smwhreyebelong

Can you provide more detail on where the NYC-startup scene is ? (Where could one meet people working in these startups ?)

I am new to the whole NYC startup scene. Which, according to you, are some of the cool startups in NYC ? Also, are there any NYC-startup specific news sources ?

+1

I have realized that having an overview of what's on the agenda aka the bullet points is the most helpful thing. Just talking about those bullet points instead of reading from a script makes the presentation more of an engaging/interactive conversation with the audience rather than a prepared speech/lecture.

Humor is a great strategy. Once you have people laughing, you can get away with a few minor hiccups.

It reminds me of a rafting trip I took. The buses being used to transport us from the office to the rafting location were really old and almost falling apart. The guides had a brilliant story about how the buses went from high schools->some backwater in mexico->some other really random places and were finally bought by the rafting company. The funny story had people laughing all the way there than crib about how crappy the buses were.

I second that. I have found that I learn things faster (and they 'stick' better) when I work on something that I find interesting/cool.

The other benefit of working on it is that you really relate to the problem you are trying to solve (since you will be the first user) and you might end up creating a viable product for a niche. There are tons of startups that started this way (one example is hotmail, where the founders needed a way to access their email from multiple locations)

I agree that it's all keyword based. I think it's because machines can only capture the objective factors of a job search. Things like : "will you get along with the team", do you like the people you'd be working with, etc are very subjective and not easily captured by computers.

Meeting people at events, getting recommendations from other people you trust allow one to evaluate the position at a much more subjective level and make an estimation of the human-elements of working at the startup.

HN "Who's hiring", linkedin jobs, even craigslist.

My personal experience with recruiters has not been as good as I would have liked. The recruiters I dealt with mostly did keyword searches on technologies and experience (e.g C++ dev with 3 yrs of experience) ignoring the other skills (teamwork, passion, how excited the person is about the company, etc.) Most recruiters use means that the companies themselves could use(LinkedIn, job boards, etc.) If the founders of the startup are not willing to invest time to find the talent and rather pay hefty fees to the recruiters, not sure if I would want to work for that startup anyway.

The ideal company would be one that you just "come across" than go out looking. For example, a product you heard about somewhere that got you really excited, or an idea that you had and while searching for who is working in that space, you find a company that was doing something very similar.

I had thought about a variation of #2 at some point but I've been too busy to implement anything.

They used to. Yahoo! used to be a great company for an engineer to work for. Given what they have been doing lately, it seems the focus has changed from being a tech company to a media company. In fact, it all probably changed when Terry was brought in to run the company and he wanted to focus on digital media.

There's a lot of small intangible things that go in to making a huge successful company. The core employees "wanting" to work at the company (as compared to just collecting a paycheck) is one of the most imporant ones.

I think it's a great idea. Are you sure you want to give up on it ? Why do you call it a failure ? I wouldn't call having 7000 users a failure. You have plenty of room to grow.

Let me know if you want feedback. One reason a lot of people trying to learn a new language give up is because of lack of motivation after a while / not finding people to converse/practice/learn with (and I talk from first-hand experience)

Well, of all the jobs I could like, I narrowed it down to two. And of those two, only one of them made the offer. So even though I liked the position at first, I wasn't so sure after I was done with the interviews.

I think I'll give the team another shot and try to talk to a senior person about what I would be doing and what my role and responsibilities will be.