I have a similar story, although nowhere near as much effort. When I was 20 and hating life in school, I really wanted to work at Shopify. At the time, they were maybe 80 people. I've never made a resume and didn't feel like that would get me noticed. Sio I simply sent a cold email to Tobi, our CEO. It was basically "Hey, Tobi. I don't know anything, and I have no skills, but I love your company and I want to be involved. Give me a chance, I'll work for free."
I got an email a week later from someone else on the team saying that I started the next week.
When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out.
When I was at my first job after the university, yet to learn about office politics, how things work and large companies, hyped up by the recruiter and all that stuff, I genuinely thought 'OMG so many things could be done better, I can do it!'. And given it was a company with hundreds of millions in revenue, where hourly revenue was more money than I had even seen in my life... Yeah I was hyped up! Just imagine adding 0.1% to the bottom line! :)
I am still naive, maybe not that much, and hoping that in the right company, I can do it. Won't change the world, but I can change some things for the better. Moved across Europe, joined a small (in terms of staff head count) company where I had a bit of connections. Great decision.
Now it's all about who you know, and what condition a potential employer is offering. No car, home office, solo office, dynamic hours and I'll walk out of an interview when the pay isn't obscenely high.
One time everything was right, but I complained to the managing director that the HR was giving me upfront bullshit during an interview, being not sure if I wanted to work In an environment where hiring is practiced that badly. This resulted in my first upper management position and allowing me to hire the employees of my department without HR in charge. Best decision ever, my best three engineers didn't even study. The hiring system is broken. In the technical sector even more than anywhere else, because it just doesn't make a difference for your skills if you have studied ivy league or learned everything necessary at home for yourself.
Watch out if you try to use that tactic with some mafia or terrorist group.
Meanwhile, sending out form resumes seems to eventually and consistently work, with way less effort.
When I was half way through college I decided I no longer wanted to be in school. I emailed a bunch of startups saying essentially "Your company sounds cool. I'll come work for you for the summer for free as long as we set up some kind of goal system where I can get a job offer at the end of the summer." I ended up getting two offers from that and never looked back. I didn't end up lasting 4 years there like you, but I am definitely glad I did it.
Ironically enough, now that I'm somewhat into my career I can't see myself doing something like that again, which is too bad. I've picked up some risk aversion along the way :(
I used to believe that putting in effort and showing originality would help me get the job I wanted. Over time, I came to understand that was a huge drain on my time, energy, and emotional well-being for the sake of people who basically never noticed.
For instance, at my current employer we use JobScore. In theory, an applicant can submit a cover letter and a portfolio and so on. People who look at engineering applicants go straight for the resume and ignore details like cover letter.
I have been looking for a job since the past couple of months, and my experience has basically been just that. Simple job listings with an email to send your details to haven't been a common sight to me, specially at established places[1]. If anyone knows of some service where I can find them, I'd be glad to hear.
[1]: I know the story is about startups, but I presume parent is talking about jobs in general?
[edit] markdown issue
EDIT: Your website, http://blairbeckwith.com/ says "You have reached a domain that is pending ICANN verification."
I'm still with the same team today four years later; I lead the Developer Relations team and manage a team of five within a larger team that includes API Support and Merchant App Experience.
This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are. They use the same email / Twitter / etc. THEY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Engineers are in incredible demand.
They get a steady stream of resumes from people who are wildly unqualified for the job. That is one reason why they're not going to read your resume when you send it in unless their prior expectation is that you're interesting.
It is not harder to be interesting than "someone I've never heard of or met." "Hey Bob, I watched your presentation at $CONFERENCE last year on Youtube. Great stuff; loved what you did with $FOO, in particular $COMMENT_PROVING_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOU'RE_TALKING_ABOUT. I'm also a $FOO developer. Do you have a few minutes to chat on Thursday about what you guys are doing?"
You're not proposing marriage here. You're asking for 15 minutes to get to know them. You do not have to author a heartbreaking work of staggering genius to make this call happen.
Your goal for the chat: get Bob enthusiastic enough to either suggest "Hey you should apply here" or be receptive to you suggesting "Hey, I really like what you're doing, and would like to see if I could be a part of it. Can you get the ball rolling for me?"
n.b. If you want to knock someone's socks off with a demo of e.g. an application which uses their API, use the above to get one person enthusiastic about reviewing the demo, then implement. If you can't get one person enthusiastic about the prospect of looking at your work, there's sharply limited odds that actually doing the work meaningfully advances your interests.
I'd turn it around on the company: You're not proposing marriage either. Take a measly few minutes every so often to really look at the stack of resumes you get, and give a few of them a whirl. Don't spend months and months of the company's time and money hopelessly looking for that special snowflake 100% match when there may be many 90% matches lining up at your door. Thanks to lax U.S. labor laws, the decision to hire is not irreversible.
You can find e.g. the name of the CTO of Fog Creek. It's FizzBuzz-level difficulty or less.
You can find e.g. any published work of Thomas Ptacek to bond over. You didn't have to run into him at Black Hat, or even know that he has spoken at Black Hat, to find a video of him speaking at Black Hat.
You may not know who is in charge of Fraud at Square. You know who probably knows? Well, to a first approximation, any engineer there should (or be able to find it out trivially). Can you find any engineer at Square?
We have the good fortune to be in an industry where people are hyper-connected, publicly identified, and Internet routable. Use these facts to your advantage when looking for a job.
You can get enthusiastic about one company and get something done about it. Following the Patrick's suggestion, it's some mega project that would take the whole week or so, a couple of focused hours should do the trick. And if you are genuinely interested, you will naturally sound generally interested without any bs covering it all.
Even if the case of just needing a job, following this advice will probably help you get produce a few but high quality applications, rather than sending yet another resume.
I think their point is that applicants should focus more on quality, not quantity. Rather than focus on 30 companies, focus on six, and spend time trying to impress them rather than just throwing your application into the numbers grinder.
I was a bigtime Rdio fan. I loved their clean design, discoverability. I pinged a real person with big list of improvements and bugfixes that was I was collecting over many months. I told them I wanted to work for them and sent them my resume.
They got back to me with "We have sent over your suggestions to our engineers, but we can't hire anyone without Python experience" .
If this is true, why even have an online job site? Why waste everyone's time?
For me the biggest job-search hurdle is emotional... I know it sounds like one of those bullshit "you biggest weakness" dodges, but the idea of "looking elsewhere" is perilous.
I feels either like cheating (on my current employer) or else some sort of irrevocable sense of obligation towards whatever I'm asking about. ("How dare you waste my time with questions if you weren't already planning to accept an offer!")
Your prospective employers do not expect every coffee, phone screen, or interview to result in a new employee. They understand that they will talk to people who are a bad fit, and that's part of the process.
I respect that you feel that way, and have felt that way myself, but it gets in the way of advantageous moves.
The author overlooked the first major factor in their success - finding the startup they wanted to work at! I actually think the more specific you get in your job search the more successful you will be. People often think that by being 'flexible' in what they want to do they are increasing the number of companies they can work for. That is true, but you aren't trying to work for a bunch of companies, you are trying to work for one. By being that general you will never find the place where you specifically are the best candidate.
To be concrete, I'd rather find the 5 companies that are really aligned with my skillset and target them very specifically than apply to 50 random companies looking for someone kinda sorta like me.
A guy called up because he wanted our linux drivers.
We didn't have any linux drivers.
So he called back a while later and said "Here I wrote the linux drivers for you."
He had reverse engineered the board and wrote the drivers to make it run on linux based on all the specs of the various chips on the board.
We hired him on the spot.
It's also a method described in "guerrilla marketing for job hunters". There's others in the book if you're looking for a little lower effort non-traditional methods.
If you have oodles of free time, then sure, it's low risk.
I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that. We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people got turned down because we didn't have an effective way of measuring their abilities. If they had gone through the code review process, they would have had a much better chance of getting the job. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why we didn't include "submit a bugfix to our open source project" as part of a standard interview process)
These job postings are for entry level positions and internships, nothing higher.
Is this something I should be worried about? Should I just apply to this kind of work anyway?
How do I find companies willing to hire me as a college student with no official experience?
A job description and requirement is their picture of the ideal candidate, but they will hire the person that's the closest to that, and other things not mentioned in the offers like how you would fit culturally in the team, work with others, and so many other things.
Just apply to what you want to do, what's the worst case again? Ah, you spent time writing a cover letter.
Btw, keep your cover letter short. People might not read it if it's too long.
Another last tip: apply even if you are almost certain you won't have it. Never say "I'll apply when I get more experience". You know what? By then, you will change, the company will change, and it might not be a good fit anymore. I wanted to apply to a couple of specifics startups in the past that I never applied too because I felt like I was not up to it, in the end, I was wrong and the company changed so much that I don't want to work there anymore at all, but I'm sure that would have been great for years.
Apply. Just apply.
In school there was a scholarship I was almost eligible for. I needed a 3.5 gpa but only had 3.2 so I didn't apply thinking I was disqualified. A few months later I found out someone with a 2.3 got it because lack of entries.
Then again later I entered a programming competition with a $5 entry fee. Only 2 people entered and we each won $100 and $75. A 3rd place prize of $50 went unclaimed. Anyone who entered and earned 0 correct would have gotten it. As second place dude didn't get any right.
If it's low effort or something you enjoy, always apply. It's almost always worth it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
I know a little, but like every college student: I still have a lot to learn. If you would like, I would be happy to email you my resume and talk with you via email. My email is my username @ my username .com.
I know the company I work has boilerplate job descriptions, but if we think the person is a good fit, we never compare their experience and education to the job description, we just hire them. Most interviewers couldn't even tell you what was in the job description.
Also, I have several friends who applied for jobs that appeared way above their current level. We're talking 10 years of experience, when they only have 5 (and you include a lot of experience that isn't directly relevant). They got those jobs.
If you are interested in a job, apply for it. Full stop.
My rule of thumb is that if you are able to meet about 75% of them, just apply.
As a counterpoint, I did something similar (replicated a barebones version of a tool that a company I wanted to work for had) and sent it off and didn't even receive a courtesy "thanks but no thanks" email. Them's the breaks I guess.
I've watched companies in the last year I interviewed with wait and suffer? a year to fill a position, even though I could have done their silly rest-api job with one arm behind my back, haha.
> Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire
> was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more
> difficult than that.
But really, are talented, creative software people really having trouble finding work?
Of course, there is a difference between a demo focusing on implementing new features then the software that we are shipping. But yes, it was extremely impressive and it's no surprise that he is leading much of our engineering team (beyond software, as well) today.
On a side note, what are higher ups looking for in a young applicant? I'm graduating in the fall with a CS Undergrad and don't have any startup contacts (I live in a smaller town in Missouri) and am trying to get my foot in the door somewhere that is doing interesting work.
Young engineers normally have more responsibilities at a startup, more trial by fire. It's great fun and good for career advancement.
There are tons of reasons for and against
Now it might be the case that you're so engaged with their mission you want to wait a few months for a below market salary offer (hey, you're obviously far too keen to negotiate it) but it might be a trick that's easier to consistently pull off with a maverick-friendly businesses with more substantial funding or revenue
Even if you don't get hired, you've learned something new and produced something cool which you can show in your next interview, and only lost a couple of days of your time.
Roughly this is how I've met every mentor I've wanted to and then gone on to work with them.
Demonstrate value by investing time/effort in your interest, and build on that through communication until an opportunity to work together presents itself.
I spent a couple of hours, recorded video of my progress and posted it to YouTube. I didn't get the job. I actually went out on a limb and reached out to somebody privately to make sure it wasn't too "out of the ordinary" and that I didn't ruin my chances for anything in the future. Thankfully, mostly everyone forgot about it. I guess it wasn't unique or clever enough?
Hats off to you, sir!
Later, I ended up doing a project[1] where I have collected and analysed the user order data from their order tracking portal.
Now I feel that they won't take me back because I kind of played like a Black-Hat instead of a White-Hat by not notifying them about the little loophole that made it possible for me.
Before this, I was an intern there and got that because of one of my past project. This method does work.
It's kind of sad you sound surprised. :(
If you were in their shoes, how would you have handled someone doing that? :)
Although it was not that I stole some secret key or something.
It was just that there was data in public, and I used it for good.
People love to hire people that care about their mission and show that they're capable of supporting it. It's really that simple.
I found the Raleway text really hard to read, personally changed it. It might just be how it looks on Mac or Mac retina, but it was very light.
I think there's a middle ground in there somewhere
[1] aplusdev.org
My site targets sellers from that marketplace and provides a search of information scraped from the official source as well as detailed sales statistics which are not available from the official source. For active users, these two things can easily save several hours per week.
The 1st party company has acknowledged the existence of my site and indicated to their users that they'll allow it but are unaffiliated, which is completely understandable since they have no idea who I am. My companion site was created out of necessity and receives about 20k pageviews a month (approx 2000 users).
Currently, I am not charging for the site but a half a dozen people have suggested charging for its use or contacting the 1st party site to license it to them. The people making these suggestions are the marketplace sellers from the 1st party site (the users who are common to both sites).
But now there are difficult decisions to be made. I've worked from home for over a decade and loathe commutes, even those measured in minutes. This company is 2.5 hours away and best-case public transportation would have me out for 12-14 hours per day. This company makes no mention of any kind of remote work possibility but my impression is that it's done some of the time by some of their employees. I wouldn't want special treatment even if they offered it. With all of that said, if I did have to travel to work... this place looks like the kind of place I'd enjoy working. It was relatively easy to find about 1/4 of their team on social media and get a feel for their culture, even found some video of their office on a regular workday.
If I did join them and the commuting situation were overcome, would that constrain my freedom to make the new features and enhancements that the community wants? Contacting them with a laundry-list of questions feels wrong.
If I didn't join, would enough of my currently free users convert to paid to make it worth continuing? What's the optimal price to balance the seesaw of retention vs dollars (number retained free users * price per month)? Is it unknowable? What percentage of the existing users might actually pay? It's all very uncertain. It'd be great to get some feedback from everyone, maybe with your own experience(s).
Shane's idea is great but it doesn't magically fall into place, relationships are complicated!
> I wouldn't want special treatment even if they offered it
That's a bad thought that you should get rid of before it has a chance to harm you. Life is hard enough as it is; you don't want bad thoughts creeping into your head and handicapping you. (I'm not saying they'll offer special treatment, of course, only that you should certainly take it if they do.)
For Plan B, go ahead and charge for your site. If people are willing to pay, great! If not, chalk it up as an experiment worth trying and shut it down. I don't know what the price should be, but I do know you should not trust your instincts; us geeks always err on the low side. Either charge significantly more than you think you should, or ask some non-geeks and follow their advice.