I couldn't help noticing that "Strong Junior Programmer" stands out from the rest. It as a category suffers from juxtaposition with "Child Prodigy Programmer". The "Strong" prefix sounds like a meaningless qualifier that only serves to blunt the label of "Junior". I have to guess that the reason companies select out of this category is that the candidates are perhaps not qualified.
Who Y Combinator Companies Want
171–180 of 552 posts
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no strong noes This is the problem. It allows one interviewer with a pet peeve to torpedo an otherwise excellent hire. Where I work, whoever ends up on the wrong side of the majority needs to make a case good enough to convince the majority to switch. Being strongly in the minority is not good enough. The culture of accepting high false negative rates leads to the "no weaknesses" hiring the GP was complaining about…
Yeah, I totally agree. We actually asked YC Companies about their fire rates. The fire rate at most of the companies was under 6% (documenting a high false negative rate approach)
This seems really low in an environment where the consequences of firing are minimal in terms of legal and financial cost (even for the employee, who can probably quickly find another job in this industry). Is this rate much lower for programmers than for other functions? Do you think that's because programmers tend to be nice people and firing someone is highly confrontational?
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#173> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
You forgot the part where, for every $100k you earn, a vacation day that you spend interviewing costs you $240 after taxes because you don't get that paid out when you quit. Or get to use it vacationing, which I value rather higher than $240/$100k since I get so few of those days.
So it's an expensive, stressful, crappy experience. Weird I don't want to do it speculatively, eh?
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the "no" pile right off the bat. The problem is that those candidates, in my experience, tend to throw up way more red flags than others - their code is extremely verbose, they rattle off factory patterns like they're reading a textbook without any inkling what sort of problems they're actua…
It's funny you say that. I can't name one factory pattern off the top of my head... Never needed to learn one. I should clarify -- I'm in my late twenties, and I've spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code. I don't understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.
Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you're all talk. You say you're a great programmer, and could learn to program in Ruby in a few days, yet in 10 years you've never done it, even though you are apparently applying for jobs that are interested in that skill.
If you can't even bother with learning the language that's requested in the advert in a few days, why should a hiring manager be interested in you?
I'm also in my late twenties, and have been programming for money for over 10 years and I also like to brag about how I'm a great programmer and am fluent in over a dozen programming languages, but you bet that if I'd go for a job that requests Node.JS experience (I wouldn't), I'd brush up on my Node.JS and make sure my resume lists it as a core competency. You can't just go around saying you're a great programmer and expect people to believe it from ten years of Java experience.
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#175"Two large YC companies (both with machine learning teams) have told us that they consider interest in ML a negative signal." I wonder why this is? Since ML/AI are currently "hot" those programmers may be trend followers? Or maybe interest in ML is correlated with being a junior programmer (those that are more senior specialized when ML/AI were not so cool and consequently are in different domains)?
Most likely because if you are doing ML and do not have a PhD (or previous experience), you are just looking at calling a library function that you do not understand. The majority of 'machine learning meetups' (not in the Bay Area), are attended by programmers that are looking to figure out how to call an R package to give them recommendations or similar items in a list (clustering). edit I just read the other replie…
>Most likely because if you are doing ML and do not have a PhD (or previous experience), you are just looking at calling a library function that you do not understand.
I'm assuming that's your interpretation of the industry mindset, and not a view you personally hold.
IMO it's a naive assumption, and it would be trivial to test for it in an interview.
I have an interest in ML for a specific domain, no PhD, and it wouldn't cross my mind to try to use it as a set of shrink-wrapped library functions.
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#176> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
It's not only the applicants who have limited time. The startup founders are also time constrained. You can't found a successful startup if you spend 10+ hours a week interviewing potential employees. I suspect much of the initial bias and "hard line" preferences are due to a startup's unwillingness to spend inordinate amounts of time interviewing candidates to find that one diamond in the rough. Imagine 4 of every 1…
[deleted]
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#177I'm an "enterprise" programmer because I write in Java... I'm also older than the average age of a start-up employee (late twenties). I've never written a line of Ruby, and I've never written object oriented JavaScript or used Node.js. However, I'm a really good programmer. I just happen to write the majority of my code in Java. If tomorrow we decided to use a new language, I could pick it up in a few days... I have…
I think a lot of companies want to hire people who also have programming as a hobby. It seems if this was true it would be very unlikely that someone would be a seasoned great programmer who only ever programmed in one language. I'd be curious why this candidate never wanted to try other styles/approaches.
Requiring programming in off-hours is pretty nuts, but in general if you're in a huge-stability big-corp programming job you're not going to be changing tools often and that will have consequences when you want to be hired at a startup.
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#178I'd really like to know what it is about a resume or in an interview that makes someone seem like more of a 'product programmer'. Is it the particular things they have worked on at other jobs, i.e. their experience, or is it the way they talk about what they want to build? I'd be really interested to hear how I can make myself sound like more of a product programmer.
Use white space and minimal typeface variation in all your written materials. Describe past work in terms of what was made, not tech used to make it. Relegate tech buzzwards to a minimal "skills" section of your resume. Use the words "make," "things," and "world" liberally. Say you got into programming to make the things that you wanted to see in the world. Have examples of things, especially small things, that a non…
Don't forget to make sure your minimal skills section includes at least one language or framework that requires a Mac to use.
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#179> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
I've made the mistake in the past of overcommitting myself to interviewing with multiple companies at once. The time commitment wasn't the worst part, the real factor I didn't for see is that interviewing is stressful and mentally exhausting. On top of the interview itself, there's the hours of studying you have to put in. It's extremely hard to do while doing your full time job. Now I have a rule that I will intervi…
I interview with whomever actually responds to me. :|
Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience in the Bay Area, jobs fall into one of three categories: 1) No paid vacation at all 2) 15-25 days of vacation a year 3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2.
2) 15-25 days of vacation a year Really? 25 days is 5 weeks; I feel like the standard for PTO is 10-15 days, and often it's 10 days, but you get bumped up to 15 after you work at a place for a year or two. 3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2. Is that really true? I have very limited first-hand experience; only two of my employers have offered unlimited vacation. For one of them, it was a…
Come to the Uk, 20 days is minimum, 25 is fairly common, plus 8 bank holidays. Sick days are extra, not taken out of holiday.
Usual disclaimers about not every company etc.