Viewing profile — cwilbur

A beautiful theory. However, the bean counters and glad-handers who stand between you and a paycheck often ask difficult but irrelevant question, and if you don't worry about expla…

I have two experiences here that may be relevant. Some years ago I was in a comparable position, only I was working full-time at a salaried job when I was approached to be a partne…

A good programmer who can find a job in an urban market can earn $120K a year. But there are a lot of programmers who can't find jobs, and that puts significant downward pressure o…

I've taught introductory computer programming in Scheme and Pascal. (I think I just dated myself.) And I find myself concurring with this. People who taught themselves to program o…

Bzzzt. Bad use of statistics, because it's not a matter of chance. The ideas that fit best with YC's ideas of what a Y Combinator startup should look like and look like they have t…

If your lawyer okays it, then it's fine. If you don't have a lawyer, why are you asking us? Ask your lawyer. Honestly, the questin is like asking "Is it okay to copy code from anot…

No, it means that building the site is not sufficient, no matter how wonderful it is, and no matter how much people who use it love it -- you also need to find a way to tell people…

If you think you'll be unhappy doing the actual work that you'll be doing when you take the job, the job isn't worth it. There's no difference between being employee #9 or being em…

One of the things you must realize to make sense of a lot of PG's advice is that the default business model for YC companies is to build a promising product so that venture capital…

Right, but stupid business types don't distinguish between "web startup" and "non-web startup." You might be able to make headway by talking about core competencies and business ex…

Even then! I've seen programmers read the code, get it wrong, and rewrite it in a way that introduces bugs. Hell, I've been that programmer. It's clear, it's readable, it's concise…

I'm talking about the ability to go to the doctor routinely, to get things like vaccinations and annual checkups. The government doesn't make you do sensible things elsewhere, but …

The core of your business should be in-house. If the technology sits at the core of your business -- as it does for most web companies -- then outsourcing it is foolish. If your bu…

If I wanted to be called by strangers from YC, I'd put my phone number in my profile.

No, a hacker would implement someone else's ideas if the ideas were interesting to implement and possible. If a business guy has a vision that he shares with the hacker, the hacker…

I'm a really good programmer. I want to implement my vision. I have several visions that I want to implement right now, as a matter of fact, and they're all vying for time with eac…

Well, I've been talking to a couple business people about various startup stuff. One major thing I've noticed is that business people who don't have hacking experience do not have …

There's no evidence that reading the code and trying to make sure it is simple and straightforward improves the quality code, for that matter. The quality of the code is a combinat…

If you only count the initial development time as "development," writing tests will increase your development time. If you take a longer view, and consider maintenance and later de…

Seconded. In the past year I've wound up visiting the hospital twice for things that were, in the words of my doctor, "total random flukes" -- not lifestyle related, could have hap…

What the lack of socialized health care in the United States means is that instead of the government paying a little bit for preventative and maintenance care, the government pays …

Depends on what the monthly plan is like. $100 is more than I've spent on my current cell phone in the year I've had it. The iPhone would have to be really sweet to justify spendin…

Here's your fundamental problem. It's a logical fallacy. You observe that a good employee is likely to have a high IQ. From this, you conclude that a bad employee is likely to have…

Because they realize that there's more to happiness than money, especially in a job where you spend at least 1/3 of your waking time?

There's no evidence one way or another, because there's no clear objective definition of "a good employee." For some of the jobs I've had, a willingness to think independently and …