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DigitalOcean S-1

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Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#351

Post by dotBen »

jeffparsons wrote: post #321
Ansil849 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to hijack this sub-thread, but just a general question: how does one deal with unethical 'homework projects'? I've had a case during an application where I was given a 'homework project' that seemed to me very much not like a theoretical scenario, but more like the company wanting me to do free work for an actual real-world issue they had. Have people had situations where you suspected the same? How do you deal w…

My employer deals with this by compensating candidates for their time. Y'know... with money. We also don't give them our actual problems as homework tasks. We'll occasionally talk about our real problems with candidates in interviews, but we're very clear about it when we do. It's not a perfect system. Some candidates will choose to spend longer on the task so that in the follow-up interview they'll have the opportun…

Doesn't this discriminates against people who are on visas who can't accept remuneration from anyone other than their current employers..? They then either have to do the same project for free or decline to continue the interview process.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#352

Post by simlevesque »

dotBen wrote: post #351
jeffparsons wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer deals with this by compensating candidates for their time. Y'know... with money. We also don't give them our actual problems as homework tasks. We'll occasionally talk about our real problems with candidates in interviews, but we're very clear about it when we do. It's not a perfect system. Some candidates will choose to spend longer on the task so that in the follow-up interview they'll have the opportun…

Doesn't this discriminates against people who are on visas who can't accept remuneration from anyone other than their current employers..? They then either have to do the same project for free or decline to continue the interview process.

Paying someone for their work isn't discrimination. It never is.

The visa process may be flawed, but putting the blame on the employer is... weird.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#354

Post by ZephyrBlu »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #158
tgtweak wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really happy to see Ben and Moisey get this far. They are both extremely competent sysadmins and system architects too. They retained a lot of equity as well - good to see.

Between the two of them, they own less than 20% of the company. Is this a lot? Not in my opinion. They sold 80% of their company.

Yes it is. Usually founders would only have a few percentage points at the tail end of things.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#355

Post by codysan »

jeffparsons wrote: post #321
Ansil849 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to hijack this sub-thread, but just a general question: how does one deal with unethical 'homework projects'? I've had a case during an application where I was given a 'homework project' that seemed to me very much not like a theoretical scenario, but more like the company wanting me to do free work for an actual real-world issue they had. Have people had situations where you suspected the same? How do you deal w…

My employer deals with this by compensating candidates for their time. Y'know... with money. We also don't give them our actual problems as homework tasks. We'll occasionally talk about our real problems with candidates in interviews, but we're very clear about it when we do. It's not a perfect system. Some candidates will choose to spend longer on the task so that in the follow-up interview they'll have the opportun…

This is always, always the answer. It's not only the decent thing to do, it ensures you'll get an accurate representation of the quality of the prospective employee's work.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#356

Post by jimhi »

temp667 wrote: post #343
jimhi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding. They are saying it is unethical to ask an interviewee to code for free and use that in production. In your case you are not doing that, although if I interviewed with you and saw the same feature added after I submitted the code I would definitely assume you did something unethical.

But is that what is happening? They said it was a work related project. That's exactly what we do. Why would a place like google even use an interviewees code without careful copyright assignment and work for hire protections (ie, you need to pay someone in USA generally to own their code). I've found some potential hires are randomly paranoid - and if they start giving you lots of hypothetical disaster / ripoff scen…

Sometimes companies do illegal things that save them money. I would assume Google wouldn't do that. Not every company is Google.

A 6-person company in New York did that to me. I reviewed the interview project I did for them and their latest product update. I had to ask them a week after the interview if they used my code in production and if so - this is how many hours I worked on it and a fair rate. The CEO emailed me threatening legal action and then called me 10 minutes later apologizing and venmo'd me the amount I stated it was worth.

If your interview process works for you that is great.

But I could totally see why potential hires are paranoid if you are giving them a situation to be paranoid about. I hope you are being super clear with your process and giving assurance you aren't using their code. If it was me, I would show them the code our team wrote at the same time they submit their project and use that as part of the follow up interview.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#357

Post by selcuka »

webmobdev wrote: post #262
havelhovel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether your claim is true or not, there’s more to a product than the underlying technology. Frankly, this line of discussion reads as sour grapes and reflects poorly on the Linode team.

I don't think it reflects poorly on them at all. When DO started everyone still used the help document of Linode and Slicehost to setup and spin a server on DO. They could do that because DO was a clone of these services. To their credit DO improved and grew, and that's no mean feat.

They all offered a VPS, which is basically a Linux box with root access. Any Linux tutorial would work on all three services.

I'm not arguing if DO was a clone or not, but saying that "you could use Linode/Slicehost documentation because DO was a clone" is a bit of a stretch.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#358

Post by bombcar »

codegeek wrote: post #263
bombcar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is amusing because Rackspace is now overpriced garbage as far as I can tell, or a wrapper around public cloud.

I have dealt with Rackspace exact 2 times and both times, it has been a horrendous experience.

They make you call support to delete a “cloud server” - glad I’ll only have to do that once more.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#359

Post by smabie »

dotBen wrote: post #351
jeffparsons wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer deals with this by compensating candidates for their time. Y'know... with money. We also don't give them our actual problems as homework tasks. We'll occasionally talk about our real problems with candidates in interviews, but we're very clear about it when we do. It's not a perfect system. Some candidates will choose to spend longer on the task so that in the follow-up interview they'll have the opportun…

Doesn't this discriminates against people who are on visas who can't accept remuneration from anyone other than their current employers..? They then either have to do the same project for free or decline to continue the interview process.

or they can just take the money anyways and no one will know. besides, you can accept a gift in btc

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#360

Post by jtdev »

timdev2 wrote: post #348
jtdev wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Their platform” has become the public square. If you think allowing unfettered control of such a utility by a small number of mega corporations - with political biases that change to suit their bottom line - is a good thing then I’m not sure we’re on the same page, in the same book, on the same planet.

These companies, and the systems and platforms they own, have not become "the public square" any more than a widely read newspaper, or the only Kinkos in town have. Nor are they utilities. You're using words and phrases with significant legal implications to characterize things that don't meet the well-understood legal definitions. I don't think you're being dishonest, but I fear you've been bamboozled by the dishone…

Section 230 is woefully naive and written for a bygone era. Censorship of speech by a small group of kleptocrat mega corporations on the greatest communication medium ever known to mankind is antithetical to everything America stands for.
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