Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
We all see "success stories" featured on internet blogs (basically every website with the "tech" prefix) and some trends tend to distort how we perceive how people arrived at where they are.
I want to know — How did you get your current job or startup? Did you go to college? Dropout? If your did go to college, have you ever failed a course? Did you have to move to a different country? How did you manage that and what was (in general) the biggest obstacle/low-point of your journey so far?
Note — Why I'm asking this: Because many of the people in this community may be in a low-point themselves, and reading about how other people persevered and what they did might just make things seem a bit easier for them.
Thank you all :)
81 comments
[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 59.4 ms ] threadThey liked me enough they offered me an intership. Used it to build my dissertation project.
When I finished Uni I looked around at who was hiring. The guys I'd worked with offered more than anyone else and were working on some seriously cool projects compared to anyone else.
Eventually, after coding through my teens, I founded a web development agency with some friends to build websites for money, while bootstrapping the development of a few web apps. All of them failed. I had severe imposter syndrome. Didn't help that my family had to sell our house while I was bootstrapping a startup, so I was basically homeless for a year.
Ultimately, one day I just realized that through all that hard work, I had somehow already made it, and that I was in fact a real developer, as knowledgeable as even my most CS-pedigreed friends coming out of school. It's about the learning, not the piece of paper.
Once I realized the true value that my skills and experience bring to the table, I began interviewing more confidently and negotiating more aggressively.
Fast-forward a few years, a few positions and companies later, and I am making over six figures with virtually no degrees or certifications, or student debt.
Uncertainty and doubt are not things to be feared; they keep you on your toes, hungry, and constantly learning, and that's how you beat college graduates in the job market. Don't succumb to imposter syndrome.
The last time I worked like that was when I was working on bootstrapping a start up while having a day job. I did close to a 20 hour schedule for around 4 years. This was only a year back, when I decided to take a break for an year or so.
Hardwork doesn't always give you results, But not working hard almost certainly doesn't. Well unless you have rich parents, or in-laws, or spouse or you inherit money someway- Or you are plain lucky to have god fathers in the industry bailing you out time to time, taking care of your career and financial growth.
For every body else its the plain old brutal torture.
There are some human anomalies that can thrive on that little amount of sleep but I would think for most people this would lead to poor productivity at best and be extremely detrimental to health at worst.
BTW, I read your "about" section. Looks like you might genuinely benefit from this discussion :)
I'm in my third semester of university (Philosophy and CS) and I applied for a job in customer support over their website with CV and cover letter.
Since my technical skills are quite solid I actually got hired as a support engineer and it has been a pretty good decision so far.
I simply found ME to be too slow on multiple dimensions.
As for my resume, I have a PhD in computer science from Oxford. I also spent a year in Australia on a fellowship. Since I'm American, I came back to the US to work in quantitative finance, which is the field I've been in for almost nine years now---four at my current place.
So that sounds impressive. Now I'm going to explain how close all of this came to not happening...
I grew-up in the rural deep South. My parents were extremely well educated and well traveled, but they had careers that didn't make any money. So I basically put myself through school. I got some scholarships and I taught part-time, but I had to take-out a lot of loans in the end. By the time I returned to the US, I had over $100K in debt from students loans and credit cards.
I didn't manage to get a job when I first got back to the States. I moved to NYC anyway and couch-surfed with every friend I could think of. (I ran-out of people I know, so I ended-up in a hostel for a few weeks.) I'm a fencer, so I refereed college fencing tournaments for enough money to eat.
It took five months to get my first quant job. The job I have now is the fourth such role because the first three trading desks I worked for all ran into the ground one way or another.
Along the way I had a big healthcare issue that resulted in surgery. That took years to prepare for and to heal from.
And since you ask about failing a class, I never made below a B- in a course, but I did fail my thesis defense the first time around. I had to resubmit my dissertation with a ton of changes to pass. (By the way, I got rejected from every grad school I applied to except for Oxford.)
So when you think that your current path is difficult, just know that I have survived two recessions (dot-com and financial crisis) and been turned-down from most jobs I've applied to.
I have three pieces of advice for you. Firstly, always be frugal. Despite my heavy debt when I returned to the US, I actually have flawless credit since I've never paid a bill late. That kind of history comes in handy a lot.
Secondly, always keep learning. Especially in my field, I have to keep-up constantly, which means following Hacker News, reading ACM/IEEE, taking MOOCs, etc.
And third, make friends. Help-out other people as often as you can. You will need them in the future.
Throughout this time I kept playing with things I liked the look of, blogged a lot, generally spent a lot of time online. I picked up Ruby and Rails and a publisher who saw my blog wanted me to write a book. I did, launched a blog to promote the book, the blog became the most popular Ruby blog for several years and a business in its own right. I then branched it out into email and now run an email newsletter business with 5 employees. (Most of this last paragraph has taken 11 years - I first picked up Ruby in November 2004.)
First career: got in the door (F250 high-tech) via Manpower and worked my way up over 14 years (reporting to CIO for last four years).
MEng: industrial engineering ten years after graduating uni.
Current job: used credibility gained from first career and emailed president of business division. Now running innovation lab at one of the best companies in the world.
ymmv.
Got an internship some time after that. I didn't have the greatest GPA, and had to drop a few classes. I'm not the greatest student for a formal education, but I'm genuinely interested in a lot of stuff and pretty good at self-educating things that matter to me. Performed good enough on the job to get a full-time position without an interview.
From there I went into business with a close friend doing agency work. We eventually went through a tough time business wise and got acqui-hired by a larger agency.
Second low point was around then when our business hinged on getting one big client. We pitched the business and didn't end up getting it. Luckily we were already in talks with the agency that acqui-hired us, so we used that as a fallback. It was a good fallback for us, the pay is good, but it isn't a startup :-)
At work, adopted a policy to always try to own more things and make things easier for others (particularly those above me) without becoming a silo for information. Write everything down, make it accessible, and give people status updates (which include any accomplishments) before they ever need to ask for them. Then, just get to work, and own things as much as possible. Because of this, I was able to show ownership above my given position for every single job, which really helped when the next opportunity came along. Additionally, always be learning / focused on continuous improvement. If you can constantly be thinking about ways to chart a path forward and suggesting those things when they make sense, you work to make everyone's life easier.
You also have to know your market and not be afraid to leave whenever the writing is on the wall or when you feel your ownership is limited. Leaving for those reasons rarely leads to hard feelings; if you leave because you want better ownership in helping your company but aren't granted it, and have a track record of success, usually people don't want to see you go and you'll leave on good terms.
With this outlook, I went from a college grad in 2009 making 45k/year, and 6 years later I'm about to lead a team at 185k/year with a 40 hour work week (and paid overtime, somehow). Which reminds me: also, be grateful -- we work in an industry that gives us a ton of opportunity.
Ownership, proactive communication, continuous improvement, and knowing your market/value.
I found a blog article interviewing one of the researchers (call him Bob) at "Company A".
I sent this email that eventually led to my job:
Hello Bob,
I've been researching [Company A] and came across this article from [BLOG SITE] that featured some of your work. I'm quite impressed with your assessment of the need for better data analysis tools in the [AREA OF RESEARCH], and the work you get to do in that area interests me. I found from your linkedin profile that part of your current research with the Company A Research Group is on [technical area I talk about below].
My recent PhD work at [University] involved a number of overlaps with your current work, both in technology ([short example]) and modeling physical processes ([short example]).
I am now looking for industry jobs in [City]. The Company A Research Group may be a good fit, but first I would like to learn more about what you do. Can you meet for coffee to discuss?
Best regards, -[my name]
He responded and asked for a resume. After further conversations, it turned out they didn't have room in their group (headcount freeze in their department) but we found another group at the company that needed someone with my skills. I was then "the guy Bob knows" during the interviews (which helped) and landed the job.
Currently Director of Technical Operations for a SFO-based SaaS company. I have an office here in Washington state. I've been here two years. Make great money. Love my job tremendously. Every day seems amazing that I get paid this well to do what I love. Extremely grateful.
Bottom line: I've seen some shit and some hard times. Never give up. Keep working hard and it will get better.
I love hearing advice and insight from people who've lived in a lot of different US cities. What similarities they've noticed, what differences, etc.
My favorite place to live, hands down, was Utah. I really enjoyed my time there. I lived in Park City, UT for both stints. It's a ski town and totally different from how many might conceive Utah. The pay in Utah was never amazing but I got by. Now that I've been working remote for 6 years, I can picture going back to a place like Park City. Mid-sized, activity-focused towns in the Mountain West are awesome.
After uni I joined IBM as a graduate. I kept freelancing in my spare time and helped my brother build a successful e-commerce company over the past 11 years.
In 2012 I left full time employment and continued freelancing to two regular clients.
In 2013 I built an MVP to be notified of changes on a web page, and while at an E-commerce trade show, I asked the CEO of a company exhibiting the question about how they get client e-commerce products into their system without any technical integration.
This resulting in me creating a second MVP to scrape e-commerce data for retailers wanting to sell on marketplaces. The CEO spent the following 6 months convincing me to be their CTO, which I've been doing for the past 2.5 years now.
So yeah, my future changed very drastically based on me deciding to wait a few more minutes to see if the CEO was free to have a chat. I could easily have walked away instead. Still looking forward to that feeling of 'success' but I know I've moved a long way over the years. I've learnt that if you focus on building up a network of contacts and actually getting to know them, you give yourself many more opportunities than you would otherwise have.
However, except with my getting into IBM, my university education hasn't played a significant role. Owning my own company, doing real work and continually learning and building has been critical.
The biggest low point was when I worked for an advertising startup with no vision and "buzzfeed projects". Thankfully I no longer have to experience that.
I'm now interviewing with a few tech companies in Paris and I wish it existed a "badge" that says "yes, I know all the stuff from CS 101, spare me the bullshit and go straight to the interesting part" because that's really annoying.
Around the year 2009, I helped some random person on the internet to setup a wordpress blog. We stayed a bit in contact, got some freelance work because of recommendations from her but that's about it. In late 2013, she asked me if I can help with a little project, sure. Other guy was working on it too, we stayed in touch.
He, my new friend, kept trying to convince me to join the company he's working for, but at the time I was living in England and the company was based in Lithuania (I'm a Lithuanian) and I loved Manchester too much to leave.
Time went by, and in late 2014 I started to look for a new job. The same friend asked me whether I'd consider joining the same company now (meaning moving across Europe), I thought ok, I will chat with them, nothing to lose.
It seemed like a good company to work for, interesting new challenges. After thinking for a couple of weeks and working remotely for a couple of months (temporary agreement, probation period kind of), I bought a one way to ticket Lithuania. Never regretted. Although still the amount of luck and all involved in this is still mind blowing. If I wasn't browsing that forum that night a few years ago, I wouldn't be where I am now.
I bounced around doing web development and running my own sites for the first 10 years of my career. Then I joined a startup in Chicago, and with the fallout of working there, I went on a 4 month hiatus of doing only whatever I wanted for myself, before being hired by where I work now, building a startup.
edit:// actually I don't consider what I am building now a startup. I don't like the stigmata associated to the term startup. I'm building a company.
Started my own web design and internet marketing shop, which proved to be much harder than I thought because I didn't know shit about running a business. Caught a break with a startup building out their website and web assets and doing marketing. Marketing director got fired, I filled that role and got a raise.
Left that company after two years to co-found a startup. Raised a little money. Tought myself product design and front-end.
Startup was unsuccessful, but I used the skills I learned to land a gig at MIT doing product design and front-end dev. Did that for a while. Jumped from 40k to almost 100k.
Left MIT to lead product at a vc backed startup making 6 figures with a good bit of equity. That's where I am today.
Tomorrow, who knows...