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Startup experience does not add value in the job market ?

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Senior Software Engineer at Taro Communitya month ago

From my observations, only my experience at big or well known companies have been valued when i am interviewing. It doesn't matter if i have done more impactful projects in smaller companies, nobody wants to hear about it. I am trying to decide between joining a big company versus a high growth startup and i am a mid-career professional. I feel like i don't want to take risks with startups anymore since that might hinder my hire-ability in the job market after the stints. But i like the speed of growth at startups.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

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Discussion

(3 comments)
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    Eng @ Taro
    25 days ago

    Most people will use quick heuristics to "score" you because they go through so many candidates each day. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world where people will comb through and try to evaluate what kind of projects you've worked on, so you'll have to meet them where they are.

    I feel like i don't want to take risks with startups anymore since that might hinder my hire-ability in the job market after the stints. But i like the speed of growth at startups.

    There is a wide spectrum of startups out there that are well known enough where they command as much respect, like OpenAI. You could look for unicorn startups that are still growing fast but haven't yet been affected by big company culture.

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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    24 days ago

    Big companies in particular will place a huge positive multiplier on other big company experience while nerfing startup experience heavily. It makes sense as the best indicator of success for an engineer coming into a big company is if they have worked at a big company before. It's generally good to work at a big company at some point in your career, which is why I recommend that most engineers try to work at Big Tech at least once if they haven't already.

    However, startups will often value startup experience more, especially if it's a good startup. Startups have massive variance from the no-name garbage pre-seed startups that die within a year to the OpenAIs and Notions of the world.

    At the end of the day, figure out your goals and work backwards from there. If you think startups are more fun and better for growth (they definitely are when you choose the right ones), then keep working for and applying to top startups.

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      Helpful Tarodactyl
      Taro Community
      23 days ago

      Want to echo this heavily. I am an ex-founder and all startups I got interviews for loved to talk about what I did during my startup. I remember being scheduled for an HM chat for a unicorn that was supposed to last for 30 mins, but it lasted for almost an hour because the HM and I shared our experiences being former founders. I've also encountered many similar scenarios when interviewing for unicorns.