I started at Microsoft straight out of college in June of 2000. Here is my last 11 years:
- 18 months @ MS. Didn't enjoy what I was working on. Didn't do particularly awesome work. Quit after ~18 months.
- Took 6 months off. Made actual friends (I moved to Seattle not knowing anyone) Went to burningman for the first time.
- Found a job at a small startup called PureNetworks on craigslist. Stayed there about 2 years. Did pretty good work, but the company didn't do so well. Management got changed over and I got fired (which kinda scared the hell out of me) after showing up to work super late one day (like 3pm) after going to Vancouver to party the night before.
- Interviewed with some random companies in Seattle including Amazon. Got referred to Google through a friend and interviewed with them as well. Ended up taking the Google job & moving to NYC.
- My GOOG options did pretty well (I started a cpl months before the IPO) but def nowhere near "fuck you money." Spent 5 years @ Google working on couple different things. Did pretty good work. Met @dens and worked on Dodgeball for a while before it got canned. Spent my last 18 months at Google semi bored kinda looking around for something new/smaller.
- After @dens & @naveen got foursquare up and running they brought me on as the first hire. Now I'm running the server engineering team (about 35 folks...and PS we're hiring! http://foursquare.jobs).
So, how did I get here? Worked hard. Picked up both small company and big company skills (learned much super valuable knowledge working on large scale infrastructure at Google) but also caught some good breaks.
Advice: work hard, learn a lot about a lot of different things. Network like hell. Networking will get you good breaks. It'll also help you recruit once you're running a team. This is vital. Keep a file of every smart person you ever meet in your whole life. You won't regret it.
Advice: work hard, learn a lot about a lot of different things. Network like hell. Networking will get you good breaks. It'll also help you recruit once you're running a team. This is vital. Keep a file of every smart person you ever meet in your whole life. You won't regret it.
I'd love to hear your advice on how to network.
I'm smart, I work hard, and I'm very willing to open discussions and help people out when I can. I try to be a good person. I don't know if this is "networking". I guess it is, but the truth is that I haven't a fucking clue if I'm doing it right. I know I can program, but I feel like technical skills are ultimately less important (past a certain point) than social skills. Technical skills hit a ceiling without vision, and vision is useless if you can't sell other people on it.
- 18 months @ MS. Didn't enjoy what I was working on. Didn't do particularly awesome work. Quit after ~18 months.
- Took 6 months off. Made actual friends (I moved to Seattle not knowing anyone) Went to burningman for the first time.
- Found a job at a small startup called PureNetworks on craigslist. Stayed there about 2 years. Did pretty good work, but the company didn't do so well. Management got changed over and I got fired (which kinda scared the hell out of me) after showing up to work super late one day (like 3pm) after going to Vancouver to party the night before.
- Interviewed with some random companies in Seattle including Amazon. Got referred to Google through a friend and interviewed with them as well. Ended up taking the Google job & moving to NYC.
- My GOOG options did pretty well (I started a cpl months before the IPO) but def nowhere near "fuck you money." Spent 5 years @ Google working on couple different things. Did pretty good work. Met @dens and worked on Dodgeball for a while before it got canned. Spent my last 18 months at Google semi bored kinda looking around for something new/smaller.
- After @dens & @naveen got foursquare up and running they brought me on as the first hire. Now I'm running the server engineering team (about 35 folks...and PS we're hiring! http://foursquare.jobs).
So, how did I get here? Worked hard. Picked up both small company and big company skills (learned much super valuable knowledge working on large scale infrastructure at Google) but also caught some good breaks.
Advice: work hard, learn a lot about a lot of different things. Network like hell. Networking will get you good breaks. It'll also help you recruit once you're running a team. This is vital. Keep a file of every smart person you ever meet in your whole life. You won't regret it.
-harryh