A 30-Year-Old Non-Major Successfully Moved from an SI Company to a Startup (Realistic Review)
Around this time last year, I remember working late at an SI company and shedding tears alone in the early morning. I’m writing this in case it might help anyone in a similar situation.
To cut to the chase, even a 30-year-old non-major can move to a startup with proper preparation.
1. In a portfolio, "intent" matters more than quantity
I refactored all the project code I'd worked on at the SI company and uploaded it to GitHub. Even though the quantity was small, explaining in the README why I designed things that way worked out much better in interviews.
2. Interviews are more about attitude than technical skills
At all five startup interviews I had, rather than technical questions, they asked about collaboration experience, troubleshooting cases, and "why did you try this?"
3. Salary goes up if you negotiate
I raised my salary by 12 million KRW compared to what I earned at the SI company. At first, I was embarrassed because I had no number in mind, but the headhunter told me to "just name a figure," so I tried it.
What I realized while preparing for the job change is that SI experience isn't necessarily a disadvantage. In fact, they said the operational experience I gained through those late nights felt very rare in the startup world. Have confidence, everyone!
10 answers
True, SI experience isn't necessarily a minus lol
Oh, I didn't know that. A 12 million won salary increase, that's crazy.
I also joined a startup at 32 without a CS background. Honestly, same experience here—the hard-won troubleshooting I picked up while doing operations at an SI company really helped a lot in interviews. When I told stories about deployments at dawn and the outages that followed, people seemed to love it.
Well, the startup climate isn't great these days, isn't that a bit old news? Even SI firms can't find people and are offering higher salaries.
Documenting in the README why you designed it this way is really important. I also used this approach to highlight it on my resume.
It's a bit odd that all 5 interviews focused on attitude rather than technical skills. Isn't it standard for startups to usually have a coding test first? Did you just get lucky and only end up at places that didn't check skills?
I'm envious. I'm 28 and still haven't been able to change jobsㅠㅠ I need to start by rebuilding my portfolio.
Ops experience earned through overtime lol. That's painfully true.
Thanks for the salary negotiation tips. But if you blindly trust the headhunter and name your price, you might get cut—and since some startups have a large stock-option component, I think you should look at the total package.
Got a source? Whether the 1200 raise came from switching jobs or just from market salaries going up over the past year, we should look at those separately.