What effects do startups have on your resume?
baycitizen.org
baycitizen.org
Of course, they were right. I was out on my own again within 6 months:)
In both cases you do the same work but the first is not going to raise too many follow up questions.
As a rule though, those that have worked for start-ups and/or were founders will not normally go back to big-corp to do a 9 to 5, and in the age of google even if you don't disclose it you may be found out anyway.
Yes, that's illegal in plenty of places but it happens quite frequently regardless of that.
You'd be amazed how things change when you get into your 30's and start having kids. ;)
Yes, that's pretty much my situation, only you can add another decade.
(I want to be generous and think it's because in large companies the how-we-do-it-here knowledge has to be taught, so it's more valuable than the how-to-get-it-to-compile knowledge and they need long tenures)
I think you have to look at the individual, their specific fit and how old they are.
Isn't that descriminatory ?
Congratulations on confessing (without a lawyer present) to breaking anti-discrimination law (and being ignorant).
But honestly IF your a individual whom might be a flight risk because they were a founder, who would you work about leaving at 20 year old or a 40 year old?
These aren't my opinion, I am just speaking about what I have often seen or heard about in the industry.
That's the takeaway. If ten years into your career (baring a situation such as a move to a new area or wanting to work on something completely different from what you're doing now), you're sending in your resume cold to HR you're doing something wrong. You should have made connections in the industry: people who can vouch for you, whom you respect and want to work with. A good resume (with interesting projects as well as companies which do interesting, technically challenging things) can make you a more lucrative target for passive recruiting. However, a resume is a representation of your experience, not the other way around: it gets you in the door, but if you can't pass a technical interview an impressive resume won't save you.
Go where you'll be working with the smartest engineers (you can tell that an interview, based on what questions they ask and how they answer your questions) and the work (specific projects you'll be working on) is the most challenging and interesting. If out of all the places you've talked to, the place that meets that criteria is the a startup, go there; if it's a big company (but with serious technical DNA) go there instead. Don't join a startup for the sake of joining a startup, don't join a big company for the brand-name.
Once you've got an actual person on the phone, the company you worked for is much less important than what you did and your ability to relate it. Still, speaking from personal experience, you should be prepared for interviewers to question whether you worked for a 'real company'.
To answer the question, I'm not sure how it will reflect on me when going for something in a banking environment, however for another startup, the experience with open source might be appealing.
As a side note I came from a 3 developer software company a few years ago when I got my current job with a major television broadcaster and to this day I am baffled with the amount of office politics people employ.
If you were interviewing a candidate that had never worked for a startup wouldn't you take that into consideration?
People that apply to a start-up usually do so because it offers them something they can't get elsewhere. Freedom, responsibility and a smaller world. They've self-selected long before they applied because they're usually willing to take a fair sized pay-cut in order to be able to join. That speaks volumes about their motivation and willingness to adapt.
If a candidate had never worked for a start-up and didn't throw up any overt red flags if they're the most suitable guy or girl for the job I'd definitely give them a shot at it.
Conversely someone coming from a startup wont understand working in a large team where progress is more methodical (slower). They will seek to circumvent processes they see as slow or useless. Perhaps they will try to 're-engineer' towards things they are more familiar with. In the process they may cause a net loss for the entire team.
In general I'd say its easier to go up than down. If you're used to the functions of a large organization it would be difficult to scale that back (network engineers that can't work without Cisco gear for instance). Someone coming from a startup is likely to be adaptive, and I'd rather have a generalist in a large organization, than a specialist in a small one.
Although I'm from an IT background not Dev so YMMV. The limit of my programming is single page perl/python scripts.
I'd think that it's a net win to have experience about the other side of the table, and that your skills are actually worth more by having been 'on the other side of the line' for a while.