Transition from Being a Big Company Employee to Working at a Startup (Part 1 of 2)
Last week I attended a talk by Bryan Starbuck (on Twitter @BryanStarbuck), a serial tech startup entrepreneur and a former Microsoft Engineering Manager, about how to transition from a big company (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.) employee to a career at startups. Bryan provided great insights and practical advice for people interested in this process. I’d like to share with you a summary of this talk and the main takeaways.
Today, in part 1 of this series, we’ll cover the topics in the first half of “Become a Startup Employee from a Big Company” –
Understand your target
- An important decision – Do you want an “early-stage” (near founding) startup or a stable, mature startup?
- The common way early-stage startups add people
- CEO / co-founders
- 2 developers
- 1 designer (or another dev)
- 1 marketing person
- Usually few or no “Program Managers”
What startups look for
- Technical
- Developer
- Decide .NET vs. Open Stack
- Envision using the stack 8 years from now. Invest in that stack.
- Open Stack is still important for .NET developers
- Focus on a web app language AND a mobile app language
- Breaking into a startup job may be harder than you imagine
- Currently a huge demand for iOS and Android developers
- Companies want a mobile app developer who also know their web app langue
- .NET/C# startups are more common in Seattle than in the Bay Area
- Test
- Rare to have testing engineers in a startup with less than 10 people
- Testing is far more automated. Startups have to automate tests
- Open source testing automation tools are amazing – Selenium, Jmeter, Waitr, Load UI, Cucumber, Concordion, etc.
- Big- or mid-sized companies can hire Software Test Engieers
- Often product software engineers write tests
- Or, test engineers write test code in the same product source tree
- Test Engineers can consider becoming DevOps
- DevOps
- Becoming popular because of cloud computing
- Companies using cloud want a “DevOps” instead of an IT person
- IT people spend time managing hardware. Hardware is now in the cloud
- DevOps need to handle all code issues between the product and the cloud platform
- DevOps can be software engineers
- Companies want a DevOps person who can code
- Developer
- Program Manager / Product Manager
- Program Managers and Product Managers are not exactly the same thing
- Microsoft’s Product Manager = Product Marketing elsewhere
- Startups often reach 15+ employees before hiring a product manager
- Microsoft clones in Seattle with Program Managers: Expedia, Zillow, Redfin
- Microsoft Program Managers can transition into
- Product Manager (often at B2B startups)
- UX Designer (while outsourcing graphic design)
- Hustler (early stage person for business tasks, such as getting sales or biz dev deals closed)
- Online Marketing
- Marketing (B2C online marketing)
- Online marketing is a hard to find skill
- It’s very technical and can be place to thrive for technical people
- It’s not the old-school “Mad Men” marketing:
- Creative ads for TV
- Can’t measure ROI
- Try creative ideas. Results also unknown and not fully measured
- B2C online marketing is about:
- SEO algorithms
- Arbitrage PPC keyword buys
- Science of measuring conversion rate and metrics
- Work towards 100% measurable
- Buying 100,000 keywords and optimize with tools and automation scripts
- Viral marketing equation
To-dos for getting a startup job
- For early-stage startups
- Go to FounderDating.com and other similar match-up service
- Networking events
- For all startups
- Apply to company job openings
- Enter resume into Monster and CareerBuilder
- Have a great LinkedIn profile
- Networking events
Next week we’ll cover topics in compensation, understanding startup mentality and the next steps. Stay tuned.
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