No offense taken! I only push the kids to get proper nutrition and sleep :) rest is their choice. She was applying for summer internships. I explained to her that open source might be a better way to get experience, and we looked into mentorship, which is how this thread started...
Good luck fixing that bug you don't have as much context on as an engineer who is familiar with that part of the code, while mentally preparing for the investor presentation on the same day.
Having seen dozens of code bases, products, and failed startups, the number one trait a good VPE or CTO should have is to vehemently prevent over engineering and accidental complexity - via coaching the tech leads, doing design reviews as needed, and making decisions and tradeoffs.
She should have strong opinions on how code should be organized for simplicity, but she should not code. If she can enforce good naming conventions and APIs, she is gold.
First of all, you don't need to be likeable by dozens of people in order to be a founder. In fact most founders are not likeable.
Second, even if you are generally likeable, you cannot engage everyone in the audience from a stage.
Third, if you want to find be a co-founder, identify specific people with missions you care about and spend a lot of time brainstorming the problem and potential solutions and get a sense for their intelligence, energy, and integrity before you sign up for building a company with them which can take years and has a very low probability of success.
Start contributing to open source projects you like, and write blog posts on topics you learn about.
Then reach out to engineering leaders at growth stage startups. They are always resource constrained. And generally speaking they hire for potential at the entry levels based on demonstrated passion for coding and systems design via Github and/or blogs.
And yes, fix your resume with the other tips in this thread.
Unless they make you a founder and give you say 5% to 33% of the company, quit.
It makes no sense to get a 1% equity when you are making the same sacrifices and taking the same risk as them. They may say they are able to raise money, but you are able to build the product. And unless the product reaches product-market fit, there is no business and no company.
You could be working at 100 other well-funded or established companies and learning a lot and making a lot. Do not underestimate yourself.
No generic answer to this but one way to think about it is over the long term would you value more depth (expert in something) or breadth (freedom to explore everything)?
If you value depth, specialize. In an industry (e.g security, healthcare, finance, etc.) or field (AI, distributed systems, scaling, etc.) You'll get intellectual satisfaction, emotional satisfaction if you intrinsically care about the space (e.g healthcare), and financial upside since people value specialization.
If you value breadth and wandering, generalize. You'll still get intellectual satisfaction from knowing a variety of things, emotional satisfaction from working on things you care w/o any industry constraints, and financial upside since generalists are valuable to startups and even though their failure rate is high, being in the right company at the right time could give you the same financial upside you'd get from say being at a large company in a specialized field.
I personally chose to speciailize because I value depth and find diving deep into a field more meaningful. I know many generalists with the same amount of experience who are doing equally well and I would hire them and value them in the same way if I built a company again.