Dan Luu
patreon
We can move as fast as any startup
🕑 Added 2018-02-22 23:50:02 +0000 UTC I've been interviewing recently, and a lot of companies tell me how much like a startup they are, how they can move as fast as any startup, etc.Although this is a pretty small sample size, my experience has been, the more often they tell you this, the less like a startup they actually are. Actual startups never tell me this. It would be absurd for a startup, especially an early-stage startup, to tell me that it's like a startup, so that doesn't happen. People only feel the need to say this at established companies.
For reasons that aren't clear to me, it's the least startup-like companies where people feel the most need to say this. It's not obvious to me that this should be the case -- one could imagine that established companies that are still "startup like" might want to tell you how they're still like a startup, but that hasn't been my experience. It's people at companies that have tens of thousands of employees that are known to be grindingly bureaucratic who really want me to know how much like a startup their company is.
The company that's said this the most also told me that they'd get me an offer in December. Here we are, two months later, almost three, and I have two more approvals to go before getting an offer. I believe I've heard "we can move as fast as any startup", "we're like a startup", and "we can move as fast as any company" a double digit number of times from the recruiter. Even before multi-month delay, these statements are so obviously false that I don't know why someone would say it. All it tells me is that the recruiter is willing to tell me a bald-faced lie. I don't know what advantage they see in conveying that information to me. Maybe they're just bored and trying to see if they can make a statement so absurd I literally laugh out loud? I don't get it.
Comments
Don’t underestimate their employees’ need to justify their current situation :) They also wanted to work at a nimble startup, but they ended up in a bureaucracy. See also Stockholm syndrome.
