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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#341

Post by brianchu »

tdaltonc wrote: post #78
NhanH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, on the taxonomy of programmers, is that supposed to be mostly exclusive, or can they overlap?

Not the author, but I know about ontologies generally. Non-overlapping is great, but rarely possible because whatever you're trying to organize might not divide up that way. Next best is eigenvectors. You would find the "pure types" of programer such that each real programer would a linear composition of the pure types. This is really handy for doing statistics. But you might run in to trouble if programmers don't ha…

Bit of a nitpick, really, but you want a basis, not necessarily just a set of eigenvectors.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#342

Post by amyjess »

kelnos wrote: post #110
scarmig wrote: post #86

Earlier 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…

For very young companies, it's also typically a case of "we don't know how to write a handbook and policies, so we'll just wing it, make up our attendance policy as we go along, and approve people's vacations on a case-by-case basis".

Since it's a young company, most employees are indespensible, and without any written guarantee saying "you have X days of vacation a year", everyone is too afraid to even ask for any time off.

I worked for one of those. I'm glad I got out. Unfortunately, I landed at a company that's ridiculously stingy with PTO (10 vacation days, 8 holidays, 7 sick days -- this is slightly mitigated by the fact that you can make up hours you miss without using PTO, so I've done things where I leave early one day but stay late the next), however because company policy requires that employees take all our vacation days every year, at least I know what their expectations are. I took a vacation this year because I knew I had the days for it and so I just filled out our standard form and gave it to my boss, knowing it would be accepted. On the contrary, I didn't take a single vacation during my time at my previous employer, and in fact I never even asked for one, because we were bouncing from crisis to crisis, and I could just imagine my boss saying "are you crazy?".

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#343

Post by TranquilMarmot »

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…

Where have you interviewed that hasn't asked you to implement X algorithm by memory?!? I'd love to interview there!

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#344

Post by dang »

tinco wrote: post #296
dang wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I apologize. I did not intend it as a personal slight, I was trying to make a point about presentation to potential employers, but I misunderstood the parents point and phrased it in an unfortunate manner.

Not to worry! We're all figuring this out together.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#345

Post by vellum »

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…

http://www.stackoverflowcareers.com/blog/2014/05/20/getting-...

Try segmenting potential hires into different categories and using different strategies for each group. You should also clearly communicate the process, so they don't get the wrong idea.

>Additionally, the people who tend to drop off because of this extra effort tend to be senior applicants

Is this before or after the phone screen? If they think the work-hire test is going to be in addition to a phone screen and an on-site whiteboard session, they'll drop. If they're senior devs, you should be able to tell from their resumes. Do a phone screen, and if they pass, explain that they can either do a work-hire test or a whiteboarding session. Explain that the work-hire test should be doable in 4 hours, so they don't envision a week long project. Also explain that it's a substitute for the whiteboard portion of the on-site. People who tend to hate whiteboard coding will choose the work-hire test and vice versa.

If you're trying to find diamonds in the rough among junior talent, sending out a first-pass work-hire test might work. You'd still get better results if you explained that it was short and a substitute for the onsite whiteboard session.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#346

Post by thaumasiotes »

ammon wrote: post #339
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.

Perhaps you've changed your policy? I'm pretty sure that's how my first interview started off. When I asked how that fit in with the advertising of "get a job based on something other than your resume", the response was "well, companies do care about which other companies you've worked at".

After the second interview, I was given to Harj and he asked me about work history again...

(Also, since I applied through the project track, I don't think there was much in the way of "tell us about a project you've done in the past".)

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#347

Post by duderific »

zo1 wrote: post #308
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…

>" 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 quicksort on the spot, you will be branded as "slow" and obviously inferior to the candidate who spent three days bashing his/her head against an algorithms textbook. " If at an i…

It's quite difficult to come up with really good, unique interview questions. It's quite a bit easier to walk into the room, say "write a function that returns all the permutations of a string" and watch the candidate squirm. That's why most companies do that, it has nothing to do with trying to find candidates who can do the work at hand.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#348

Post by duderific »

georgemcbay wrote: post #98
s_kilk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, it is. Even worse than the fact that getting 2 weeks off is considered a pretty good amount of time, there's often lots of subtle pressure (that manifests itself implicitly in project planning) to not use it all at once. This pressure isn't universal, but I'd say the majority of the companies I've worked for hardly anyone ever took more than a week off in a go, and when they did it was the topic of uncomfortable…

Not to mention, people come to work sick all the time, so they don't use up their precious PTO days.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#349

Post by engi_nerd »

jcadam wrote: post #196
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'll use myself as an example -- I work as a programmer in the Defense industry. I've wanted out for years. So every so often I start sending out resumes and going on interviews. After wasting about half of my vacation time on (multiple) rounds of interviews with each prospective employer (that ultimately lead nowhere -- most often, a potential employer who inexplicably stops communicating with me), I give up. Then,…

The defense industry is strange. I've had three jobs in it. In every single interview, the most technical question that anyone ever asked me was, "What do you like to do on the weekends?"

And all three jobs have been engineering positions.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#350

Post by gotchange »

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…

Coding as part of the interview process is a reasonable request to ask from the applicant and I'm having hard time to understand your objection to this step.
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