Ask HN: Want to join a startup, only have Fortune 500 experience

Ruby/Rails is predominant in the startup world now. Regardless of the language you're probably going to want to build something for show and tell as soon as you can.

You can host on Heroku and of course having viewable code on GitHub is important, too (how about a simple finance-related library culled from your experience?).

There was discussion earlier this year about the Great Chicago Ruby Developer Shortage, so that may be an option (and of course SF if you're really willing to move).

Sometimes I think startups undervalue experience while over-emphasizing open source contributions; however the flip side is they're more likely to give someone with less experience a chance if they can see some code, especially in big cities with the most demand.

Good luck!

I feel that am sort of a younger version of you, on the other side of planet. 6 years with an Indian IT major (in a product unit, a million dollar banking product). Though I don't find my experience to be in "uninteresting" problem domains; as throughout my stay, I have been in the most technically intensive track within. Worked on a lot of code generators, internal tools and some system level stuff.

However, I find it very apprehensive and intimidating interviewing/applying for a startup. Few startups rejected my application simply because I am from a BigCo.

Thanks for the post, few of the responses here might help me too!

I think there is a lot of money to be made by startups that take on some of those uninteresting banking/financial domains - look for one of them. Also, take a look at Advent Software [1] if you are at all interested in moving to San Francisco. They are not a startup but they have some things going for them and they use .Net pretty extensively these days. A move like that could get you half way and you can then begin to develop your network.

[1] http://www.advent.com

Do you have any open source contributions? If not, are there any projects you could contribute to? There are many .net open source projects that could use a hand.

At the very least, it will give people a chance to see what sort of work you do if they want to see more than what's on your resume.

if you're worried about the startup community in your city, you can always try telecommuting

> The problem is that I don't really have a network in any startup hubs.

My company is located in Boston, and we recently hired a guy out of Chicago based on a posting he made in a Scala forum and a half day of interviews with the team. It's very competitive out there right now, so a person with fifteen years experience, eleven in .Net and an interest in learning new technologies is going to be in high demand. Don't box yourself in as we also do [some] C, C++, Java and even PHP. They key to being an asset to a startup is having domain expertise but also being readily adaptable to providing solutions for the myriad of cases that arise when you're chasing business.

If you're worried about people not giving you your due because you don't subscribe to a particular language or framework, then you're better off not working with them as that's a warning sign of entrenchment.

You're at a point where you can basically target the companies where you'd want to work versus taking whatever is available. Go forth and do likewise. Good luck!

This.