Getting Your First Developer Job in A Startup - Read Time: 5 Mins

📅 August 05, 2018

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⏱️4 min read

Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Introduction

It's graduation season again and by now besides wearing one's graduation gown and preparing for one's own graduation trip overseas.

You might be starting to look for your first job to be a developer, product manager, data scientist, data analysis or just without any idea of what to do in the future.

It might be that before you had landed yourself in a job. Your had previously been taking on multiple internships to get to know of yourself. If it's the right fit for you to work in a full time job.

One Dollar 3 Tries

What i had learnt after dabbling in multiple different things from data science training to sales.

It taught me that i should always be willing try out different jobs and talk to people who's doing the work that your interested in doing then decide if it's worth the effort to go for it. Which I took action that lead me to get a internship in one of the 1st batch of Deep Tech startups based in Singapore by Entrepreneurship First.

This didn't happen overnight for me, as getting into a internship is out of the question while i was studying in university.

Due to fact that i won't be able to compete with other graduates who had a much better prospects to get into companies like Google, Red Hat or other big tech companies.

My lack of passion, eagerness to graduate plus bad academic result gave me.

A limiting belief in myself that i did not had the capacity in me to be a "Developer" which lead to a decision.

This decision was to secure a job in business development job in a tech Startup before my last paper. Which i was happy that i was able to accomplish that by using Startup related job sites like Angel List or Tech In Asia.

To Be In A Startup or Not To Be That is the Question

My past experience is not the same for students or new graduates like you.

When they are searching for developer job in Startup and you might think what does it got to do with me?

Well i had the opportunity to be involved in the recruitment process of potential hires and taken on afew interns under my wing at MicroSec.

I find that besides NUS, NTU and SUTD, there's not a lot of tech related students who are interested or wants to be part of local startups.

It's really a shame that in Singapore, we actually have a lot of interesting startups who are building innovative solutions with bleeding edge technology.

Startups like Transcelestial Technologies who's a space startup that deal with laser communication for satellites or Movel AI that does robotics navigation or my company MicroSec that does end to end security solution for IoT devices,

Exposure to the Startup Scene in Singapore

There's tons of ways for you to be part of the startup scene in Singapore .

By joining hackathons like Startup Weekend, Angel Hack this allows you to expose yourself to be part of the startup ecosystem in building and forming a startup within 72 hours or less.

The other by going for conferences like Tech In Asia, Switch or Unbound Innovfest to get a glimpse of startups in Singapore.

The last one is by setting your calendars to go for Co-working spaces or Venture Capitalist firm based events like JustCo, SGInnovate, Lattice80 or Blk71.

These event is quite frequent and specific in nature for certain industries or technology, thus it will be a great exposure for you to talk to people in a low stress enviroment.

Conclusion

By now you might ask why must i be exposed to the Startup Scene in Singapore if i want to be part of startup as a developer.

Well actually most developer jobs are filled through referrals even when a job is posted online.

Developers jobs are mostly fill through the above method cause developers in general is quite a tight knitted group.

So if the developer in a company knows about you and are looking for developers.

Your chances of getting a interview is much higher than just a nameless person who just applied for a position through a online job portal.

Getting Your First Developer Job in A Startup - Read Time: 5 Mins

Robert Frost

Introduction

One Dollar 3 Tries

To Be In A Startup or Not To Be That is the Question

Conclusion

Links

Movel AI

Transcelestial Technologies

MicroSec

Angel List

Startup Weekend

Tech In Asia

SGInnovate

Lattice80

Blk71