My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

Post by ionwake » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 11:03 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #80

t0mas88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What role were you interviewing for? Sure anyone with a serious CS degree at some point knew the difference between a char and a string. But if you're hiring a VP or product in a larger org, it doesn't matter whether they remember because the people they'd be managing wouldn't even need to know.

Customer-facing implementation engineer, more or less.

Post by yieldcrv » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #79

F-W-M wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Strings are sequences of characters" or sth. like that.

It's a grab bag, tell-me-something-interesting icebreaker question. I'm looking for some evidence of the fact that you can differentiate the two in some meaningful way. Not intended to be a gotcha question! Just a quick test of basic CS knowledge to get the candidate comfortable.

Post by mustafa_pasi » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

jamesaurichs wrote: post #44

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #26

All I'm thinking is, you Americans are really fucking lucky. Yeah OK, VCs are greedy and difficult to work with, but at least they give you a chance and literally give you startup capital in the millions to build your own thing. That is mind blowing to me and definitely what sets America apart from everywhere else.

The built-in culture of risk taking in US can't be underestimated. Yes, we joke about Florida man and lament about the excess funding for startups. But with great risk comes great reward, and chances for inexperienced founders to prove themselves. Nowhere else on the planet are you able to do that with such magnitude, not in Japan, not in Europe, not in China (now that they're broke and in a Great Depression, and Xi…

Post by mustafa_pasi » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #51

jamesaurichs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The built-in culture of risk taking in US can't be underestimated. Yes, we joke about Florida man and lament about the excess funding for startups. But with great risk comes great reward, and chances for inexperienced founders to prove themselves. Nowhere else on the planet are you able to do that with such magnitude, not in Japan, not in Europe, not in China (now that they're broke and in a Great Depression, and Xi…

And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?

Post by ethbr0 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 11:20 PM UTC

janstice wrote: post #119

ethbr0 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high water mark was the basics... and then the candidate drawing an analogy between char as primitive and char-array-based-strings as object oriented classes that offered additional functionality on top of chars.

That sounds like someone who will make a four-page fizzbuzz solution, which was at one stage a highlight for us. What I try to get candidates to do in interviews is find the project they are most proud of, and get them to talk about it at a technical level - the constraints, challenges & solutions. That’s much harder to fake than pretty much anything else, and works at any technical level. My theory is that if they c…