An aside to this article: along with thinking like an investor, you can also reach out to investors who will often be willing to help with your job search. For

An aside to this article: along with thinking like an investor, you can also reach out to investors who will often be willing to help with your job search. For example, as a seed VC there are now about 80 companies at various stages that my fund works with. If someone emails me and says, "I'm a good engineer who wants to join a Series A startup in SF or Oakland that has characteristics X, Y, and Z," there's a good chance I can make a few useful recs. There's nice incentive alignment here: the VC doesn't get any compensation, they just want their companies and the prospective employee to do well. That means 1) we won't recommend a bad fit to an employee because we want the employee to join and be happy and get their friends to ask us for company recs; 2) we won't recommend a bad fit to a company because we want founders to like us and not feel distracted by us. We're going for quality, not quantity -- and you're welcome to ignore our suggestions. So if you're good at what you do and are looking to join a startup, consider soliciting recs from a few investors with large portfolios. I wrote a short post about this a few years ago: https://www.codingvc.com/using-investors-to-find-the-ideal-startup-job/ https://www.codingvc.com/using-investors-to-find-the-ideal-s... I might regret posting this invite on HN, but if you want to join a startup and want recs, my email is in my blog's header.