I would be relieved if I was in your position.

A lot of companies have a policy of not hiring people that are significantly overqualified for a position. The reason for this is that those people are almost guaranteed to be unhappy and perform poorly. That means that if your company just needs some code monkeys to crank out code to spec then you need to hire people that are perfectly happy doing that because it matches their skill level and ambitions.

Someone with enough initiative to start their own company is not likely to do well in that kind of an environment, and the fact that they look at it solely as crap they need to tolerate in exchange for a paycheck doesn't help.

And "flush" is perfectly correct. Used transitively, it means "to expose or chase from a place of concealment." Example: "the hunters used dogs to flush their game from the bushes."

In figurative language, "flush" is a good choice when you're talking about stripping away extraneous information. "Flesh" is used when you're proposing to add more information, as in putting flesh onto bones.

I should add that I'm only addressing your claim that "flush" is inherently scatalogical, not whether the original use was valid.

In fact, it seems like the company in question only wants to hire people that "just want a paycheck".

If you talk about how cool it was, and how you plan to do it again, they won't want to hire you, thinking you are just there for a few months until you go back to doing startups

You definitely don't want to give the impression that you're just applying to pick up some quick cash before trying your next startup. But there's a lot of middle ground between that and "I never want to be an entrepreneur again, and will happily be your corporate bitch forever."

It is dangerous to assume that "One size fits all" in this situation, for both you and OP. A better answer might be to read the interviewer/company and make the best decision at the time given all the info (on whether to "fudge" or not about whether you'd do it again). It also, I suppose, depends on your financial situation.

So, the top-poster should ask himself what he wants: Does he want a few years of nine-to-five, or to be starting a company again in a few months?

If the answer is the former, then he needs to do exactly as vaksel said. Play up the aspects of startup life that will appeal to Company X: hard work, thinking on your feet, people skills, having to come up to speed quickly. Play down anything that makes it sound like you want to leave in less than a few years. Talk about how the uncertainty of income was nerve-wracking, how hard it was to always be on your own, how much you found you missed having co-workers, etc.

If you do want to leave in six months, don't lie to a recruiter -- look for contract jobs. You'll make more money in a shorter period of time, build up a bigger network, and avoid burning bridges.

I don't think so. I did just that and I still got 3 offers out of 3 interviews. 2 of them were small companies (one of which I'm working at now), but the last was a corporate behemoth with the initials FX. It really depends on what the employer wants out of filling the position, I think.

You probably just had a bad interview. Either you're not completely qualified, or they didn't feel you were a good fit for the team. Maybe they didn't like some of your answers to the interview questions. Or, somebody else beat you out for the position.

Using careful wording you can spin any negative experience into something positive. I'd recommend doing that with your startup.

I moved from the UK to San Francisco a few years ago, and everything is very different. An attempted startup, whether successful or not, is almost always seen as a good thing here.

This is either:

a. Bait. You got me.

b. A poor joke. Next time you may want to try <sarcasm> and </sarcasm>.

or

c. Your true feelings. You have a attitude problem. The large software company noticed too. Fix your stinkin' thinkin' and stop blaming others for your failure. I wonder if "lack of money" was the only cause of your startup's failure.

Seriously? With a sample size of 1, you are blaming hacker news for bad advice rather than blaming the hiring manager for having a rare/bizarre attitude?

My previous experience was selling shareware for a few years, which helped me demonstrate that I knew what I was doing, as well as making me comfortable communicating with adults in their 40's when I applied for a position (when my dad was laid off). I had only applied to a few companies and did not have problems getting interviews. I also sent recruiters and managers, follow up e-mails with code, screen shots, and links to websites and software I had created, after each interview.

The other few young employees there had started as temps or in the training pool. Although they had Bachelor's Degrees on top of that, they didn't have a real job title for months after I did. What matters is that the managers who hired me could see I had drive and did not rely on having a piece of paper.

In my first two months, I got an iPhone and told my manager I thought the company should have an iPhone web application and then a native application when the devkit came out. I also got them to sign up for the iPhone Enterprise Beta. I taught the guy who hired me all about differences between phones and technologies, how hard it was to program for each one, and different applications that could be made. Multiple times he felt the idea had run dry, and I told him that if we could just get statistics about this, we would be good to go. So he partnered with his friend who did have such statistics and I was out of the picture suddenly... But some of my mockups did make it to the presentation shown in front of who-are-now the CIO and CTO of the company, as well as the two Chief Operating Officers. Sure, it would have been nice (and fair) for me to attend those meetings and get credit and a bonus, but it was a good learning experience about the corporate world. Looking back, I probably should have made my own presentations early on (using publicly available information) and made sure everybody knew the whole story, because apparently the manager who had told me he wanted to work on this with me, only cared about his own name getting mentioned--so don't worry, maybe you're not missing much from big corporate after all. :)

I am completing a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics right now, a decision I made as school started in September because I felt I should get my degree then move to California. I hope I will have the same swagger and hustle as I did without a degree, instead of relying on it in any way. I am focusing on theory as much as possible (Algorithms, AI, math courses), even though it will hurt my GPA, because I can learn other stuff myself.

Instead of being bitter, think of how lucky you are. For me, losing the freedom of working on my own software product in order to work at a Fortune 100 company, and now attending a research university for a four year degree that causes frequent sleepless nights, feels like I'm on a "downward spiral". In reality, that's better than 99% of what other individuals can accomplish at our age (assuming you're in the mid-20's or younger), and that's just in the United States alone. Your situation is very similar, and we should feel lucky.

From an employment perspective, you are simply making HR people happy. The technical interviewers don't see much value in a degree in practice, even if they will tell you differently.

Kudos to this guy, I agree with his path. He's not just making HR people happy, he's truly learning regardless of what his GPA may become after it.

I do agree, you do only get as much out of the degree as you put in.

However, take two job candidates:

One of them just has a CS degree, let's even say it was from a "prestigious" university or whatever. No internships, no computer-related jobs, no open source / hobby projects, nothing else except good grades and dubious academic rewards.

The other has no college degree, but has spent 4 years working various junior positions / contract jobs that pertain directly to the job in question, mentioning several cases where they wrote/maintained software in a production environment. To even the field, let's just say they don't have any open source / hobby projects or otherwise "outside" experience.

They are both asking for the same salary and are "equal" in terms of team fit and other non-technical factors. Who would you hire? This is ultimately the point I'm trying to make.

"Thanks HN. You lied to me about the true cost of a failed startup." Are you kidding? Surely, you aren't ready to blame those trying to help you for one bad encounter with a knucklehead recruiter with a bad attitude.

About your last comment: take responsibility for your actions.

The real question (which neither the OP nor I am qualified to answer) is whether a startup opens more doors than it closes, not whether it closes one particular door. Obviously, there are all kinds of people in the world with all sorts of stupid biases; there's someone out there who will decide not to hire you because you went to the same school as some intern he disliked.

Whenever you listen to any advice, you need to view it through the filter of Buchheit's Law: "Limited life experience + overgeneralization = advice". Lots of people post about their experiences here, but nobody's experience will completely fit with your own circumstances. So you've got to examine why it worked for them and determine if those same conditions apply to you. In my case, I was applying for a job at Google in Silicon Valley, not a big company in the UK. I had previous successful programming projects, though unfortunately nothing lucrative. And I had sharp basic CS skills and did well in the interview. I'm not sure how many of these apply to your own situation.

If they don't, you have two options:

1.) Make your situation look more like the people whose advice you've been reading.

2.) Seek out advice from people closer to your own situation.

It's really valuable that you've posted your own experience for others to learn from, but there's always a danger in generalizing too much.

I took time off the lifestyle and worked at an established (but small) software company for about 4 years after my last failure, and feel like I was better off for that choice.

My thoughts:

- I wouldn't sell it as a failed start-up, you can put an honest story around anything

- "I didn't like start-up life, I thought the grass was greener, and it sure as hell isn't"

- "Yea, I agree, the product didn't work out, but I learned a lot of operational skills. Planning, hiring, firing etc."

- "One thing it definitely taught me was it all comes down to numbers and ROI."

etc etc etc

Disclaimer: My first job was with a start-up that I'm pretty sure is on its why down the pan. But I sure as hell don't share the same concerns. I'd argue that what I learned in a start-up has prepared me for my life more than any degree could.

Anything you do in your career has the potential to open or close some doors.

My suggestion is to be prepared to tailor things like cover letters and resumes appropriately for the position and be more selective in how you apply so as to maximize your chances. Unless you're very very good or lucky you're bound to have some kind of failure in your past. The important thing in this sort of interview situation is to be able to convince people you've learned the right lessons from the experience and are more valuable as a result.

Though, I think there is almost zero correlation of landing a position and having done a startup. Also, in real terms failed/successfull startups dont really matter much because often there is a very fine line (often described as luck) between failed and successfull startups. You might have learned a lot more in a failed one than having lucked out in a succesfull one. (for eg. jobs might have been considered a lesser success when apple mostly did the mac compared to say the youtube guys. Even though we now know otherwise because of the ipod, the fact is that it was plain market conditions that led to youtube being a bigger hit than the Mac).

A friend of mine got turned down with one of the biggest private enterprise software firms in the US. They hired the best of the lot - stanford, mit etc. He went on to join a smaller firm, and then did a startup which is about to run a million in revenues this year. The private software firm has since lost its mojo and is laying off right left and center. The friend, who is now CEO, is hiring right left and center. The very people who thought he was unfit to join their 'ranks' would now be very happy to be on his payroll.

In any case the lesson is that treat a job as independent from doing a startup - it takes a different set of skills to land one and its not fair, so just try to find what is required to land a job and not assume it to mean anything more than that.

That said, it may be beneficial for you to think about how you are selling yourself and your experience.

However, whilst being interviewed over the past month or two I've encountered people who've really disliked the fact that I'd moved around several small entrepreneurial projects and now wanted a job. Some people absolutely loved it, but some people were really quite sceptical and even critical. Just shows you that people can be stupid, you have to keep trying as many as it takes until someone understands your value and doesn't make some retarded judgement based on something that doesn't matter.

As a sidenote, I found that the CEOs and founders that interviewed me were very keen on the entrepreneurial aspect to my cv. The middle management and wage monkeys weren't at all.

Thus does the domesticated assail the free.

When writing a resume, you need to be careful to tailor it for the reader. If you're applying to work at a place that values free-thinking and risk-taking, then leave it on there. If you're applying to work at a consulting company or less-inventive company, they will see it as a red flag.

No company wants to train someone for a job only to have them bail to do their own thing.

You can still talk about it to the latter type of company, but you have to spin it in a way that doesn't make them think you're a rogue and unlikely to be happy in a corporate environment.

Alan

Have a serious think about what you're doing at the moment, bitching at a group of entrepreneurs/tech heads about a bad job application. Think you're the only one here that's either A) Been in this position or B) Currently in this position?

Zubar's attitude certainly isn't productive: he'd get a more positive response by acknowledging that ok, the startup is dead, what can I learn from this? But it's understandable. It's often not easy to be rational in the face of multiple rejections.

As to the truism that lying on your C.V. is a very bad idea, well, it is, but so is trying to recruit excessively conformist employees. You've put yourself in a position where you can't both conform and be truthful, so decide!

I had the same experience. Had been employed at X, headhunter told me to consider jobs at X-15 (this was February 2007). I got one at X+35.

Relentlessly resourceful: doing whatever is necessary to get where/what you want. (But be a good person about it and don't step on other people.)

No one here lied to you but there is no absolute truth.

You know yourself better than the company does, and "free spirit" vs. "not the kind that settles in a normal job" is not only a gross generalization, an artificial dichotomy, and generally B.S., you know yourself better than they do! You know you are perfect capable of settling in a normal job, right?

Again, the company seems to be looking for a drone, and hiring that way. Surely you can find something better?

Perhaps they just fire you when you commit your first broken build. Then you could have an entire team of programmers that have never submitted buggy code.

"In my experience within the UK graduate market..."

So was this job in the UK? If so, was the recruiter American?

If it's a really long time just say you were a free lance consultant or something.

Cheers

You are kidding right?

By their own logic (maybe I'm giving them too much credit, by assuming consistency) they probably wouldn't want to hire someone with a successful startup either.

Second, I don't know what type of job you're looking for but the two startups that I've worked at both think very highly of startup experience on your resume, failed or not. If you pursued a startup idea it tends to indicate all sorts of good things -- self directed, can run with ideas, aren't averse to a certain amount of boring but necessary work, etc. Of course, you should expect to be grilled on why it failed and what you would do differently.

Third, Scribd always needs good rails people, so send your resume if you want. Email is in the profile.

1) You don't want that job. You really don't. They want in-the-box thinkers who would never question why they didn't get their raise this year. They want risk-averse programmers caz you can exploit them.

2) HN never lied. In probability there are no absolutes. if I or my manaders had to choose between two resumes of equal qualifications all would choose the one with a startup. I doubt any programmer I personally worked with would dissagree(or their manager). However there are exceptions to this rule. Some simply want the workers that work not the workers that think.

3) You really don't want to work for them... Do you want to work with people who never act on their dreams or hopes, only whine and complqin and sit down and shut the fuck up about problems at work when it comes to talking to managers or asking for appropriate pay for teir tallent (if they got it)? Every job I take I want to gain something. At 60 ill take the safe job and retire on it. Till then I want to wor with people who challenge me, not conformists.

So OP really consider is it so bad that you don't want that job? If you do FIGHT FOR IT. Call em tell em THEY WANTYOU! What do you have to lose? Only gain!