/More Eitzes from me, 'Eitzes is billik' - advice comes cheap.../
This gist is my experience. In general: do not trust such advice. Somehow the market tends to change every few years, always be aware of that possibility and be on the look-out.
You can work for a big established company or for a startup. With more advanced companies you have a less stressed environment / and a more steady job, kind of.
Working for big companies, you can work either as a full time employee or via a contractor (both can be very different deals...)
Most of my experience is as a full time employee, compared to start ups:
- technical assignment may have more depth than in start-ups
- People with deep specialized knowledge are valued
- however the management structure is far more hierarchical and one can have trouble with what-you-may-say-to-who-or-not.
- you may see occasional crunch times, however there is less overall stress due to general uncertainty / pivot, change of direction.
- however some big companies add a lot of stress with annual perf reviews (like amazon), therefore these days any generalization is wrong...
Startup stages can be confusing: See y combinator explanation
| Name | Invested | Description | Problems |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed (find a concept) | 1-5M$ | 'people at startups wear many hats (and get a lower salary?)' 'Hiring strong engineers, scientists, and other technical specialists is key since developing the technology and product matters most' | Culture fit is very important (and is interpreted literally), Pivot moments will cause stress and wear out. Uncertainty is a big source of stress too. Be a cool dude and learn how to handle stress. |
| Series A (proof of concept) | 5-20M$, takes 12-24 months | 'Series A startups have a working product and are moving closer towards product market fit (?). They may have a few happy customers and initial revenue, but there is work to be done to validate and scale the business.' 'startups look to hire a number of critical roles across functional areas, especially in engineering' | Politics, lots of it. Still lots of stress. |
| Series B/C (Growth) | 10-50M$ (per round, several rounds), B - takes 12-24 months, C - no fixed timeline | 'They know who their customers are, and they’re on their way to capturing as many of them as possible' but: a company now needs to differentiate itself from the competition, in some way this requires an ability to be creative and to adapt! In some way this is a very challenging period. | A drive to stabilize and scale thing. Skills like optimization and debugging of live systems suddenly become more important. Less politics. |
| Series D+ (Scale) | no fixed timeline or cost | 'with multiple 100s to 1000s of employees', 'closest to IPO and are great bets if you’re looking for job stability' Sometimes series D is mixed up with Series C, because people are not too good with terminology and maybe a given company/domain is more likely to scale linearly rather than exponentially, due to the specifics of its niche? | less stress, more of a steady job, fewer career opportunities. |
Log all contacts after initial screening, write it down (so you know what firms contacted you).
Before an interview, if the initial screening has been passed: research some background on the company where you get interviewed at:
- I think some background knowledge helps you to give better answers and ask better questions. For example you can pick to tell about more relevant working experience, if you know something already. If there is a software design question then this may involve some specifics as well.
- Where to search?
- for startups in Israel there is : https://finder.startupnationcentral.org/
- search for the company on https://www.linkedin.com
- glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.com/Community/index.htm (lots of noise over there. Don't know what to think of that. Maybe better leave it until wrap-up / retrospective ?)
Upon the second interview: start to take notes on the process: Where/how can such a detailed log help?
- this style of logs can give you a higher level perspective on each hiring process, as a whole. Most interview processes have something like five stages, so you will need to multiplex multiple hiring process. All this multiplexing is adding stress, so that keeping notes reduces multiplexing, therefore reducing hiring stress.
- even if the process drags on: you get a sense of what areas are in demand / what skills are relevant.
- you can try to get a higher level perspective and see correlations with other events: how is the economy going? Which industries/skills are in demand?
- if you get to choose from two options, then a log may be quite helpful. Such an analysis may add details! (In such an event: anything is better than to rely exclusively on your gut feelings)
Schema for notes after interview (Must write it down on the same day as the interview)
-
Position: What do we interview for?
-
Domain: Business domain, what problems are being solved?
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Strategy (tech, business): Any chance of asking on how things are tackled? (both tech and business) Is there a preferred market segment?
-
Tech Stack: the platform, what do we use for work? Layer above, layer below.
-
Org: How does the department look like? What teams? What is done by each team?
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Work: Methodology used (Scrum, CI, et), common work process
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Problems: Common problems (technological problems, ask a bit about dev process, about the business - on second third interview), What do we fight?
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Hiring process: they mention this if there is a chance for follow up / if you passed this stage, important indication of how you did it now (may not mean much in a stressed economy)
-
Very important: don't rush to conclusions, when reviewing notes on past failures. Things can always turn around.
From highest chance for something to lowest chance
- Being referred to via a friend
- Being directed via a job agency / headhunter
- if headhunter asked for an update on the process, don't forget to notify them!
- Always be very friendly to job hungers on linked-in! Being referred via job hunter signals tht you are vetted / passed initial screening.
- Applying via Linked-In (without leaving to company site) sometimes these links end up at a headhunter, so this is kind of signalling that you are looking for a job.
- Directly applying at the job board of the company. The applications are most likely ignored, unless backed up by a friend referral. HR people seem to place some value on the vetting process of a headhunter. (However you never know with bees, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't)
- if you don't have too much contacts with headhunters then use some automated submission process. Might help (it did help me some twenty years ago)
- Disregard any of this advice: Somehow the market tends to change fundamentally, every few years, always be aware of that possibility and be on the look-out.
You need to be a social animal, because hiring processes/working are social processes. Therefore you need a Linked-in account.
I am not much of a social animal, still this is what I learned.
- try to remain in contact with your colleagues, and remain 'friends' in linked-in.
- try to add headhunter friends, that may be good during job search.
- ignore social networking or political posts in linked-in (unless it is something within the consensus)
- taking part in professional discussions is considered to be a good thing, as it increases your visibility (though I don't know for sure if that actually helps)
- having our open source projects on github is considered to be a good thing (It may help with some companies, I think it very much helps with the vetting process)