Ask HN: How to pick a good startup to work for when you're not business-savvy?
I read blog articles about people that joined a company when they were this small, only to be acquired by a huge company and then they made great yields from that acquisition. I know it's survivorship bias but I can't help but think that those early employees that are not co-founders mostly got lucky. Is that actually true, though? Is picking a small company that will have a bigger future mostly a numbers game, or can I apply strategy to it without needing to be business minded?
As the title suggests, I'm not business savvy. I'm just a programmer looking to make a living. I interview with companies big and small, I never cut the mustard with interviews with large companies so realistically I have only the smallest companies to choose from.
I browse Craigslist, AngelList, and BuiltInChicago to apply to places to go work for. I'm pretty much lone-wolfing it out there, without any leads from prior employers. And I don't know what constitutes a company that will be likely to have a good exit.
Working for small companies only to see each one drain their employees (false promises, no benefits, slump in sales) as the company as whole is losing money got old fast. How do you find "the one"? I cannot believe it's just a numbers game, just brute-forcing your career through before you find a company that is good and doing interesting enough things to get millions of dollars of funding and then bought by a huge company.
As I said, I haven't cut the mustard for big company jobs, but this is what I'm interested to know. If you're working a technical job, how do you know how to pick a good small company that has the best future?