I have been looking for good jobs in the Houston area. I'd appreciate suggestions.
Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
201–210 of 215 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#202Looking for a contract developer to work on a firefox extension. Interested? Email me at khang.toh _at_ gmail _dot_ com
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#203On a similar note, can you folks offer advice on how to "form" a team and apply for the summer round of YC if you are applying from overseas? I am from Sydney and am looking to form/join a team with those in the valley or otherwise (as long as they are willing to move to YC ofcourse). I know it sounds silly and absurd. I have been desperate to apply to YC for ages. Only thing that has stopped me were my studies (whic…
have you ever applied for COMET funding from AusIndustry?
I have looked into it and found (along with other entrepreneurs here) that it caters for ventures that are in a slightly more developed stage than startups. It is more for companies with slightly more significant size (more than 5 or 10 i think) and patent portfolios (atleast 1). From memory I think revenues are must as well.
2/3 hackers from a garage (ok I am making it sound romantic now, apologies for that) are not catered by the comet grant. And also the environment is just not the same as YC!
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#204We are looking for RoR hackers and/or software engineering generalists at EMI Music. Read more about our job descriptions here: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg3h36zx_23c4ck9bc9
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#205I am told by my friend Tristan that Apture.com is looking for top notch javascript hackers.
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is your point? That your single case of not getting the job means that it is not true that they hire college drop outs? I mean there is plenty of other things than just experience related to hiring someone. "More qualified" may well be a nice way to say "you don't seem to fit in" or whatever their reason not to hire you.
Would you rather be told: "Listen bud, you're talented, but not quite right for us due to X, Y, and Z." ... or ... "Sorry, we want to hire you, but our investors won't let us." If that was the case (and I don't think it was), then the latter is a cop-out. You don't make up reasons not to hire someone, no matter how much you want to. You'd be doing a disservice both to the candidate and to yourself. My single case is…
Fair enough, I guess you were given a straight answer.
Anyway for some reason you original reply sounded to me pretty much like: "these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"
Often you do not know the reason for not hiring. "Just does not feel right" or "gut feeling" may be the real reason, and then you try to rationalize it somehow. Hiring is not an exact science.
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you rather be told: "Listen bud, you're talented, but not quite right for us due to X, Y, and Z." ... or ... "Sorry, we want to hire you, but our investors won't let us." If that was the case (and I don't think it was), then the latter is a cop-out. You don't make up reasons not to hire someone, no matter how much you want to. You'd be doing a disservice both to the candidate and to yourself. My single case is…
Fair enough, I guess you were given a straight answer. Anyway for some reason you original reply sounded to me pretty much like: "these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!" Often you do not know the reason for not hiring. "Just does not feel right" or "gut feeling" may be the real reason, and then you try to rationalize it somehow. Hiring is not an exact science.
"these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"
No sir, that wasn't my intention at all. :) JTV's interview was extremely rigorous, and they all seem like great hackers. In that regard, they r0x0rz. Unfortunately, their investors may have the final say as to whether you are hired or not, which is what I wanted to tell everyone.
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In fact, we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs!" Hmm... This post is difficult for me. On one hand, I don't want to negatively impact Justin.tv. On the other hand, I feel obligated to let everyone know that if you don't have a college degree or other qualifying credentials, you probably won't get hired there. I went in for an interview, and as far as I could tell, I passed. But afterward…
If you voluntarily left gamedev, could you please tell me.... why? If you say "long hours, low pay, incompetent management" I'll know you're just a sell-out :)
What's your email? I don't want to go into salary details publicly.
On low pay: when I first arrived at The Corporation, I made nothing for the first nine months. I was an "intern", and they don't pay interns. I'm not complaining. It was excellent experience. After that, I was paid a very low salary. A year and a half after that, I was paid "slightly less than low, but still half of what an average developer makes" salary. So the pay wasn't especially good. I was there for the experience anyway, not the pay.
On incompetent management: We had a "daily report" to fill out each day. The idea was to list what we did, what we were "blocked" on, and what we will do soon. On Fridays, we had to fill out a weekly "time allocation sheet". We would assign percentages to various categories of what we spent time on. (e.g. "50% primary tasks, 30% debugging, 10% meetings, 10% other".) We also had many, many meetings. One day, a few months before I left, all developers spent over four hours in meetings. (The "Monday Morning Meeting", followed by the general "Developer's Meeting", followed by the "Version-one-point-something Product Meeting"... Over half the day spent in just meetings.) Our direct manager was very controlling. A few times, he walked by and asked people to implement a brand-new feature, claiming that "it would be easy". So he was apt to gloss over details, and the details are often the hardest part of software development.
The biggest reason why I left The Corporation is because I wasn't learning anything anymore. The three years I worked there were filled with nonstop learning... up to about six months before I left. At that point, it became hard to be passionate about the job, because I wasn't doing much that allowed me to grow as an engineer.
Are the conditions at your gamedev job pretty good? I heard from a friend that The Corporation was an outlier, and that every one of the five other gamedev companies my friend had worked at were a lot better, so I'm still holding out hope for the gamedev industry in general.
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Show some respect during the interview process. Possibly make their point of contact an engineer rather than an HR person. I interviewed with a company that had a technical recruiter who knew technology and I was very impressed by them for that. Also keep in mind, how you run the interview process says volumes about what its like to work in your company. Taking > 2 weeks between responses shows lack of interest. Maki…
I have to echo your point about the response time. I recently interviewed with a large well-known software company, and I told them about some of my schedule limitations (due date on an existing offer), and the HR person seemed dodgy about it at best. My interviewer loved me, but told me that the company generally was unable to respond in less than 4 weeks. If you want your potential hires to feel valued, move throug…
And speak of the devil - they got back to me and were gracious enough to tell me that they were unable to meet our deadline, despite their interest.
Oh well, I guess I'm going with the other offer :)
Re: Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
#210The startup that I work for, Akaza Research, is hiring: http://akazaresearch.com/about_akaza/careers.html
Mostly Java/J2EE, based in Cambridge MA. We deliver an open-source product to the life sciences, OpenClinica (http://openclinica.org/). Contact me through my profile (Linkedin, blog, etc) if you have questions.