Ask HN: How to become a successful startup employee? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to become a successful startup employee?

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I am recently moving to a startup (late stage, post series D) from a big company. Since I was not satisfied with building internal tools without much customer impact. I wondering what different knowledge and skills do I need to acquire in order to become a successful start employee?

PS: I am a new software engineer with about 1.5 year experience. The company I am about to join is also a portfolio of UC

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These are bits of knowledge from my personal experience in startups:

1. Most of the stuff you write will not be used.

2. Product owners/sales people will change their designs/expectations on a whim (get ready for it) and expect a quick turn around.

3. Be prepared for a revolving door of employees signing on, fizzing out or being dropped one day without ceremony.

4. Be prepared for work done to be valid when you committed it and for it to the wrong design when it finally got accepted into production.

5. Be prepared for some of the senior programmers to make bad choices for the company even if common sense says otherwise.

6. Be prepared for long hours if it is required.

Your mileage will vary but it is experience that you can add to a CV and you'll learn if you like it.

Before looking into knowledge and skills, look into the definition of successful.

Do you mean rich? Happy? Wanted? Desired? Etcetera

In my current position, I am not getting much impact at work, I am working on internal tools. I would hope to be more impactful at work, like developing stuff that customers think useful and they are willing to pay a lot! Certainly, I want to have a big exit, but at a post series D startup, my impact on exit/failure would not be that much.

Right now your internal stakeholders are your customers (the best kind of customers). I would say you have the chance to build great tools your customers want (ask them).

- Work 24/7.

- Brown-nose the boss every chance you get.

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