Is this the end of the current startup era? How did we get from "Make stuff people want" to the current obsession with funding, SEO and "Growth Hackers" (!). This sounds like the same sort of nonsense I was reading in January 2000. Just like the 90's tech boom, the community has become inward-looking, stale, and it's feeding on itself (c.f. this article, which isn't about how to start a company but to be hired by a "startup"). The most exiting new stuff seems to be stuff that just feeds more startups.<p>None of this is about the practical details of the article. If that's the job you want then this sounds like a great way to get it. But like I said, if this is the kind of thing that's interesting to "startups", then I think the end is near.
Wow, some really big mistakes... Explains why it took 5 months to get the final interview.<p>>but I will put in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until I get there.<p>>Vidyard being one of them, even if I work for free.<p>>I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time.<p>Never, ever, ever do this stuff<p>- Free<p>If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off.<p>- I will work 24/7<p>You're coming off as desperate if you put it like that. I've similarly been on the job hunt for my first job recently and out of all the phone screens I had, every single one led to an on-site interview (21 on-site interviews in the next 3 weeks). I attribute my success in part to a similar snipped that I would make sure to drop into every interview:<p>"I'm not a 100% subscriber of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, but I do believe that in order to become good at something you have to spend a lot of time and focus on it. I want to become the best software developer I can be.<p>I'm not looking for just a 9 to 5, and especially interested in startups because I want to join a great team that I can intensely work with and learn from"<p>That was roughly part of my pitch. I also researched _every_ person who I'd be talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.<p>Respect to the guy's persistence. I'm similarly in a position where I can't immigrate to the US (but at least I'm a EU citizen so I can move to London) so I can see why OP really wanted to join a famous startup when there's already so few available to him.
It's an interesting story and really shows an unusual level of determination, but I'm stuck on this part:<p>> So, just to recap, that’s about 5 months and 9 interviews/meetings and countless hours spent working on projects/reports/presentations.<p>> by proving himself capable for the role, he hacked the process.<p>I don't see a hack so much as I see a broken process that made a single task monumentally difficult and time consuming. Employers everywhere have a problem with relying on credentials or experience rather than recognizing ability and potential, which is understandable given time and budget constraints. If someone could figure out a way to help companies quickly pick talented but inexperienced individuals out of a pool of applicants, THAT would be a hack. A pretty amazing one for employees and employers, too.
Wow. I don't know if I should be impressed or pity the guy. Mike says, "Everyone who wants to work in a startup should do this," which I don't agree with. But I think every job-seeker should read this piece and pay attention to 2 key points:<p>1. Amar leveraged his own internet real estate by publishing blog posts about Vidyard's marketing and then tweeting at the founders to let them know about his work. He essentially provided some flattering, well-written, and useful consulting work to Vidyard.<p>2. He was honest about his desires, expectations, and willingness to work. When his initial email was written off as just another form letter, he went above and beyond to ensure his real feelings were heard.<p>These tactics are within the reach of every reasonably intelligent person. Good read.
While this had a happy ending, can you imagine an alternate universe where the founders for whatever reason decided not to hire the guy? Leading him on for several months, making him jump through hoops and then not hiring him would have been a huge waste of time and energy, esp considering they seem pretty disinterested through most of the process. People sometimes greatly undervalue the value of a polite 'no'.
"Launch something"<p>That's all you need to get a startup to pay for your time. Honest. Every time I launch something, emails start pouring in from people who are interested.<p>Forget everything else anyone says, just launch something.
Wow, can't believe all the negative talk, perhaps I read it in a different tone, but the story delivers what the headline says, unless you want to be really critical on the word hack. If you are persistent and prove yourself, you can go anywhere. It didn't sound to me like they treated him like crap, yeah sure they told him No, they brushed him off, and they did what any other person running a start up or even what any other HR person would do. If a guy continues to practically stalk you, you either ignore him or are forced to deal with him, and when you are 'awkwarded' into a situation or you see someone trying hard, what are you gonna do, tell him to fuck off or throw him a bone? Dude kept coming back and incrementally proving himself, asking for what he could do, and what do you say? "Sorry you'll never be good enough?", you don't know that, you just know he is currently right for that role, but he still might be able to prove he's a valuable person to hire. The stories of 7-year over night successes are because of persistence, dude had that and those are the people you want along with you on the ride.
All right, most of these comments seem to be about how he went the completely wrong direction looking to get hired and how each of us would have done it completely differently. There's more than one way to skin a cat.<p>Would he have done better if he had just "launched something himself"? Perhaps. How about being a fantastic coder and orator too? Certainly. That's not the point. He had persistence. When it comes to running a company and trying to be successful, there are few traits more valuable than persistence -- and he has more of it than the majority of extremely smart people I know.<p>I know a lot of absolutely fantastic coders. Many of them are very creative too. But the lack of persistence and drive is what will prevent them from dealing with the emotional rollercoaster and disappointment that is running a company.<p>Somebody with persistence and intelligence can learn any skill. And most importantly, they can keep performing their skills when everybody else -- even those 50 times better at it than they -- have quit.<p>EDIT: And I should have included: Amar, hats off to you. You're going to go far.
Amazing how much free consulting work companies are getting through job interviews these days... It almost makes you think a lot of companies now have an incentive to pretend to be hiring just to get this input.<p>By the way, if anyone's interested, I posted a cpl days ago to no avail the following breakdown of job openings results in select cities by select keywords via Indeed.com's API (I'm new to python and having some fun):
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/hGlSb.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/hGlSb.png</a>
You know its funny, most of the talented engineers here in Miami are working at big corps and could care less about the startup echo-chamber and jobs at these startups. Could be that our startups here don't get enough press to seem cool?
this is depressing. cheers to the guy for his persistence and interest - but seriously - why would you still want to work for a company after being literally treated like crap like that? also - what bargaining value do you have at all w.r.t. salaries or equity if you go in seeming like the most desperate person alive? It should be the other way around - if you´re good and talented - which the author of the article obviously is - then companies should court you to be come a part of their business. Case in point - the 42floors guys - who were awesome enough to really try to woo Dan Shipper publicly - <a href="http://42floors.com/blog/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-work-at-42floors" rel="nofollow">http://42floors.com/blog/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-work-a...</a> - at the end of the day - you want to be valuable to a company - and you want them to want you - telling them that they can use you isnt that.
this article was terribad internet 2.0 stuffed shirt middle management corporate hot garbage.<p>i wiped my ass with everything that ceo had to say. join our moustache hipster 'hot startup', it'll take you 9 interviews but we're worth it. really? it's 2012 how about f you and your viral marketing video cloud service startup. you are parasites upon humanity making video spam and viewing metrics stats for car companies, penis pills and gambling. just admit you are shameless hucksters that are one peg above a spammer, ditch the synergies and ridiculous pretense.<p>if this guy enjoys the starbucks latte macfag synergies promoting corporate work environment that's great but this isn't 'hacking' this is pleading and begging to get a shitty job in yet another corporation that's just pretending to be super kawaii cool and awesome but when it comes down to it they'll lay this guy off in a heartbeat, sell the company to some megacorp and screw every employee royally. all startups do this. the guy who owns it buys back all your shares before he lays you off as a favour then keeps the money and sells out faster than Jay Leno in front of a bowl full of Doritos.<p>I bet they do excrement inducing "team building exercizes" at this way super coo startup. No matter what hipster clothes and mac products you put in front of the CEO he's Bill Lumberg from Office Space demanding TPS reports.<p>Finally the worst of this entire article was the buzzword 'growth hacker' which is newspeak for a spammer. Look at the definition article they link, some guy who basically manipulates CL ads to punt his junk, a marketer with coding experience, in other words, a fcking spammer. Protip: all of India and Pakistan are chock full of marketers who can code. This is not a revolutionary concept.<p>I would've shown up and given this guy a USB drive with 3 OSx exploits on it to corrupt client side memory and my "resume", then sold myself to him in person using balls not limp social media or stalking around linkedin and twitter. If they didn't hire me I'd have their source code to sell on blackhat SEO forums anyways so who cares.
I have read almost to the end and I still have no idea what a "growth hacker" does. Is this SEO (another blurry, but less blurry term) or content generation or scaling?