The Lesson to Unlearn • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#331

Post by guptaneil » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

The problem is not that fundraising feels like a test, it's that fundraising is a test posed by authority figures, and by pg's own definition, is probably hackable. How hackable is proportional to the quality of the VC.

Luckily startups themselves are indeed not a test. So you can avoid any test by making enough revenue to not need external funding, but the second best strategy is take the VC's test without trying to hack it as your own test of the investor. Assuming you're a good investment, you'll beat those trying to hack the test unless the investor's test is susceptible to hacking. If you're not a good investment (which is by definition not obvious in the early days), maybe you should just try to learn to hack the test? Ironically, one of YC's biggest value adds is that it helps you hack those tests by lending you their name.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#332

Post by paul7986 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #240

The tech industry has unfortunately adopted the methodology of centralized hackable tests as the canonical gatekeeping method in the form of programming interviews. Most big tech companies don't care about how good you have been at delivering some value through creating software: they want to see you deliver a very specific type of performance at a whiteboard. Interviewers are given specific math puzzle questions to…

I loathe all types of coding or design challenges when interviewing! I once designed and coded a five page website.. it took awhile, yet never heard back from the company. Thus, Im going to seek out all opportunities that do not force me to waste my time, especially design as it's subject. Overall you liked my portfolio well enough to consider me then lets chat and see if we jive/im a good fit for you/your team/company!

So far I've been very fortunate that recruiters reach out on LinkedIn and I rarely have to do such time wasting activities as they vouch for me.

Recently dealt with a company who pays parity (everyone makes the same .. no woman, man, etc can negotiate their worth), had five to 6 interviews and 2 to 3 coding/design challenges. WoW I guess they are looking only for a subset of talent who would do all that. People might do that for a FAANg company or when jobs in the field are scarce, but this was no FAANg company and thankfully there is still a good amount of demand!

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#333

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

Ever look at Keller Plan stuff?

I did Physics 2 that way and really liked it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keller_Plan

(also, wow, I just got that Principle Skinner in the Simpsons doesn't accidentally have that name. Face to palm.)

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#334

Post by dreamcompiler » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #291

knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

It is amusing how many of my peers still hold to the notion that heavier things fall faster. Not a higher terminal velocity, but the intuition that they accelerate faster. Hilariously tough for folks to shake.

There is a larger gravitational force on heavier things because they're heavier. Trouble is, they also have more inertia, which exactly counteracts the larger force (because of the principle of equivalence) and so they fall at the same acceleration as lighter objects.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#335

Post by cm2012 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #260

cm2012 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I consult with B2B startups on marketing and have seen the internal data for 20+ B2B tech companies. If anything, the best products with the lowest churn have less referrals, since people don't want their competitors to have the competitive advantage the product provides.

> people don't want their competitors to have the competitive advantage (...) That sounds like a very cut-throat business. In my target audience, most people are happy to share how they work and which tools they use. I even occasionally see random people recommending my product online (which makes me very happy)

Generally, different VC firms give a lot of money to similar companies at the same time. In one vertical, I worked with the same company for three years. CPC for the same keywords doubled every year for all 3 years, when the unit economics of the industry didn't change. It's fiercely competitive.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#336

Post by caro_douglos » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

Recently I have been charged with helping someone setup paperwork for their startup. I am not a lawyer so I simply have the paperwork, standard agreements, and general company structure that any lawyer would (I assume) give away for free. Avodocs has pretty much all that paperwork covered, carta has the captable, and pilot has the books under wrap. After reading this article I'm somewhat torn about mentioning things like c corps and filing in Delaware to my friend since in the end it really is only the product that matters. Corporate structure steeped in law/history is a hackable test which everyone must take...resulting in either getting bitten or by running to attorneys and tax advisors (because they were bitten in the past).

TLDR opinion. The hackable c corp structure Y pushes has payed off well for Ycombinator yet it is the very thing that can distract from building a good product.

Then again I'm sure someone might make the claim that c corps are also a way to easily share equity with your employees.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#337

Post by hirako2000 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #287

ken wrote: post #90

I'm glad he made the leap from school tests to funding tests, as it seemed to be a thinly veiled analogy from the start. I'm disappointed, though, that he didn't take the final step and admit that money itself is also a poor, hackable test. Funding, growth, usage -- these are all still one level removed from something worthwhile or beneficial. Cigarettes have amazing usage numbers even in 2019. I'm waiting for the en…

You are implying that PG thinks money is all important - but he doesn’t think that. PG: if you had to boil it down to one quality to look for, authenticity would be the most important one. “You’re looking for people who are real friends,” he said to Chang. “Not just for people who got together for the purposes of this startup. You don’t want people who were in it just for the money. He also talks about how that start…

This.

I work towards wanting less stuff. Living a simple life, I do feel richer for sure. Wealthier, perhaps not, I don't even care actually.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#338

Post by richmarr » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #253

pavlov wrote: post #240

The tech industry has unfortunately adopted the methodology of centralized hackable tests as the canonical gatekeeping method in the form of programming interviews. Most big tech companies don't care about how good you have been at delivering some value through creating software: they want to see you deliver a very specific type of performance at a whiteboard. Interviewers are given specific math puzzle questions to…

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

> I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room.

I think you've got a lot of this right (disclaimer: we've built the product I think you're describing)

The don't think the most important problem is standardisation though, it's observability/instrumentation ie. if you don't measure what's working, you can't improve things.

The very best tech companies measure quite a lot, and often look back at their hiring processes in the event of a mis-hire to figure out what went wrong and how they can avoid the same happening in future... but even then they only do that in exceptional cases because it's done fairly manually. That means they have low statistical significance and a stuttering cycle of learning.

I believe they should be constantly looking at what's working well, for every hire. So that's what we built.

Once your hiring pipeline is trivially visible, a lot of these questions go away. You can see what's working well and try new things in safety, you can optimise with your eyes wide open.

One thing we did straight away was to deprioritise CVs and replace them with written scenario-based questions relevant to the job. If managed properly that takes your sift stage from a predictive power around r=0.3 to a performance we find typically above r=0.6. Far fewer early false negatives makes your hiring funnel (a) less leaky, (b) more open to pools of talent previously ruled out by clumsy CV sifting, and (c) potentially shorter as the improved sift accuracy allows companies to consider dropping their phone interview stage(s)

Our NPS rating for HR teams is currently running at 85, and MRR churn is under 1% so there's clearly some value to the approach.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#339

Post by vntx » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #272

vntx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, it would be nice to have tests at university where I can google things, just like in the real world. One of the best professors I had at university for a Linux course always said: “If you don’t know something, google it!” He backed up his words by allowing googling on the actual coding part of his exams. You had to understand the underlying concepts but you never had to memorize syntax. One time, he ha…

> He backed up his words by allowing googling on the actual coding part of his exams. You had to understand the underlying concepts but you never had to memorize syntax. ... His course and exams were _rigorous_. You could never cram for his class and expect to pass and indeed I know of one student repeatedly failing his course. When I studied law, all our exams were open book. Bring whatever you want. I brought caseb…

> None of this helped if you didn’t know the material well enough to identify the legal issues in each question.

My machine learning professor who was from CMU would allow us to put anything we wanted on both sides of one piece of printer paper to bring to exams.

No amount of notes helped if you had no understanding of the algorithms and formulas.

I almost failed that course too, but it was also one of the cornerstones of my university career. It made me realize how much I had been optimizing for the wrong thing: grades instead of understanding.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#340

Post by taeric » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

GCA10 wrote: post #300

taeric wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amusing how many of my peers still hold to the notion that heavier things fall faster. Not a higher terminal velocity, but the intuition that they accelerate faster. Hilariously tough for folks to shake.

Add air resistance into the mix, and denser materials do fall faster. Coins vs. napkins. Plums vs. crumpled balls of paper I'd actually take the lesson the other way. It's hilariously tough for model-makers to acknowledge real-world noise that prevents their theoretically precise models from delivering reliable results.

I covered that with terminal velocity. And it isn't just falling, but going down a hill. Folks commonly think heavier bikes will go faster down a hill. That isn't how that works.