Who Y Combinator Companies Want • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#411

Post by RodericDay » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #168

ammon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of a real work test is much higher, both to the company, and to the applicant. Some companies take that approach (weebly for one), but it means that some of the best programmer will not apply, and it only makes worse the problem of having to aggressively pre-filter (based on credentials, or something else). You are 100% correct that most research into interviewing has show it to be far less predictive than c…

The best programmers do apply. Whatever you think a work-hire test is, that wasn't it. A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. It's a chance to demonstrate their skill. It's also far better: anything is better than the fake contests they're currently forced to endure. Which would you prefer? Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app, or spend…

I don't know if I'm a "best programmer", but I definitely enjoy "add a little feature to our fake app" tests.

A friend of mine's company usually sends out a little canvas-based browser paint app with a bunch of features, and asks them to implement a few things, like flood fill. It's really enjoyable.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#412

Post by acjohnson55 » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

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've found in the past that companies are pretty willing to work with me and let me split interview day between two days. It's worth asking.

But just to undermine that point, I've also learned that it's quite complex to try to juggle multiple job interview processes with a day job, especially if you want to be able to make a choice with multiple offers on the table. It ended up working out for me this past time, but next time I'm ready to make a move (hopefully not for years!), I may just resign first, so I'd be able to devote my full attention to making the right move.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#413

Post by jholman » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 1:54 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #356

karmacondon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a top ten percent programmer who charges $137/hr then this whole discussion probably isn't oriented at you. By definition, most programmers are not in the top ten percent. They make money by sitting down and writing code, not by projecting confidence and machismo. So why shouldn't they prove their abilities and evaluate the company and it's general environment by sitting down and actually coding? I'm very o…

Because you shouldn't work for free . That holds true for writers, that holds true for artists, that holds true for web designers, and that holds true for programmers. And unlike those other professions, the creative has the power in this relationship. What these companies hate admitting but all know is true is that even a mediocre programmer, a sit-down-and-write-code programmer, needs these companies more than the…

Most professionals do work for free, in small amounts relative to the amount of money at stake. If you clearly only need 2 hours of lawyer time, you pay for both of those hours. But if you're talking about maybe hiring a lawyer to do something complicated for you, the lawyer will give you an hour or two of time for free, in which they will use their professional expertise (i.e. do work) to assess whether or not your case will benefit from their services. But maybe you think law is a situation where the client has the power in the relationship? No worries, accountants do that too, as do architects and building contractors, as do SaaS companies, as do.... basically, as do members of every industry where the customer isn't obviously a penny pincher (i.e. retail sales does not do this).

You made this exact case yourself in a related comment, in which you called meeting people business development. I agree there's a non-zero distinction here between work-hire-test and consulting-about-consulting, but claiming that the issue is that "you shouldn't work for free" is misleading.

Also, you suggest that if they pay, that costs them instead of costing you. It already costs them more to interview than it costs you. But sure, if making sure they don't get any benefit out of their relationship with you unless you get benefit too, tell them you'll only do a work-hire if they make a donation to the EFF in the value of your hourly rate.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#414

Post by eldavido » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 1:54 AM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #81

throwaway456789 wrote: post #63

I'm an "enterprise" programmer because I write in Java... I'm also older than the average age of a start-up employee (late twenties). I've never written a line of Ruby, and I've never written object oriented JavaScript or used Node.js. However, I'm a really good programmer. I just happen to write the majority of my code in Java. If tomorrow we decided to use a new language, I could pick it up in a few days... I have…

I think age-ism is part of it. However, being an Enterprise dev myself (kind of), I feel that Startups don't think Enterprise devs "move" fast enough. They are too busy abstracting things and trying to get to the holy grail of the "perfect" architecture. Startups don't necessarily care about that right away, but enterprise devs have been steeped in it.

Yeah well, that depends on whether you're used to working on a mature project with lots of structure and process (and usually, customers) or something newer where you're more in POC mode.

I'd favor someone who could do either but I guess if you have to pick one or the other I'd take "hack and ship" over "let's make it perfect", especially considering the second probably has lots of great options at BigCo.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#415

Post by hox » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:06 AM UTC

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…

Wow. Really? Why is stability a concern? Much of engineering is making solid decisions and fucking sticking with them rather than changing to the latest toolset because that's what hacker news says is the best today. Are you trying to build a product and company, or a blog post?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#416

Post by eropple » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:07 AM UTC

jholman wrote: post #413

eropple wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you shouldn't work for free . That holds true for writers, that holds true for artists, that holds true for web designers, and that holds true for programmers. And unlike those other professions, the creative has the power in this relationship. What these companies hate admitting but all know is true is that even a mediocre programmer, a sit-down-and-write-code programmer, needs these companies more than the…

Most professionals do work for free, in small amounts relative to the amount of money at stake. If you clearly only need 2 hours of lawyer time, you pay for both of those hours. But if you're talking about maybe hiring a lawyer to do something complicated for you, the lawyer will give you an hour or two of time for free, in which they will use their professional expertise (i.e. do work) to assess whether or not your…

> But if you're talking about maybe hiring a lawyer to do something complicated for you, the lawyer will give you an hour or two of time for free, in which they will use their professional expertise (i.e. do work) to assess whether or not your case will benefit from their services.

Of course. That's the sit-down-and-chat "interview". But lawyers don't draft up a contract for you to demonstrate that they can write up a contract to your satisfaction. If you want a lawyer's expertise applied concretely to something of your direction, you pay. And while lawyers do have bar exams, they don't have a very detailed demonstration of their work up on Lawhub for your perusal!

> I agree there's a non-zero distinction here between work-hire-test and consulting-about-consulting, but claiming that the issue is that "you shouldn't work for free" is misleading.

I think it's misleading only if you consider the beneficiary of that work to be the same in both cases. I don't. The only beneficiary of every work-sample test I've ever been given was the company--it goes into some black hole and whether it was even good or not, to say nothing of any actionable feedback, has literally-literally never been forthcoming. On the other hand, I have very rarely not benefited in some way from sitting down and chatting with a technical leader at a company, whether it was directly about their problems (or their solutions!) or about tech in general. Both in a consulting-about-consulting capacity and an interview one.

> Also, you suggest that if they pay, that costs them instead of costing you. It already costs them more to interview than it costs you.

In an absolute sense, it definitely costs them more. In a relative one, it emphatically does not: they've got plenty of bodies that can parallelize. I can be interviewing with them, or I can be working, or I can be mopping my bathroom floor. I can't be doing all of those things at once.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#417

Post by jholman » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #276

LordHumungous wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>How unfortunate why? Is it unreasonable to ask a candidate to know CS101? Not at all. For a junior position. But that's a difference of opinion with which we may have to live. For more experienced candidates, I'd be far more interested in what they've done to apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios. I need them to be able to do more than hypotheticals. >I would never work for a company that didn't ask engineer…

It is a protected term here (in Canada), and it is not in the US.

For example, in 2001, Microsoft apparently agreed that in Canada, they would only use the acronym "MCSE", and not spell it out, because holding an MCSE does not make you an engineer.

I think it's amusing and cute that American developers call themselves engineers. It's not like they take on the ethical responsibilities that engineers do. But when in Rome, speak Romansh. Or however that goes.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#418

Post by asmdb » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

ammon wrote: post #321

steven2012 wrote: post #288

What is the point of interviewing through TripleByte and going through their interview process, if I just have to interview with the YC company again? It's something I would completely avoid. I already know that almost 100% of the companies I send my resume to will respond, so what is the point of adding another set of interviews, which as the article points out, only adds a random level of success.

Several reasons: 1) people who go through us skip the screening steps and go straight to a on-site interview at the YC companies. 2) We've sent a bunch of people to most of these companies, and have a good idea what they are looking for. We help you avoid failing interviews for the reasons mentioned in this article. 3) Perhaps you have no trouble getting responses to your resume, but a lot of (strong) programmers do.…

I went through the initial TripleByte process earlier this year but was rejected. I passed the initial multiple choice programming test, but I failed miserably at the 1 hour programming exercise. I actually found the problem to be one of the more difficult algorithm type problems I've encountered in an interview situation. I am curious if the problems chosen by Triplebyte are representative of the typical types of questions for YC company interviews? I can't imagine they all have identical pre-screening processes, so how do you choose representative problems?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#419

Post by mquander » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:09 AM UTC

soham wrote: post #150

Hi Ammon/Harj, Thank you for that effort and laying it out. Very helpful. Just so the readers don't miss the context: By definition, most companies referred here, I'm guessing, are startups. And startups will definitely want more product-focused engineers, in order to keep moving fast. Interviewing in general, is closer to a date, than it's to a standardized test. The smaller the company is, the more pronounced that…

When I was a Director of Engineering at Box, the engineering team was tasked with hiring 25 engineers in a single quarter. For several quarters. When hiring at that scale, it's hard to hire based on personas and elaborate preferences.

I just watched another startup in the same reference class grow at a similar speed, and I don't believe you. Suppose it takes 20 interview loops to hire one very good engineer, and each loop takes on average 10 engineer-hours. That's 200-engineer-hours per new hire, or about one engineer-month. That means if you have 100 engineers at Box (correct me if I'm way off base here, but 25 on 100 in a quarter sounds like a reasonable fast growth) you can hire 25 new engineers in a quarter while spending only 10% of your total labor recruiting.

The reason this doesn't usually work is because most engineers don't spend 10% of their time helping with recruiting. That is in my opinion an unforced error. They should.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#420

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:11 AM UTC

throwaway456789 wrote: post #111

ScottBurson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I read your post I missed the parenthetical in the first paragraph, and was inclined to agree with you. Then I looked again and saw "(late twenties)", and had to laugh. On the one hand, you're right, you can't learn everything. On the other, to be able to realistically claim that you can pick up new languages quickly, you should already know three or four different kinds of languages. If all you know i…

I am pigeonholed. Sure I know other languages: Shell Scripting, Perl, HTML/CSS/JS, Groovy, SQL, C#, etc, but 80 percent of the code I write is in Java. I'm at a Java shop and have golden handcuffs. It's Java or bust for me.

[deleted]