[tixocloud]

Might be talking to the wrong startups but also might be dealing with leaders who lack vision.

Spend time to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are with those "fresh graduates". As a startup founder, I would take a 10x engineer any day. Fresh grads bring great energy and enthusiasm but experienced heads make sure my business is going to make the simple mistakes.

Don't sell yourself short. You're definitely valuable to any organization (startup or otherwise) as you've seen the best and worst of both worlds. You're an incredible asset.

[ryanmarsh]

Having worked at and hired in both startups and the enterprise the startup cop-out is to stereotype someone with an enterprise background and expect them to behave just like an enterprise, bureaucratically. This is a major fear within startups because they often don't have the spare time/energy to reshape someone's mindset. It's unfortunate and leads to a lot of skipped candidates but expediency !== efficiency.

There comes a stage in each successful startup when they start looking for adult supervision and explicitly seek enterprise experience. If you are looking for early stage work you should make it obvious that you get the startup's space and have a fast-execution mindset.