My first job out of college was a small company called Wishoo, Inc. It was an event marketing company that pushed the limits of technology at the time (2002). It was a great company to work for, but I admittedly wasn’t too happy with my initial salary. I was concerned about what my professor’s told me when I graduated college… that I should be making around $45k when I graduate, and because of that my head was in the clouds in regards to what my salary should have been. I won’t say what my salary was, but needless to say it wasn’t $45k.

Well due to some prayer and advice from my mom, I accepted the offer, I gave them trouble about my salary over the 3 years I was there, and they were gracious and gave me pretty large raises over time. (Also, I didn’t complain about it and I worked hard while I was there)

But the entire time I was there I missed one huge thing… I was working with great people who were entrepreneurs. I didn’t even realize the type of experience I was getting from being around guys like them. I didn’t know what kind of friendships I was making long term, stuff that you really can’t put a dollar value on. When I sit down for lunch to talk, I have people that care and desire to see me succeed, and there is a wealth of knowledge that I never had, and wouldn’t have been exposed to trying to get a standard corporate job.

At Wishoo, I gained so much knowledge, because in a startup you know you can’t just be the developer, you have to be the database admin, web master, server admin, and anything else you can dream of. This made my worth as a developer jump a few levels very quickly… any standard training wouldn’t have taught me all those things.

The sad part is I didn’t even recognize how much that experience meant until I started my own company, then it all clicked. Man, I appreciate that experience now so much more than I did when I was there.

So part of my job is to let them know my appreciation, but also do for others what they’ve done for me.

So for anyone reading…

Get a startup job where you can work with innovative people with crazy ideas. The type of people that when they quit, they can’t help but try to start something new. Don’t be caught up in the flash of a standard salary… working at a startup will give you more valuable knowledge that you can imagine. And if it all falls to pieces, you can always get the corporate job… or maybe even go out on your own.

(P.S. > thanks to everyone at Wishoo, you know who you are)

Knowing how to do something is not as important as being able to figure it out. At times, when a person doesn’t know how to do something, they quit or give up, rather than try and fail and eventually get it.

When looking for a developer to work with or hire, I find that I put much more value on the ability of a person to learn versus what they already know. (Of course, they have to know something, so I can see that they can learn).

I’ve seen people know a great deal about one particular programming language or paradigm, but if you throw something different at them, they can’t adjust, they don’t know how to figure it out quickly. 

Give me a MacGyver developer, someone who can put some stuff together, and you’re always thinking “how in the world…”, but you know they always get it done… and it’s good.