Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#31

Post by w1ntermute » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 6:43 AM UTC

lpsz wrote: post #30

w1ntermute wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm? That depends on your definition of "norm". The average person could probably spend their entire life preparing for a Google interview and never get an offer. Others could enter any field of their choosing and reach a very high level of competency in just a matter of months. Seems like the…

No matter how academically bright someone is, practical coding experience is still highly desirable.

It has nothing to do with academics - some people can pick up practical skills much more quickly than others.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#32

Post by fensipens » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 6:49 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #29

fensipens wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> close-minded and pessimistic attitude I would call it healthy skepticism.

Then you won't be getting a 250K offer from Airbnb with 1 year of experience any time soon.

130K + something that at some point may be sold for a currently unknown value.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#33

Post by ronrogers » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 6:50 AM UTC

App Academy is the most selective dev training program in the world. We've developed this course to give you inside knowledge about the boot camp .A Farewell speech or farewell address is a speech given by an individual leaving a position or place. They are often used by public figures such as politicians.Custom essay writing service(http://www.essayguardian.com/) is the better service that helps students in their academic fields.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#34

Post by fredophile » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 6:57 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

fredophile wrote: post #12

One thing that struck me as odd while reading this, and the preceding article, was that he seemed offended at being offered junior roles despite only having a year of experience. A talented junior developer is still a junior developer.

> A talented junior developer is still a junior developer. Read his biography - the entire reason he has been able to achieve everything he has in life is because he doesn't have such a close-minded and pessimistic attitude. Rather than just letting the conventions of society dictate what he gets and does, he instinctively finds ways to work around them. While everyone else is busy checking the boxes expected of them…

On your advice I read the about page on his website (I assume this is the biography you mentioned). I also checked out App Academy on LinkedIn and Angel List. Angel List even had the job posting for his old position. I still believe he's a junior developer. He didn't magically cram more than a year of development into that year. If anything he did less development. Out of his one year of experience some was spent as an instructor, not a developer, and many of his duties as Director of Product were management and not software development. In fact, he mentioned that as one of the reasons he wanted to leave that role.

Some lessons are learned by doing things and dealing with the results. He hasn't been doing this long enough to see the long term consequences of any decisions he made while developing software at App Academy because those consequences haven't happened yet. Also, App Academy is a small company with about 10-20 people. Lots of things that aren't important with 10 people become very important on software projects with 100 people.

None of what I said means he isn't intelligent or talented. It doesn't mean he didn't do good work while at App Academy or that he won't do good work at AirBnB. It just means he's inexperienced. That's not a bad thing but it isn't something you can change overnight.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#35

Post by athlos » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

minikomi wrote: post #22

Seeing those salaries as a dev in Tokyo is mind boggling. Time to start looking at remote work options even I think..

Never look at salaries in a vacuum; remember what he says about what a 105k salary would "translate to" 57k in Texas. I don't know if remote working will change the game, eventually, but since companies today outsource jobs to "cheaper" cities to pay lower salaries, I find it hard to imagine that they'd be willing offer the same strong salaries to remote workers, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to cut costs.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#36

Post by keiferski » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 7:44 AM UTC

In life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate for.

Nice job. Thanks for the transparency.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#37

Post by hueving » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 7:54 AM UTC

I was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering problems are they solving?

From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more knowledge shed some light on what airbnb does that puts it on par with the work from Google (e.g. spanner, F5, borg, their SDN stuff, etc)?

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#38

Post by temp20160423 » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 7:57 AM UTC

For people who are currently looking, they should be thankful for this post. This guy really was a master negotiator and provides lots of hard numbers. The key is to get some initial leverage (at least one offer from anywhere) and then keep cranking. If you can get a Google offer, then you can really squeeze out every last drop.

I think him publicly posting this will cause a lot of resentment at his company. I wouldn't be surprised if there are PhD's with multiple years of experience at AirBnB making less in total comp than this guy.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#39

Post by temp20160423 » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 7:58 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #37

I was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering problems are they solving? From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more knowledge she…

Their comp is obviously top. I was impressed at how large AirBnB's offer is in every aspect--its base was already higher than the total comp of many of his other (initial) offers.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#40

Post by whazor » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 8:05 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #37

I was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering problems are they solving? From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more knowledge she…

I guess recommendation, machine learning, infrastructure (multiple servers over earth), fraud detection. From the outside they also have messaging, an automatic pricing feature, and I remember them announcing that they want to offer extra services, like a day trip.