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Comment by arohner | Hacker News Reader

Great article. I really appreciate that the OP describes a more closed-form solution to what makes a senior engineer, rather than platitudes like "learn 5 languages".

One nit I'd pick with it though is that many large and bureaucratic companies won't appreciate an engineer who decides it on them to fix hiring, culture, product marketing fit and marketing. If you find yourself in this position, it's time to move on to somewhere else that will. Typically, those companies are startups.

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Honestly, our industry has such a love affair with engineering at this point that at many companies you can easily have an impact in these areas if you're senior enough. And by "senior enough" I don't mean having a big enough title. These groups are willing to collaborate with people who show honest interest and appreciation for the problems they're trying to solve and the roadblocks they hit while doing so. It may sound a little chicken and egg, but I think part of how senior people demonstrate their seniority is to successfully work outside their silo. Unfortunately many engineers fall into one of two traps: waiting for permission to do this kind of work or -- the flip side -- barging in without having a clear way to contribute.

The great frustration is that the longer you spend tilting at those windmills at large companies, the less likely you are to get a startup to actually hire you, since you are too "corporate" or "enterprisey".

That has never been true for me. I've been able to go from large companies to startups and vice versa without any trouble.

Well, I haven't. Just last week I had DigitalOcean refuse to even talk to me because my experience was "too government/enterprise". I imagine the dozens of black holes at similar companies I have communicated into over the past years are for similar reasons.

Sounds like DigitalOcean is "too startup"

Startups which can afford to reject a candidate on these grounds are probably too late to join anyways? Something doesn't add up here.

Don't VCs require more "enterprisey" people at later stages, when product discovery is done and operations/scaling up takes precedence?

The types of problems experienced in mid to late stage are definitely more relevant to someone with experience at ops and scale. Late stage startups or enterprise (the line blurs) are popular places to pick such talent, and for these needs specifically, Netflix is one popular source.

The reality of your comment varies widely by the stage of the startup. Pre-seed is a radically different animal than Series B.

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