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

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

#131

Post by ultrasaurus »

yieldcrv wrote: post #58
ethbr0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed a guy the other day. CS degree. "I have a proven track record of building and leading amazing engineering teams." "Okay. What's the difference between a character and a string?" *crickets* We all have our specialities, but jesus ¢@&#ing christ: if you're interviewing for an engineering role, of any sort, you should be able to answer basic questions.

The bytes it takes up and how it can be cast? What answer would you be looking for

Not the OP but I'd expect the desired answer to be some kind of semi-technical discussion that shows they understand the fundamentals even if they've forgotten all the details and can have a healthy conversation, not that they know the answer.

Possible good indicators: "I haven't written C code in a decades, but one is a byte, one is a structure" "I'd be in over my head with Unicode but.." "What are you looking to solve?"

Bad indicators: Hostility. Authoritative wrong answers.

(For a director of Product role once, I was asked the difference between REST and SOAP -- not because he cared that I knew the answer, but because he wanted to see how I could work with an engineer who was focusing on the wrong problem)

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

#132

Post by jemmyw »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #96
booleandilemma wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works in a nutshell. Lots of talkers out there. The people I know who do the real work are the ones at the bottom, and you don't know them because they keep their heads down and focus on writing code. The people that self-promote the most are the ones least capable.

Time spent coding is a zero sum. Leaders are needed to identify how to do use that energy and time. In terms of business success. This might be the #1 thing (granted I’m entirely speculating). Are your priorities correct and do the engineers know them? This is not that easy. People will argue endlessly over when to address tech debt, how much security is enough security, how much to deliver early vs fully formed, wha…

People building projects don't tend to argue about tech debt and security unless they've had a leader make decisions that compromised their comfort levels. Quorum decision making in those circumstances keeps those things in check.

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

#133

Post by yieldcrv »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #131
yieldcrv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bytes it takes up and how it can be cast? What answer would you be looking for

Not the OP but I'd expect the desired answer to be some kind of semi-technical discussion that shows they understand the fundamentals even if they've forgotten all the details and can have a healthy conversation, not that they know the answer. Possible good indicators: "I haven't written C code in a decades, but one is a byte, one is a structure" "I'd be in over my head with Unicode but.." "What are you looking to so…

“Lets ask neurodivergent people stupid questions for stupid reasons”

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

#134

Post by mufti_menk »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93
lotsofmoney wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…

Insane amount of money: Of the 10 countries with the highest median income, 7 of them are European. By some measures, the USA is-midpack, with Norway/Canada very similar to us, but missing most of the entrepeneurial/VC culture of the USA. World hegemony: mostly a function of the post-WWII situation, combined with our willingness to spend absolutely insane amounts on our military and use it to impose or at minimum enc…

[flagged]

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

#135

Post by squeaky-clean »

lumost wrote: post #81
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.

It’s quite possible to avoid learning this. A trivial way is to do all of your coding in python, and then never do anything more advanced than a todo MVC app. Do this for 3 years then get promoted to management and stop coding. When money was cheap, delivery didn’t matter for a while.

I've interviewed and approved people for hiring who probably did not know the actual difference between a char and a string. And they've done more than a TODO MVP. They were great employees. For python dev work you really don't need to know about that, since it doesn't have a dedicated char type. They could probably answer questions about Django and RabbitMQ that OP couldn't.

But I'm assuming OP is hiring for a lower-level language role where that knowledge is necessary. I've interviewed people with similar levels of incompetence. Again for that Django role, people who did not know the difference between GET and POST. I'm amazed they made it past the first phone screen with our hiring manager. And I'm curious how bad the people who did not pass the phone screen were.

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

#136

Post by willcipriano »

adwn wrote: post #94
lotsofmoney wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…

> * And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans.* Such as? Name three examples, please. "smartphones and cars" doesn't cut it, those are pretty common even for low income citizens here in Germany at least, and we don't really need air conditioners on account of being located in higher latitudes – everyone has heating, though.

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

#137

Post by squeaky-clean »

ethbr0 wrote: post #129
janstice wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've also had good luck asking about a project they were on that went off the rails and what they'd do differently next time around. You can tell pretty quickly how involved they were and if they were thinking through solutions vs just doing as told.

I also ask the same question. Because of my current industry, usually with the caveat that they have to be able to get into some technical details without breaking NDA.

Some of my favorite other questions are:

1 - You're diving into one of our repos for the first time and you need to add X feature. Let's assume everything is perfect, what would you want to see in the repo and what are your first steps in learning the code?

2 - Tell me about your favorite bug? It doesn't have to be one you caused. And it doesn't have to be a super technical obscure bug. Just your favorite bug.

3 - What are some of your personal philosophies when it comes to programming. In other words: What are some of your opinionated takes. I understand, when working here you'll follow company policy. But what if you were the person who wrote the company policies.

All are great jumping off points for further discussion and open up a lot of followup questions. I find they're pretty hard to fake after the conversation goes on for more than a minute or so.

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

#138

Post by ineedasername »

yieldcrv wrote: post #67
F-W-M wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

oh ok, I tend to overthink irrelevant questions in interviews

There’s nothing irrelevant about measuring someone’s technical understanding of the very basics at the same time that you gauge their ability to have a conversation about the domain.

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

#139

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

djoldman wrote: post #8

Honest question: if you sell 50%, then why do what the VCs tell you to do? Beyond gaining some sort of reputation for not doing what your investors want, is there anything else?

Why don’t you pick up the soccer ball and run around with it in your hands? There’s no fundamental reason you can’t have minority investors whose opinions you completely ignore, but that’s not the game that VCs or the people who accept VC money are playing.

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

#140

Post by squeaky-clean »

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?

> other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders

Why can't this be the claim and be the end of it?

"I have a startup idea"

"Do you live in the USA?"

"No"

"Well it's going to stay as a idea"

" :( "

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