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In the 24 years I've been working for Silicon Valley / SF companies (7 companies, the latest two as remote positions) I've never gone through HR or gone through
by nwatson 9y ago
In the 24 years I've been working for Silicon Valley / SF companies
(7 companies, the latest two as remote positions) I've never gone
through HR or gone through the regular job-posting-or-board search ...
I've gotten all jobs through connections and references, including
the very first. Many job transitions involved a significant pay raise,
and several involved liquidity events ... none were huge, but I managed
to filter the occasional opportunities down to those that "made sense"
and had a plausible exit strategy ... I regret not having gone to Splunk.
I usually joined companies with between 3 and 25 employees.
But I look back and think that maybe I've missed something, and I've just
floated down the stream meandering, jumping from one raft to the next.
I maybe haven't found the "best" match for my interests and skills since
I've never thought too deeply about what exactly I wanted to do. I've just
always "had skills and friends doing interesting things", and it's not
been bad.
The transition to remote happened four years ago. I joined one smaller
startup (with a single parent company funding its growth) ... a spinoff
of sorts. I stayed for three years and it was the worst professional
experience of my life, though I did appreciate California pay while living
in the Southeast. There is and continues to be a lot of management churn,
and a picture of the company should be in the Wikipedia entry
for "Dunning Kruger".
A year ago I started working for an already-acquired startup that was part
of a larger company (think 5K-15K employees). It's been the best experience
in a long time ... I belong to a smaller team within that "startup",
work on pretty interesting things. There's no equity, but my effective
annual compensation has increased approx 40% (generous bonus plan, and they
like my work).
I'd say for compensation and (mostly) positive development experiences,
working through my network has paid well.
- downrightmike 9y agoHow did you start that network?
- raybb 9y agoI have no affiliation with them but the Meetup app is also a great way to meet people in tech in your area.
- fapjacks 9y agoOne of the ways I started and continually improve that network is by interviewing for programmer jobs. I am almost constantly interviewing. It keeps my skills up to spec, helps me do well with typical programmer interviews, I always have my ear to the rail for a new opportunity, and best of all, I'm continually meeting new and interesting people working on cool projects. I've been interviewed by people that later I befriended and then helped get positions at companies that I knew were hiring. It is an excellent way to form and maintain this network of like-minded people. I'll warn you though that this is a time-consuming and sometimes very draining hobby. I've never gone into an interview saying to myself that I would not take the job, but there have been times when I regretted going. It sometimes helps you know which companies to avoid. I'd start local and then if this is something you can handle, only then start interviewing in other cities.