Even though I had plenty of experience in leadership roles, I preferred to join startups as a senior dev. Later, after I understood the lay of the land, I would

Even though I had plenty of experience in leadership roles, I preferred to join startups as a senior dev. Later, after I understood the lay of the land, I would move into leadership roles as needed. This helped me develop relationships with other devs, QA, ops, etc. Also, I could learn or discover the reasoning behind trade offs and compromises that were made before I proposed changes. One time I went direct into a director/manager lead role. It was a nightmare, some on the team thought I didn't know what I was talking about -- even though they were not using source control until I brought it up during my interview. They had not been exposed to professional software development before my arrival and took little stock in my advice/leadership.