Last year, we revived the "Work at a Startup" event for YC companies and prospective hires to meet each other in person (
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367707). The format has proven to work well, so we're doing it again. The 2019 event will be on Saturday, June 29 at YC in Mountain View:
https://workatastartup.com/expoMany engineers are interested in working at smaller companies. But there aren't many efficient ways to meet a bunch of them at once, and it's a ton of repetitive work to seek them out one by one. Meanwhile, hiring is the biggest challenge most YC startups are facing. That's an obvious matchmaking problem, and bringing everyone together in one big event is one thing YC can do to help address it. It's a fun and interesting day, too!
This year, we're bringing together 40 YC companies in one place. Rapid-fire company presentations—like Demo Day, but for engineers instead of investors—will give you a way to quickly survey the companies. Following this, we'll have a casual open house for you to engage one-on-one with any founders and early engineers who you thought were interesting.
New this time: We've heard from people who are interested in joining somewhat later-stage startups, because they think their skills may translate better to roles there than at the classic 2-to-10 person early stage. So this year we've included a number of larger startups, like Gusto and Sift Science. These companies have specialized needs across data, infrastructure, security and more. We hope this gives you more options to match your skill set, interests and risk appetite.
Working at a startup is for sure not for everybody! Justin Kan covered this in his post here: https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/, and HN users are never shy about pointing out the downsides. But I can tell you from personal experience that the upsides are powerful if you're in a position to go for it. For me, working at startups has been a unique opportunity to work closely with talented and experienced founders. (Many founders at this year's event learned to ship products at places like Square, Google, Linkedin and even Gusto.) The magic of working with a small, closely aligned team and the feeling of true ownership and impact is something many of us long for in our careers. The intense learning curves, the chance to personally grow rapidly along with a company—these are experiences which those of us lucky enough to have would never trade away.
Of course, there are no guarantees: it's a classic risk/reward tradeoff. But if you're tired of feeling stuck and uncreative in a corporate situation, or no longer really believing in what you're doing, and part of you is longing for greater ferment, impact, and adventure, come and spend the day with us and check out the other side of the equation.
I hope to see you there! https://workatastartup.com/expo
In particular, I was trying to look for YC companies in Los Angeles, as I am moving there and I'm very interested in working on a early stage startup