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“Facebook turned me down” (2009)

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Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#71

Post by pajop »

kkowalczyk wrote: post #22
waterlesscloud wrote: post #8

Turns out false negatives can be pretty costly too, it seems.

If he was hired by Facebook, he wouldn't have (co)developed WhatsApp. If Facebook hired him, he would most likely be worth (to Facebook) as much as any other random Facebook programmer. Unless he's the one who started WhatsApp, it would have been developed and successful anyway and Facebook would have to buy it for the same amount of money. The reality is that product/market fit is much more powerful force than progr…

"The reality is that product/market fit is much more powerful force than programming capabilities of any single engineer." - kkowalczyk

I'll start using this quote! May I know your full name for proper attribution? :)

Are you Kacper Kowalczyk of https://github.com/kkowalczyk ?

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#72

Post by chadillac »

foobarqux wrote: post #59
chadillac wrote: post #15

Turned me down in 07' after a handful of phone interviews, flying me across the country, and 8 hours of in person interviews with 3 separate departments... but not before I got their CTO so shitfaced drunk he botched a 2AM code push to production and helped convince Zuckerbergs little sister into riding a mechanical bull. I regret nothing. edit: Worth noting I was a 22 year old self taught programmer that hadn't expe…

Where did you end up?

Jumped around a bit, handful of companies you've probably never heard of but paid better than FB due to geography and talent shortage. Worked on a lot of fun projects for smaller and more adventurous groups that I wouldn't have ever gotten a chance to touch at a big corp like FB.

Everything from sneaking around pop-up blockers (sorry everyone) to video chat applications to real time messaging platforms to media conversion clusters to penetration testing (I use that term very lightly, but correctly... I wasn't cracking WPA or trashing stacks to pop boxes, just abusing poorly designed systems with permission and stuff with a touch of forensics and systems hardening).

I think back at the opportunity and I was devastated that I didn't make the cut, but honestly, I'm pretty happy I was left to find my own way... it's lead to a lot of great experiences over the past 7 years and I wasn't able to just slide by on resume fodder and has left me the freedom to live in MIA, NYC, and LA... cross the country via road trip multiple times (once on motorcycle!), and met a lot of very talented peers along the way. Not all of the best and brightest are in the Valley... just the chest thumpingist.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#73

Post by peterwwillis »

Ologn wrote: post #5
hendzen wrote: post #4

"We only hire the best engineers"

He only had a BSCS from Stanford and had been a VP of Engineering at Yahoo leading over 300 engineers. Facebook turned him away, and as someone else mentioned here, Twitter. It kind of puts in perspective that blog post from yesterday that claimed companies in Silicon Valley can't find rock star ninja engineers ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7259845 ).

It does sound difficult to find someone who has an engineering degree, a stadium-touring band and practices ninpo.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#74

Post by wpietri »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #23
wpietri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overplay your hand. There is a very large luck component to it, sure. But I mentor at entrepreneurship events, and there is a very wide distribution of people who want to start companies. Some of those people are obviously more suited to the work than others. I think that's especially true for people who, like WhatsApp, do things that are different than the common wisdom [1]. I had dinner recently with a friend w…

If Mark Zuckerberg was a freshman in college again in 2014, what chances do you give him of creating a $170B company in the next decade? How about in his lifetime? How about a $1B company in his lifetime? I'd say on the order of 1. 1 in a billion 2. 1 in 100 million. 2. 1 in a million. Sure he is smart and driven and has had every opportunity available to the one guy on planet earth who will achieve what he has. But…

That's one way to look at it. But there are what, 2 million freshmen a year? If we start slotting random freshmen into Mark Zuckerberg's room at Harvard, how many of them would have made it to be a billionaire?

Yes, he got lucky. (Which I already acknowledged.) But successful founders aren't "just lucky".

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#75

Post by chaz »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #14
paul wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in many cases great founders would make terrible employees. Imagine trying to tell Steve Jobs what to do.

So if you're a giant company, hire them and don't tell them what to do. Let them run free on your dime. Own whatever they make. (Not that Twitter was a giant company in 2009, and Facebook was just getting there)

Actually, this is what acquihires are great at. An interesting article recently about eBay's turnaround and how CEO John Donahoe started acquiring startups to drive innovation with talent they can't simply hire or grow internally. http://www.businessinsider.com/explaining-ebays-turnaround-2...

> But beyond the tactics, Donahoe realized there was a deeper issue bedeviling eBay. It had stopped innovating. [...] eBay also had a problem attracting and retaining innovative, entrepreneurial people into its executive ranks ...

> Andreessen’s second theory of innovation is that the people who are the very best at it are the people who create successful technology companies — founders. They are the people who have a proven ability to develop a concept and bring it to fruition.

> For this reason, Andreessen believes that tech companies should be run by their founders.

> The problem for eBay is that its founder, Pierre Omidyar, had no interest in running it. And Donahoe, a talented manager, had the wisdom to know he was not the kind of visionary who could found an innovative tech company.

> So he decided he was going to have to go after the next best thing. He was going to have to build a team of founders, or founder-types, and give them the run of the place.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#76

Post by chadillac »

shutupalready wrote: post #57
chadillac wrote: post #15

Turned me down in 07' after a handful of phone interviews, flying me across the country, and 8 hours of in person interviews with 3 separate departments... but not before I got their CTO so shitfaced drunk he botched a 2AM code push to production and helped convince Zuckerbergs little sister into riding a mechanical bull. I regret nothing. edit: Worth noting I was a 22 year old self taught programmer that hadn't expe…

> Turned me down in 07 Telling the story now is an interesting historical anecdote, but you probably didn't blog or tweet about it in 2007, right? I can't quite understand why Brian Acton was so public about the companies that turned him down. Isn't this bad for him if he's in a job search? Doesn't this send out a negative message (assuming any employer bothered to look)?

Nah, I didn't announce it publicly, I was pretty ashamed of it at the time. Most people didn't even know I was up for it and I liked it that way. I'd rather surprise my friends with a "So I'm moving to Palo Alto!" message than a "Dang, apparently I'm not good enough." follow up/pity party.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#77

Post by incision »

a_bonobo wrote: post #64
shutupalready wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turned me down in 07 Telling the story now is an interesting historical anecdote, but you probably didn't blog or tweet about it in 2007, right? I can't quite understand why Brian Acton was so public about the companies that turned him down. Isn't this bad for him if he's in a job search? Doesn't this send out a negative message (assuming any employer bothered to look)?

You could see it as a badge of honor that Google or another large company, which purportedly hires only the best of the best, deemed you worthy of an interview. The mere fact that you have been considered for a position might raise your standing with potential employers [citation needed].

>"The mere fact that you have been considered for a position might raise your standing with potential employers [citation needed]."

Personally, the weeks following my interviews with one of those big players saw me approached by a couple of established start-ups and a major financial company - far more attention than I'd ever received previously.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#79

Post by ChuckMcM »

Ologn wrote: post #5
hendzen wrote: post #4

"We only hire the best engineers"

He only had a BSCS from Stanford and had been a VP of Engineering at Yahoo leading over 300 engineers. Facebook turned him away, and as someone else mentioned here, Twitter. It kind of puts in perspective that blog post from yesterday that claimed companies in Silicon Valley can't find rock star ninja engineers ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7259845 ).

This isn't all that unusual. Most people realize that hiring processes are really random. In some ways just hiring anyone who applies, firing them after 90 days if they don't work out, and keeping track of who has been through once is probably a better system overall.

The recent work on how SAT scores don't predict college success is similar. There is a huge amount of influence around 'fit' and environment. Some people just "click" and some people don't. Genius rock star programmers that don't click are poor employees, and some times former washouts that do click are your key hires. Hard to predict.

Re: “Facebook turned me down” (2009)

#80

Post by waterlesscloud »

bduerst wrote: post #25
waterlesscloud wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you're a giant company, hire them and don't tell them what to do. Let them run free on your dime. Own whatever they make. (Not that Twitter was a giant company in 2009, and Facebook was just getting there)

Too high of a risk for companies. Better to let the market sift out the successful founders than to payroll a hundred of them, hoping for a big win. Think of how many unsuccessful founder types that Facebook didn't hire too. Also if this guy was working for Facebook, odds are he would have ended up on messenger, and someone else would have filled the SMS market need for Whatsapp in India. Then Facebook would be acqui…

>let the market sift out the successful founders

Sure, of course that's exactly what they're doing.

But just giving up on being able to identify these sorts of people when there's tens of billions of dollars at stake seems like an irresponsible business decision.

At these acquisition prices, it's worth putting a great deal of effort and money into alternative processes.

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