* I co-founded my first company with people I met at university.
* We got our first investor thanks to a chance encounter between said investor and one of my co-founders at a bar.
* When we exited that company, our investors lawyer arranged a meeting for us with another of his clients, who hired us.
* One of the execs at that company hired me for his next startup, and introduced me to his brothers, so I could work part-time for them until he got funding.
* One of my co-workers at that company was one of my co-founders at my next company, and our other co-founders were friends of that person. One of them had worked for the VCs who invested in our first round.
* [I went to Yahoo for a couple of years -- no connections there.]
* The general counsel at my last pre-Yahoo startup pulled me into my next startup.
* [I then went to a web dev agency, no connections there]
* The co-founder of the company I worked at before the web-dev agency contacted me about some contracting, and I ended up joining full time (my current job)
So Yahoo and the web dev agency are the only places I've worked over the last 26 years where my resume has mattered. Even then, at the web-dev agency I name-dropped one of people who'd hired me previously, and it impressed them, so who knows how much my resume really mattered there either.
Here's an example of how much it can matter:
* I co-founded my first company with people I met at university.
* We got our first investor thanks to a chance encounter between said investor and one of my co-founders at a bar.
* When we exited that company, our investors lawyer arranged a meeting for us with another of his clients, who hired us.
* One of the execs at that company hired me for his next startup, and introduced me to his brothers, so I could work part-time for them until he got funding.
* One of my co-workers at that company was one of my co-founders at my next company, and our other co-founders were friends of that person. One of them had worked for the VCs who invested in our first round.
* [I went to Yahoo for a couple of years -- no connections there.]
* The general counsel at my last pre-Yahoo startup pulled me into my next startup.
* [I then went to a web dev agency, no connections there]
* The co-founder of the company I worked at before the web-dev agency contacted me about some contracting, and I ended up joining full time (my current job)
So Yahoo and the web dev agency are the only places I've worked over the last 26 years where my resume has mattered. Even then, at the web-dev agency I name-dropped one of people who'd hired me previously, and it impressed them, so who knows how much my resume really mattered there either.