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Intern at a YC Company

blog.ycombinator.com

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31–40 of 86 posts

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#31

Post by redthrowaway »

gregchapple wrote: post #29
wyclif wrote: post #27

Nothing but a blank screen in the latest version of Chrome.

I've noticed a strange bug with the latest version of Chrome where pages sometimes don't render. Try opening the developer tools, this usually causes the page to render for me.

I've noticed the same bug, but dev tools doesn't seem to do anything and view-source is blank. This one though seems to be a site issue:

    $ traceroute blog.ycombinator.com
    traceroute to posthaven.com (50.63.202.48), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
     1  10.142.83.65 (10.142.83.65)  0.892 ms  0.719 ms  0.769 ms
     2  216-13-232-1.dedicated.allstream.net (216.13.232.1)  1.213 ms  3.646 ms  1.234 ms
     3  216-23-136-13.dedicated.allstream.net (216.23.136.13)  2.256 ms  8.470 ms  1.299 ms
     4  66-46-123-225.dedicated.allstream.net (66.46.123.225)  18.638 ms  12.393 ms  13.011 ms
     5  eqix-ch.godaddy.com (206.223.119.141)  58.324 ms  61.302 ms  60.216 ms
     6  * * *
     7  * * *
     8  * * *
     9  * * *
    10  * * *
etc

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#32

Post by redthrowaway »

johannh wrote: post #30

What if I'm not from the US and require a work permission? Any chance of applying?

I have no inside info, but my guess is probably not. Unless we're talking about AirBnB or Dropbox, most YC companies aren't going to want to take the time out to deal with the regulator¥ hassles of H1B sponsorship.

That said, for the perfect candidate, exceptions will be made.

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#33

Post by seiji »

jordsmi wrote: post #28
canistr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps alternatively, this is a test by some hot new, stealth-mode YC startup to test the viability of video interview screening? And simply using interns as a small test subject pool. Furthermore, because interns are the testing pool. The turnover of selecting quality interns and seeing how they turn out over a summer internship would provide good data for whoever the startup is doing this.

They do the same thing for regular YC applications, so I don't think its anything crazy new.

Though, there's a large difference between overt "we want to discriminate against who joins our private secret society" and "we want to discriminate against potential employees."

The goal of the video is so they can form opinions about you more quickly. They don't want to waste time getting to know you or your history on paper if you turn out to be somehow unlikeable or unworkable as a person.

[Also see: online dating. When you read profile text, you read it as yourself and form opinions based on your ideal world view. When you end up meeting and dealing with someone in person, you end up seeing how much they completely don't match the ideas you formed from textual communication.]

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#34

Post by psuter »

redthrowaway wrote: post #32
johannh wrote: post #30

What if I'm not from the US and require a work permission? Any chance of applying?

I have no inside info, but my guess is probably not. Unless we're talking about AirBnB or Dropbox, most YC companies aren't going to want to take the time out to deal with the regulator¥ hassles of H1B sponsorship. That said, for the perfect candidate, exceptions will be made.

Internships would fall under J1, which isn't all that hard to get.

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#35

Post by mapgrep »

gms7777 wrote: post #24
Xdes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video introducing you. Does this violate equal opportunity employment or is there some weird legal exclusion?

As someone with no legal expertise in any area: Well, the companies are getting age/race/gender information from seeing you and they could use this information to discriminate against a protected class, but I don't see how its different from in-person interviewing where they would have access to the same information.

>I don't see how its different from in-person interviewing

An in-person interview is a two-way conversation and costly (in time and energy) for both sides. It is ideally a rich experience with a lot of infomation.

What we have here is a call for a very short (1 minute) one-way look at the candidate, who is asked in incredibly vague terms to introduce themselves.

IANAL but it seems like an attorney could make a case that such a short video with so little non-visual content -- no meaningful prompt, no real chance to show skill -- is a pretext for discrimination based on age or race or gender. Not that I'm saying it is, mind you, but asking for a video "introducing you" does suggest that the content of what the speaker says is incidental to who the speaker is. Particularly for a job that does not involve introducing yourself all the time (are these sales interns? receptionists?).

Why not a prompt like "...introduce yourself and explain why you're interested in working for $COMPANY..."?

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#36

Post by marukokinno »

HELP, I just got infected by clicking in the top article of HN, the one named 2048, when I clicked ,it automatically downloaded a file with extension .patch, when I try to delete the file, the OSX says "finder wants to make changes". what should I do? I clicked in the comments of the article, not the article itself

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#37

Post by mrtron »

I suggest looking at interns all year long and not just during the summer months. University of Waterloo has a co-op program for students where they have work terms throughout the year.

Interns can be very high value if the environment is setup for them to contribute.

Re: Intern at a YC Company

#40

Post by mrtron »

psuter wrote: post #34
redthrowaway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no inside info, but my guess is probably not. Unless we're talking about AirBnB or Dropbox, most YC companies aren't going to want to take the time out to deal with the regulator¥ hassles of H1B sponsorship. That said, for the perfect candidate, exceptions will be made.

Internships would fall under J1, which isn't all that hard to get.

North American interns with a technical background should be eligible for TN visas as well.
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