From College To Silicon Valley: Tips From A Veteran
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Do I feel like these have been unfair? No. In each case I can perfectly well understand why I was passed over: I screwed something up, whether an algorithm on the whiteboard or incorrectly describing a certain data structure. While it's a bit depressing to read stories like this about SV firms competing to hire college students, I've come to realize that I'm just not good enough to get those positions.
Right now my plan is to stay where I am for a year (I do have an offer from a local firm, it's just not that exciting) and build up a portfolio of work. I've got products shipped out there in the wild but nothing I'm that proud of. However, a year of weekend projects will give me a portfolio of working products and (hopefully) make me more attractive to companies in Silicon Valley.
I'll be releasing my senior thesis project into the wild soon and the corresponding paper has already been accepted for publication. I've started submitting pull requests for open source projects on Github with bug fixes.
Right now I'm not good enough. A year from now, I will be.
Back when I had a developer position, when it came time for hiring, my boss would hand-select his "top picks" from the resume pool and ask us (the developers) to give a general audit of their work.
For me, looking through all the apps, there was never anything robust. The codebases proved nothing more to me than the candidates ability to follow a ruby on rails "setting up a todo list" tutorial.
I got accused of being overly harsh but I think you need top standards when hiring.
Anyway the point is its very rare that a candidate will have production quality apps running in the wild. And its even more rare that those apps have any more substance than you'd get following a paint-by-numbers rails tutorial.
Don't be one of those guys.
Best of luck!
I've also come to realize how skewed your perspective is based on who you're surrounded by. I'm one of the best in my CS department which made me think that job searching would be easy, but now I see that I'm the best of a small group that isn't that spectacular to begin with. Really wish I'd taken the harder path four years ago and gone for a better/larger school.
I think you have a great start: have a goal and pursuing that goal. Many young people just stay afloat without knowing where to go or what to do.
I used to have a similar desire: to work in a company that people were buzzing about (Microsoft, Google, Twitter, you know who they are). Had a few chances to try one big company and one start-up and decided they were not for me. I definitely do not want to spend most of my time thinking, living, breathing technology, learning every prog. lang. under the sun, have to prove myself against my colleagues (competition always exist)... and work lots of overtime.
I opted for a more stable job where I can exercise good software development practices and have more says on technical decisions. I have "downtime" once in a while where I can hone my skill further or polish the software we develop. The occasional downtimes give me great relief and a chance to clear my mind. When your mind is clear, you suddenly can explore other things: be it researching real-estate, learning how tax works, diversifying my financial portfolio, and basically being normal (socialising, etc). Those activities tend to open my mind to look at things beyond the technology world: other business opportunities outside hi-tech world.
I hope you're successful in achieving your goal though. There's nothing wrong pursuing what you truly want. Once you got it, you might like it, or you'll decide to have another goal (^_^).
Most people move to Silicon Valley because they get positions at large companies that have budgets to fly them out. What many college students don't realize is that are many small startups struggling to hire people. They just aren't well known or have the resources to fly people from far away so they hire friends, students and engineers nearby.
If you really want to work in Silicon Valley, I'd say don't wait. Pay for you own plane ticket and spend a week or so in the area. Your perspective will definitely change.
Any tips on networking there? I grew up in the Bay so I know my way around but I have no idea where to start meeting people.
Rent wise, SF and Palo Alto have about the same rent, even though half of Palo Alto and Mountain View is 1930s craftsman track houses.
Huh? Tract houses are a 1950s (and newer)s thing and Craftsman is a 1910-20s thing.
While PA does have old areas, San Jose, founded in the 1770s, has more. My house is 1902 and there are neighborhoods where that era dominates. Other neighborhoods are dominated by Victorians. Pick a decade, and there's a couple of neighborhoods.
PA's Eichlers (which are 50-70s) are nice if you like that sort of thing.
There's a pretty good write up at http://infochachkie.com/options/
Compensation is not everything, and for most startups the expected value of your options == $0, but you should still understand what you're getting or giving up so you can make a sound decision.