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VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

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Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#101

Post by unoti »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #95
[deleted] wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I don't really understand this point of view, because implementing a Sieve of Eratosthenes is not particularly difficult. I really don't know where to start with your comment. All I can suggest is that you sit in on about a dozen interviews by someone who actually knows how to interview and learn from that process. The thing about interviewing is that it is really just about due diligence. You are verifying that what…

It's worth noting that many team members see other team members as opponents and competition.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#102

Post by justinY »

geuis wrote: post #58

This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I'm looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I'm going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question. I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn't even on the call. They h…

via 500friends founder/CEO.

As I mentioned to you in my initial apology, we had a fire drill. That being said, the tardiness was inexcusable, and I talked to the developer about that.

Regarding our interview questions, they were meant as an "initial screen." We do ask more practical questions in person. However, we figure that most smart software engineers can write a linked list or prime number solver.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#103

Post by speeder »

rdouble wrote: post #64
geuis wrote: post #58

This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I'm looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I'm going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question. I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn't even on the call. They h…

Not to excuse that sort of behavior, but this is a pretty typical HR experience in the Bay Area. Late calls, no-shows, awkward questions, either too easy or too hard, abrupt endings, obviously haven't read the resume, etc. Happens all the time, unfortunately.

I had a interview failed like that from Amazon...

Granted, I think it was accidental on their part (ie: the person that interviewed me was newbie at Amazon himself and quite lost, but seemly the person that was going to interview me had a serious problem of sorts and could not do it)

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#106

Post by [deleted] »

fingerprinter wrote: post #56

This is totally off topic, and might be considered a rant, but I see this from time-to-time in startup land. Not understanding titles. First, this is for a "vp of engineering" that is "hands on". Are you really looking for an architect that codes? Perhaps a Sr. Engineer/Team lead? Do the engineers directly report to this "vp of engineering"? What happens when the team gets to big? Second, you are locking yourself int…

[deleted]

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#107

Post by [deleted] »

justinY wrote: post #75

The reason for this is that if you haven't been coding (just managing) for 12+ years...you probably are not "hands-on" enough for a company of our stage. We have gotten a lot of very smart but "big company" people who had applied for this position. Sorry for the confusion however, most of our team is actually MUCH holder than the typical start-up: 500friends.com/team. We may be a lot of things but are definitely not…

[deleted]

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#108

Post by tjbiddle »

Jailbird wrote: post #8
tjbiddle wrote: post #5

The only reasoning I can come up with that could possibly support this is maybe they have the idea in mind that those with more than 12 years experience would be less able to adapt to newer ways of thinking?

That counts as ageist for me.

And I don't disagree - It's just the only thing I can possibly come up with to make sense of it.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#109

Post by hga »

justinY wrote: post #82
freework wrote: post #4

This company has been looking for a VP of Engineering since at least last summer. I applied for this position back then. They got back to me with a ridiculous busy-work problem they wanted me to solve. I forgot then about them.

It has been no longer than 3 months...

That's worse, it means you're running through them rather quickly....

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#110

Post by kenjackson »

justinY wrote: post #98
kenjackson wrote: post #37

This posting is so bad and offensive, I hold it against the leadership team of this company. I certainly would think less of someone if someone else mentioned, "Oh they were on the leadership team at 500friends".

500friends founder/CEO here. Look at my team - 500friends.com/team. Most people are who you may consider to be "old." And we wouldn't be where we're at without them. We do not discriminate against age. What we meant is that we're looking for someone who has coded in the past decade. Someone that has been managing 1,000 people at Oracle may not be the right fit for a company of our stage. Make sense?

Hi Justin. It makes sense, but why didn't you say something more like that to begin with? Something like "Active development skills are part of the hiring criteria". You already mention doing Ruby development -- someone who hasn't coded in a decade, probably doesn't have much Ruby experience.

It just seems odd that of all the possible ways to ask for what you describe above, you choose arguably the most offensive and least effective way to do so. And I think as a marketing company, you should know better. The message matters -- not just the intent.

Seriously, think about a better way to phrase the requirement. There are several preferable ways to phrase the question (not just from a legal perspective, but even in terms of simply capturing the pool of candidates you desire).

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