Insights into Google’s early years

May 28th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

As you know, we work to provide folks a feel for the culture and work life dynamic at a wide range of startups. We found some great insights into what Google, the now multi-billion dollar company, was like in its early days from Chuck Howitt at The Record:

It started off using some of the cheapest computer hardware it could find.

A typical working area featured 27 different kinds of processors, monitors, mother boards and printers. Cable management was a nightmare. Data storage was cheap.

The headquarters was situated between a landfill site and a monster-truck race course.

Like many early stage companies, the organization was no more structured:

Managers supervised as many as 45 people and had one-on-one chats with employees every three months. Employees dressed like slobs. Failure wasn’t just tolerated, it was celebrated.

They also had some fun hiring practices:

Twenty people interviewed him before he was hired, [Douglas] Merrill, [former Chief Information Officer at Google,] said. Every engineer is interviewed at least eight times before joining Google, and managers don’t hire the people working directly for them.

There are a bunch more interesting anecdotes in the full article which makes an important point. The culture at each startup employer is incredibly unique—both vastly different from that of large established companies and differentiated from other startups. Company size, mission, leadership, industry, location, and team composition all shape a culture, though people exert the greatest influence. Getting this cultural fit right is obviously important, and it requires getting to know the team and the team getting to know you. It’s presumably one of the reasons for the 8+ interviews at Google.

Our upcoming “Summer of Startups” series will profile dozens of emerging growth companies and provide a feel for the unique culture at each. Among them might be the next Google—and perhaps your next job.

What do you thing? How important is culture when evaluating a potential employer?

Tags: Companies, Employment, Google
Posted in In The News, Summer of Startups | No Comments »

The Power of Passion

May 27th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

Eileen Gittens at Forbes.com has a great article about how entrepreneurs should look for passion in what they do:

Most people think about their jobs as the thing they do, instead of the thing they get to do. When you can build a culture where people feel privileged instead of entitled, that’s magic. And that’s what the best Silicon Valley companies do: They tap into the power of personal passion.

Gittens is right—startup companies provide some of the most rewarding work on the planet, driven by passionate teams bent on improving the way we work, live, or play.

While the focus of Gittens’ article is on the entrepreneurs themselves, the same applies to professionals who work (or desire to work) at rapidly growing startups.

First do something you love, and second, look for passion and excitement when evaluating new employment opportunities.

Hitch your wagon to a company with passionate employers and founders. It’s a very good indicator of company culture, how much fun you will have, and the probability of company success.

On the flip side, the best companies look to hire passionate people. Passion and excitement for your work are contagious.

When you interview, listen for the story, the elevator pitch, the history and mission of the startup. If you hear a consistent and exciting story, there is something there. If inconsistent, confusing, or it lacks energy, you’ll want to move on.

Posted in In The News | No Comments »

Don’t prejudge people’s ability to scale

May 26th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

Among the many things to consider at a rapidly growing company is this: “Is it better the stay within the moment and go with the executives that will perform well in the present? Or should executives be judged based on how they may or may not perform in the future?”

After all, every company aspires to make it big and wants to be well positioned when they get there. But what does that mean for the current executives, who’ve shepherded the company from its infancy? What if these executives don’t have the management experience to scale the business to ever greater heights.

Well, Ben Horowitz, writing at his blog, feels very strongly that it’s a mistake to prejudge an individual’s “scalability”, for a bunch of different reasons.

Chief among those reasons are:

Managing at scale is a learned skill rather than a natural ability—Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to manage a thousand people. Everybody learns at some point.

This is an important thing to consider: after all, life in an emerging growth company sometimes means you’re a jack-of-all-trades, learning something new almost every day. If one of the reasons you succeeded or did well at a startup company is your ability to learn quickly and adapt, then the odds are reasonable that your talents will scale with the business. If they don’t, well that’s a different story, but Ben’s point is not to prejudge an individual in advance of that decision waypoint.

Horowitz goes on:

Hiring scalable execs too early is a horrible mistake—There is no such thing as a great executive. There is only a great executive for a specific company at a specific point in time

Just like with any hire at a startup, one poor fit can cause lots of problems.

But of his many points, the one I place the most stock in is this one:

It’s no way to live your life or run an organization—Deciding (with woefully incomplete data) that someone who works their butt off, does a terrific job, and loyally contributes to your mission won’t be with you three years from now takes you to a dark place. It’s a place of information hiding, dishonesty, and stilted communication. It’s a place where prejudice substitutes for judgment. It’s a place where judgment replaces teaching. It’s a place where teamwork becomes internal warfare. Don’t go there.

Read the rest of Ben’s points, and his blog, in the links below.

(Ben’s Blog via ReadWriteStart)

Tags: Ben Horowitz, Executives
Posted in In The News | No Comments »

Launching Version 3.0

May 26th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

In addition to launching our blog, yesterday afternoon we launched version 3.0 of our site, and with it, several new features.

The first thing you will notice is the new ‘country’ selection box in the job search bar—yes, that’s right, we now support job postings in countries outside the US. We think this is a great feature considering the countless startups that are formed all around the world, and the numerous inbound requests we’ve had from around the globe. Out of the gate, we support an additional 15 countries with the highest concentrations of startup activity, and we’ll continue to expand this list as time goes on.

Second, we’ve completely rewritten the job search function from top to bottom. Not only will our new search engine generate results more quickly, but everything will be more relevant. This improves both search results on the site and the content of your emails alerts, for those who subscribe—if you don’t yet subscribe, our email alerts are the best way to be the first to learn of new jobs matching your unique criteria. Give it a try – simply perform a search and select ‘email alert’ in the upper left.

We hope you enjoy the new features, and feel free to test the site. If you break anything (like we did with the regional Twitter feeds), just drop us a note—we’ve got a team dedicated to quickly fixing anything that comes up.

In the coming months, we’ll be working on some more cool stuff for you. I don’t want to give out too many secrets now, but stay tuned…

Posted in StartUpHire News | No Comments »

Watch this Space: Re-introducing our Blog to the world

May 25th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

We started out with the best intentions: create a blog, where we would foster a discussion about hiring at startup companies from all different perspectives, and compare notes about what life is really like at startups —everything from “the nuances of compensation and stock options, how to pick a winner, is this lifestyle for you, tips on work/life balance, insights from the trenches, etc.”

We had ideas, and interviews, and all sorts of stuff planned—and then it dropped off.

It’s now time to fix that. Starting today, we’re going to make a serious push to become a source for all things startup. As you already got a preview of earlier today (check that out here), we’ve got a bunch of stuff planned for the summer and beyond, like:

“Summer of Startups,” a series profiling startup companies and what it’s like to work there.
Different perspectives from CEOs and executives, to venture investors, right down to recently hired employees, on what it’s like to live and work the startup life, including the hiring process.
The best resources around the internet on finding a job, interview guidance, etc. as it applies to startups
Some of that discussion and informed opinion stuff we were talking about when we first launched our blog.

We think this is one of the most interesting times to be working at, or considering working for a startup, (go watch the live stream of TechCrunch Disrupt—you’ll get an idea of why) but we still don’t see a really great resource for information on what it’s really like to work at one of these exciting companies, and how to identify the most promising startup employment opportunities.

That’s what we’ll try to provide over the coming weeks and months. We hope you stay tuned.

Posted in StartUpHire News | No Comments »

WSJ: Increase in Valley hiring changes methods for others

May 25th, 2010 by StartUpHire blog

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that due to a large influx of hiring at Venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, so called “second-tier” locations are stepping up the recruitment efforts to try and attract new hires. Talking about an Austin-based company called SailPoint (backed by, among others, our friends over at Austin Ventures), the WSJ writes:

“The days of ‘I’ll take what I can get’ are over,” says Mark McClain, the 60-employee company’s chief executive. SailPoint mostly competes against other startups, some of which are in Silicon Valley. Candidates he recruits now often have at least one offer in hand, sometimes two, he says. Mr. McClain says he hasn’t had to start offering perks such as increased signing bonuses, but anticipates that he will. For now, he is emphasizing Austin’s short commute times, cheap real estate and quality of life to potential employees.

“As hiring improves in the Valley, I’d expect that we might have to start looking at bonuses, salaries, or options again as ways to attract people,” he says. “We feel some of that tightness coming back.”

As you can probably guess, this is nothing but great news for people wanting to work at a startup. With so many places hiring (like the 10,000+ jobs in the StartUpHire database), the opportunites just get better and better for potential employees.

There’s also been a shift in recruiting strategies. The WSJ explains how open-source software developer Red Hat, based in Raleigh, NC, has done this:

Previously, Red Hat’s recruiting pitch focused on pay, benefits and the product a developer would work on. But as Red Hat executives watched their Silicon Valley rivals rebound, they didn’t want to have to compete against them on pay and benefits. “We realized the competition would pick up,” says DeLisa Alexander, who heads human resources and brand marketing.

Instead, Red Hat made its pitch more personal. Hiring managers now are trained to talk about their career histories, emphasizing the variety of projects they work on and ideas they have been able to execute. The idea is to portray Red Hat as a more entrepreneurial place to build a career than its rivals in California. So far, the company has retrained 50 of its 437 hiring managers, and the firm says the effort is helping to land hires.

This more personal and entrepreneurial (read: startup) pitch apparently has worked, and resonates well with the people who are seeking jobs now.

All this is important to know if you’re considering a job at a startup company, so we encourage you to go check it out.

P.S. Startup Employers: visit www.startuphire.com/signup/e to post your job openings to the world’s largest community of passive and active job seekers with startup experience.

Tags: Human resources, Open source, Silicon Valley
Posted in In The News | No Comments »

National Entrepreneur’s Day

May 12th, 2010 by admin

There is a move afoot for a National Entrepreneur’s Day, targeted for March 20th, 2011 This is an opportunity to recognize America’s rich history of entrepreneurship and to ensure a strong foundation for the future.

Image via Wikipedia

There is no question that entrepreneurship creates jobs. According to IHS Global Insight, public companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Genentech that were founded with venture capital today employ more than 12.1 million Americans. Current private venture-backed companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Fisker Automotive employ another half a million people in the US according to Dow Jones Venture Source. The start-up company engine serves as a critical source of new jobs and opportunities for thousands of Americans. Our country’s entrepreneurial spirit combined with access to risk capital will continue to drive this economic recovery

Can you imagine a future without entrepreneurs?

Support the first annual National Entrepreneur’s Day at http://entrepreneursday.org/StartUpHire

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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