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Anecdotal, but from ~15 years, ~10 start ups, 6 successful exits > You won’t get the mentorship you need from senior engineers This was not my experience earl

Anecdotal, but from ~15 years, ~10 start ups, 6 successful exits > You won’t get the mentorship you need from senior engineers This was not my experience early in my career. It was invaluable to have mentorship at my first few companies and I try as much as possible to teach and give advice and direction when possible. > High Breadth but Little Depth I'm not sure being incredibly silo'd and knowing one skill well will help your career more. The best asset I have is being able to learn new stuff well quickly. Getting a wife range of experience is extremely useful and allows you to get to the point where you inuit how stuff works easily. > Hire Fast, Fire Faster Counter point: Amazon Yes, shitty companies are shitty. You shouldn't just take any startup job, and the same goes for any large company jobs. Large companies have been soul crushingly slow and beaurocratic in my experience. I don't think a slow silod career will allow you to expand your skill set which will impact your earning potential in the long run.

gtirloni 5y ago
> Anecdotal, but from ~15 years, ~10 start ups, 6 successful exits So you were a founder not an employee?
- bostonsre 5y ago
  No, employee only so far, but still earlyish in my career. I just mean I've worked at about 10 different companies for about 15 years and I've been a part of some solid teams with 6 companies that have exited successfully.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    How many of those companies exited while you were still working for them?
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      6. Think it would be 7 if I counted ones I left. I'm absolutely not going to say I'm some all star that is the reason the companies did well. As my career has grown, my impact on company performance has grown. I've been lucky enough to be a part of a lot of good teams. Early in my career, I was lucky with the companies I got jobs at. They happened to have great teams with incredible mentors that I was able to lean on. But, that luck let me see what good teams look like and I've looked at potential jobs through that lens for a while now. It also helps a ton to look at those companies as an investor. I try to look for companies that are dominant in their markets and have solid growth when evaluating potential jobs. My first company that I interned at while in college, then transitioned to full time while still in college was acquired by one company after being there for a few years, then that larger one was acquired a year or so after that by a fortune 50. I saw the dark side of beuacracy and that kind of made me focus on small companies that have lots of potential. One was a part time contractor gig where I was helping out my ex manager build a company after the one I worked for him before that got acquired and that part time company was acquired less than a year after launch. There was another one that happened about 90 days after I joined. My most recent one was acquired after working there for 4 years by another fortune 50 but they are allowing us to run independently and I have an amazing manager so I don't think I'll be moving again any time soon.
  - zingar 5y ago
    It's refreshing to hear someone in tech describe 15 years as early-ish. Technically true, most of us will need to work for 40+ years.
joelbluminator 5y ago
How can you vest any of the options when switcing compaies like that?
- bostonsre 5y ago
  I'm not rich. A lot of the ones early in my career weren't very lucrative.
t-writescode 5y ago
> The best asset I have is being able to learn new stuff well quickly. Getting a wife range of experience is extremely useful and allows you to get to the point where you inuit how stuff works easily. A great deal of pain can occur by standing up a lot of things you've never worked with, very quickly, and then moving on to the next thing. Not knowing the best practices and the pain of time with those tools and services may lead to some major technical debt down the line that future teams have to suffer with.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Yep, absolutely agreed. Fire hosing out infrastructure that you didn't take the time to learn and understand properly is a recipe for a disaster. I think humility is crucial, you need to understand what you know and what you don't know and be open to the unknown unknowns as well. Being a part of great complimentary teams will also help a ton. If you're junior, you probably shouldn't be designing massively complex infrastructure or dev projects. But if you work with a more senior person that lays out the plan for the infrastructure or project, then you do the work for that project while being shepherded by that senior engineer, it is an incredible learning experience.
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    Sometimes there isn't a senior engineer for that position, so you get to learn it all, yourself :/ When there's only a few engineers at a company, people aren't going to be experts in everything they end up needing to do.

gtirloni 5y ago

> Anecdotal, but from ~15 years, ~10 start ups, 6 successful exits So you were a founder not an employee?

bostonsre 5y ago
No, employee only so far, but still earlyish in my career. I just mean I've worked at about 10 different companies for about 15 years and I've been a part of some solid teams with 6 companies that have exited successfully.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  How many of those companies exited while you were still working for them?
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    6. Think it would be 7 if I counted ones I left. I'm absolutely not going to say I'm some all star that is the reason the companies did well. As my career has grown, my impact on company performance has grown. I've been lucky enough to be a part of a lot of good teams. Early in my career, I was lucky with the companies I got jobs at. They happened to have great teams with incredible mentors that I was able to lean on. But, that luck let me see what good teams look like and I've looked at potential jobs through that lens for a while now. It also helps a ton to look at those companies as an investor. I try to look for companies that are dominant in their markets and have solid growth when evaluating potential jobs. My first company that I interned at while in college, then transitioned to full time while still in college was acquired by one company after being there for a few years, then that larger one was acquired a year or so after that by a fortune 50. I saw the dark side of beuacracy and that kind of made me focus on small companies that have lots of potential. One was a part time contractor gig where I was helping out my ex manager build a company after the one I worked for him before that got acquired and that part time company was acquired less than a year after launch. There was another one that happened about 90 days after I joined. My most recent one was acquired after working there for 4 years by another fortune 50 but they are allowing us to run independently and I have an amazing manager so I don't think I'll be moving again any time soon.
- zingar 5y ago
  It's refreshing to hear someone in tech describe 15 years as early-ish. Technically true, most of us will need to work for 40+ years.

joelbluminator 5y ago

How can you vest any of the options when switcing compaies like that?

bostonsre 5y ago
I'm not rich. A lot of the ones early in my career weren't very lucrative.

t-writescode 5y ago

> The best asset I have is being able to learn new stuff well quickly. Getting a wife range of experience is extremely useful and allows you to get to the point where you inuit how stuff works easily. A great deal of pain can occur by standing up a lot of things you've never worked with, very quickly, and then moving on to the next thing. Not knowing the best practices and the pain of time with those tools and services may lead to some major technical debt down the line that future teams have to suffer with.

bostonsre 5y ago
Yep, absolutely agreed. Fire hosing out infrastructure that you didn't take the time to learn and understand properly is a recipe for a disaster. I think humility is crucial, you need to understand what you know and what you don't know and be open to the unknown unknowns as well. Being a part of great complimentary teams will also help a ton. If you're junior, you probably shouldn't be designing massively complex infrastructure or dev projects. But if you work with a more senior person that lays out the plan for the infrastructure or project, then you do the work for that project while being shepherded by that senior engineer, it is an incredible learning experience.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  Sometimes there isn't a senior engineer for that position, so you get to learn it all, yourself :/ When there's only a few engineers at a company, people aren't going to be experts in everything they end up needing to do.