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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#251

Post by thaumasiotes »

Swizec wrote: post #242
ammon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I thought that sillysaurus3 was talking about a work trial period (days or a week), but it seems they are talking about asking question during that interview that are similar to actual work. I retract me objection :) If only it were that easy. I am not at all opposed to work-trial tests. They are almost certainly more accurate. But a high percentage of programmer will never apply to a company that requires one.…

If you're getting paid for a week of work, you can take a week of unpaid vacation from your day job. No vacation days burned. No money lost.

Huh? You can't just take unpaid vacation because you feel like it.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#252

Post by jenshoop »

lackbeard wrote: post #127
random_coder wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain a little? Did your friend mean that talented engineers like working on novel problems and companies facing hard problems are thus more attractive?

I read jenshoop to mean: when recruiting, describe in some technical depth, the difficult, unique problems your company is solving to build its product(s).

Spot on lackbeard ^^

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#254

Post by lukasm »

ryandrake wrote: post #8

> "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…

wow, I had no idea that there is no paid vacation time in US. The only country in the world. What about unpaid time off? Now I know why I hear about burnout from US developers.

EDIT: After few minutes with Google.

> USA: There is no statutory minimum. It is left to the employers to offer paid vacation days as part of the compensation and benefits package.[67] According to one survey, 98% of employers offer at least some paid leave to their employees; full-time employees earn between 6 and 20 vacation days at 86% of employers surveyed.[68] About 96% of surveyed employers give their employees paid time off during public holidays,[68] typically 6 per year.[69] Some employers offer no vacations at all.[68] The average number of paid vacation days offered by private employers is 10 days after 1 year of service, 14 days after 5 years, 17 days after 10 years, and 19 days after 20 years

> European Union legislation mandates that all 28 member states must by law grant all employees a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation

> Sweden: Employees are entitled to 25 work days of annual leave. Sweden also has 11 public holidays and a few that may or may not be half days.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#255

Post by eropple »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #125
eropple wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Before I went into independent consulting, five weeks was a non-negotiable point for me. And I largely went into consulting specifically to take more time off. Life's too short.

Exactly. EXACTLY! I'm not going to lay on my death bed and wish I had another couple lines of code committed.

...Are you looking? ;) Email's in my profile.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#256

Post by jakub_g »

throwaway456789 wrote: post #200
tinco wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

Who ever said I was interviewing for a job? I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole. Read some of the comments (and the article). The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn' write tests. Hiring is so subjective. This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state o…

Well with this kind of compensation, wherever you live, if you needed to find a new job I guess you could probably survive a month or two without a paycheck, learn a new language and do a pet project, contribute to open source.

Of course when you work full time, 60h/week, and don't want to resign from current job while seeking a new one, it's pretty hard, but I can assure you it's as hard for anyone else working full time.

Learning new tech stack in spare time is not easy, and you can't and shouldn't learn all of them, 'cause in a few years half of the stuff you learn today will be obsolete.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#257

Post by quanticle »

noarchy wrote: post #238
jcadam wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people are really doing this. It's stupid, but to not do so puts you at a competitive disadvantage against other candidates. Competition for programming jobs is fierce. It is not enough to be able to implement quicksort. One must have the algorithm thoroughly memorized so that it can be scrawled onto the whiteboard in one smooth motion of the dry-erase pen. If you pause to say "hmm..." while re-deriving quicksor…

>Yes, people are really doing this. It's stupid, but to not do so puts you at a competitive disadvantage against other candidates. Competition for programming jobs is fierce. I'm suspecting that this is a "Valley" thing, would that be wrong? >It is not enough to be able to implement quicksort. One must have the algorithm thoroughly memorized so that it can be scrawled onto the whiteboard in one smooth motion of the d…

It's not a "Valley" thing. It's a tech. company thing. I've never interviewed in the Bay Area, but pretty much every interview I've had has asked me to write algorithms on a whiteboard.

>If someone has years of experience in their field and a strong portfolio

Well, the problem is that quite a lot of programmers don't have portfolios outside of work. I certainly don't. I mean, I have a Github, true, but there's not really anything on there except for a bunch of half-finished experiments. Honestly, I don't have the energy to spend 8 hours a day immersed in programming, and then come home and spend one to two hours more building up my portfolio. Maybe that makes me a "bad" programmer, by some definitions.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#258

Post by ones_and_zeros »

ryandrake wrote: post #209
shimon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, tinkering in your off-hours is a key way for programmers to keep their skills current. The industry changes rapidly and the skills that were most marketable over the past 10 years are not the same as those that will be most marketable over the next 10. If you're not changing jobs constantly, the rate of tech change at your workplace is unlikely to be enough to keep your skills marketable. So you need t…

Why is this not true in other professions? Why don't hospitals give preference to surgeons who like to dissect frogs in their spare time or build better scalpels on their garage workbench?

I know you are being rhetorical but to those that don't know it's because surgeons have a proper profession that protects surgeons from management/lobbyists/politicians etc bossing them around.

Software developers don't have such protection and any mention of such a thing will get you blackballed within the industry by employers and ostracized by peers as most have bought in to the narrative that cooperating is bad for the individual.

However, my SO is a physician and they spend A LOT of time on skill mastery beyond med school and residency, however, their keeper is their profession, not their employer which is a major difference.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#259

Post by quanticle »

lukasm wrote: post #254
ryandrake wrote: post #8

> "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…

wow, I had no idea that there is no paid vacation time in US. The only country in the world. What about unpaid time off? Now I know why I hear about burnout from US developers. EDIT: After few minutes with Google. > USA: There is no statutory minimum. It is left to the employers to offer paid vacation days as part of the compensation and benefits package.[67] According to one survey, 98% of employers offer at least s…

There is no mandated minimum level of paid vacation time in the US. Most companies do offer some paid vacation time, but it varies from company to company (and even employee to employee, depending on negotiation skills).

As far as unpaid time off, culturally, the amount of paid vacation time you get at a company is assumed to be the maximum amount of time off you can take in the normal course of matters without putting your job at risk. Normally people only ask for unpaid time off if there's some exigent event that they have to take care of (health issues, family issues, etc.).

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#260

Post by Swizec »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #251
Swizec wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're getting paid for a week of work, you can take a week of unpaid vacation from your day job. No vacation days burned. No money lost.

Huh? You can't just take unpaid vacation because you feel like it.

Can't you? Your only obligation to the company is the time they pay you for. The time they don't pay you for is yours.
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