> you'll never be sending your resume "cold" again.
That's the takeaway. If ten years into your career (baring a situation such as a move to a new area or wanting to work on something completely different from what you're doing now), you're sending in your resume cold to HR you're doing something wrong. You should have made connections in the industry: people who can vouch for you, whom you respect and want to work with. A good resume (with interesting projects as well as companies which do interesting, technically challenging things) can make you a more lucrative target for passive recruiting. However, a resume is a representation of your experience, not the other way around: it gets you in the door, but if you can't pass a technical interview an impressive resume won't save you.
Go where you'll be working with the smartest engineers (you can tell that an interview, based on what questions they ask and how they answer your questions) and the work (specific projects you'll be working on) is the most challenging and interesting. If out of all the places you've talked to, the place that meets that criteria is the a startup, go there; if it's a big company (but with serious technical DNA) go there instead. Don't join a startup for the sake of joining a startup, don't join a big company for the brand-name.
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> you'll never be sending your resume "cold" again.
That's the takeaway. If ten years into your career (baring a situation such as a move to a new area or wanting to work on something completely different from what you're doing now), you're sending in your resume cold to HR you're doing something wrong. You should have made connections in the industry: people who can vouch for you, whom you respect and want to work with. A good resume (with interesting projects as well as companies which do interesting, technically challenging things) can make you a more lucrative target for passive recruiting. However, a resume is a representation of your experience, not the other way around: it gets you in the door, but if you can't pass a technical interview an impressive resume won't save you.
Go where you'll be working with the smartest engineers (you can tell that an interview, based on what questions they ask and how they answer your questions) and the work (specific projects you'll be working on) is the most challenging and interesting. If out of all the places you've talked to, the place that meets that criteria is the a startup, go there; if it's a big company (but with serious technical DNA) go there instead. Don't join a startup for the sake of joining a startup, don't join a big company for the brand-name.
Agreed. 10 years in Silicon valley, I have never had need to submit a cold resume for a decade. That includes 5 job changes including 3 startups.