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London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

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Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#61

Post by stronglikedan »

throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding)

I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code. Another acted like I was asking him to produce something for the company for free, before even reading the three lines of requirements, and then tried to back peddle when he did read them - of course, I was already holding the interview room door open for him by that time. All told, a FizzBuzz test in the initial round saved hours of my (and their) time.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#62

Post by [deleted] »

ccozan wrote: post #53
nikon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?

Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you. I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.

[deleted]

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#63

Post by brilliantcode »

ccozan wrote: post #53
nikon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?

Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you. I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.

How much is the salary and what's the skill level like?

I'm very interested in Eastern European developers, they seem to get shit done and rarely complain.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#65

Post by chx »

I am just a very satisfied customer. They managed to be cheaper than using even a dedicated FX company for international transfers (I do Canada-Austria, Austria-Canada, Canada-Hungary) and the process is pretty seamless and it doesn't take longer than a SWIFT transfer usually.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#66

Post by brilliantcode »

Lordarminius wrote: post #54
Bombthecat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are bleeding a ton of money. For there idea to work they need to get money transferred into all directions... They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it (sadly) But money was probably transferred only one direction. So they lost money.

> They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it ... I am a Nigerian and I consider this an unpardonable failure of basic market research. If they had spent a quality hour of their time investigating the Nigerian market, they would have found out that inflow overwhelmingly dwarfs outflow. Makes you wonder what their decision making methodology is

I guess I won't be able to send large amounts of cash to a Nigerian prince who promised me a share of his inheritance anymore.

I'm not even sure if he's a prince.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#67

Post by orthoganol »

throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

Ah that definitely explains the vibe I got from their "naked march" where they got what looks like a sea of frat boys and sorority girls (I assumed largely their employees/ friends, in reality) to strip down to their underwear and scream and shout and walk around for a "viral" stunt. I know I'm just piling on here, but the vibe certainly had some doucheyness and it made me think their founders were the party bro types trying to get rich.

[http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-na...

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#68

Post by Retric »

mjw1007 wrote: post #55
smnscu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the recent The Grand Tour episode, when they mention how if you're famous for something positive you're called British, otherwise you're Scottish/Welsh.

Do they give any reason to believe that what they're mentioning is true? I've looked informally for this phenomenon and I haven't been able to find it. The only concrete piece of research I know on a specific case came up negative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-349098...

List of famious Scottish People often include J.K.Rowling as Scottish, but Wikipedia lists her as English. So, it probably only applies to people that can claim both as she was born in England, but wrote the books in Scotland.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#69

Post by throwawaytwise »

averagewall wrote: post #57
throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags. But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial s…

> they do have a very noble goal

LOL

they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence.

We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise.

Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#70

Post by rattray »

stronglikedan wrote: post #61
throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me…

Out of curiosity, what sort of (non-personality) mistakes did you see?
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