Ask HN: Any advice for someone getting back in the game after 13yrs at startups?
Cliff Notes version: I have a Comp Sci degree, wrote a couple books, spoken at a bunch of conferences, and have always been a hands-on leader. At one point I was managing a 15 person team. I've brought several product lines from 0 code to 6/7 figure revenue. And I was able to keep my team happy and advance their careers.
And my HN throw away profile has almost 6000 karma but I can't take karma to the bank .
My concern is that 13 years of "wearing lots of hats" has not positioned me well for the job market. I know I can be a great principal engineer, manager, or executive but I don't think my interviewing skills (I haven't interviewed for 13+ years) would reflect that.
I'm prepared to work hard. My first thought is to cram leetcode for a while but are there any better resources out there? And/or other general advice.
Thank you in advance!
43 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadNot saying it’s a bad idea but it does seem a little bad faith.
With that said, ethics aside, it does seem like a solid way to get practice.
The same principle applies here. The more interviews you do, the more comfortable you'll get, the better it'll go. And who knows, it might work out with one of the first companies you interview at!
Thanks for the advice, though!
They've always been a thing; at least in SV.
People who need to practice tech interviews, while probably optimizing for the wrong thing, have plenty of resources available to do that.
This has been the opposite of my experience.
I tend to interview very well... at least in the past. My confidence is shit now. I had mediocre skills then (deteriorated now). But I had a wealth of situations to pull from when they wanted me to tell them about certain times in my career. The code screens always killed me because I bounced between tech and teams too much to become a true expert. Now, this was at midlevel positions, not the higher level stuff the OP is looking at. I would hope the code screens are less of an issue for them. I'm fucked though.
yeah, it sucks OP couldn't make his startups work. but if there's anything with a negative ROI in terms of learning it's interviews. you can do leetcode / behavioural etc, after 2/3 years it doesn't mean you're now a pro - if you stopped doing it
find places that appreciate builders OP. and that have less than 3 interview rounds.
That said, it's possible. It's usually someone you know really well that trusts you that will get you back in the game. Or companies known to hire founders, rippling comes to mind.
No sugar coating needed. That's why I'm asking this here, because I already had a hunch that was the case and figured if any group of people could have some experience with this situation it is the HN crowd.
If you can get through that and make it clear in the process you should be more than fine.
If getting interviews is hard having a title of CTO or founder on your resume you change it to Director or Staff just to get into the process and explain it on the interview.
Make it clear you are not a primadona.
You are hire-able. Just wipe away any preconceived judgements.
Unfortunately my previous employer that wasn't a startup no longer exists (it was 14 years ago after all, they got crushed by the 1..2 punch of the dot com crash and the 2008 recession).
If you're going for staff/principal/senior engineer at Big Tech, this is necessary. (Though I don't think you'll get principal engineer interviews, maybe not even staff unless you have some really notable technical accomplishments other than just being a CTO).
However if you want to work at later stage startups you may not need much practice either.
Finally, you're going for Engineering Manager, I think you shouldn't need to do leetcode. I think most FAANGs etc are going to ask for code reviewing interviews or the like, not have you actually doing algorithmic puzzles.
You do want to practice system design interviews, depending on your skill set, you might be fine and just want to get used to the interviewing process, or you might need to study up quite a bit.
You may be right.
The companies I was CXO of created some pretty impressive intellectual property (deep tech; which I coded the v1.0+ for personally) and two books (major tech publisher not self-published). You're probably running code I wrote on your machine if you are on a Mac or Linux. Can't say much more without doxing my throw away account.
But I'm not sure any of those things would come across well on a resume, unfortunately.
> Finally, you're going for Engineering Manager, I think you shouldn't need to do leetcode. I think most FAANGs etc are going to ask for code reviewing interviews or the like, not have you actually doing algorithmic puzzles.
Interesting, I've heard that opposite. Good feedback.
> You do want to practice system design interviews.
Good idea. What do you think the best way to go about that is?
Ah. My mistake, I'd guess that is likely to get staff+ level interviews at Big Tech.
>Interesting, I've heard that opposite. Good feedback.
That managers have to do DS&A coding rounds at FAANG+? Maybe some, I don't think the bar will be near as high as the IC route.
>Good idea. What do you think the best way to go about that is?
Well, I don't think this is something you can fake, but if you've been working on deep tech, you don't have to fake it.
I'd go against the grain of reading 'system design books' and say instead read (some of) the actual code and design docs for large popular web scale open source projects (stuff like K8s, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, memcache, Spark etc).
That should be enough to get a deeper understanding of how to design large scale systems.
Then do a few practice interviews at some place like pramp.com or interviewing.io, just to get used to talking about it with someone.
Both my startups actually hit scale so I already know system design pretty well. I was actually an early adopter for K8s and we were using Docker before it was even GA. What I don't know is how to interview for it, since a down side of working at a startup is you have very few sounding boards to catch up with terms of art. The priority is on shipping. I'll check out those sites you mentioned. Thanks!
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My first thought is to cram leetcode
I think you need to figure out what kind of job you're actually looking for. I'm assuming you mean "something not another startup"; if you're angling for another startup gig I'm not sure why you're concerned.
If you've been a C-level for 13 years, I'm sure not going to be interested in bringing you on as a programmer (unless maybe you have a notable project I'd know about), and probably not as a line manager. It's not just that you should be wildly overqualified, but as cajunboi said, you're not used to having a boss and I'm used to managers who understand what having a boss means. I spend enough time with HR without "my new hire still thinks he's the CEO".
I would de-emphasize the C-level job titles to the extent of changing them to 'Manager' or some such, and if brought up demure with something like "hey, it was a startup...everyone was C-something". Focus on the nuts-and-bolts of doing a job, so to speak. "I managed a team of 15 people and we did X" (citing 'on time' and/or 'under budget' metrics is good here), "I did X things to keep my team happy, productive and had low turnover", "I have a track record of taking a product from inception to X revenue", "I'm a recognized industry expert through my book(s) and participation in X events". Emphasize the team aspect of your accomplishments. Tailor the pitch to the job and don't just spam out generic resumes. And as always, work your network.
FWIW, I came from the startup side too, several times CTO. Now doing my penance in the corp world. :-)
I don't want to be an individual contributor but my issues are two fold:
1. I found most management jobs want me to have managed more than 15 people and a low seven-figures budget and 15 is a non-starter.
2. I've been told (on HN, actually) a lot of companies these days ask coding questions even for management roles.
I could be wrong on one or both or those things but they are my working assumptions (the first one being based on job listings).
So I've kind of resigned myself to the idea that the only senior management or executive job at an established company.
> If you're angling for another startup gig I'm not sure why you're concerned.
I'm pretty sure (ok... 100%) I could get a leadership role at an early stage startup but the reason I'm looking is because I need a stable paycheck and benefits (for various life reasons) and most of the early stage startups I see are only paying equity with a token salary for leadership roles. If startups could pay well I'd be continuing to work on my current startup.
Might be worth looking at companies with a similar sized dev team that are growing and need someone to run the tech team.
So skip the startup/tech cofounder and find the ones where the initial stage is done and either the existing person wants to step away or is no longer “the right person” for the current role.
These roles are often less equity and more salary.
So I would start there. People who know you will see past the titles and want to hire you for what you offer in terms of business value and solving problems. If you’re considering grinding leetcode and doing cold interviews, where is your network?
Then again, I learned after a couple of management roles that I should keep my options open, so I have called myself “programmer analyst” for 20+ years regardless of actual responsibilities.
Even with a strong referral a lot of places won't let you skip 100% of the coding interviews. It might just fast track you past the technical phone screen.
Only a small fraction of companies, mostly in SV, do coding interviews at all.
I assume at those levels your prior achievements are a bigger part. The interview should mostly be about soft skills and "tell me about a time..." rather than code screens. I could be wrong.
Some good bets for you imho are fractional CTO and director-level jobs at tech companies. For those you want networking and practicing "soft skills" and management interviews.
I've only had side-projects, but one of them was big enough to pay the bills during the best of times. Currently it has hit a speed bump (more visitors, but less orders) so I'm just running it passively on the side, generating a little bit of profit, while I do freelancing.