.
nerdy 11y ago
I've done something similar by creating a 3rd party companion website for an online marketplace (which has ~50 employees), but haven't contacted the company directly. Now I'm stuck. What Shane did requires not only hard work, but the guts to engage the company and knowing what it is that you really want. If you're considering this, make sure you're resolved to a particular course of action. My site targets sellers from that marketplace and provides a search of information scraped from the official source as well as detailed sales statistics which are not available from the official source. For active users, these two things can easily save several hours per week. The 1st party company has acknowledged the existence of my site and indicated to their users that they'll allow it but are unaffiliated, which is completely understandable since they have no idea who I am. My companion site was created out of necessity and receives about 20k pageviews a month (approx 2000 users). Currently, I am not charging for the site but a half a dozen people have suggested charging for its use or contacting the 1st party site to license it to them. The people making these suggestions are the marketplace sellers from the 1st party site (the users who are common to both sites). But now there are difficult decisions to be made. I've worked from home for over a decade and loathe commutes, even those measured in minutes. This company is 2.5 hours away and best-case public transportation would have me out for 12-14 hours per day. This company makes no mention of any kind of remote work possibility but my impression is that it's done some of the time by some of their employees. I wouldn't want special treatment even if they offered it. With all of that said, if I did have to travel to work... this place looks like the kind of place I'd enjoy working. It was relatively easy to find about 1/4 of their team on social media and get a feel for their culture, even found some video of their office on a regular workday. If I did join them and the commuting situation were overcome, would that constrain my freedom to make the new features and enhancements that the community wants? Contacting them with a laundry-list of questions feels wrong. If I didn't join, would enough of my currently free users convert to paid to make it worth continuing? What's the optimal price to balance the seesaw of retention vs dollars (number retained free users * price per month)? Is it unknowable? What percentage of the existing users might actually pay? It's all very uncertain. It'd be great to get some feedback from everyone, maybe with your own experience(s). Shane's idea is great but it doesn't magically fall into place, relationships are complicated!
- rwallace 11y ago
patio11 11y ago
An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is "convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there." This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are. They use the same email / Twitter / etc. THEY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Engineers are in incredible demand. They get a steady stream of resumes from people who are wildly unqualified for the job. That is one reason why they're not going to read your resume when you send it in unless their prior expectation is that you're interesting. It is not harder to be interesting than "someone I've never heard of or met." "Hey Bob, I watched your presentation at $CONFERENCE last year on Youtube. Great stuff; loved what you did with $FOO, in particular $COMMENT_PROVING_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOU'RE_TALKING_ABOUT. I'm also a $FOO developer. Do you have a few minutes to chat on Thursday about what you guys are doing?" You're not proposing marriage here. You're asking for 15 minutes to get to know them. You do not have to author a heartbreaking work of staggering genius to make this call happen. Your goal for the chat: get Bob enthusiastic enough to either suggest "Hey you should apply here" or be receptive to you suggesting "Hey, I really like what you're doing, and would like to see if I could be a part of it. Can you get the ball rolling for me?" n.b. If you want to knock someone's socks off with a demo of e.g. an application which uses their API, use the above to get one person enthusiastic about reviewing the demo, then implement. If you can't get one person enthusiastic about the prospect of looking at your work, there's sharply limited odds that actually doing the work meaningfully advances your interests.
- mathattack 11y ago
  Very good advice. Any employee at any halfway decent company can put a friend's resume at the top of the pile. You still have to know what you're doing to get through the interview, but HR people are looking for any good reason to cull their stack. "Well, Jane over in QA recommended them" is as good a reason as any, and provides them cover when asked, "Why doesn't this person have skill X"
- leeny 11y ago
  As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.
known 11y ago
Volunteer/Intern
- dominotw 11y ago
  i have mouths to feed.
motdiem 11y ago
Anecdotally, that's how we hired our designer - her last "mockup" project matched exactly what we were working on next - the hiring process was super fast, and there are a lot of benefits to hiring someone who has already spent time thinking about the same problem space as you did.
cushychicken 11y ago
The short version: show that you fucking care! People love to hire people that care about their mission and show that they're capable of supporting it. It's really that simple.
groundCode 11y ago
This is a great story and kudos - it looks like an awesome piece of work for a weekend project. As a counterpoint, I did something similar (replicated a barebones version of a tool that a company I wanted to work for had) and sent it off and didn't even receive a courtesy "thanks but no thanks" email. Them's the breaks I guess.
pravj 11y ago
I was interested in working with the Data Science team of one of India's leading e-commerce startups. Later, I ended up doing a project[1] where I have collected and analysed the user order data from their order tracking portal. Now I feel that they won't take me back because I kind of played like a Black-Hat instead of a White-Hat by not notifying them about the little loophole that made it possible for me. Before this, I was an intern there and got that because of one of my past project. This method does work. [1] http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-ecommerce http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-ecommerce
- justinclift 11y ago
  Heh Heh Heh It's kind of sad you sound surprised. :( If you were in their shoes, how would you have handled someone doing that? :)
  - pravj 11y ago
    Yeah, agree with you. Although it was not that I stole some secret key or something. It was just that there was data in public, and I used it for good.
- soared 11y ago
  They likely thought you used knowledge of their internal system for blackhat purposes, which is kind of what you did. Interesting analysis and dci nonetheless.
sinnet11 11y ago
I feel like this approach is easier for smaller startups. But what about bigger places like google, apple, or facebook. My background isn't your traditional CS background but I have over 4 years of experience on a site that does million+ in traffic but I can't even get my resume sniffed at by those companies.
samstave 11y ago
Years ago we were working on the first PC-based phone gateway, which allowed you to use your phone line and computer as a call gateway over IP. A guy called up because he wanted our linux drivers. We didn't have any linux drivers. So he called back a while later and said "Here I wrote the linux drivers for you." He had reverse engineered the board and wrote the drivers to make it run on linux based on all the specs of the various chips on the board. We hired him on the spot.
Riod 11y ago
I think everyone is ignoring the fact that he really wanted to work there. If you're in that boat then yes this makes sense. But if like most people you're not exactly gaga over the company but value other factors like pay and lifestyle then the traditional approach could yield more dividends. Return on time invested after all is important.
wcchandler 11y ago
I've done something similar. I wanted to branch into a new discipline, so to show off my ability to pick up a new skillset, I learned how to juggle. At first it started off as a joke, because their jobsite said "juggle multiple things." I spent a couple of hours, recorded video of my progress and posted it to YouTube. I didn't get the job. I actually went out on a limb and reached out to somebody privately to make sure it wasn't too "out of the ordinary" and that I didn't ruin my chances for anything in the future. Thankfully, mostly everyone forgot about it. I guess it wasn't unique or clever enough?
starving_coder 11y ago
I did something very similar and approached the hiring manager to show him what I've done. While he appreciated my work, he wanted me to work (for free) on the company's Github stuff and said he will call me if that something opens up. PS: I am okay spending my free time on his cool project but it progressively looks unsustainable.
gravypod 11y ago
The largest thing that stops me from being able to apply for a job as a college student is that every job I am interested in, mainly back-end/low-level software development, say that they require a "MS in CS and 5 years of experience." These job postings are for entry level positions and internships, nothing higher. Is this something I should be worried about? Should I just apply to this kind of work anyway? How do I find companies willing to hire me as a college student with no official experience?
- jpmw 11y ago
  Having hired a bunch of people, including juniors out of school, I'll tell you this: apply, just apply. A job description and requirement is their picture of the ideal candidate, but they will hire the person that's the closest to that, and other things not mentioned in the offers like how you would fit culturally in the team, work with others, and so many other things. Just apply to what you want to do, what's the worst case again? Ah, you spent time writing a cover letter. Btw, keep your cover letter short. People might not read it if it's too long. Another last tip: apply even if you are almost certain you won't have it. Never say "I'll apply when I get more experience". You know what? By then, you will change, the company will change, and it might not be a good fit anymore. I wanted to apply to a couple of specifics startups in the past that I never applied too because I felt like I was not up to it, in the end, I was wrong and the company changed so much that I don't want to work there anymore at all, but I'm sure that would have been great for years. Apply. Just apply.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    It seems that everything in the process, from the "Jobs Page" that goes to a black hole, to the unrealistic job descriptions, to the months-long interview processes, to the opaque and feedback-less selection process, seems to be built for the purpose of not hiring candidates. Which seems odd for an industry that constantly complains about not being able to find talent and is bent on perpetuating the "shortage of engineers" meme.
  - Namrog84 11y ago
    I couldn't agree more. In school there was a scholarship I was almost eligible for. I needed a 3.5 gpa but only had 3.2 so I didn't apply thinking I was disqualified. A few months later I found out someone with a 2.3 got it because lack of entries. Then again later I entered a programming competition with a $5 entry fee. Only 2 people entered and we each won $100 and $75. A 3rd place prize of $50 went unclaimed. Anyone who entered and earned 0 correct would have gotten it. As second place dude didn't get any right. If it's low effort or something you enjoy, always apply. It's almost always worth it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
jes5199 11y ago
I got my first real startup job by submitting a bunch of bugfix patches to their open source offering. It was relatively easy - they had a public bug tracker, and I just picked the things I thought I could figure out, and after one weekend, I had a job offer. I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that. We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people got turned down because we didn't have an effective way of measuring their abilities. If they had gone through the code review process, they would have had a much better chance of getting the job. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why we didn't include "submit a bugfix to our open source project" as part of a standard interview process)
- personjerry 11y ago
  "submit a bugfix to our open source project" might be looked down upon as trying to get people to work for you for free
  - djcapelis 11y ago
    So pay them?
berfarah 11y ago
If you're the author: Typo here (I assume): > At they time they had 10 employees I found the Raleway text really hard to read, personally changed it. It might just be how it looks on Mac or Mac retina, but it was very light. I think there's a middle ground in there somewhere
lemiffe 11y ago
I once applied to Heroku; I wrote a song about deploying to Heroku, made a video for it on Youtube, deployed it to Heroku (of course), and applied (via their site and Twitter). Never got an email back, not even a "we received your application". Was bummed out for a while afterwards.
kazinator 11y ago
Get famous; then you still don't know anyone, but they "know" you.
- hawleyal 11y ago
  I'll just put on my fame helmet, squeeze down into a fame cannon and fire off into fame land where fame grows on fame trees.
xivzgrev 11y ago
My approach. Either do the job (I'm a marketer and built a landing page for one company with bootstrap to show I could), or find a common connection. In my current job, the hiring manager formerly worked with a good friend of a guy I helped out 4 years ago evaluate two job offers. that's how weak ties work. Also the benefit of paying it forward, never know how that connects back to you.

419 points by swighton 11y ago

It's a high risk method. But it's much more effective than traditional job applications. So if you weigh the time spent (10-20 hours building custom thing for company) vs spending 10 hours filling out 30 applications, I would guess this is a better approach. It's also a method described in "guerrilla marketing for job hunters". There's others in the book if you're looking for a little lower effort non-traditional methods.

mschip 11y ago
I put a much higher priority on the people I work with. So I would add to that risk the scenario where I get the job but it turns out to be a bunch of bros. Maybe there was some public insight to the kind of people this person would be joining to mitigate that risk.
- swighton 11y ago
  I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the company, the people, their product, etc. I knew half the engineers by name from various videos they had posted and was fully convinced it was a company of amazingly talented people.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    Just curious -- were there other companies you put this much effort into studying and making such a stellar first impression? Did you feel sure enough you would get this position that you didn't need to?
vinceguidry 11y ago
High risk? Really? What do you have to lose? Time spent doing what you love?
- rubidium 11y ago
  When you're looking for work and need to get a job (e.g. to support a family) spending 10-20 hours working on a single job opportunity is risky because they may just say "sorry, we like you but _____". where _____= {there's a corporate headcount freeze, we don't need that skill, we already have something that does that better, we're not good at hiring}. I still think it's likely a good strategy, just worth acknowledging the inherent risk. If you have oodles of free time, then sure, it's low risk.
imh 11y ago
It's not too high risk. Worst case, it becomes a pretty portfolio piece, which is useful enough.

cahoodle 11y ago

Thanks for sharing. I agree with doing the unconventional, and I think it comes down to making a very clear case to the founders that you can add value off the bat when joining the company. Given the limited time and resources, it's hard for the company to pass on hustlers who can get shit done right away.

dbalan 11y ago

Hug of death. Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-koHwskgMJ:shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-when-you-don-t-know-anyone+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Dc-koH...

dharma1 11y ago

Great approach. I would hire someone like this. You're gonna be a legend the day you join. Probably easier to be noticed/hired this way with smaller companies. Even if you don't get hired, you've learned something new and produced something cool which you can show in your next interview, and only lost a couple of days of your time.

pibefision 11y ago

Why the goal is a startup? I don't undertand the obsesion of being part of something so fragil.

goldbrick 11y ago
For one thing, it's probably much harder for these types of moves to make an impact when your stereotypical HR drone is handling incoming resumes -- hell, I can practically see them filing the cover letter in the standard way, the resume in the standard way, and the random hunk of metal in the standard way (garbage).
- organsnyder 11y ago
  In my experience, your typical startup has its own drone handling resumes. It may not be a dedicated HR person—it could even be a fellow developer—but it's still someone with their own biases and blind spots. Engineers can certainly better understand how the demands of a position map to a candidate, but there's a tendency to "hire someone like me" that doesn't exist to the same extent with dedicated HR people.
- notahacker 11y ago
  True, but then if it's a 10-person startup there's also the danger that they're so amazed by your ingenuity they decide they definitely want to hire you as soon as they've closed that next round so they can afford a few more people. Now it might be the case that you're so engaged with their mission you want to wait a few months for a below market salary offer (hey, you're obviously far too keen to negotiate it) but it might be a trick that's easier to consistently pull off with a maverick-friendly businesses with more substantial funding or revenue
ejcx 11y ago
As an engineer, it's great being able to push code daily and see people using your work. Young engineers normally have more responsibilities at a startup, more trial by fire. It's great fun and good for career advancement. There are tons of reasons for and against

dlsx 11y ago

I am curious as how this .engineer TLD plans to keep it's doors open if it only hosts a few websites? What happens if .engineer can't pay the bills? Why would anyone register such a terrible TLD? Engineers have poor taste.

forgetsusername 11y ago

This boils down to being able to show the potential employer than you can be of immediate, tangible value to the company, which should be the main goal of anyone looking for work. A resume is one way to do this (albeit not great), building a valuable, relevant prototype is another. There are many alternatives along that continuum. But really, are talented, creative software people really having trouble finding work?

blairbeckwith 11y ago

This is so true. It's really shocking how little effort and originality some/most people go to in getting the job they want. I have a similar story, although nowhere near as much effort. When I was 20 and hating life in school, I really wanted to work at Shopify. At the time, they were maybe 80 people. I've never made a resume and didn't feel like that would get me noticed. Sio I simply sent a cold email to Tobi, our CEO. It was basically "Hey, Tobi. I don't know anything, and I have no skills, but I love your company and I want to be involved. Give me a chance, I'll work for free." I got an email a week later from someone else on the team saying that I started the next week. When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out.

wdewind 11y ago
> When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out. When I was half way through college I decided I no longer wanted to be in school. I emailed a bunch of startups saying essentially "Your company sounds cool. I'll come work for you for the summer for free as long as we set up some kind of goal system where I can get a job offer at the end of the summer." I ended up getting two offers from that and never looked back. I didn't end up lasting 4 years there like you, but I am definitely glad I did it. Ironically enough, now that I'm somewhat into my career I can't see myself doing something like that again, which is too bad. I've picked up some risk aversion along the way :(
- dasil003 11y ago
  I think it works a lot better when you're 20 because people hire you based on potential. But when you're 30 hiring managers want to see skills. I suppose it could still work if you're changing careers, but you would need to demonstrate an even higher level of hunger and dedication.

FallDead 11y ago

Yeah so good, he basically could have started his own company but instead ... gave his soul to another.

mikekchar 11y ago
Or to look at it another way, "I can make all the newbie mistakes on somebody else's dime? Sign me up!"
ceejayoz 11y ago
Not everyone wants to run a business.

a_lifters_life 11y ago

Logically, I'd think try to meet people. Meetup.com is a great start!

k-mcgrady 11y ago

I don't get why you have to go to such extremes to get hired. In my experience getting hired at a startup is like getting hired anywhere else - in fact generally it's easier. You send in a CV, attend one or two interviews (personal and technical), and get a decision. I'm not sure what it's like now but weren't companies finding it really difficult to find engineers in SV not that long ago? That should make things even easier.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more difficult than that. It is probably a major factor in the talent shortage, as companies are no longer willing to take any chances or train anyone, even for jobs that would take four hours of training! I've watched companies in the last year I interviewed with wait and suffer? a year to fill a position, even though I could have done their silly rest-api job with one arm behind my back, haha.
- rlonstein 11y ago
  > Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire > was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more > difficult than that. I experienced this first-hand a few years ago. I had a few friends and former colleagues working there and was qualified. One of the six interviewers was known to be difficult (even to outsiders) and sank me. The CTO personally apologized to me face-to-face but decided to uphold the 100% agreement tradition.

JonLim 11y ago

Shane, you build a slicer in three days? Good lord. Hats off to you, sir!

shloky 11y ago

Yep. I think people are getting caught up on the 'startup' part of this. Roughly this is how I've met every mentor I've wanted to and then gone on to work with them. Demonstrate value by investing time/effort in your interest, and build on that through communication until an opportunity to work together presents itself.

osullivj 11y ago

Years ago, during the original dotcom crash, I was working in banking. All the banks were firing, not hiring. I got an interview at Morgan Stanley by contributing a feature to their open source A+ project[1]. Running code counts for a lot! [1] aplusdev.org

krschultz 11y ago

Great story, and I love the author's initiative. The author overlooked the first major factor in their success - finding the startup they wanted to work at! I actually think the more specific you get in your job search the more successful you will be. People often think that by being 'flexible' in what they want to do they are increasing the number of companies they can work for. That is true, but you aren't trying to work for a bunch of companies, you are trying to work for one. By being that general you will never find the place where you specifically are the best candidate. To be concrete, I'd rather find the 5 companies that are really aligned with my skillset and target them very specifically than apply to 50 random companies looking for someone kinda sorta like me.

deleted 11y ago

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lucio 11y ago

You developed in a long weekend a MVP which does more than the startup's soft?

iammaxus 11y ago
Formlabs cofounder here. Of course, there is a difference between a demo focusing on implementing new features then the software that we are shipping. But yes, it was extremely impressive and it's no surprise that he is leading much of our engineering team (beyond software, as well) today.
- zerr 11y ago
  Do you think he would've been better off with starting his own business with that MVP? If no, why?
- niij 11y ago
  You're the best boss in this thread. On a side note, what are higher ups looking for in a young applicant? I'm graduating in the fall with a CS Undergrad and don't have any startup contacts (I live in a smaller town in Missouri) and am trying to get my foot in the door somewhere that is doing interesting work.
  - elliotec 11y ago
    Projects. Contribute to open source as much as possible and build as much stuff as possible that you can show off. Then you should have no issue finding something interesting. Might have a better chance searching outside your hometown though.
    - niij 11y ago
      Thanks! I've been meaning to carve time out of my school schedule to make some contributions to a few projects on Github.
  - brey 11y ago
    Passion. Engagement. Curiosity. Being the absolute best possible at something - I don't really care what, but being mediocre at lots of things is a turnoff. Ability to learn new stuff, more so than any specific skill (although YMMV with this one). Any interview I walk out of thinking I've had a 2-way meeting of minds, a genuinely engaged conversation as if we're already peers, rather than an attempt to simply answer a list of questions is going to do well.

steven2012 11y ago

At my previous company, someone walked into our office and asked if we had any openings for engineers. Given that we were hiring anyway, we said sure so we talked with him. Unfortunately because of visa issues we couldn't hire him but if not for that, we definitely would have. It was a case of right-place-right-time, but it definitely was something we talked about for a while afterwards.

gaius 11y ago
My first startup job I literally walked in the front door and asked if they needed a Unix hacker. They interviewed me on the spot. Not enough office furniture so I got a chair and the engineering lead sat on a DEC Alpha he had in his office.

nerdy 11y ago

I've done something similar by creating a 3rd party companion website for an online marketplace (which has ~50 employees), but haven't contacted the company directly. Now I'm stuck. What Shane did requires not only hard work, but the guts to engage the company and knowing what it is that you really want. If you're considering this, make sure you're resolved to a particular course of action. My site targets sellers from that marketplace and provides a search of information scraped from the official source as well as detailed sales statistics which are not available from the official source. For active users, these two things can easily save several hours per week. The 1st party company has acknowledged the existence of my site and indicated to their users that they'll allow it but are unaffiliated, which is completely understandable since they have no idea who I am. My companion site was created out of necessity and receives about 20k pageviews a month (approx 2000 users). Currently, I am not charging for the site but a half a dozen people have suggested charging for its use or contacting the 1st party site to license it to them. The people making these suggestions are the marketplace sellers from the 1st party site (the users who are common to both sites). But now there are difficult decisions to be made. I've worked from home for over a decade and loathe commutes, even those measured in minutes. This company is 2.5 hours away and best-case public transportation would have me out for 12-14 hours per day. This company makes no mention of any kind of remote work possibility but my impression is that it's done some of the time by some of their employees. I wouldn't want special treatment even if they offered it. With all of that said, if I did have to travel to work... this place looks like the kind of place I'd enjoy working. It was relatively easy to find about 1/4 of their team on social media and get a feel for their culture, even found some video of their office on a regular workday. If I did join them and the commuting situation were overcome, would that constrain my freedom to make the new features and enhancements that the community wants? Contacting them with a laundry-list of questions feels wrong. If I didn't join, would enough of my currently free users convert to paid to make it worth continuing? What's the optimal price to balance the seesaw of retention vs dollars (number retained free users * price per month)? Is it unknowable? What percentage of the existing users might actually pay? It's all very uncertain. It'd be great to get some feedback from everyone, maybe with your own experience(s). Shane's idea is great but it doesn't magically fall into place, relationships are complicated!

rwallace 11y ago

patio11 11y ago

An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is "convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there." This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are. They use the same email / Twitter / etc. THEY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Engineers are in incredible demand. They get a steady stream of resumes from people who are wildly unqualified for the job. That is one reason why they're not going to read your resume when you send it in unless their prior expectation is that you're interesting. It is not harder to be interesting than "someone I've never heard of or met." "Hey Bob, I watched your presentation at $CONFERENCE last year on Youtube. Great stuff; loved what you did with $FOO, in particular $COMMENT_PROVING_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOU'RE_TALKING_ABOUT. I'm also a $FOO developer. Do you have a few minutes to chat on Thursday about what you guys are doing?" You're not proposing marriage here. You're asking for 15 minutes to get to know them. You do not have to author a heartbreaking work of staggering genius to make this call happen. Your goal for the chat: get Bob enthusiastic enough to either suggest "Hey you should apply here" or be receptive to you suggesting "Hey, I really like what you're doing, and would like to see if I could be a part of it. Can you get the ball rolling for me?" n.b. If you want to knock someone's socks off with a demo of e.g. an application which uses their API, use the above to get one person enthusiastic about reviewing the demo, then implement. If you can't get one person enthusiastic about the prospect of looking at your work, there's sharply limited odds that actually doing the work meaningfully advances your interests.

mathattack 11y ago
Very good advice. Any employee at any halfway decent company can put a friend's resume at the top of the pile. You still have to know what you're doing to get through the interview, but HR people are looking for any good reason to cull their stack. "Well, Jane over in QA recommended them" is as good a reason as any, and provides them cover when asked, "Why doesn't this person have skill X"
leeny 11y ago
As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

known 11y ago

Volunteer/Intern

dominotw 11y ago
i have mouths to feed.

motdiem 11y ago

Anecdotally, that's how we hired our designer - her last "mockup" project matched exactly what we were working on next - the hiring process was super fast, and there are a lot of benefits to hiring someone who has already spent time thinking about the same problem space as you did.

cushychicken 11y ago

The short version: show that you fucking care! People love to hire people that care about their mission and show that they're capable of supporting it. It's really that simple.

groundCode 11y ago

This is a great story and kudos - it looks like an awesome piece of work for a weekend project. As a counterpoint, I did something similar (replicated a barebones version of a tool that a company I wanted to work for had) and sent it off and didn't even receive a courtesy "thanks but no thanks" email. Them's the breaks I guess.

pravj 11y ago

I was interested in working with the Data Science team of one of India's leading e-commerce startups. Later, I ended up doing a project[1] where I have collected and analysed the user order data from their order tracking portal. Now I feel that they won't take me back because I kind of played like a Black-Hat instead of a White-Hat by not notifying them about the little loophole that made it possible for me. Before this, I was an intern there and got that because of one of my past project. This method does work. [1] http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-ecommerce http://pravj.github.io/blog/indian-ecommerce

justinclift 11y ago
Heh Heh Heh It's kind of sad you sound surprised. :( If you were in their shoes, how would you have handled someone doing that? :)
- pravj 11y ago
  Yeah, agree with you. Although it was not that I stole some secret key or something. It was just that there was data in public, and I used it for good.
soared 11y ago
They likely thought you used knowledge of their internal system for blackhat purposes, which is kind of what you did. Interesting analysis and dci nonetheless.

sinnet11 11y ago

I feel like this approach is easier for smaller startups. But what about bigger places like google, apple, or facebook. My background isn't your traditional CS background but I have over 4 years of experience on a site that does million+ in traffic but I can't even get my resume sniffed at by those companies.

samstave 11y ago

Years ago we were working on the first PC-based phone gateway, which allowed you to use your phone line and computer as a call gateway over IP. A guy called up because he wanted our linux drivers. We didn't have any linux drivers. So he called back a while later and said "Here I wrote the linux drivers for you." He had reverse engineered the board and wrote the drivers to make it run on linux based on all the specs of the various chips on the board. We hired him on the spot.

Riod 11y ago

I think everyone is ignoring the fact that he really wanted to work there. If you're in that boat then yes this makes sense. But if like most people you're not exactly gaga over the company but value other factors like pay and lifestyle then the traditional approach could yield more dividends. Return on time invested after all is important.

wcchandler 11y ago

I've done something similar. I wanted to branch into a new discipline, so to show off my ability to pick up a new skillset, I learned how to juggle. At first it started off as a joke, because their jobsite said "juggle multiple things." I spent a couple of hours, recorded video of my progress and posted it to YouTube. I didn't get the job. I actually went out on a limb and reached out to somebody privately to make sure it wasn't too "out of the ordinary" and that I didn't ruin my chances for anything in the future. Thankfully, mostly everyone forgot about it. I guess it wasn't unique or clever enough?

starving_coder 11y ago

I did something very similar and approached the hiring manager to show him what I've done. While he appreciated my work, he wanted me to work (for free) on the company's Github stuff and said he will call me if that something opens up. PS: I am okay spending my free time on his cool project but it progressively looks unsustainable.

gravypod 11y ago

The largest thing that stops me from being able to apply for a job as a college student is that every job I am interested in, mainly back-end/low-level software development, say that they require a "MS in CS and 5 years of experience." These job postings are for entry level positions and internships, nothing higher. Is this something I should be worried about? Should I just apply to this kind of work anyway? How do I find companies willing to hire me as a college student with no official experience?

jpmw 11y ago
Having hired a bunch of people, including juniors out of school, I'll tell you this: apply, just apply. A job description and requirement is their picture of the ideal candidate, but they will hire the person that's the closest to that, and other things not mentioned in the offers like how you would fit culturally in the team, work with others, and so many other things. Just apply to what you want to do, what's the worst case again? Ah, you spent time writing a cover letter. Btw, keep your cover letter short. People might not read it if it's too long. Another last tip: apply even if you are almost certain you won't have it. Never say "I'll apply when I get more experience". You know what? By then, you will change, the company will change, and it might not be a good fit anymore. I wanted to apply to a couple of specifics startups in the past that I never applied too because I felt like I was not up to it, in the end, I was wrong and the company changed so much that I don't want to work there anymore at all, but I'm sure that would have been great for years. Apply. Just apply.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  It seems that everything in the process, from the "Jobs Page" that goes to a black hole, to the unrealistic job descriptions, to the months-long interview processes, to the opaque and feedback-less selection process, seems to be built for the purpose of not hiring candidates. Which seems odd for an industry that constantly complains about not being able to find talent and is bent on perpetuating the "shortage of engineers" meme.
- Namrog84 11y ago
  I couldn't agree more. In school there was a scholarship I was almost eligible for. I needed a 3.5 gpa but only had 3.2 so I didn't apply thinking I was disqualified. A few months later I found out someone with a 2.3 got it because lack of entries. Then again later I entered a programming competition with a $5 entry fee. Only 2 people entered and we each won $100 and $75. A 3rd place prize of $50 went unclaimed. Anyone who entered and earned 0 correct would have gotten it. As second place dude didn't get any right. If it's low effort or something you enjoy, always apply. It's almost always worth it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

jes5199 11y ago

I got my first real startup job by submitting a bunch of bugfix patches to their open source offering. It was relatively easy - they had a public bug tracker, and I just picked the things I thought I could figure out, and after one weekend, I had a job offer. I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that. We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people got turned down because we didn't have an effective way of measuring their abilities. If they had gone through the code review process, they would have had a much better chance of getting the job. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why we didn't include "submit a bugfix to our open source project" as part of a standard interview process)

personjerry 11y ago
"submit a bugfix to our open source project" might be looked down upon as trying to get people to work for you for free
- djcapelis 11y ago
  So pay them?

berfarah 11y ago

If you're the author: Typo here (I assume): > At they time they had 10 employees I found the Raleway text really hard to read, personally changed it. It might just be how it looks on Mac or Mac retina, but it was very light. I think there's a middle ground in there somewhere

lemiffe 11y ago

I once applied to Heroku; I wrote a song about deploying to Heroku, made a video for it on Youtube, deployed it to Heroku (of course), and applied (via their site and Twitter). Never got an email back, not even a "we received your application". Was bummed out for a while afterwards.

kazinator 11y ago

Get famous; then you still don't know anyone, but they "know" you.

hawleyal 11y ago
I'll just put on my fame helmet, squeeze down into a fame cannon and fire off into fame land where fame grows on fame trees.

xivzgrev 11y ago

My approach. Either do the job (I'm a marketer and built a landing page for one company with bootstrap to show I could), or find a common connection. In my current job, the hiring manager formerly worked with a good friend of a guy I helped out 4 years ago evaluate two job offers. that's how weak ties work. Also the benefit of paying it forward, never know how that connects back to you.