8 ms·
Work at a Startup
- gsiener 17y agoI'm really interested in attending something like this but am on the East Coast. Will there be any audio/video available from this event?
- jl 17y agoYes, we'll broadcast the event on Justin.tv.
- dunstad 17y agoDo we know when? It says invitations will be issued June 1, but not (that I saw) when the event actually occurs.
- cbernini 17y agoGreat news. I'm in Brazil and was wondering if there would be a live stream. I wonder if anyone here knows a startup with people working all over the globe. That would be just the optimal scenario for me.
- mitko 17y agoarhg, me too. I just applied and then found out that it is in MV and I am in Boston. Well, that's life...
- sachinag 17y agoIf you're a hacker and want to work at an interesting, funded startup in Boston, there are about a million jobs here. Everyone here is hurting for good technical talent. Just today, I had lunch with an executive at a company that is just killing it and, as always, the conversation turned to recruiting. If you want a gig in Boston, shoot an e-mail to sachinag@gmail.com with your resume and what you're interested in, and I guarantee you that I can make at least one substantive intro tailored to exactly what you want.
- infinite8s 17y agoDo you know if NYC is the same?
- apgwoz 17y agoJoin some meetup groups. There's job postings and pre meetup "have a job, need a job" things in pretty much all the tech meetups I attend, most are startups.
- iamelgringo 17y agoI flew out to the Hackers and Founders meetup in NYC, and I talked with a number of founders. Rhey all complained about not being able to find talent. Specifically, I heard complaints about not being able to find PHP and .NET talent. :|
- aditya 17y agoYeah, pretty much. There's a lot of interesting companies being built here and they're all looking for smart hackers. Feel free to drop me an email (in profile) if you have any questions!
- Timothee 17y agoSounds interesting. One comment: in the application form, it's not really clear how we would be contacted by whoever we decide to (any YC company, any HN user, anyone). Basically, where are the email and resume going and how would "anyone" have access to them? Thanks!
- pg 17y agoI built the resume feature as something more general. Those options were in case I eventually do something where anyone can keep a resume on HN, and people can do searches on them, as has sometimes been proposed. For now I'm only using it for workatastartup, so I just took the other options out, in case they alarm people.
- rokhayakebe 17y agoI like how they have a Techstars company in the mix. Very nice.
- pg 17y agoThey're all YC companies.
- rokhayakebe 17y agoMisread Fabricly for Graphicly.
- joesunga 17y agoThis is definitely interesting. I'm currently working at a startup, but it's always good to see how others work too. Is this specific to developers, or can business side folks attend too?
- pg 17y agoThis particular event is mainly for programmers. We're hosting this at YC itself, and we can't fit as many people as you could in an auditorium. But ultimately it depends on the presenting companies: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346178 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346178
- joesunga 17y agoThat's what I figured. Thanks a lot for clarifying. :)
- bb_mn 17y agoThis is an interesting filtering process. Presumably, there will be some who attend this event already identified (based on their resumes) as desirable candidates for one or more companies. Will this be asynchronous knowledge or will the attendees and companies have contact and/or show interest in advance?
- pg 17y agoThe companies reading the resumes will be able to contact the people submitting them if the people submitting them say they can. There's a field for specifying that on the resume.
- abstractbill 17y agoLooks like a great event! If anyone ever wants to talk about what it's like to work at a startup from the perspective of someone who has worked at Justin.TV for the past three years, I'd be happy to answer some questions - feel free to email me at doctorbill [at] gmail [dot] com
- jf 17y agoWill all the people needed to make a hiring decision be present at this event? I postulate that running a hiring event would attract some very talented people if the one of the stated goals of the event was for people to leave with signed offer letters. I helped run the "Reverse Job Fair" at the Hacker Dojo several months ago - some job seekers flew in from the East Coast and LA just to attend. From what I've heard about 5 people were hired on the spot. This is one area where startups can really differentiate themselves: The last startup I worked for made me a job offer in about 48 hours - I was unemployed for a total of 100 hours. It took about 3 months for me to go through the hiring process with Microsoft.
- pg 17y agoYes, typically. I don't know how common that will be, but all or nearly all the presentations will be given by the founders of these companies.
- justin 17y agoI can only speak for our company, but I run technical hiring at JTV and will be there presenting. On the other hand, to say that we will hire you "on the spot" is probably disingenuous: I think both candidates and our company are better served when we make people go through the full interview process of doing a technical problem, coming into the office for technical interviews and to see what the culture is like, and then giving both the candidate and our company a day or two to think about it. That being said, of course it is our full intention to move as quickly as possible.
- rjett 17y agoThis event looks like it's geared towards programmers, but aren't at least a few of these companies looking for non-programming positions? Wouldn't the information shared at this event be just as relevant to business-minded folks interested in working at a startup? I personally have been trying to teach myself programming for the past year and getting to work for a startup in some sort of business development role alongside of top-notch programmers seems very appealing to me because I could provide value while supplementing my learning experience. I understand the need to narrow the scope of this event so that it's easier to manage applicants, but is there any opportunity for non-programmers?
- pg 17y agoIt will depend on whose resumes the presenting companies like. I know they're most interested in programmers, so I described the event as being for programmers. But there's no coding test to apply or anything like that. Ultimately you get invited if the presenting companies like your resume, whatever it says.
- sayrer 17y agoThis comment will sound a little confrontational, but here it goes. Why would anyone competent enough to work at one of these companies choose that path instead of being a founder?
- zaius 17y agoEveryone's risk tolerance is different. Sometimes, you need to get paid. This will get you in the door at an already funded startup where you'll get a salary and still have the potential payoff of a big exit.
- johnswamps 17y agoIt's also probably good practice for founding a startup. You get to learn about the issues that come up in running a startup without having to make all the big decisions yourself. Think of it as similar to auditing a college course.
- rmorrison 17y agoThis will get you in the door at an already funded startup where you'll get a salary and still have the potential payoff of a big exit. Simply out of curiosity, what range equity stake would a programmer get? More specifically, if there is a $10mm exit, what would a programmer stand to make? How about $100mm? I know it varies by company, vesting, additional funding rounds, and a bajillion other factors. I'm just curious as to rough order of magnitude. While I think it's a great idea to work for a startup because they're exciting environments which offer a lot of learning experiences that big companies do not, "big exits" for non-founding programmers are exceptionally rare and are too easily oversold.
- 1053r 17y agoBased upon some completely unscientific asking around, it seems like a person who has an employee number under 10 is likely to make 1/50th to 1/400th of the total exit after taxes. So $100mm for the company = $500K plus or minus. Not total crap, but also probably not worth it based upon the money alone. The reason to work for a startup as an early employee is the fun (if you like working 12-14 hour days on cool stuff) and the experience. I'm guessing having a successful startup under your belt makes it a LOT easier to get your own company funded down the line. Also, people can end up much higher in a large organization earlier than they could have without some serious corporate climbing.
- hartror 17y agoI have never worked for anything but early stage startups and wonder what it is like on the other side where pay is (almost) always certain, you can't drop into the CEOs office at a moments notice and everyone just works 9-5. It is like a foreign country to me, but one that is on my list of places to visit eventually.
- abstractbill 17y agoI have some experience with almost every part of this spectrum. I worked for a few years for a startup in London that grew from 3 people when I started, to 7 people, and then we got acquired and shipped over to Silicon Valley. Enter the Golden Handcuff phase - definitely my favorite in many ways! We were treated like royalty for a while - given lots of nice benefits and some very interesting and challenging problems to work on, with resources to match (we purchased more than 1000 powerful servers and put them in a huge cage in a colo!). We had nice offices with windows. I had a nice apartment in Palo Alto and a rental car paid for by the company for about a year. After about a year things started to tail off. Our project became less strategically important to the company that had acquired us. We were gradually starved of resources and attention. The perks went away one by one. The transformation was slow, but sure. Eventually even the offices with windows went away, and we were moved to crappy cubes where you couldn't see windows even if you stood on your desk. In the end, the daily routine for everyone on the team was something like a 10am-4pm work day, filled with browsing reddit and playing ping-pong or air hockey. Nobody noticed, or if they did, they no longer cared. Finally my Green Card arrived (after three years). As soon as it did, I quit and joined my next startup (Justin.TV).
- faramarz 17y agoI admire so many of those companies listed that I'd highly consider applying. Problem is, I'm in Toronto and only through a NAFTA VISA I can work there. I highly doubt many of the jobs are open to this Visa. That's frustrating.
- immad 17y agoWe are open to helping with TNs. I am sure others are too.
- bengl 17y agoI'm in the same boat in Ottawa. Many Canadians have gone on to work for startups in the US. What I've always seen, from friends and family who've been down this road, is that US companies (big or small) wanting to hire Canadians have always been very helpful in the visa process. Of course, your mileage may vary. I think your best bet is to throw your resume in, clearly indicating your current location.
- joseakle 17y agoYou could post this on the jobs page.
- pg 17y agoGood idea; yes, I should add a link there.
- radicalmatt 17y agoCould we get one of these in Chicago and New York?
- gsiener 17y ago++ for New York
- aristus 17y agoA question I'm surprised isn't on here: what's the motivation to do this? Is it becoming harder for YC companies to hire, or a way to share resources, etc?
- pg 17y agoHiring tends to be issue number 1 for all startups that get over the initial threshold of raising significant funding. Now that so many of the startups we've funded are over that threshold, we were hearing more and more about it. So we started to think whether there was anything we could do to help them, and it seemed like the best thing we could do would be to make the idea of working for a startup more real to more programmers. I think most programmers apply to work at big companies largely by default. They know what to expect when they do that. They know that startups exist, of course, but if they haven't met many in person, the idea of going to work for one doesn't seem like a real possibility. So we thought that if we could make the idea seem real, by (a) explaining all about it and (b) introducing people to a lot of actual startups, at least they wouldn't simply go to big companies by default. They'd actually weigh the two alternatives, and that would probably cause more to work for startups.
- justin 17y agoUsing YC's influence and reputation to bring talented candidates in the door at the investee companies is always something I'd hoped for, so I'm super happy to see this. Quality deal flow has always been our bottleneck for hiring (like all technical companies, I suppose we like to think we're super picky :D).
- puredemo 17y agoI think more startups should be willing to take on junior level programmers and interns. For instance, there's not much of a jumping off point for smart people who are just starting out in programming. I know a few people who understand basic php and mysql but would happily learn more in depth programming and best practices if given the chance.
- euroclydon 16y ago
- zaatar 17y agoFYI: Zumodrive's link at the bottom of the page is broken (zumodrive.om)
- pg 17y agoFixed; thanks.
- MLnick 17y agoAny chance of something like this in London?!
- nagrom 17y agoI'd also be interested in an event like this if it was held in the UK. If it's on Justin.tv, will the stream be made available as a video later?
- Wump 16y agoAny chance a non-YC company can attend?
- rodh257 16y agothis might be a little off topic, but what sort of programming languages, and other skill requirements are most popular at these sort of events? As a programmer who wants to work for (and perhaps start) a startup in the future, I'm interested in what technologies, skills etc are most common. I do ASP.NET at the moment, but this is more enterprise than startup I believe. If this is totally the wrong spot let me know, but I'd imagine if I rocked up to this event, and everyone was doing Rails I'd be useless to most?