As I read through this, I found myself thinking over and over, what should have happened instead? He did a startup, it failed, fine, he got some job offers, he

As I read through this, I found myself thinking over and over, what should have happened instead? He did a startup, it failed, fine, he got some job offers, he turned them down, tried being a starving artist, realized he didn’t really want to be one after all, hit the job market again, and found his market value wasn’t what he wanted it to be. Sounds normal. It’s like dating again after a long relationship. I don’t think the conventional wisdom even says you’re guaranteed a job after running a failed startup. It just says you won’t be penalized for it. The last generation freaked out about their kids starting companies instead of getting jobs — “what if it fails?!” — and my generation replied, well, then you just look for jobs again. You’re not locked out of the market. But you’re not automatically going to get a job either. I also don’t understand the hand wringing around interviews. So you get asked to invert a binary tree, and you realize, shit, I don’t know this. Might be the Asian in me talking, but what’s wrong with going home, practicing binary trees, and trying again? Anyway, as far as a practical suggestion goes, having done a failed startup myself, it sounds like this person could try applying to other startups.