4 ms·

On the other hand, at small companies, this can be a big deal. FAANG companies pretty much know how interested you are in working there, based on the fact that

by whafro 3y ago

On the other hand, at small companies, this can be a big deal. FAANG companies pretty much know how interested you are in working there, based on the fact that you’re the type of person who thinks they want to work at a FAANG company. And since the scope of these companies is so large, there are all sorts of ways to fit your interests into work at such a company over the mid-to-long-term. But early-stage companies are looking for folks who have an interest and understanding in the task at hand. For many hiring managers at these companies, expertise – or at least interest – in the problem space is noteworthy. On the hard-skill side, it can suggest that you may be able to help see around corners with your product team, identifying and solving issues during planning or on the fly. On the soft-skill side, it can suggest that you’re bringing positive energy and motivation to the still-nascent team. In the end, it’s still a matter of knowing your audience and reading the room. It may be a waste of time in some places, and may be the difference-maker in others.

lmeyerov 3y ago
Yep. Folks at 200+ and especially FAANG companies are mostly interchangeable. The interviewer is mostly derisking chance of a dud and comparing a 86%er vs 87%er. A few exceptions like at the rarer million dollar comp level. For everyone else, especially non-insiders... Cookie cutter comparisons it is, and whatever edge. Startups are very much making a more existential bet. For our openings, I'm equally looking for ownership, interest in our customers/mission/long-term, and other bits that have little to with a whiteboard. On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  Frankly most startups aren't very interesting. The ones who want you to be super interested are often the most boring ideas "were passionate about sox compliance", and if they are interesting they won't tell you shit about the company due to secret sauce or just moving so fast nothing is documented. It's hard as a candidate to get excited about every idea. And many people purposefully don't as they don't want to get shot down later by a job they were excited about. Finally if I'm actively looking I have 10 leads I'm following and I'm practicing for interviews. Signing up for every beta tryout eats into that time. I'll take a look when ivw got an offer. I took a career pivot from web forms /rails to AAA playstation games. I played the game after they flew me to Seattle and gave me an offer. It involved buying a PlayStation 3 and their previous game. And that's an obviously cool job. Bought it right after I landed home and played it the next morning. Accepted the offer a few hours later.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, I've had a similar issue happen to me. Was interviewing at a small-mid company that I was increasingly interested in and passionate about, and had really delved into with various interviewers to learn about their business and what made them a good product and good place to work. Ultimately, they went with someone else. I'm not upset about it, but it stung more than getting another form letter from some large company. It feels almost cruel as an interviewer/hiring manager to expect every viable candidate to get really invested in you and your company when you know you're going to reject some high percentage of them just because you can't hire more than a few people.
    - lmeyerov 3y ago
      Yes, generally I assume each candidate is having serious conversations with 2-5 others, and non-serious with more. We do the same. There are exceptions, like folks not actively interviewing, but that's the typical case. It is big stakes for all involved, so someone not treating it seriously is a big warning flag. That is fine for later stage companies where individuals mostly need to not screw up and add reliable incremental value, and the resume screens and interview processes people are complaining about here reflect that need. Different job, different interview..
      - noirbot 3y ago
        I certainly understand the stakes for you in making the right hire, but you're fundamentally much less invested in the candidate than you seem to be asking them to be in you. At the end of the day, you can reject them and pick someone else, or wait for someone better, while it seems like you have some expectation that they should be upset and disappointed if they don't make the cut with you. Ultimately, if I'm really passionate, but don't have all the skills you want, or want more money than you can provide, than you'll pass on me and move on to the next candidate. That's fine, but if we've spent the time making sure I feel like I could really create something good with you and your team, and that I'd be a good part of it, that's just setting up 3-5 of your candidates to have a really strong letdown, even beyond what's already a difficult thing to hear.
- neilv 3y ago
  > if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us Now that you've said it on HN... soon, most of the applicants you get using your free tier by second round will be doing so because that'll be added as a standard part of the generic tech jobs interviewing ritual for people who just go through the motions (along with memorizing Leetcode, and practicing good-sounding lies to behavioral questions).
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    Great! I can't fathom having a serious discussion about a 2-5 year career bet, and hopefully even more impacting, and not having a serious look at the actual work or at least the highly related technologies. Some of our best hires have been from our userbase and the OSS communities we helped start, and some of our misses have been from those who couldn't get on board with those. (We don't do leetcode etc, though for junior roles we do ask for a Jupyter notebook, and for senior, might do a contracting period if mutually agreeable.)
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      Having a contracting period for senior engineers sounds like you must not get many of them. Most people I know at that level are swimming in offers when they go looking for work, so a contract period is just incredibly unattractive.
      - lmeyerov 3y ago
        Yes it varies. Some prefer it before jumping in, eg, super senior who mostly do advisory and light consulting. We are a small team so by definition each person gets more ownership than at your average bigco or megaround VC co.
  - twic 3y ago
    A friend told me that Bumble require you sign up to apply for a job. And now my pet theory about why guys get so few swipes back is that they're all swiping away on leagues of job applicants.
- mikebenfield 3y ago
  > if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations. This is on a completely different planet from my experience as a candidate and as an interviewer. It looks like you're doing interesting work, and it might be great to work for you. But that's true of a lot of other companies. You're asking for a level of interest and dedication to your company that is completely unwarranted at this stage. For all I know you're about to ghost me. I suspect a major effect of your approach is that you select people who are better BS artists and have fewer employment options.
  - chrisdbanks 3y ago
    Maybe this is why you've been ghosted so much.
    - mikebenfield 3y ago
      I haven't been ghosted "so much." I've worked at a cool startup and two FAANGs. But there's no guarantee the interview process will go your way no matter how good you are; there's a lot of luck and interpretation involved.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    Yes, we are looking for folks to work with us, not for us. Different mindset & process. We try not to hire ex-FAANG (but occasionally do) in part because of this kind of difference. It's fascinating to see so much resistance to this kind of thinking for a forum that is nominally about startups. In a sense that's good - some people are well-suited for the needs of scaleups and post-scale, vs startups (0-1, 1-10), and recognizing that is healthy. What you do & learn in a big company or a already-figured-it-out late-stage & highly funded VC co is different from the wild west stage of startups.
    - oxfordmale 3y ago
      I will work for you, not with you, as the loyalty of your company is non existent. I worked for many start ups, and enjoyed working on that type of challenges, but I am always aware loyalty is non existent. It is a red flag if company talks about "we are a family" or "work with us".
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. I was about to write a moderately snarky comment and went to your profile to check which Java banking middleware or Rails-based Uber-for-dogs your startup is building for applicants to be excited about... but looking at the description your company seems quite interesting! Sorry to hear that you've got flooded with generic low-effort application from disinterested people. I guess in current job market some people just desperately knocking on all doors hoping to get any job at all.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    A lot of people here would argue it’s just a numbers game. I’ve been lucky over the past 25 years to hit 2 or 3 targeted possibilities with a single email to someone I knew. But I realize that’s probably not typical.
    - lmeyerov 3y ago
      I think that's more true than people, especially pure engineers, would like to think Ultimately companies are made out of individuals going through their own lives and making decisions as they go. Raising capital, selling software, and getting a job offer are all very much sales processes. That means very real human + numbers components. Agreed on the numbers side too on the long-view.. join a company, vest + 1yr, and either stay if it's growing or on to the next one. At least a couple times, stay longer - ideally at the growers - so you can go up in learned seniority too vs just in title. An equally important numbers game.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    Thank you, and thankfully we are fine I just feel bad that folks are pretty much disqualifying themselves needlessly. It's a tough job market, and if folks are flubbing it with us that needlessly, I can only imagine what they are going through with their other applications. A bit of effort here can go a long way, hence my advocacy...
- eschneider 3y ago
  > Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use > our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for > what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations. This makes sense. After a first round, if I'm still interested in a company, I want to dig in and find out everything I can to see if they're a likely fit and signing up for a free tier (if there is one) is absolutely a no brainer. And it's usually is a great way to form some meaningful questions to ask in the next round of interviews if I AM interested.

by whafro 3y ago

lmeyerov 3y ago

Yep. Folks at 200+ and especially FAANG companies are mostly interchangeable. The interviewer is mostly derisking chance of a dud and comparing a 86%er vs 87%er. A few exceptions like at the rarer million dollar comp level. For everyone else, especially non-insiders... Cookie cutter comparisons it is, and whatever edge. Startups are very much making a more existential bet. For our openings, I'm equally looking for ownership, interest in our customers/mission/long-term, and other bits that have little to with a whiteboard. On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.

grogenaut 3y ago
Frankly most startups aren't very interesting. The ones who want you to be super interested are often the most boring ideas "were passionate about sox compliance", and if they are interesting they won't tell you shit about the company due to secret sauce or just moving so fast nothing is documented. It's hard as a candidate to get excited about every idea. And many people purposefully don't as they don't want to get shot down later by a job they were excited about. Finally if I'm actively looking I have 10 leads I'm following and I'm practicing for interviews. Signing up for every beta tryout eats into that time. I'll take a look when ivw got an offer. I took a career pivot from web forms /rails to AAA playstation games. I played the game after they flew me to Seattle and gave me an offer. It involved buying a PlayStation 3 and their previous game. And that's an obviously cool job. Bought it right after I landed home and played it the next morning. Accepted the offer a few hours later.
- noirbot 3y ago
  Yea, I've had a similar issue happen to me. Was interviewing at a small-mid company that I was increasingly interested in and passionate about, and had really delved into with various interviewers to learn about their business and what made them a good product and good place to work. Ultimately, they went with someone else. I'm not upset about it, but it stung more than getting another form letter from some large company. It feels almost cruel as an interviewer/hiring manager to expect every viable candidate to get really invested in you and your company when you know you're going to reject some high percentage of them just because you can't hire more than a few people.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    Yes, generally I assume each candidate is having serious conversations with 2-5 others, and non-serious with more. We do the same. There are exceptions, like folks not actively interviewing, but that's the typical case. It is big stakes for all involved, so someone not treating it seriously is a big warning flag. That is fine for later stage companies where individuals mostly need to not screw up and add reliable incremental value, and the resume screens and interview processes people are complaining about here reflect that need. Different job, different interview..
    - noirbot 3y ago
      I certainly understand the stakes for you in making the right hire, but you're fundamentally much less invested in the candidate than you seem to be asking them to be in you. At the end of the day, you can reject them and pick someone else, or wait for someone better, while it seems like you have some expectation that they should be upset and disappointed if they don't make the cut with you. Ultimately, if I'm really passionate, but don't have all the skills you want, or want more money than you can provide, than you'll pass on me and move on to the next candidate. That's fine, but if we've spent the time making sure I feel like I could really create something good with you and your team, and that I'd be a good part of it, that's just setting up 3-5 of your candidates to have a really strong letdown, even beyond what's already a difficult thing to hear.
neilv 3y ago
> if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us Now that you've said it on HN... soon, most of the applicants you get using your free tier by second round will be doing so because that'll be added as a standard part of the generic tech jobs interviewing ritual for people who just go through the motions (along with memorizing Leetcode, and practicing good-sounding lies to behavioral questions).
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  Great! I can't fathom having a serious discussion about a 2-5 year career bet, and hopefully even more impacting, and not having a serious look at the actual work or at least the highly related technologies. Some of our best hires have been from our userbase and the OSS communities we helped start, and some of our misses have been from those who couldn't get on board with those. (We don't do leetcode etc, though for junior roles we do ask for a Jupyter notebook, and for senior, might do a contracting period if mutually agreeable.)
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Having a contracting period for senior engineers sounds like you must not get many of them. Most people I know at that level are swimming in offers when they go looking for work, so a contract period is just incredibly unattractive.
    - lmeyerov 3y ago
      Yes it varies. Some prefer it before jumping in, eg, super senior who mostly do advisory and light consulting. We are a small team so by definition each person gets more ownership than at your average bigco or megaround VC co.
- twic 3y ago
  A friend told me that Bumble require you sign up to apply for a job. And now my pet theory about why guys get so few swipes back is that they're all swiping away on leagues of job applicants.
mikebenfield 3y ago
> if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations. This is on a completely different planet from my experience as a candidate and as an interviewer. It looks like you're doing interesting work, and it might be great to work for you. But that's true of a lot of other companies. You're asking for a level of interest and dedication to your company that is completely unwarranted at this stage. For all I know you're about to ghost me. I suspect a major effect of your approach is that you select people who are better BS artists and have fewer employment options.
- chrisdbanks 3y ago
  Maybe this is why you've been ghosted so much.
  - mikebenfield 3y ago
    I haven't been ghosted "so much." I've worked at a cool startup and two FAANGs. But there's no guarantee the interview process will go your way no matter how good you are; there's a lot of luck and interpretation involved.
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  Yes, we are looking for folks to work with us, not for us. Different mindset & process. We try not to hire ex-FAANG (but occasionally do) in part because of this kind of difference. It's fascinating to see so much resistance to this kind of thinking for a forum that is nominally about startups. In a sense that's good - some people are well-suited for the needs of scaleups and post-scale, vs startups (0-1, 1-10), and recognizing that is healthy. What you do & learn in a big company or a already-figured-it-out late-stage & highly funded VC co is different from the wild west stage of startups.
  - oxfordmale 3y ago
    I will work for you, not with you, as the loyalty of your company is non existent. I worked for many start ups, and enjoyed working on that type of challenges, but I am always aware loyalty is non existent. It is a red flag if company talks about "we are a family" or "work with us".
caskstrength 3y ago
> On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. I was about to write a moderately snarky comment and went to your profile to check which Java banking middleware or Rails-based Uber-for-dogs your startup is building for applicants to be excited about... but looking at the description your company seems quite interesting! Sorry to hear that you've got flooded with generic low-effort application from disinterested people. I guess in current job market some people just desperately knocking on all doors hoping to get any job at all.
- ghaff 3y ago
  A lot of people here would argue it’s just a numbers game. I’ve been lucky over the past 25 years to hit 2 or 3 targeted possibilities with a single email to someone I knew. But I realize that’s probably not typical.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    I think that's more true than people, especially pure engineers, would like to think Ultimately companies are made out of individuals going through their own lives and making decisions as they go. Raising capital, selling software, and getting a job offer are all very much sales processes. That means very real human + numbers components. Agreed on the numbers side too on the long-view.. join a company, vest + 1yr, and either stay if it's growing or on to the next one. At least a couple times, stay longer - ideally at the growers - so you can go up in learned seniority too vs just in title. An equally important numbers game.
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  Thank you, and thankfully we are fine I just feel bad that folks are pretty much disqualifying themselves needlessly. It's a tough job market, and if folks are flubbing it with us that needlessly, I can only imagine what they are going through with their other applications. A bit of effort here can go a long way, hence my advocacy...
eschneider 3y ago
> Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use > our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for > what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations. This makes sense. After a first round, if I'm still interested in a company, I want to dig in and find out everything I can to see if they're a likely fit and signing up for a free tier (if there is one) is absolutely a no brainer. And it's usually is a great way to form some meaningful questions to ask in the next round of interviews if I AM interested.