Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Citymapper

citymapper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 96 posts

Re: Citymapper

#81

Post by wilandbo »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #72
EmilLondon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Citymapper as a software engineer, and I know from my own personal experience that Glassdoor doesn't reflect our culture. We have a smart and passionate team. Everyone is supportive of each other, and you will learn a lot every day. There's an abundance of interesting problems around and everyone is passionate about building a great product. Anyone thinking of applying and is concerned about this, please co…

I was going to make a comment about how your response sounded either like marketing, AI-generated-text, or a HR department trying to recruit rather than an actual human being or software engineer, because you didn't actually say anything material while giving a lot of tech-recruiting catch phrases. So I clicked on your account and looked at your past comment history... yikes... Maybe you're an just an engineer that o…

> So I clicked on your account and looked at your past comment history... yikes...

Good catch. His comments can be ignored based on his comment history.

Re: Citymapper

#82

Post by taejo »

loftyal wrote: post #50

I don't really understand Citymapper, everything in that app is available on Google Maps. What am I missing?

In my city, Google Maps treats all bus, tram, and subway stops as being at the same point, so it can't help you find the correct bus stop (many subway stops have dozens of connecting bus lines distributed around all exits of the station). Even when it doesn't make you miss the last connection home, it sucks spending ten minutes looking for the right bus stop.

This is the fault of the data provided by the transport companym and even their own app gets it wrong iirc, but somehow CM has gathered the necessary data and even knows which end of the subway train to get on to get to the right exit to find the right bus stop.

Re: Citymapper

#83

Post by rossmohax »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #76
rossmohax wrote: post #70

What every single transportation app fails at is recommending a route which is technically worse, but less crowded or otherwise more preferrable. I dont mind commute taking 10-20% longer, if I can take a seat, or trade changes undeground for changes overgrond or avoid connections with high opportunity cost, where being late cost you 30 mins wait for a next train.

In addition to the default "Best route", Google Maps has "fewer transfers", "less walking" and "wheelchair accessible" modes.

that is a step in right direction, but still doesn't allow me to express my route preferences

Re: Citymapper

#84

Post by ebg13 »

EmilLondon wrote: post #63
ebg13 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who stay at CM are mostly too scared to leave How does this happen to people? Are there really no other options or something? Are they barrel-bottom candidates on their final shot? I just can't imagine feeling like I need my employer more than it needs me.

Or, perhaps it isn't actually true.

It's definitely true for a general subset of people. I just don't understand how they got there.

Re: Citymapper

#85

Post by lozenge »

loftyal wrote: post #50

I don't really understand Citymapper, everything in that app is available on Google Maps. What am I missing?

* Trip pricing (although Google also has it in some regions) * Offline static maps for your city * Step free and "avoiding rain" routes

Re: Citymapper

#86

Post by lozenge »

jasoncartwright wrote: post #41
orf wrote: post #28

City mapper is used extensively in London, it’s really really good. They are/where expanding into some form of Citymapper busses which is really interesting. I had the chance to interview there, but I was put off by the absolutely terrible Glassdoor reviews[1] including consistent reports about the CEO and the internal culture. Given that, I’m not too hopeful about the future of Citymapper. Right now they have a head…

Gosh, do people rely on Glassdoor? To turn down an interview? From my experience it's an outlet for people with a personal gripe and far from a good source of internal information about a company.

I would only eliminate the bottom 25% of companies based on Glassdoor, but yes it is worthwhile. Take a look at theirs, it's probably the worst you've seen.

If there is no way for them to reassure you you aren't signing up to a toxic work environment then why interview.

I wish I had turned down the interview. Did an excessive take home for them and received no reply. Two months later they apologised and sent some feedback. They explained the relevant person was on holiday. (Considering the size of their office at the time they should have been using an applicant tracking system and have a plan for somebody going on holiday. They had many dozens of engineers at that point.)

That was years ago though so no longer relevant, and I learned to push back on take homes.

Edit: at the time Glassdoor was full of complaints interviewees were assigned to research a city and build a playbook on entering the market there. After the interview grilling they suspected there was not actually a role and they had been used for free labor. Not acceptable behaviour either.

Re: Citymapper

#87

Post by lozenge »

rossmohax wrote: post #70

What every single transportation app fails at is recommending a route which is technically worse, but less crowded or otherwise more preferrable. I dont mind commute taking 10-20% longer, if I can take a seat, or trade changes undeground for changes overgrond or avoid connections with high opportunity cost, where being late cost you 30 mins wait for a next train.

Google has started asking me how crowded the bus is so I guess this is coming.

In London you can pretty much choose a slower or cheaper route and it will be less busy. The fastest Tube lines attract more journeys.

Re: Citymapper

#88

Post by lozenge »

andybak wrote: post #27
larrymyers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as a public transportation organization can expose their data as GTFS, then most transit applications should be able to provide routing. https://developers.google.com/transit This is what the CTA and Metra do in Chicago. Even Metra, not known for it's technical prowess, provides a GTFS realtime feed.

I don't think that's what the person you were replying to was asking. More "how do they get the data from cities that don't want to give it to app vendors like Google"

By spending VC capital.

Re: Citymapper

#89

Post by Tempest1981 »

ebg13 wrote: post #56
prplnrpl wrote: post #45

I worked at Citymapper. The quiet, grim truth of the place is that everyone there is gritting their teeth trying to do work they're passionate about in the face of an exec team who are all gritting their teeth trying to succeed in the face of a CEO who is legitimately abusive toward the people around him. Everyone is scared of the guy for reasons I don't really understand. Also a lot of the current/ex employees have…

> The people who stay at CM are mostly too scared to leave How does this happen to people? Are there really no other options or something? Are they barrel-bottom candidates on their final shot? I just can't imagine feeling like I need my employer more than it needs me.

Some insight here: (just scan the bold headings)

https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html

Re: Citymapper

#90

Post by joshstrange »

ebg13 wrote: post #56
prplnrpl wrote: post #45

I worked at Citymapper. The quiet, grim truth of the place is that everyone there is gritting their teeth trying to do work they're passionate about in the face of an exec team who are all gritting their teeth trying to succeed in the face of a CEO who is legitimately abusive toward the people around him. Everyone is scared of the guy for reasons I don't really understand. Also a lot of the current/ex employees have…

> The people who stay at CM are mostly too scared to leave How does this happen to people? Are there really no other options or something? Are they barrel-bottom candidates on their final shot? I just can't imagine feeling like I need my employer more than it needs me.

> How does this happen to people?

I've seen this happen to people I would NEVER expect to stick around a bad environment, hell, I'll seen it happen to people who have left previous jobs because of a bad environment yet they can't/won't admit where they are now is bad.

It's extremely easy to, from the outside looking in, see a bad/toxic environment but sometimes when you are in the weeds you miss it completely or think "it's not too bad".

Things I've heard from friends (people I value highly and would hire in a minute if I had the power):

* Well it's not that bad

* What if my skills have atrophied and no one wants me

* I don't think I can make as much $$$ elsewhere

* I think it's getting better

* I like the people I work with/don't want to leave them hanging

I once had a guy who had been in the industry almost twice as long as me (10 years me -> 20 years him) who wasn't sure if he could find a job that paid as much. He was making 85% of my salary at the time and I considered a number of his skills to exceed mine greatly.

Another friend had put up with overwork, denied PTO, unofficial holidays taken away, etc. He told our friend group about this and asked "Is that really that bad?". A "frog in boiling water" story if I ever heard one...

What I'm trying to convey is some people do feel forced to stay in a bad situation and some genuinely don't see it. People are weird...

Post reply on HN