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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#491

Post by lifeisstillgood »

jholman wrote: post #409
swalsh wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"whiteboard hazing" there are two types of whiteboarding questions. The kind that's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask (i've had people ask me to develop some simple system... which I think is reasonable, because i'll do that as part of the job) but then there's the solve x algorithm questions. Which ultimately is an exercise in memorization. At this point I've just accepted that i'll have to do that.

The best argument for whiteboard algorithm questions is that they (to some degree) filter out people who think that whiteboard questions are "an exercise in memorization". I mean, whether or not the company actually values the underlying non-memorization skill is another question (as someone who is very strong in that skill, I think that most companies/roles do not have a use for that, and should not test for that).…

That last part is a book or course Inwould buy

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#493

Post by dang »

benihana wrote: post #398
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…

> Here's why: I made well over 400K this year at my job. I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need. My time away from work is too precious to me This is what makes you all talk. You say in other comments that you're a really good programmer and you express concern that people are passing on you. Then you make this post swinging your dick around saying how much you make and…

We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines, despite repeated requests not to. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban anyone as long as there is reason to believe that they'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#494

Post by DrScump »

a-dub wrote: post #360

When I look to hire a lawyer, I'm going to evaluate potential candidates by asking them to write statutes from memory in full on a whiteboard under time pressure, because I really want to see how well they think on their feet. As a forward thinking technology executive, I am certain this strategy is correct, because Google does it.

If you are going to hire a lawyer, you should be more interested in their knowledge of case law rather than how well they memorize statutes.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#495

Post by jphelan »

I had such a disappointing experience with Triplebyte. I take their automated test and everything is hunkydory. After that they gave me a very ambiguous technical interview live-coding session without an interviewer. It seemed like an unreleased feature or a trial a/b test variant. Even now I go back and they've removed every reference to a "programming challenge"!

Anyway, the problem involved writing a tree generation/traversal along with a little equation parser and a lot of string parsing (I think, at least). I was really uncomfortable because while it said "we will run this code" I didn't know what their expectations where (In what environment are they going to run the code? Is underscore ok? They said "you can't use built in eval" so do they really want me to write my own eval? Do they care if I look on stackoverflow for string parsing stuff?). I only had an hour for a difficult problem and I spent most of the time wondering what they really wanted and stressing out about little details that wouldn't consume ten seconds of thought on the job.

I've interviewed a lot and I'm pretty confident from a lot of experience whiteboarding code or typing up an answer on the spot in interviews, so this was very frustrating and I found it to be disrespectful of my time.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#496

Post by jamiewildehk »

vorg wrote: post #367
throwaway456789 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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... The languages in your list are: * declarative: HTML, CSS, Groovy (for Gradle), SQL * scripting: Shell, Perl, JS, Groovy (for testing) * Java-clones: C# I found it difficult to pick up Clojure and Haskell "in a few days" when all I had was experience in those types of languages. I…

I'm also working mostly in Java recently, and our project has a small amount of Scala (left over form and engineer long since gone). I am finding it really hard, on the rare occasions when I need to work on the Scala part, to get my head around it. I know I need a week or two to "get" Scala - but I just can't justify the time.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#497

Post by dragonwriter »

pkteison wrote: post #430
dragonwriter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 days paid time off is the de-facto standard for just about every company based in this country. Not to mention that tech industry firms are reputed to be more generous than what is otherwise common, that sounds really low even outside of the tech industry ; its lower than any company I've seen, and lower than what most sources I've seen indicate is common. [0] [0] e.g., http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.ht…

What's probably happening here is there are company-selected vacation days being left out of the number. You get to choose 10, but another 10 are picked by the company. I worked as a programmer at a big boring company which did this - 10 days of company holidays, 10 days of you-get-to-choose. It's a month off total, but you only have control over 2 weeks, so it's presented as 10 vacation days.

> What's probably happening here is there are company-selected vacation days being left out of the number.

The first source I linked provides actual averages for paid holidays, paid vacation, and paid sick leave.

10 paid vacation days is dead average for professional, technical, and related employees -- with only one year of service, and low for such employees with more service.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#498

Post by facepalm »

vinceguidry wrote: post #62
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 found my current job through a recruiter, I think I will find all subsequent jobs through one as well for this reason. Applying for a position is fundamentally an act of sales, so it behooves you to either be a salesman yourself or to hire someone to do it for you. Otherwise you're throwing yourself at the mercy of people's deep-seated fears and prejudices.

Yes, but did you hire the recruiter?

I think they are usually hired by the companies, or "loyal" to the companies, because that is were the money come from.

Would be a fun experiment to hire somebody to sell yourself. Then again, maybe that is what is usually called a "personal coach"?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#499

Post by facepalm »

exelius wrote: post #10
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)?

Because ML/AI are feature enablers. They make a good product better, but they won't make a product successful. It's a signal that people are more interested in solving technical problems than solving business/product problems.

So Google without good AI would be still as good because of the neat interface? Self driving cars would be just as good without good AI?

I get what you mean, and it might be true for a lot of products. But there are also products were good AI is the core.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#500

Post by rluhar »

staunch wrote: post #383
throwaway456789 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you only care about money. BTW, making $400k in finance is not particularly high. Nor is it evidence that you're a great programmer. Finance companies have to pay huge premiums to attract and retain people. Just about any programmer can make 2x working on Wall Street. Very few good programmers are willing to work for these finance companies. It doesn't seem like you've thought much about why that is.

Finance companies do have incredible technical and regulatory challenges that require good programmers. There are a number of strong programmers who work in finance and are indeed attracted to some of the challenges around finance. I have worked across a number of banks and each has had its own challenges and I have worked with talented and motivated programmers working to solve these.
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