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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#311

Post by curun1r »

silverpikezero wrote: post #140
ammon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Ageism is real, and we'll be analyzing it in a future post. But in this case I don't think it's ageism. I think it's big-company-ism. Startups define themselves in opposition to big companies, and take signs of big company culture as strong negatives (which may or may not be justified statistically, I honestly don't know). But there are great programmers at big companies in any case, and startups should…

Startups should realize that this is a thoroughly idiotic notion, and should abandon it ASAP. The one thing that large software companies do well is SHIP PRODUCTS. A good software engineer is someone who can ship a product, even if its ill-defined or not feature-complete. This is a virtue. Small companies, especially startups, have a horrible track record for shipping software that in any way resembles its product pl…

Which large companies have you worked for? I've worked in both environments and seen way more failed projects on the enterprise side.

However when an enterprise ships something, the shipped product tends to be more stable. There's tradeoffs to be made and large companies often prioritize stability and their reputation over time to market and spending money.

As a startup, I would look for people who have less specialized experience and are able to cover as many of my bases as possible. Can the developer field a page at 2am and login to the production environment to fix a problem? Can the developer help my sales people with a desktop support issue while the lone IT guy is on vacation? Can the developer make the product work on a single AWS micro instances until we get some sort of traction/funding?

The theme here is a scrappy, do-whatever-it-takes mindset that's often missing in the enterprise where people learn to CYA lest the bureaucracy come down on them for cutting corners.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#312

Post by rowborg »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #104
ammon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true. The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads. But this fact does nothing to help the good programmers who look bad on paper who everyone is ignoring. This is precisely the problem that we're trying to fix with Triplebyte. We want to make actual technical evaluatio…

The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads. Imagine how mistaken that would sound if you substitute "startup founders" for "programmers." The reason you feel company filters are anything except random noise is personal bias. It's disheartening that your article notices that company pref…

For purposes of discussion, let's take it as a given that a work-hire tests are the best way to screen candidates.

The effort required to administer an on-site work-hire test is non-zero, therefore I cannot administer such a test to every applicant.

I therefore need a way to determine who to bring on-site, in order to administer such a test. I cannot phone screen every single applicant due to the cost involved.

That process could also be a work-hire test of some sort (e.g. a remote coding project), but regardless of what has been said on this thread, many good applicants will drop off at this step. I know this empirically, because I've experienced it, many, many times.

Additionally, the people who tend to drop off because of this extra effort tend to be senior applicants, who often have multiple offers from multiple companies due to the competiveness of the current hiring market. It also disproportionately drives away passive candidates, who are often the best candidates, because the best candidates are often not looking for work (since they are good, people who have worked with them previously want to work with them again, and they get poached).

So I need some method of sourcing and filtering candidates down that is non-intrusive to both our development team AND the applicant. This is the reality. This simply has to happen in a startup's hiring pipeline.

Currently, most companies do this by looking at resumes. That is obviously sub-optimal.

Any suggestions for alternatives?

EDIT: spelling.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#313

Post by MCRed »

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 "Tech company thing" it's a "junior engineer who doesn't know how to interview" thing. It is an indicator of a low quality company. Seriously. This is my opinion after 25 years of interviews.

Ask the candidate "Tell me about a project you're passionate about". Find out why. Get them to explain a hard problem they solved. Get them to teach it to you so you understand it.

Find the candidate that can do that and that gives you a good answer and you find a candidate who is passionate about something and can communicate it and understood it well enough to relate it in detail to you on the spot. That's the one to hire.

not the one who memorized quick sort... the former can implement a new quicsort.... the other one will spend all his time on stack overflow asking others to do his work.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#314

Post by jmorrow977 »

runamok wrote: post #289
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…

I was thinking on this and thought I should start a company that: a. Pre-screens candidates on off-hours since they are likely already employed with a focus on keeping it brief out of respect for their time. b. Similarly match interviews at off-hours and perhaps moderate them to also not waste anybody's time. I am sure there are many people that would not like this but if hiring is difficult and they want to make it…

I'm also interested in this. Please email me at jmorrow977@gmail.com to discuss in private. Others are also welcome to contact me there about this.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#315

Post by zo1 »

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…

Well, "no government-mandated minimum of paid vacation days" is a more appropriate description of your observation, judging from your EU-findings.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#316

Post by throwaway456789 »

LordHumungous wrote: post #241
throwaway456789 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I should work in finance.

Yes. You should if you want to make a lot of money...

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#317

Post by NhanH »

MCRed wrote: post #309
brianchu wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a CS student and most students I know dislike whiteboarding too (and by extension many, if not most, YC startup employees do too). But I'm pretty okay at them now, having had lots of practice. The key advantage for students I think is the ability to have sustained practice over the course of a month (e.g. > 4 onsites over the course of a month), which most students can afford since their schedules are flexible. A…

IF they have you write code, think twice about taking the job. That's an indicator of a junior engineer conducting an interview in a company that didn't care enough to work out a good process. Seriously. I've been working for startups and starting companies for 26 years, and for half that time I've been building teams. I stopped asking people to code a long time ago. If they can't code it will be obvious by their ans…

I'm not trying to be pretentious here. But all big companies (Google etc.) I've interviewed so far asked me to code, what should I make of your advice?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#318

Post by jakub_g »

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…

> The root problem with enterprise is that products are often built to artificial specifications that someone made up, not to actual specifications learned through real use and feedback or that are shaped by underlying reality.

Sounds familiar. The previous app I worked on was so flexible and customizable via parameters, that in fact half of the bugs we've had were due to crappy configuration management process rather than actual code bugs.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#320

Post by RightWingRabble »

MCRed wrote: post #309
brianchu wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a CS student and most students I know dislike whiteboarding too (and by extension many, if not most, YC startup employees do too). But I'm pretty okay at them now, having had lots of practice. The key advantage for students I think is the ability to have sustained practice over the course of a month (e.g. > 4 onsites over the course of a month), which most students can afford since their schedules are flexible. A…

IF they have you write code, think twice about taking the job. That's an indicator of a junior engineer conducting an interview in a company that didn't care enough to work out a good process. Seriously. I've been working for startups and starting companies for 26 years, and for half that time I've been building teams. I stopped asking people to code a long time ago. If they can't code it will be obvious by their ans…

Are you in a position to name company names? Most everybody I interview with does this (at a minimum). I'd love to interview at a company that has a smarter system in place.
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