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Comment by akerl_

5 years ago

Maybe a hot take: if you have a Manager-of-Managers role, you aren’t a startup any more.

There are startups with over 50 engineers you know ;) At sr manager role you are for sure not technical though even if you did get asked coding/design questions in interview loops (there are exceptions)

  • At what point does an organization stop being a "startup" and become a "private company"?

    • Obviously it’s pretty tricky to define but I’d say anything that doesn’t have an already established or rapidly growing customer base/revenue is a startup. If you can shutdown all r&d and it’s still going to be viable business for a while then it’s not a startup

  • A company with over 50 engineers that wants to be seen as a startup is a red flag for me. I usually stop reading their job postings as soon as I can detect this.

  • You'd need more like 300+ to have a manager-of-managers who isn't a director or VPE.