Thanks HN. You lied to me about the true cost of a failed startup.
You probably just had a bad interview. Either you're not completely qualified, or they didn't feel you were a good fit for the team. Maybe they didn't like some of your answers to the interview questions. Or, somebody else beat you out for the position.
Using careful wording you can spin any negative experience into something positive. I'd recommend doing that with your startup.
I moved from the UK to San Francisco a few years ago, and everything is very different. An attempted startup, whether successful or not, is almost always seen as a good thing here.
If you talk about how cool it was, and how you plan to do it again, they won't want to hire you, thinking you are just there for a few months until you go back to doing startups
You definitely don't want to give the impression that you're just applying to pick up some quick cash before trying your next startup. But there's a lot of middle ground between that and "I never want to be an entrepreneur again, and will happily be your corporate bitch forever."
It is dangerous to assume that "One size fits all" in this situation, for both you and OP. A better answer might be to read the interviewer/company and make the best decision at the time given all the info (on whether to "fudge" or not about whether you'd do it again). It also, I suppose, depends on your financial situation.
So, the top-poster should ask himself what he wants: Does he want a few years of nine-to-five, or to be starting a company again in a few months?
If the answer is the former, then he needs to do exactly as vaksel said. Play up the aspects of startup life that will appeal to Company X: hard work, thinking on your feet, people skills, having to come up to speed quickly. Play down anything that makes it sound like you want to leave in less than a few years. Talk about how the uncertainty of income was nerve-wracking, how hard it was to always be on your own, how much you found you missed having co-workers, etc.
If you do want to leave in six months, don't lie to a recruiter -- look for contract jobs. You'll make more money in a shorter period of time, build up a bigger network, and avoid burning bridges.
I don't think so. I did just that and I still got 3 offers out of 3 interviews. 2 of them were small companies (one of which I'm working at now), but the last was a corporate behemoth with the initials FX. It really depends on what the employer wants out of filling the position, I think.
Exactly. It appears that, out of 3 interviews, those three companies were looking for that type of person. It could be that those were exactly the types of companies you were looking for as well. That doesn't mean that if you interviewed for 500 jobs at a wide spectrum of companies (with sizing from 10-250,000 people) that you would fare as well.
Have a serious think about what you're doing at the moment, bitching at a group of entrepreneurs/tech heads about a bad job application. Think you're the only one here that's either A) Been in this position or B) Currently in this position?
As to the truism that lying on your C.V. is a very bad idea, well, it is, but so is trying to recruit excessively conformist employees. You've put yourself in a position where you can't both conform and be truthful, so decide!
Relentlessly resourceful: doing whatever is necessary to get where/what you want. (But be a good person about it and don't step on other people.)
I would be relieved if I was in your position.
Seriously? With a sample size of 1, you are blaming hacker news for bad advice rather than blaming the hiring manager for having a rare/bizarre attitude?
This is either:
a. Bait. You got me.
b. A poor joke. Next time you may want to try <sarcasm> and </sarcasm>.
or
c. Your true feelings. You have a attitude problem. The large software company noticed too. Fix your stinkin' thinkin' and stop blaming others for your failure. I wonder if "lack of money" was the only cause of your startup's failure.
About your last comment: take responsibility for your actions.
The real question (which neither the OP nor I am qualified to answer) is whether a startup opens more doors than it closes, not whether it closes one particular door. Obviously, there are all kinds of people in the world with all sorts of stupid biases; there's someone out there who will decide not to hire you because you went to the same school as some intern he disliked.
By their own logic (maybe I'm giving them too much credit, by assuming consistency) they probably wouldn't want to hire someone with a successful startup either.
"Thanks HN. You lied to me about the true cost of a failed startup." Are you kidding? Surely, you aren't ready to blame those trying to help you for one bad encounter with a knucklehead recruiter with a bad attitude.
Whenever you listen to any advice, you need to view it through the filter of Buchheit's Law: "Limited life experience + overgeneralization = advice". Lots of people post about their experiences here, but nobody's experience will completely fit with your own circumstances. So you've got to examine why it worked for them and determine if those same conditions apply to you. In my case, I was applying for a job at Google in Silicon Valley, not a big company in the UK. I had previous successful programming projects, though unfortunately nothing lucrative. And I had sharp basic CS skills and did well in the interview. I'm not sure how many of these apply to your own situation.
If they don't, you have two options:
1.) Make your situation look more like the people whose advice you've been reading.
2.) Seek out advice from people closer to your own situation.
It's really valuable that you've posted your own experience for others to learn from, but there's always a danger in generalizing too much.
I took time off the lifestyle and worked at an established (but small) software company for about 4 years after my last failure, and feel like I was better off for that choice.
My thoughts:
- I wouldn't sell it as a failed start-up, you can put an honest story around anything
- "I didn't like start-up life, I thought the grass was greener, and it sure as hell isn't"
- "Yea, I agree, the product didn't work out, but I learned a lot of operational skills. Planning, hiring, firing etc."
- "One thing it definitely taught me was it all comes down to numbers and ROI."
etc etc etc
Disclaimer: My first job was with a start-up that I'm pretty sure is on its why down the pan. But I sure as hell don't share the same concerns. I'd argue that what I learned in a start-up has prepared me for my life more than any degree could.
Anything you do in your career has the potential to open or close some doors.
My suggestion is to be prepared to tailor things like cover letters and resumes appropriately for the position and be more selective in how you apply so as to maximize your chances. Unless you're very very good or lucky you're bound to have some kind of failure in your past. The important thing in this sort of interview situation is to be able to convince people you've learned the right lessons from the experience and are more valuable as a result.
Though, I think there is almost zero correlation of landing a position and having done a startup. Also, in real terms failed/successfull startups dont really matter much because often there is a very fine line (often described as luck) between failed and successfull startups. You might have learned a lot more in a failed one than having lucked out in a succesfull one. (for eg. jobs might have been considered a lesser success when apple mostly did the mac compared to say the youtube guys. Even though we now know otherwise because of the ipod, the fact is that it was plain market conditions that led to youtube being a bigger hit than the Mac).
A friend of mine got turned down with one of the biggest private enterprise software firms in the US. They hired the best of the lot - stanford, mit etc. He went on to join a smaller firm, and then did a startup which is about to run a million in revenues this year. The private software firm has since lost its mojo and is laying off right left and center. The friend, who is now CEO, is hiring right left and center. The very people who thought he was unfit to join their 'ranks' would now be very happy to be on his payroll.
In any case the lesson is that treat a job as independent from doing a startup - it takes a different set of skills to land one and its not fair, so just try to find what is required to land a job and not assume it to mean anything more than that.
That said, it may be beneficial for you to think about how you are selling yourself and your experience.
However, whilst being interviewed over the past month or two I've encountered people who've really disliked the fact that I'd moved around several small entrepreneurial projects and now wanted a job. Some people absolutely loved it, but some people were really quite sceptical and even critical. Just shows you that people can be stupid, you have to keep trying as many as it takes until someone understands your value and doesn't make some retarded judgement based on something that doesn't matter.
As a sidenote, I found that the CEOs and founders that interviewed me were very keen on the entrepreneurial aspect to my cv. The middle management and wage monkeys weren't at all.
Thus does the domesticated assail the free.
When writing a resume, you need to be careful to tailor it for the reader. If you're applying to work at a place that values free-thinking and risk-taking, then leave it on there. If you're applying to work at a consulting company or less-inventive company, they will see it as a red flag.
No company wants to train someone for a job only to have them bail to do their own thing.
You can still talk about it to the latter type of company, but you have to spin it in a way that doesn't make them think you're a rogue and unlikely to be happy in a corporate environment.
Alan
No one here lied to you but there is no absolute truth.
You know yourself better than the company does, and "free spirit" vs. "not the kind that settles in a normal job" is not only a gross generalization, an artificial dichotomy, and generally B.S., you know yourself better than they do! You know you are perfect capable of settling in a normal job, right?
Again, the company seems to be looking for a drone, and hiring that way. Surely you can find something better?
Perhaps they just fire you when you commit your first broken build. Then you could have an entire team of programmers that have never submitted buggy code.
"In my experience within the UK graduate market..."
So was this job in the UK? If so, was the recruiter American?
If it's a really long time just say you were a free lance consultant or something.
Cheers
You are kidding right?
Second, I don't know what type of job you're looking for but the two startups that I've worked at both think very highly of startup experience on your resume, failed or not. If you pursued a startup idea it tends to indicate all sorts of good things -- self directed, can run with ideas, aren't averse to a certain amount of boring but necessary work, etc. Of course, you should expect to be grilled on why it failed and what you would do differently.
Third, Scribd always needs good rails people, so send your resume if you want. Email is in the profile.
1) You don't want that job. You really don't. They want in-the-box thinkers who would never question why they didn't get their raise this year. They want risk-averse programmers caz you can exploit them.
2) HN never lied. In probability there are no absolutes. if I or my manaders had to choose between two resumes of equal qualifications all would choose the one with a startup. I doubt any programmer I personally worked with would dissagree(or their manager). However there are exceptions to this rule. Some simply want the workers that work not the workers that think.
3) You really don't want to work for them... Do you want to work with people who never act on their dreams or hopes, only whine and complqin and sit down and shut the fuck up about problems at work when it comes to talking to managers or asking for appropriate pay for teir tallent (if they got it)? Every job I take I want to gain something. At 60 ill take the safe job and retire on it. Till then I want to wor with people who challenge me, not conformists.
So OP really consider is it so bad that you don't want that job? If you do FIGHT FOR IT. Call em tell em THEY WANTYOU! What do you have to lose? Only gain!