# How to get a job at a startup

-   [

    ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/c_scale,w_50/James_T_b075fc52ee)

    James Temperton](/community/profiles/29278.md)

Aug 15, 2024

-   [People](/newsletter/people.md)

In the last two months, we’ve had 900 people apply for engineering roles:

-   86 got a first interview
-   55 got a technical interview
-   10 did a [SuperDay](/handbook/people/hiring-process.md#4-posthog-superday)
-   4 were hired

That means we hired 0.4% of people who applied for engineering roles.

So, how do you join the 0.4% of superstar engineers – not just at PostHog, but at any other fast-growing startup?

## 5) Be available as soon as possible

This is a hard truth, but availability can make or break your chances.

Outside very senior or critical roles, many startups can’t wait for your three or six-month notice period to expire. This is especially true of early-stage startups, where momentum is critical.

Be honest about your availability up front – and, if you can, be available within weeks, not months.

## Good reads 📖

-   **[Why doesn't advice work?](https://dynomight.net/advice/)** – Simple question, complex answer.
-   **[If AI chatbots are the future, I hate it](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/if-ai-chatbots-are-future-i-hate-it)** – Wi-Fi and internet aren’t the same thing!
-   **[Should I open source my company?](https://supabase.com/blog/should-i-open-source-my-company)** – Thoughts from the CTO of Supabase.
-   **[Time management techniques that actually work](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/time-management-techniques-that-actually)** – via Lenny Rachitsky.

*Words by James Temperton, who hates LinkedIn.*

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/engineer_47d6638eae)

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---

1.  Being a great human doesn’t mean being an effervescent personality – you don’t need to be the life and soul of the party. Being reliable and easy to work with is way less common than you might imagine. If you struggle getting referrals from former colleagues, be really honest about why that could be. More companies don’t have a culture of direct, honest [feedback](/newsletter/how-to-give-feedback.md), which can obscure problems. It’s why we [value trust and feedback](https://posthog.com/handbook/values#4-trust-and-feedback-over-process) so much.[↩](#fnref-1)

> PostHog is the leading platform for building self-driving products. With a full suite of developer tools – [AI observability](/ai-observability.md), [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [experiments](/experiments.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), [logs](/logs.md), and more – PostHog captures all the context agents need to diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes. A [data warehouse](/data-stack.md) and [CDP](/cdp.md) tie it all together, unifying that context into one source agents can read across. You can steer it all from [Slack](/slack.md), [the web app](/ai.md), the desktop ([PostHog Code](/code.md)), or your own editor via [the MCP](/mcp.md).

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