Why would anyone think that the average entrepreneur or even early startup person would be able to seamlessly transition back and forth between the entrepreneurial and big corporate worlds, at least at the lower levels relevant here. It's a different mindset and skillset. And it works both ways, you'd expect startups to be biased against salarymen.
> And it works both ways, you'd expect startups to be biased against salarymen.
Not without good reason.
I have been on that side of the table. I have recruited my fair share of salarymen.
To be fair, some don't make it past the interview table. I'm not joking. "Where's my office ?" is a question I have been asked. Seriously !
The majority of the time it ends up being a dreadful mistake.
The truth is the corporate guys are too used to be hiding in numbers.
In the corporate world you are one of a team. You can ask your team members for help. You can push tasks you don't want off onto your junior team members. All luxuries you don't get in the small business world.
And, sadly, if you are largely useless, in a corporate world, as long as you keep your head down, you can float around as dead-wood until someone gets round to firing you, usually a decade or so later by the time the your manager has passed it up to HR and HR has got round to it ...
There's no room for dead wood in small business.
And of course in the technology sphere, in the corporate world you get to play with bigger budgets. The hardware vendors take you out to lunch. You get "enterprise support". You don't get any of that in the small business world.
Don't get me wrong, I have had some good ex-corporate recruits, but the majority of time its been an expensive mistake. Which is why I tend favour SME recruits overall.
As someone who has done exactly that, I'll tell you why: because we know what's expected of employees. The people who start businesses are generally high performers. When I hired others, I naively expected them to approach their work in the same way I do. The reality is most people suck. They feel the best when they finish a shift having done the least, as though they got away with something. I feel the best when I get the most done.
Many of the best entrepreneurs can (and do) excel greatly within corporate environments. They’ve learned how to lead, sell, and get things done even when they have to improvise.
The problem is that “ex-entrepreneur” is a title that anyone can give themselves by merely registering a domain name and a business one evening. The title attracts a lot of people who have no business being an entrepreneur or leading people, but want to be in charge of people and running the show.
That latter group is the long tail, and due to the inevitable failure of their startups those people are far more likely to be seeking jobs than the ex-entrepreneurs you want working for your company.
Having spent some time in local startup and entrepreneur communities, I have no problem believing that the average person who self describes as an ex-entrepreneur would make for a below-average employee. A lot of these people want to be in charge and tell others what to do more than they want to do the work, which is the opposite of what you’re looking for in people to work for your company.
Because outside of the rare entrepreneurs who make 50k a month working 5 hours a week, there are a lot who worked 90 hour weeks sometimes not even being able to pay themselves. Yes maybe at one point they wanted to wear many hats and venture out. But that isn't a sustainable lifestyle for everyone. To think that person couldn't develop an appreciation for a supportive environment with PTO, the ability to focus on a limited number of tasks, stable pay, stable work hours and other team members they can depend on is a very limited viewpoint imo.
I’m not a recruiter, but I am in “Big Tech”, and dealing with founders, or even just people who have only worked at startups, is frustrating. They tend to have underdeveloped skills in teamwork and listening to authority. Honestly, I just want likable people who will execute on my ideas (or the ideas I’m simply passing on from higher management), or with light discussion, even if the execution isn’t perfect. I feel like a lot of corporate work is like this.
> I just want likable people who will execute on my ideas (or the ideas I’m simply passing on from higher management), or with light discussion, even if the execution isn’t perfect.
That sounds horrible. I want people working under/with me that will question the work, that will try to figure out if it's the right work. It is common for decisions "from higher management" to be made without a real in-depth knowledge of how the system(s) work. When that happens, there may be a (possibly radically) better approach that can be taken.
Software developers are generally paid a lot of money. Not taking advantage of their experience and problem solving ability sounds like a waste of money.
Startup or not, you're not always being paid to think, even if you're capable of it. It's super annoying to work with people who only want to push back when it's not part of the mandate - just like it's annoying to work with people who don't think for themselves when it's expected. Knowing what the job is is and important skill no matter where you work, if somebody can't do that it's a big problem.
I've worked in both sorts of companies. The constant questioning may work well at smaller scale but kills productivity at larger scales. Putting aside that it inevitably becomes a political exercise as much as a technical one (because the different technical solutions almost always reflect competing priorities), it also requires perfect sharing of information across the organization, which does not scale.
Especially in any sales driven organization, I've seen it cause issues with infra teams questioning the need for certain features. Meanwhile, the answer is that the features are necessary because someone is willing to pay $$$ for them.
> That sounds horrible. I want people working under/with me that will question the work, that will try to figure out if it's the right work.
Sounds great in moderation, but becomes horrible as soon as you get a guy who spends more time arguing than doing.
There’s a reason that “disagree and commit” is a common teaching. It’s fine to question and propose alternatives, but when people see everything as an opportunity to debate and fight it becomes a problem. A big one.
It sounds like how 95% of everything works. In reality of course there is a spectrum between visionary entrepreneurs and mindless drones and some critical thinking is generally welcome. But it seems like startup founders have a very strong belief in their own ideas even when everyone else seems to disagree (that is why they are/were startup founders) and that honestly just sounds so exhausting in a corporate setting.
Bruh we are slave to the machine. Most of us want to get in, get our paycheck, let the boss feel smart, and go back to our actual lives. Programmers tend to overinflate the influence of their job in their personal lives.
That sounds lovely riiight up until you’re in a position where one of your reports gets very inconveniently standoffish when they’re tasked with something that has been pre-determined, has been decided for complex workflow management , political, legal, etc reasons.
I am a big believer in developers working with sufficient context, but the reality is that when an org gets to a certain size, everyone can’t have full visibility over everything.
Sometimes the ‘business analysis’ involved in determining how to address a particular need can be painful, intense, political, disruptive, etc. A burden that I want to and should shoulder for my team. Sometimes you’ve just gotta divide and conquer with some things. And that means that sometimes developers need to start with the puzzle already partially solved.
Again, this can all sound completely unreasonable, right up until the point when you’re first faced with this situation. Framing it as “you’re not being paid to think! conform, swine!” is too cynical. Rather, sometimes, it’s impractical or flat out undesirable for everyone to do everything. Sometimes you’re better off focusing on a certain type of thinking / work.
Yeah, I agree with you, but sometimes higher management wants to implement anything without questions and multiple times the ideas taken more time to deliver! It's very toxic to work like that.
> Blindly follow orders isnt really on most startup folks’ list of things to do.
The really funny thing I'm thinking about here is when I bring people onto a project I'm leading: I give them an intro to the project, all of the components at play, the needs of the project... and then introduce them to something they could work on and the general gist of what needs to be done.
For some people that's enough to take it and run (and check in with feedback, minimal viable product, look for "does this sound good?" kinda stuff).
For others it really feels like they need to be spoonfed an entire spec down to block diagrams, flowcharts, sequence diagrams, etc. And I've worked with teams that wanted that before we even assigned any software engineers to the project. Meanwhile I'm trying to get SOMETHING on a computer so we can start looking for the bugs that take a long time to manifest themselves. (and "that's not what we were expecting it to do!" from the systems team lol)
Anyway, I can say that's not necessarily a big enterprise vs startup thing. It's more of a team vs team thing.
I assumed OP is well aware that the question is why these people took the big tech job in the first place, because it is obvious that it would be like this. Is this rocket science? I say no.
They want a good soldier who pretends to be an independent thinker not an independent thinker who pretends to be a good soldier.
You can see this from the advice given to people looking to game interviews. Also from the lack of interview success for those who don't game interviews.
You are bound to stay the leader of mediocre teams then. You could at least bother with 2 or 3 of these who would make wonders - or fired based upon what you just said. But mediocre is … comforting.
Some people want to dedicate a lot of their work time and energy to LARPing Tony Stark. Other people just want to deliver the value the company needs, get paid, and pursue their other goals outside of their job.
I've had recruiters from mid-sized, but rapidly growing, tech companies tell me to my face that they don't accept "entrepreneurial" applicants. This meant anybody who has worked at smaller startups or done consulting, contracting, or freelancing.
That explains quite a bit. My entire career since college has been "worked at smaller startups or done consulting, contracting, or freelancing." How is somebody with that background who doesn't have enough runway or funding to launch a startup supposed to find a job when companies actively discriminate against you over your background?
This seems true based on my experience. I've taken two startups from 0-$100,000/month in revenue on shoestring budgets, and I've tried for years to get a corporate job with no luck.
Biases - but if I may - I've been on both sides and as an ex-entrepreneur, I feel I'm really easy going especially when it comes to office stuff. Have a chair? Great now let's solve this business issue. I don't expect much really and I'd say less than most as we're used to do more with less - as long as it's decent pay for the work and the team rocks.
Now when it comes to office politics... I have to agree. I and most of us have no patience for incompetence and time burning in meetings and coffee talks...
Confirmed. I took a year off for my startup attempt, currently looking for another 9-5 and they really don't know what to do with me.
I think the bias is merely confusion. In recruiter land anything uncertain is a pass.
The primary problem I suspect is I seem overqualified. Having a diverse skill set in all things software such as product development and engineering AND management AND devops (etc.) is just too much to process for a recruiter. Also for hiring managers in general. It's great if you're applying to say a director level position but if you NEED A JOB and try for an IC role it's a tough sell. Proficiency in multiple tech stacks is the same negative signal.
Secondary is perceived or real attitude misalignment. The problems most corporate tech companies are solving are boring and they know it. They must never admit it, and candidates especially need to demonstrate complete obliviousness. Candidates need to walk the line, simultaneously signaling technical ultra-competence and naive enough to consider yet another CRUD legacy app maintenance task challenging and interesting.
I personally don't have a problem working on boring problems, and I'm less inclined to create unnecessary challenges by using bleeding edge tech to pad my resume. Both qualities I can never admit to a recruiter. To actually get interviews, I severely cut down my resume to fit each open role. Recruiters can intuit my experience somehow anyway, and just about every senior IC role I've interviewed for lately came with a big disclaimer that this role will NEVER include management responsibilities. I guess to hedge against senior ICs expecting compensation for the management tasks they absolutely will be doing.
> “It’s really critical for them to be able to explain the elephant in the room,”
Sure, but here's another elephant in the room:
> “So it’s really challenging for recruiters to understand whether their qualifications, experience, or job responsibilities are comparable to a conventional applicant’s.”
It's really challenging for recruiters to understand anything about anyone's ability.
Can we admit that the bulk of tech hiring is nonsense, and move forward?
That seems extremely plausible. The last thing McDonald's wants is a franchise doing something innovative or different because it wouldn't be the same terrible experience as every other McDonald's.
I dunno if that all applies any more post covid in these parts. McDonalds was always predictably and blandly bad, but the couple of times I've stupidly visited since covid they seem to have swung into unpredictably bad territory. Maybe management creativity has won out after all.
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Not without good reason.
I have been on that side of the table. I have recruited my fair share of salarymen.
To be fair, some don't make it past the interview table. I'm not joking. "Where's my office ?" is a question I have been asked. Seriously !
The majority of the time it ends up being a dreadful mistake.
The truth is the corporate guys are too used to be hiding in numbers.
In the corporate world you are one of a team. You can ask your team members for help. You can push tasks you don't want off onto your junior team members. All luxuries you don't get in the small business world.
And, sadly, if you are largely useless, in a corporate world, as long as you keep your head down, you can float around as dead-wood until someone gets round to firing you, usually a decade or so later by the time the your manager has passed it up to HR and HR has got round to it ...
There's no room for dead wood in small business.
And of course in the technology sphere, in the corporate world you get to play with bigger budgets. The hardware vendors take you out to lunch. You get "enterprise support". You don't get any of that in the small business world.
Don't get me wrong, I have had some good ex-corporate recruits, but the majority of time its been an expensive mistake. Which is why I tend favour SME recruits overall.
The problem is that “ex-entrepreneur” is a title that anyone can give themselves by merely registering a domain name and a business one evening. The title attracts a lot of people who have no business being an entrepreneur or leading people, but want to be in charge of people and running the show.
That latter group is the long tail, and due to the inevitable failure of their startups those people are far more likely to be seeking jobs than the ex-entrepreneurs you want working for your company.
Having spent some time in local startup and entrepreneur communities, I have no problem believing that the average person who self describes as an ex-entrepreneur would make for a below-average employee. A lot of these people want to be in charge and tell others what to do more than they want to do the work, which is the opposite of what you’re looking for in people to work for your company.
big companies have processes that need to be followed
once you get used to process hard to go to shoot from the hip world of early stage start ups
That sounds horrible. I want people working under/with me that will question the work, that will try to figure out if it's the right work. It is common for decisions "from higher management" to be made without a real in-depth knowledge of how the system(s) work. When that happens, there may be a (possibly radically) better approach that can be taken.
Software developers are generally paid a lot of money. Not taking advantage of their experience and problem solving ability sounds like a waste of money.
Especially in any sales driven organization, I've seen it cause issues with infra teams questioning the need for certain features. Meanwhile, the answer is that the features are necessary because someone is willing to pay $$$ for them.
Sounds great in moderation, but becomes horrible as soon as you get a guy who spends more time arguing than doing.
There’s a reason that “disagree and commit” is a common teaching. It’s fine to question and propose alternatives, but when people see everything as an opportunity to debate and fight it becomes a problem. A big one.
It sounds like how 95% of everything works. In reality of course there is a spectrum between visionary entrepreneurs and mindless drones and some critical thinking is generally welcome. But it seems like startup founders have a very strong belief in their own ideas even when everyone else seems to disagree (that is why they are/were startup founders) and that honestly just sounds so exhausting in a corporate setting.
I am a big believer in developers working with sufficient context, but the reality is that when an org gets to a certain size, everyone can’t have full visibility over everything.
Sometimes the ‘business analysis’ involved in determining how to address a particular need can be painful, intense, political, disruptive, etc. A burden that I want to and should shoulder for my team. Sometimes you’ve just gotta divide and conquer with some things. And that means that sometimes developers need to start with the puzzle already partially solved.
Again, this can all sound completely unreasonable, right up until the point when you’re first faced with this situation. Framing it as “you’re not being paid to think! conform, swine!” is too cynical. Rather, sometimes, it’s impractical or flat out undesirable for everyone to do everything. Sometimes you’re better off focusing on a certain type of thinking / work.
Blindly follow orders isnt really on most startup folks’ list of things to do.
The really funny thing I'm thinking about here is when I bring people onto a project I'm leading: I give them an intro to the project, all of the components at play, the needs of the project... and then introduce them to something they could work on and the general gist of what needs to be done.
For some people that's enough to take it and run (and check in with feedback, minimal viable product, look for "does this sound good?" kinda stuff).
For others it really feels like they need to be spoonfed an entire spec down to block diagrams, flowcharts, sequence diagrams, etc. And I've worked with teams that wanted that before we even assigned any software engineers to the project. Meanwhile I'm trying to get SOMETHING on a computer so we can start looking for the bugs that take a long time to manifest themselves. (and "that's not what we were expecting it to do!" from the systems team lol)
Anyway, I can say that's not necessarily a big enterprise vs startup thing. It's more of a team vs team thing.
IDK about startups.
You can see this from the advice given to people looking to game interviews. Also from the lack of interview success for those who don't game interviews.
Deleted Comment
Now when it comes to office politics... I have to agree. I and most of us have no patience for incompetence and time burning in meetings and coffee talks...
I think the bias is merely confusion. In recruiter land anything uncertain is a pass.
The primary problem I suspect is I seem overqualified. Having a diverse skill set in all things software such as product development and engineering AND management AND devops (etc.) is just too much to process for a recruiter. Also for hiring managers in general. It's great if you're applying to say a director level position but if you NEED A JOB and try for an IC role it's a tough sell. Proficiency in multiple tech stacks is the same negative signal.
Secondary is perceived or real attitude misalignment. The problems most corporate tech companies are solving are boring and they know it. They must never admit it, and candidates especially need to demonstrate complete obliviousness. Candidates need to walk the line, simultaneously signaling technical ultra-competence and naive enough to consider yet another CRUD legacy app maintenance task challenging and interesting.
I personally don't have a problem working on boring problems, and I'm less inclined to create unnecessary challenges by using bleeding edge tech to pad my resume. Both qualities I can never admit to a recruiter. To actually get interviews, I severely cut down my resume to fit each open role. Recruiters can intuit my experience somehow anyway, and just about every senior IC role I've interviewed for lately came with a big disclaimer that this role will NEVER include management responsibilities. I guess to hedge against senior ICs expecting compensation for the management tasks they absolutely will be doing.
Sure, but here's another elephant in the room:
> “So it’s really challenging for recruiters to understand whether their qualifications, experience, or job responsibilities are comparable to a conventional applicant’s.”
It's really challenging for recruiters to understand anything about anyone's ability.
Can we admit that the bulk of tech hiring is nonsense, and move forward?