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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#331

Post by shimon »

jakub_g wrote: post #282
ones_and_zeros wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I think average surgeon's skills are probably pretty sharp (pun intended), however, in my experience the knowledge of a regular small-town GP's indeed usually is not very up-to-date. Regarding the OP's question: new hip languages and frameworks evolve way faster than human body, and "it works" is more important in medicine than "iterate and fail fast" (hopefully:) My personal theory is also that partially the high ex…

I don't think software is all that exceptional in this regard. Any profession has certain visible achievements that distinguish its world-class members. For software, it's cool open source projects; for chefs, it's creating a great restaurant; for doctors, it's publishing influential novel research.

In each of these fields, the visible achievement isn't exactly the same as great performance in the field. You can get unlucky in scientific research and end up with nothing publishable; you can cook mediocre food but market it really well; or you can create the latest trendy build system instead of just mastering Gnu Make.

The misleading thing may be the assumption that most successful open source software projects are done by unpaid hackers on their own time. Perhaps that used to be the case, but many of the hot open source projects in recent history -- from Rails to Docker to React to Swift -- are built on the clock by successful programmers employed at big and small companies. But software is unusual in that serious contributions can be made by people without any institutional support.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#332

Post by vellum »

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…

This also depends on how clear the company is about the hiring process. A lot of companies have started using the coding projects before the resume screen, and then also throwing in an all-day whiteboard session. So when someone's been burned before, they're going to do a 180 when a company replies, "Do this project."

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#333

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

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)?

In addition to what's been said, I think that ML/AI, especially AI, attract people interested in the Big Question and aren't exactly detail people.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#335

Post by ammon »

Jemaclus wrote: post #20

Some companies reject people based on green card status, because they don't have the resources to sponsor them. Some companies have specific salary ranges, too. Are those factors considered during your analysis? You seem to be focusing primarily on what companies want, but sometimes what they want and what they can accept are two different things. Thoughts?

We asked about visa sponsorship. We did not ask about salary. The general pattern with visa sponsorship was that small companies don't want do it, out of concern about the success rate (only 30% of H1B applications last year won the lottery). Some large companies will sponsor visas, but they set a higher bar (they have to be really excited to take on the extra work). The exception is larger companies with teams outside of the US (several YC companies have offices in Canada) to take advantage of different immigration restrictions.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#336

Post by 20years »

moron4hire wrote: post #189

This is why I don't really interview my sub-contractors. If I run into someone at a meetup that I think seems smart, I ask them if they'd be interested in picking up a small project. If they accept, I... give them a small project. No resumes. No demeaning interrogation. Straight to work on something real. And I pay them.[0] If they do well, I give them another one. If they don't, I tell them I'm sorry but I don't hav…

Very cool! Wish more companies approached it like this.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#337

Post by ammon »

j2kun wrote: post #273

I am very interested in which of these companies are the outliers. What is the one company in the table that expressed a dislike for product-focused programmers? Which are the few that like academic programmers?

I can't give company names, but we've not seen much of a pattern. It really seems to have to do with the backgrounds of the founders, and who the early successful hires were. This sets an engineering culture going forward.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#338

Post by sillysaurus »

rowborg wrote: post #312
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do. I was going to bail from this thread, but it sounds like you see the great potential that this idea can have, if it can work. The truth is that it works. Okay then, one last try:

Set up a system that can spin up a droplet for a remote candidate. Any time a candidate expresses interest in your company, spin up an instance and email them a link to it.

What does the link do? That depends on your company. Are you making an iOS app? Then the link takes them to where they can download source code for a fake, hypothetical iOS app. It says "X, Y, and Z bugs exist. Find them and fix them. Then add a feature: here is a clear description of what to add."

When the candidate is done doing this, they zip up their code and send it back to you.

If it sounds way more effective to look at that than to look at resumes, it is. If it sounds like it will repel candidates, well... Two things. First, if you're chasing a specific developer, then that isn't really the normal hiring process. You want them already. This pipeline is for everyone else. It makes no sense to subject them to a work hire test when you're actively seeking them out.

Here's the other point. The type of candidates you will find with this method will shock you. They will be so skilled that it won't matter whether they're called a senior or fresh out of college. You'll know immediately that you want them.

Everything I've described up to this point is a remote process. There is no on-site work hire test. By the time they come on site, you're mainly checking they can show up, and telling them about your company. You're no longer trying to filter them based on ability; they already demonstrated it.

Let's say your company's website is the primary focus, not an iOS app. Ok. The link will take the candidate to a hypothetical, fake website built with a similar framework. Again, it will have multiple bugs and a missing feature. Tell them what the bugs are, and tell them what the feature needs to do. Then have them send you their code when they're done.

I feel like at this point no one will even try to do this. You can think of so many reasons not to try: it takes too much work, it will scare too many people off, it will... Etc.

These reasons turn out to be largely fake or mistaken. Try it. Invest the resources to build this pipeline, tell HN when it's ready, and you win.

If this sounds prohibitive or unlikely, remember how counter-intuitive the most effective techniques in life are. Penicillin was discovered by accident. It sounds pretty unlikely that it would work. Same deal here.

I've explained this as clearly as I can. It's up to everyone else to either try it or to watch others win after they try it. Because the filter I've explained is the only way to let talent find you.

The type of people you'll discover will range from passive people who found the process amusing, to well-off senior developers who are demonstrating why you should pay them X equity or Y salary, to high school dropouts who turn out to be one of the most valuable people that join your team.

I'm not even going to touch the topic of what tech companies currently do. It doesn't matter. I've described what works, and if whoever reads this suppresses their instincts and builds this, they will discover it's practically the key to winning.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#339

Post by ammon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #246

> We do our interviews without looking at resumes (in order to find great people who look bad on paper) They don't ask for a resume, but the first thing that comes up in the interview is "where have you worked in the past, and what did you do there?"

So, we ask at the beginning to talk about a programming project that you've done it in past, but not about where you've worked. We don't ask for a work history until the end (by which point the notes and scoring that go into the final decision are over). We ask at the end so that we have the data to write posts like this.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#340

Post by erichmond »

NhanH wrote: post #317
MCRed wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My guess is that he's referring to startups, not monstrous companies like Google.

I think the reason you whiteboard for google interviews because you will necessarily be a cog in a wheel, and the focus of the cog is to code.

At smaller companies / startups, you will potentially be expected to design, architect, gather requirements, code, etc.

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