Study found corporate recruiters have a bias against ex-entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

Study found corporate recruiters have a bias against ex-entrepreneurs

fortune.com

54 pointsrmason69 comments

Why would anyone think that the average entrepreneur or even early startup person would be able to seamlessly transition back and forth between the entrepreneurial and big corporate worlds, at least at the lower levels relevant here. It's a different mindset and skillset. And it works both ways, you'd expect startups to be biased against salarymen.

As someone who has done exactly that, I'll tell you why: because we know what's expected of employees. The people who start businesses are generally high performers. When I hired others, I naively expected them to approach their work in the same way I do. The reality is most people suck. They feel the best when they finish a shift having done the least, as though they got away with something. I feel the best when I get the most done.

Many of the best entrepreneurs can (and do) excel greatly within corporate environments. They’ve learned how to lead, sell, and get things done even when they have to improvise.

The problem is that “ex-entrepreneur” is a title that anyone can give themselves by merely registering a domain name and a business one evening. The title attracts a lot of people who have no business being an entrepreneur or leading people, but want to be in charge of people and running the show.

That latter group is the long tail, and due to the inevitable failure of their startups those people are far more likely to be seeking jobs than the ex-entrepreneurs you want working for your company.

Having spent some time in local startup and entrepreneur communities, I have no problem believing that the average person who self describes as an ex-entrepreneur would make for a below-average employee. A lot of these people want to be in charge and tell others what to do more than they want to do the work, which is the opposite of what you’re looking for in people to work for your company.

this

big companies have processes that need to be followed

once you get used to process hard to go to shoot from the hip world of early stage start ups

You should look into types of people are running the various parts of Rippling.

Because outside of the rare entrepreneurs who make 50k a month working 5 hours a week, there are a lot who worked 90 hour weeks sometimes not even being able to pay themselves. Yes maybe at one point they wanted to wear many hats and venture out. But that isn't a sustainable lifestyle for everyone. To think that person couldn't develop an appreciation for a supportive environment with PTO, the ability to focus on a limited number of tasks, stable pay, stable work hours and other team members they can depend on is a very limited viewpoint imo.

> And it works both ways, you'd expect startups to be biased against salarymen.

Not without good reason.

I have been on that side of the table. I have recruited my fair share of salarymen.

To be fair, some don't make it past the interview table. I'm not joking. "Where's my office ?" is a question I have been asked. Seriously !

The majority of the time it ends up being a dreadful mistake.

The truth is the corporate guys are too used to be hiding in numbers.

In the corporate world you are one of a team. You can ask your team members for help. You can push tasks you don't want off onto your junior team members. All luxuries you don't get in the small business world.

And, sadly, if you are largely useless, in a corporate world, as long as you keep your head down, you can float around as dead-wood until someone gets round to firing you, usually a decade or so later by the time the your manager has passed it up to HR and HR has got round to it ...

There's no room for dead wood in small business.

And of course in the technology sphere, in the corporate world you get to play with bigger budgets. The hardware vendors take you out to lunch. You get "enterprise support". You don't get any of that in the small business world.

Don't get me wrong, I have had some good ex-corporate recruits, but the majority of time its been an expensive mistake. Which is why I tend favour SME recruits overall.

I’m not a recruiter, but I am in “Big Tech”, and dealing with founders, or even just people who have only worked at startups, is frustrating. They tend to have underdeveloped skills in teamwork and listening to authority. Honestly, I just want likable people who will execute on my ideas (or the ideas I’m simply passing on from higher management), or with light discussion, even if the execution isn’t perfect. I feel like a lot of corporate work is like this.

Without noticing you might have pointed out one of the reasons founder type people are founder type people.

Blindly follow orders isnt really on most startup folks’ list of things to do.

I assumed OP is well aware that the question is why these people took the big tech job in the first place, because it is obvious that it would be like this. Is this rocket science? I say no.

> Blindly follow orders isnt really on most startup folks’ list of things to do.

The really funny thing I'm thinking about here is when I bring people onto a project I'm leading: I give them an intro to the project, all of the components at play, the needs of the project... and then introduce them to something they could work on and the general gist of what needs to be done.

For some people that's enough to take it and run (and check in with feedback, minimal viable product, look for "does this sound good?" kinda stuff).

For others it really feels like they need to be spoonfed an entire spec down to block diagrams, flowcharts, sequence diagrams, etc. And I've worked with teams that wanted that before we even assigned any software engineers to the project. Meanwhile I'm trying to get SOMETHING on a computer so we can start looking for the bugs that take a long time to manifest themselves. (and "that's not what we were expecting it to do!" from the systems team lol)

Anyway, I can say that's not necessarily a big enterprise vs startup thing. It's more of a team vs team thing.

IDK about startups.

Oh! Yeah I think I know what you mean. I - personally - would attribute that to fear. People from certain experiences or backgrounds dont want to be wrong or look bad. So they’ll demand a spec instead of being given general guidance. To me people who need spoon feeding and entirely dismissable if they cant be coached. The whole style that seems to work best is “we need to cross this river” rather than “build me a temporary pontoon bridge that can carry a tank”.

Oh god we had this in team building exercises in the woods. "Here's a pile of junk, work out how to cross a stream without getting wet". One guy grabbed a long piece of wood and vaulted over the stream, others weren't satisfied until they had incorporated every single item from the pile of junk into the solution

It suddenly made it clear how each person worked that I couldn't see in the office

lmao at the "One guy grabbed a long piece of wood and vaulted over the stream" that's efficient as hell lol.

> I just want likable people who will execute on my ideas (or the ideas I’m simply passing on from higher management), or with light discussion, even if the execution isn’t perfect.

That sounds horrible. I want people working under/with me that will question the work, that will try to figure out if it's the right work. It is common for decisions "from higher management" to be made without a real in-depth knowledge of how the system(s) work. When that happens, there may be a (possibly radically) better approach that can be taken.

Software developers are generally paid a lot of money. Not taking advantage of their experience and problem solving ability sounds like a waste of money.

Startup or not, you're not always being paid to think, even if you're capable of it. It's super annoying to work with people who only want to push back when it's not part of the mandate - just like it's annoying to work with people who don't think for themselves when it's expected. Knowing what the job is is and important skill no matter where you work, if somebody can't do that it's a big problem.

Totally on point. Sometimes you just have to roll with it.

I've worked in both sorts of companies. The constant questioning may work well at smaller scale but kills productivity at larger scales. Putting aside that it inevitably becomes a political exercise as much as a technical one (because the different technical solutions almost always reflect competing priorities), it also requires perfect sharing of information across the organization, which does not scale.

Especially in any sales driven organization, I've seen it cause issues with infra teams questioning the need for certain features. Meanwhile, the answer is that the features are necessary because someone is willing to pay $$$ for them.

I think the problem isn't constantly questioning! The major problem is many times, the ideas was top down, without a basic research or thought about possible RoI, wants to be discussed more because the team that will implement wants to know better and avoid mistakes, such behaviors always causes friction!

> Meanwhile, the answer is that the features are necessary because someone is willing to pay $$$ for them.

Just because someone is willing to pay for them doesn't mean they're worth doing. It could be that adding a feature makes other features harder to add or support. So sure, it might get you a win today, but it will cost you in the long run. And someone needs to be making sure the question being answered isn't "do we want a win today", it's "do we want the win today at the cost of a larger loss tomorrow" (when that's the case). And the sales team and higher managers don't see that. So it's the developer's job to make sure the questions are asked.

Sure, sometimes the answer is that yes, the feature is needed today, and it's worth the pain later caused by it. But if someone doesn't ask about the pain, it can't be considered into the decision.

> That sounds horrible. I want people working under/with me that will question the work, that will try to figure out if it's the right work.

Sounds great in moderation, but becomes horrible as soon as you get a guy who spends more time arguing than doing.

There’s a reason that “disagree and commit” is a common teaching. It’s fine to question and propose alternatives, but when people see everything as an opportunity to debate and fight it becomes a problem. A big one.

Yeah, I agree with you, but sometimes higher management wants to implement anything without questions and multiple times the ideas taken more time to deliver! It's very toxic to work like that.

Bruh we are slave to the machine. Most of us want to get in, get our paycheck, let the boss feel smart, and go back to our actual lives. Programmers tend to overinflate the influence of their job in their personal lives.

Please never work for me.

I'm sure the feeling is mutual. This is why it's so important to suss out team culture before taking a job.

I acknowledge that there are plenty of workplaces where “Make the boss feel smart” is unfortunately necessary, but going into a job with this attitude contributes directly to the environment the OP derides.

I try to do a good job at everything I do. Some things to a larger extent than others (being a spouse/parent gets more effort than being a developer), but I still _try_ to do a good job on the smaller things too.

That sounds lovely riiight up until you’re in a position where one of your reports gets very inconveniently standoffish when they’re tasked with something that has been pre-determined, has been decided for complex workflow management , political, legal, etc reasons.

I am a big believer in developers working with sufficient context, but the reality is that when an org gets to a certain size, everyone can’t have full visibility over everything.

Sometimes the ‘business analysis’ involved in determining how to address a particular need can be painful, intense, political, disruptive, etc. A burden that I want to and should shoulder for my team. Sometimes you’ve just gotta divide and conquer with some things. And that means that sometimes developers need to start with the puzzle already partially solved.

Again, this can all sound completely unreasonable, right up until the point when you’re first faced with this situation. Framing it as “you’re not being paid to think! conform, swine!” is too cynical. Rather, sometimes, it’s impractical or flat out undesirable for everyone to do everything. Sometimes you’re better off focusing on a certain type of thinking / work.

> That sounds lovely riiight up until you’re in a position where one of your reports gets very inconveniently standoffish when they’re tasked with something that has been pre-determined, has been decided for complex workflow management , political, legal, etc reasons.

There is a very big difference between

1. I expect my worker to do as their told and not question it.

and

2. I expect my worker to use their analytic ability to make sure our plans are reasonable, and let me know when they're not. But sometimes, even knowing the issues they point out, I have to tell them to move forward with it anyways, because <factors>. And the need to be able to understand that sometimes we don't make the decisions.

A developer that can't help understand the various possible choices to be made is... less useful.

A developer that can't understand that they don't always get to make the final call is... less useful.

> That sounds horrible.

It sounds like how 95% of everything works. In reality of course there is a spectrum between visionary entrepreneurs and mindless drones and some critical thinking is generally welcome. But it seems like startup founders have a very strong belief in their own ideas even when everyone else seems to disagree (that is why they are/were startup founders) and that honestly just sounds so exhausting in a corporate setting.

Sounds awfully dreary.

Some people want to dedicate a lot of their work time and energy to LARPing Tony Stark. Other people just want to deliver the value the company needs, get paid, and pursue their other goals outside of their job.

In English?

Some people want to work for a living, not live from working.

My attempted translation:

“Some people try to pretend to be a lone visionary genius who is wildly productive but also is an asshole to coworkers/authority. Other people don’t care that much about such ‘lone genius’ narratives and are much more interested in just doing what their boss tells them they must to earn a paycheck.”

Seems like a false dichotomy to me but I believe that’s what they’re trying to communicate.

Well, what is the source of 'authority' in your view? Is it 'this is the best way to do it in my view', or is it 'because I said so'?

You are bound to stay the leader of mediocre teams then. You could at least bother with 2 or 3 of these who would make wonders - or fired based upon what you just said. But mediocre is … comforting.

Most people in management say they want independent thinkers, but in reality, they want what you want: good soldiers.

They want a good soldier who pretends to be an independent thinker not an independent thinker who pretends to be a good soldier.

You can see this from the advice given to people looking to game interviews. Also from the lack of interview success for those who don't game interviews.

I've had recruiters from mid-sized, but rapidly growing, tech companies tell me to my face that they don't accept "entrepreneurial" applicants. This meant anybody who has worked at smaller startups or done consulting, contracting, or freelancing.

That explains quite a bit. My entire career since college has been "worked at smaller startups or done consulting, contracting, or freelancing." How is somebody with that background who doesn't have enough runway or funding to launch a startup supposed to find a job when companies actively discriminate against you over your background?

This seems true based on my experience. I've taken two startups from 0-$100,000/month in revenue on shoestring budgets, and I've tried for years to get a corporate job with no luck.

Could you describe those two startups?

Biases - but if I may - I've been on both sides and as an ex-entrepreneur, I feel I'm really easy going especially when it comes to office stuff. Have a chair? Great now let's solve this business issue. I don't expect much really and I'd say less than most as we're used to do more with less - as long as it's decent pay for the work and the team rocks.

Now when it comes to office politics... I have to agree. I and most of us have no patience for incompetence and time burning in meetings and coffee talks...

Confirmed. I took a year off for my startup attempt, currently looking for another 9-5 and they really don't know what to do with me.

I think the bias is merely confusion. In recruiter land anything uncertain is a pass.

The primary problem I suspect is I seem overqualified. Having a diverse skill set in all things software such as product development and engineering AND management AND devops (etc.) is just too much to process for a recruiter. Also for hiring managers in general. It's great if you're applying to say a director level position but if you NEED A JOB and try for an IC role it's a tough sell. Proficiency in multiple tech stacks is the same negative signal.

Secondary is perceived or real attitude misalignment. The problems most corporate tech companies are solving are boring and they know it. They must never admit it, and candidates especially need to demonstrate complete obliviousness. Candidates need to walk the line, simultaneously signaling technical ultra-competence and naive enough to consider yet another CRUD legacy app maintenance task challenging and interesting.

I personally don't have a problem working on boring problems, and I'm less inclined to create unnecessary challenges by using bleeding edge tech to pad my resume. Both qualities I can never admit to a recruiter. To actually get interviews, I severely cut down my resume to fit each open role. Recruiters can intuit my experience somehow anyway, and just about every senior IC role I've interviewed for lately came with a big disclaimer that this role will NEVER include management responsibilities. I guess to hedge against senior ICs expecting compensation for the management tasks they absolutely will be doing.

> “It’s really critical for them to be able to explain the elephant in the room,”

Sure, but here's another elephant in the room:

> “So it’s really challenging for recruiters to understand whether their qualifications, experience, or job responsibilities are comparable to a conventional applicant’s.”

It's really challenging for recruiters to understand anything about anyone's ability.

Can we admit that the bulk of tech hiring is nonsense, and move forward?

No. Gatekeepers mean dumb salaries all around

I remember reading about how McDonald's makes prospective franchise owners take personality tests and actively select against creative types.

That seems extremely plausible. The last thing McDonald's wants is a franchise doing something innovative or different because it wouldn't be the same terrible experience as every other McDonald's.

I dunno if that all applies any more post covid in these parts. McDonalds was always predictably and blandly bad, but the couple of times I've stupidly visited since covid they seem to have swung into unpredictably bad territory. Maybe management creativity has won out after all.

Can confirm. I have 30+ years of experience. Submitted resume to jobs that should be trivial given my experience, I literally published books covering the technologies they use. Didn't even get a phone interview before rejection. When I do get to the interview they always love me, but it's surprisingly challenging to get to that stage.

Not specific to tech, there can be a kind of resentment that some corporate employees feel toward entrepreneurs and solos. They envy their freedom and willingness to take risks.

And of course, from a hiring perspective, if you are truly looking for someone who will march in lockstep and not ask questions, why would you want people who think for themselves?

Also after 15 years of witnessing a successful entrepreneur doing the exact opposite than they advise, what stays? The dislike. I had the opportunity to observe this many times with many of them.

I am always amazed how closed people’s minds are. There are some good open people out there too.

Maybe that's it but whenever I've been in hiring rounds for dev roles and seen someone operating solo the story I see on their resume tends to look like they are solo because they were fired or otherwise couldn't make it in the corporate world so they tried to go solo, failed again and are trying to go back to the corporate world. That doesn't bode well.

If I see someone got a real company going with a real developed product or service and a couple employees and that failed that is an entirely different story, that is hire material. I understand most companies won't make it but the number of 'CEO' titles I've seen on resumes running a single owner LLC just makes me chuckle to myself.

what would be a better title then ceo for a small company?

i’ve generally used owner.

President; managing director.

Founder or owner I think are the best. President is fine if you have a a couple employees, CEO I'd even be totally fine with for a small company, it just approaches cringy in my book when its founders using a corporate title that usually implies a larger organizational structure and it is really just them (a single person/no employee company).

i’ve been conflicted using founder since in some circles it implies the VC route

thanks

Working at a FAANG, I've definitely seen founders and startup employees chafe at decision making that they felt powerless over. Stuff like legal refusing contracts with GCP due to reasons and then doing it anyways, or coping with staff engineers dictating decisions they'd have decided differently by quitting.

What reasoning about the facts surrounding an applicant is not "bias"?

The term "bias" usually implies "unfair bias", like a lower likelihood of hiring some black, all else being equal.

Being an ex-enterpreneur isn't like being a woman, or black; it's a relevant piece of job background.

Would that person rather continue to be an enterpreneur? Are they here because they ran out of money, or got spooked, or burned out or whatever?

I own(ed) my own business. It gets asked about at every job interview. The simple answer: I prefer a regular paycheck.

I first started introducing Linux (as file/print servers) back in the mid-90's. The rate of support calls would drop from weekly to quarterly. A few of my clients I actually had to introduce a retainer. I was making "most of my money" on 'new hardware' upgrades. I was smart enough to stagger roll-outs so I would have somewhat consistent work at Q1 every year. But not enough to reliably pay the bills. The Microsoft Support racket was too lucrative, and would have forced me to be dishonest. I can't live like that.

I gave the clients a choice: I run linux at home, and this is what I suggest for your servers. The level of honesty won me respect but not a paycheck.

Life circumstances also change such as having a family, mortgage, wanting other hobbies, etc.. If a recruiter is assuming a previous entrepreneur is going to be permanently stuck in one mindset it's really not fair to the applicant. Maybe the person grew tired of the 90 hour weeks with no free time. Or wants to be able to take a day off without being stressed out that the whole deck of cards will collapse. They're primed to make good employees at that point who will likely appreciate the corporate perks vs someone who has been in that environment for a long time and feels entitled to it.

https://archive.md/HJnOX

Not just recruiters, but hiring managers.

I trained the model used to rate candidates’ resumes at a largish public company (based on hiring manager feedback signals), and when you inspected resumes with “CEO” as a job title the expected scores (all else being equal) were much lower.

Perhaps the entrepreneurial octopus interprets corporate recruitment channels as damage and routes around the problem...

As someone who bounced between my own startups and working for others where a company put me on a hard project and really challenged me I could excel. If they wanted just another cog in a sea of cogs it didn't go so well. I can tell you having your own startup does spoil you. You never bring the same passion writing code for an employer once you've done it for your own ideas.

Have also done both. I find it easier and perform better when the corporate project is entrepreneurial —- urgency or novelty means we have to do things differently than just executing the well-honed and predictable processes to produce version 47 of something.

But corporate experience has made me a better entrepreneur (“hey, maybe we should have some process”). It requires a shift in thinking, but IMO that’s a good thing.

it is not recruiters, most folks in corporates look at startups as competition, insubordinate, have a bias for action and understand business drivers much better

> They get stereotyped for not wanting to ‘be a small piece of the puzzle’

That’s hilarious. We’re ALL small pieces in a universal puzzle. Inescapable.

And yeah, anyone who understands the value of their time and is in a position to make free decisions about what to do with it will not want to take your piss ant job.

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