Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Y Combinator Companies Want

data.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 552 posts

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#261

Post by dang »

tinco wrote: post #174
throwaway456789 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you're all talk.

We ask people to avoid this kind of personal slight in HN comments because it inevitably lowers the discussion. You can make a substantive point without resorting to that, so please do.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#262

Post by jakub_g »

throwaway456789 wrote: post #116
sgarman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never understood why that was a prerequisite. I program for 60 hours a week. So what if I don't want to do it on the weekends too.

Depending on your situation, maybe you could try to push some new technologies to your current company? (could be hard, depends what company, I guess you work in finance, well that's double hard then)

Anyway, personal anecdote: I know a guy who was a Java programmer for almost a decade, in a Java-heavy corporate environment. The company's been also investing in frontend for a while. Being bored with Java development, he learnt JS, and started following angularjs (stackoverflow, github issues etc.) in his spare time (a bit in the morning, a bit in the evening, just regularly), and within a year, with the support of a senior manager, basically became a "free-electron" angular evangelist inside the company.

The transition was pretty fluent, now he works on angular-related stuff full-time.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#263

Post by B1gred »

tmarthal wrote: post #147
cogware wrote: post #3

"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…

I am a statistician working in the data sciences. I see lots of programmers show interest but do not have the depth of knowledge in mathematics and statistics. They can apply libraries and do 80% fine but do not have the educational background to side step assumptions and pitfalls.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#264

Post by lewisl9029 »

As a "Product Programmer" myself, I find it highly ironic that despite the fact that there is apparently more demand for product-focused developers than technical-focused ones, the interview process for most startups is overwhelmingly technical-focused.

If you're looking for product-focused developers, please consider tuning your interview process to evaluate whether or not candidates can build great products, rather than following the herd and grilling them on obscure algorithms and data-structure problems, which has a rather high chance of weeding out the kinds of product-focused developers that you're looking for in the first place.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#265

Post by noarchy »

quanticle wrote: post #257
noarchy wrote: post #238

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. 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 re…

>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.

The last time I had to write anything on a whiteboard in an interview, it was a data model relating to the work I'd be doing. I felt it was relevant to the process, at the time. If it weren't I'd feel like my valuable time (as well as theirs) was being wasted. But I suppose this comes down to what a company wants. If they just want people who are generally smart, and can be ramped up on the company's tech stack, fair enough. But some companies need to hire people who can hit the ground running. Much of my contracting has been done on such a basis.

>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.

Your portfolio need not be only Github work. Barring an NDA, you can certainly discuss your professional work. In fact, I want to be asked about it during my interviews, as it forms the basis of my experience (which in theory is a big part of why I'm there in the interview room!).

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#266

Post by noarchy »

quanticle wrote: post #257
noarchy wrote: post #238

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. 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 re…

>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.

The last time I had to write anything on a whiteboard in an interview, it was a data model relating to the work I'd be doing. I felt it was relevant to the process, at the time. If it weren't I'd feel like my valuable time (as well as theirs) was being wasted. But I suppose this comes down to what a company wants. If they just want people who are generally smart, and can be ramped up on the company's tech stack, fair enough. But some companies need to hire people who can hit the ground running. Much of my contracting has been done on such a basis.

>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.

Your portfolio need not be only Github work. Barring an NDA, you can certainly discuss your professional work. In fact, I want to be asked about it during my interviews, as it forms the basis of my experience (which in theory is a big part of why I'm there in the interview room!).

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#267

Post by LordHumungous »

noarchy wrote: post #230
LordHumungous wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data structures and algorithms mostly. Most companies will ask you to solve those types of questions. >If I'm interviewing, I expect to be asked about previous projects, maybe my Github portfolio, and so on. Oh. Well you are in for a big surprise if you interview at 90% of tech companies.

Maybe where you are (and how unfortunate). But in a decade-plus of doing this, I haven't been asked things like that since I was trying to find my first job in software development. At that point, asking CS 101 questions made sense, since I didn't have much in the way of products shipped, and so forth.

How unfortunate why? Is it unreasonable to ask a candidate to know CS101? I would never work for a company that didn't ask engineer candidates those questions.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#268

Post by arethuza »

shimon wrote: post #155
throwaway456789 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you worked at multiple jobs over those 10 years? As a hiring manager (working with only the limited data you've provided here) I'd be concerned that you value stability very highly, and you might be thrown by the rate of change (in requirements, tools used, business goals, desired feature set, etc) that is typical of a startup. Long tenure at a single job suggests you enjoy getting deeply specialized and develop…

"Would you be excited to learn a few new toolsets?"

I suspect by the 3rd or 4th time in the same year with people who haven't worked out what it is they are trying to achieve my level of excitement might be wearing a bit thin.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#269

Post by AnimalMuppet »

s_kilk wrote: post #46
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…

>> have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard) Wait, what? Is it really this bad in the States?

My current place (not in the Bay Area) gives 18 days after 4 years (I forget what it is before that).

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#270

Post by cableshaft »

api wrote: post #203
pc86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so bad that I've actually heard people advise startups to pass on some enterprise revenue if they can afford it (pass on REVENUE!) if it might lead them down an "enterprisey" path, since doing so would in the end result in a systematically inferior product. Yes, because it's much better to have an architecturally pure product nobody uses than something generating millions in recurring revenue.

It depends on the situation. It's bad to forego millions in recurring revenue, but it's not bad to forego smaller gains if you have a vibrant business in other areas and if those smaller gains require that you go down a path that will ultimately make your product a loser in the marketplace. This is why Apple shuns "enterprise." They value user experience. Exposing UX to enterprise development priorities and methodolo…

Apple shuns enterprise, huh? http://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/

I've worked for startups and I've worked for enterprise apps, and at least the enterprise apps I've worked on actually got used by a good number of people. Some of the startup apps I worked on completely failed to find their audience precisely because someone in charge was making it all up as they went along and didn't base anything on what customers actually wanted.

I tried to do the best I could in that situation, and sometimes managed to convince myself that the apps would find their audience, but the artificial specifications can exist equally in both domains.

And the startup arena was the only place where I saw the client/producer completely flip flop on how a feature should be designed multiple times in a single week, based on whatever article they read or dream they had the night before, and then get all pissed why I wasn't already halfway done with their brand new vision they just told me two minutes ago.

It can go both ways. At least the enterprise apps had a mechanism where the users could provide feedback, and had a definite audience and need that needed fulfilled.

Post reply on HN