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How (not) to get a job at a startup...

getrealordie.com

71–80 of 89 posts

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#71
post #10

I agree he was obnoxious in his email, but the "We’ll take care of you ... trust me" response doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, sorry. Surely this is what stock options are for?

Never trust someone saying that.

I trust what gets put in writing and signed.

Contracts exist so that we can trust each other.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing. First off, whenever someone says "trust me," as a rule of thumb, don't. His advice sounds really self-serving. Trustworthy people are always open to committing in writing or in ways that don't require so much trust. Now, the dude who wrote the cover letter doesn't seem all that stupid to me. Sure, the writing isn't great, but for all you know English is his second language. I'm not so s…

CSS is very difficult in the sense that implementations vary so wildly, and browsers demonstrate random bugs where you least expect it. Oodles of experience counts for a lot.

CSS is a pretty badly designed language, and the implementations are terrible.

It's hard to find people who really grok it on a deep level, and also have enough real-world experience to deal with the quirks on a regular basis.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#73
post #57

About us: We are LeadLog, a small startup company in South Florida building lead management software. We're two biz dev guys, a ux guru and a hacker with solid business experience. Hmm...something seems wrong about this equation...

Yeah. They're going to sink like a lead log.

Telling that the blog domain name is "get real or die".

The job request and the response to criticism are anything but realistic.

So I wonder which one Dashboard is going to do?

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#74
post #21
post #14

I lived in south Florida for years before coming out to San Francisco. Working in IT down there was horrible. I will guarantee they aren't paying more than $35k-$40k per year. Here in SF I make nearly 3x as much as before doing the job they are advertising.

We're paying market: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681

If you pay average, you'll get average. The job description is WAY above the average.

Frankly, "we're paying market" in this case is an insult, and it says a lot about your company.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#75
Y'all are missing the point. Start-up offers totally unrealistic salary, and gets some script kiddie who couldn't hack his or her way out of a paper bag. Said script kiddie builds the app using toothpicks and glue. App actually gets users and completely s*s the bed. Founders realize they have a great idea and a loyal audience, but now have to spend a HUGE amount of money completely rebuilding the app because the existing codebase is useless.

What's worth more? Scaling your app at the outset and then rolling in profit? Or saving bucks at the outset and then blowing 10x more later on trying to fix the mistakes. Let's ask Twitter.

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#76
post #58

There's an attitude of putting people down going round HN. The applicant in the story put down the other applicants. LeadLog put down him, publicly. And now, HN is putting down auston. Everyone is criticising everyone else's spelling and grammar - and therefore becoming more self-conscious of their own. If you are truly capable of creating value for others, putting others down is pointless for you. But it's worse: fo…

I largely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: a little hostility helps people to check themselves. It forces you to think before you speak and before you post, which means there's a good chance you check yourself before you submit thing. It ensures a degree of quality control, and that's something that I think Hacker News benefits rather than suffers from.

The first forum I joined was one of people who enjoyed ripping on people who said stupid things and who wasted space. I joined there at a pretty young age: I still credit it for teaching me to think about and revise things that I post online. I still remember it fondly, in part because it was a tight community: it scared most people away, but that was good, because it was a site for a niche audience. (Similar, I'd say, to the niche audience that ought to be in Hacker News.)

I've also worked with forums that aimed towards nice: they tended to have a less fanatic userbase, and the people who remained were of wildly varying quality. Nice in excess leads to a downfall.

(I also haven't noticed much unfair hostility until the last month: the election polarized a lot of people, and brought in a lot of attitudes that seem less concerned with new information and interesting articles. Hopefully it will pass.)

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#78

I agree he was obnoxious in his email, but the "We’ll take care of you ... trust me" response doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, sorry. Surely this is what stock options are for?

The line of "We’ll take care of you ... trust me", it remind me of some mafia movie, "give me the money, and I'll take care of you"

Re: How (not) to get a job at a startup...

#80
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. Everyone here encourages thinking that differs from ours. I suppose we are generic in the job posting (I really appreciate the feedback) and again, as I stated, we're trying to find someone who is looking for more than just money, someone looking for place to work where they fit in and feel at home. If you were trying to meet a decent girl with values, would you go around waving $100 bills and wearing diamond pen…

Something you have to understand: as a startup without a product, without users, and without revenue, your bargaining position sucks . It's incredibly easy to start a company; it's incredibly difficult to finish one successfully. If you're Google or Twitter or are funded by YC, you can attract applicants based on the strength of the opportunity. If not, you don't have much to offer besides the money. Put yourself in…

Best feedback here.
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