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Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

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Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#51

Post by yuhong »

eganist wrote: post #3

"part-acquisition" So in conclusion, someone bought up the scraps at rock-bottom prices just before a potential bankruptcy. Ouch. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise. They brought on a former Yahoo VP as CEO four years ago. As the article and one of the comments therein pointed out: it seems they didn't have much in the way of new technological or algorithmic advantages to build on and didn't have much in the way of…

Not that it is a good idea of course, but I wonder if there are companies who pick CEOs randomly from new MBA graduates and pay them an extremely high salary with no stock options or other incentives.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#52

Post by yuhong »

praneshp wrote: post #44
eganist wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, I didn't expect my implied criticism (elsewhere in this thread) of a Yahoo VP being hired as their CEO to be so damningly validated by personal experience.

He was at Yahoo for barely a year and a half.

Looks like he was bought in as part of the Dapper acquisition: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesberiker

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#53

Post by bcantrill »

808statetaway wrote: post #42
throwaway59511 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. What about Yahoo VPs would lead you to expect the experience I had?

Good rule of thumb is that people from Yahoo or Sun are extremely nonproductive and tend to spend most of their time preparing powerpoint presentations for internal use.

In my experience, the deadwood at Sun actually became deadwood at Oracle; most of the folks who left Sun (disclosure: includes me) were the ones who were drawn to Sun first and foremost by its mission, and since leaving they have gone on to interesting things elsewhere. So while there are certainly companies that are red flags for me, Sun isn't one of them -- and I say this as someone who knows Sun's failings better than most...

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#54

Post by mathattack »

bcantrill wrote: post #53
808statetaway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good rule of thumb is that people from Yahoo or Sun are extremely nonproductive and tend to spend most of their time preparing powerpoint presentations for internal use.

In my experience, the deadwood at Sun actually became deadwood at Oracle; most of the folks who left Sun (disclosure: includes me) were the ones who were drawn to Sun first and foremost by its mission, and since leaving they have gone on to interesting things elsewhere. So while there are certainly companies that are red flags for me, Sun isn't one of them -- and I say this as someone who knows Sun's failings better…

The purchase was 6+ years ago, and the deadwood is still there?

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#55

Post by mathattack »

x0x0 wrote: post #12
vthallam wrote: post #11

This was destined to happen i guess! SimplyHired has no USP, scrapers which can massively scrape jobs and SEO which gets users,that's about it. No clear direction and competing with Indeed, which has better tech must have been hard for them. Also, I wonder with $34 million in funding, why they didn't launch any products to cater the users/companies.

Yeah, but Indeed seems to be making plenty of money: $434m rev in 2014, $300m 1/2 year rev in 2015! I'm really curious what went wrong... http://press.indeed.com/press/indeed-2014-revenue-434-millio... http://press.indeed.com/press/indeed-half-year-2015-revenue-...

Many times companies can inflate revenues, or the revenue is very costly to acquire.

These are two examples, though I don't know enough about Simply Hired to say if they did either.

1) Companies with Ad Revenue quote the gross amount, rather than the net they keep. So let's say that someone spends a dollar on advertising. 60 cents may go to the website that hosted the ad, 10 cents to their software vendor, 20 cents to an exchange, and 10 cents to the buyer's website. Everyone counts this as a dollar of revenue, even though they're passing through most of the costs. This is most often seen in advertising or other reselling markets.

2) They spend $2000 in advertising to get a customer with a lifetime value of $1000. Sometimes this is a deliberate Ponzi scheme, other times it's done with honest intent. It can be very hard to predict lifetime customer value.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#56

Post by geofft »

therealgimli wrote: post #34
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

there's an interviewing technique among senior execs to take on an aggressive, rude tone to interviewees to "see how they respond under pressure." One way to spot it is if they respond in a contrary way to everything and generally try to pick on you to find chinks in your armor. the first time I experienced it I was pretty shaken up. either that or the person you spoke with is just an asshole.

This is how you end up with organizations where arguing loudly and making personal attacks are part of your culture.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#57

Post by godzillabrennus »

mathattack wrote: post #40
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

There is an enormous irony in a Recruiting SaaS company being so bad at recruiting.

It epitomizes the industry.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#58

Post by bcantrill »

mathattack wrote: post #54
bcantrill wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the deadwood at Sun actually became deadwood at Oracle; most of the folks who left Sun (disclosure: includes me) were the ones who were drawn to Sun first and foremost by its mission, and since leaving they have gone on to interesting things elsewhere. So while there are certainly companies that are red flags for me, Sun isn't one of them -- and I say this as someone who knows Sun's failings better…

The purchase was 6+ years ago, and the deadwood is still there?

Absolutely! It is, after all, deadwood -- and given that it's broadly resistant to Oracle's management-by-asphyxiation, it will likely be there for quite some time to come...

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#59

Post by JoblessWonder »

therealgimli wrote: post #34
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

there's an interviewing technique among senior execs to take on an aggressive, rude tone to interviewees to "see how they respond under pressure." One way to spot it is if they respond in a contrary way to everything and generally try to pick on you to find chinks in your armor. the first time I experienced it I was pretty shaken up. either that or the person you spoke with is just an asshole.

When I was in my early-mid twenties and trying to make the internal jump from top-tier Help Desk to SysAdmin I had a Director who did this.

The earlier interviews were fine. I was fairly green, but I seemed to get the basics of the position, was very eager to learn, and had the recommendation of my (large) department's management up to VP. They asked me technical questions which I did pretty well on. Then the Director comes in and immediately starts blasting my resume, my lack of real-world experience, asked why I was wasting his time and literally questioned whether I was worthy of being on the Help Desk at all.

I was shaken to my core. I spent the next three days questioning my abilities and feeling like I was letting the company down somehow. On the fourth day someone told me that this was his "interview style" and he was doing it to "stress test" interviewees. At that point I was pretty thrilled I didn't get the job and left the company shortly after for an entry-level SysAdmin job. I couldn't believe he would lay into a coworker (even a very subordinate one in a different department) like that without at least telling them why at the end.

I'm still shaken up by that interview to this day. Technical interviews scare the shit out of me.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#60

Post by aak »

I worked in an office below them for a few years. They seemed nice, thoughtful, ambitious, and hard-working, much like most folks I've met who choose to work at startups.

I feel sad to see any startup shut down since I know so many people like them; hell, that could easily have been me. I also feel sad to see the commenters here dance on their graves. I would prefer to celebrate the fact that they lived and battled for 10+ years, much longer than most startups. Kudos to them.

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