How to get the most out of working at a startup
- Continue learning. Read books!
- Copy Charlie Munger and identify the people you admire the most in the company, and do whatever you can to position yourself as working for/with those people
- Identify the key levers of success for the company and figure out how you can use your skills to help those (e.g. work on core company initiatives that are big drivers of profit today or will be in the future)
- Ask to work on the important things!
- Do good work
Abridged interview with one of the first ~100 employees at Facebook:
I started out at this company and received an average performance review. I wasn’t really sure why, because I’d done what I thought was a pretty good job.
I asked my manager, and I learned that it was basically because the project wasn’t an extremely important project to the company.
I then asked my manager for an important hard project, and got placed on one. This significantly accelerated my growth in this company.
Don’t be a summertime soldier
Don’t just be a “summertime soldier” — don’t go someplace because it’s already successful, and then bail when things get tough.
Any hiring manager for the rest of your career will be able to read that on your resume just by looking at the dates.
High-growth companies virtually always hit speed bumps, or even huge potholes. Stuff goes wrong. Going through the experience of gutting through the hard parts and coming out the other end will be a key part of your real-world education and will serve you very well down the road, especially if you ever start your own company.
Suggested readings for employees that want to maximize their opportunities at a company:
Read all of these! They are all excellent and will certainly be one of the highest ROI uses of time you experience this year.
Great talk on doing work
Good summary of a number of “self-help” style books
Great story of Bell Labs
Good notes for anyone with high self confidence
Poor Charlie’s Almanack or the free alternative
Career Tools Podcast, as with all of these, highly recommended, excellent content
Grit
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