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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#101

Post by tdaltonc »

ammon wrote: post #23
tdaltonc wrote: post #4

I like the ontology of programmers. Are there any other efforts to do this? Anything data driven or externally validated? Given what a big role personas and demo/psycho-graphics play in marketing, I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about then in the context of hiring and managing.

Yeah (author of the blog post here), I think it's a powerful idea. I don't know of any other public attempts to do this (most ideas about hiring stay locked up inside companies). I'd love to hear any ideas you have. Email me at ammon@triplebyte.com

You might not be able to share it, but I'd love to see a covariance analysis on that matrix. You have this hypothesis that companies hire based on some sort of culture. Is that culture random or are there types of culture? Product-focused v tech-focused. test-driven v code-review-drived. If so, the companies hiring practices should cluster.

This would be very useful for triplebyte to know. It would tell you very quickly who this or that company would like, without just throwing a bunch of candidates at them and seeing what sticks.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#102

Post by merpnderp »

s_kilk wrote: post #46
ryandrake wrote: post #8

> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…

>> have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard) Wait, what? Is it really this bad in the States?

My company starts at 10, then after 4 years you get 15, then after 11 years you get 20. This is in addition to 12 holiday days off a year, plus unlimited accumulation of 1 sick day per month, which can be taken any time you feel "sick".

So you start with 22 working days off including holidays, plus generous sick time. Not perfect, but could be worse.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#103

Post by rowborg »

api wrote: post #16

> "Second, companies dislike programmers with enterprise backgrounds. Our data shows that companies are less likely to hire programmers coming from Java or C# backgrounds." This I totally understand. Enterprise software is systematically horrible in almost every way: terrible UI/UX, insane degrees of over engineering, high footprint, high cost, and usually at least two to three generations behind on every technologic…

I posted this as a comment on the original post, but will make the point here...

Large organizations are often more dysfunctional than small ones, yes, especially when it comes to building software. But that doesn't mean they aren't filled with very smart people. The fact that enterprise programmers can't get hired at startups is not, in my opinion, a reflection of the dysfunctional nature of software development at large companies, but of a mismatch in expectations about how to communicate your ability to do your job.

As an example: one pattern I’ve seen that consistently holds enterprise programmers back in startup interviews (especially in phone screens and technical screens) is the inability to effectively articulate the projects they’ve worked on. Enterprise programmers have often worked on optimizing one small part of a very large and complex system that no one person may understand completely, and in my experience, they often cannot describe that system clearly or holistically. Startups usually need people who can build a system end-to-end, and when an enterprise programmer doesn’t seem to understand their own projects, it reflects very poorly. I see this pattern way too often.

My suggestion (and obviously this is a gross generalization) is for enterprise programmers who want to work at startups to practice being able to clearly and consisely explain what they worked on and how it fit into the overall product. Startups will care more about this than showing, for example, a deep understanding of how Java's various memory pools work (even if they work in Java).

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#104

Post by sillysaurus3 »

ammon wrote: post #44
chatmasta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only the applicants who have limited time. The startup founders are also time constrained. You can't found a successful startup if you spend 10+ hours a week interviewing potential employees. I suspect much of the initial bias and "hard line" preferences are due to a startup's unwillingness to spend inordinate amounts of time interviewing candidates to find that one diamond in the rough. Imagine 4 of every 1…

This is definitely true. The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads. But this fact does nothing to help the good programmers who look bad on paper who everyone is ignoring. This is precisely the problem that we're trying to fix with Triplebyte. We want to make actual technical evaluatio…

The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads.

Imagine how mistaken that would sound if you substitute "startup founders" for "programmers."

The reason you feel company filters are anything except random noise is personal bias. It's disheartening that your article notices that company preferences are essentially random noise, and then you don't really internalize that fact or take it to its logical conclusion:

Interviews where programmers do anything except work-hire tests tuned to the signal that the companies want are doomed to fail.

And it's almost impossible to do a work-hire test in an interview. A real work-hire test. The type of test where you actually do some work and then show that yours is effective.

We're so backwards that people probably read this and think I'm saying whiteboard work or something stupid like that. No. Real, actual work. The problem you're working on can be fake, but the problem needs to be literally the same type of thing that the company does on a day-to-day basis.

Want a 100% success rate? Do that, and then don't pay attention to anything but the results. Including whether the candidate has an MIT degree, or any degree at all. If you actually set up a work-hire test, a real one, and then stop asking about all the other stuff that doesn't matter, then you will get a 100% rate. Again, you have to tune the test to what the company is looking for, but that's not hard. "Here is an iOS app. Find and fix these bugs, then add a new feature."

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#105

Post by throwaway456789 »

alexwebb2 wrote: post #88
throwaway456789 wrote: post #63

I'm an "enterprise" programmer because I write in Java... I'm also older than the average age of a start-up employee (late twenties). I've never written a line of Ruby, and I've never written object oriented JavaScript or used Node.js. However, I'm a really good programmer. I just happen to write the majority of my code in Java. If tomorrow we decided to use a new language, I could pick it up in a few days... I have…

Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the "no" pile right off the bat. The problem is that those candidates, in my experience, tend to throw up way more red flags than others - their code is extremely verbose, they rattle off factory patterns like they're reading a textbook without any inkling what sort of problems they're actua…

It's funny you say that. I can't name one factory pattern off the top of my head... Never needed to learn one. I should clarify -- I'm in my late twenties, and I've spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code. I don't understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#106

Post by reitanqild »

[deleted] wrote: post #94
reitanqild wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been hired without experience: that was how my Java career started. Basically it went like this: registered with recruiting agency - got a call a few days later asking if I would like a plane ticket - met up with the company next time I crossed the mountains anyway, told them I knew next to nothing about Java, was told that I looked smart and as long as I picked it up within the next 6 months they would be hap…

[deleted]

To be honest I was honest at time as well and announced loud and clear that I knew nothing about Java. For those people smart seemed to matter more than experienced.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#107

Post by Retric »

chatmasta wrote: post #28
ryandrake wrote: post #8

> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…

It's not only the applicants who have limited time. The startup founders are also time constrained. You can't found a successful startup if you spend 10+ hours a week interviewing potential employees. I suspect much of the initial bias and "hard line" preferences are due to a startup's unwillingness to spend inordinate amounts of time interviewing candidates to find that one diamond in the rough. Imagine 4 of every 1…

Interviewing is ridiculously important for any small company. The problem is most people have little idea how to do anything except look for people like them.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#108

Post by pc86 »

api wrote: post #16

> "Second, companies dislike programmers with enterprise backgrounds. Our data shows that companies are less likely to hire programmers coming from Java or C# backgrounds." This I totally understand. Enterprise software is systematically horrible in almost every way: terrible UI/UX, insane degrees of over engineering, high footprint, high cost, and usually at least two to three generations behind on every technologic…

> It's so bad that I've actually heard people advise startups to pass on some enterprise revenue if they can afford it (pass on REVENUE!) if it might lead them down an "enterprisey" path, since doing so would in the end result in a systematically inferior product.

Yes, because it's much better to have an architecturally pure product nobody uses than something generating millions in recurring revenue.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#109

Post by Fiahil »

> Almost no one passes all their programming interviews. This is true because of randomness in many interview processes (even great people are bad at some things, and an interviewer focusing on this can yield a blocking no).

Reading this is somewhat reassuring. I've been over some interviews lately and I had some trouble getting past the tech phone screen.

One particular rejection was very frustrating, because I've spend quite some time preparing for the interview. Failed the first one. Got a second chance. And I knew it was over about 5 minutes after it began. "Can you write an algorithm that would sort efficiently this k-sorted array with a complexity strictly inferior to O(n log n)?". Yeah. No. Neither my job nor my hobbies includes sorting almost sorted arrays of integers, and O(n) complexity calculations.

It really seems to me that, being hired by a tech company is just completely random. Tech interviews in general are completely random. "Just a numbers game"

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#110

Post by kelnos »

scarmig wrote: post #86
s_kilk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard) Wait, what? Is it really this bad in the States?

In my experience in the Bay Area, jobs fall into one of three categories: 1) No paid vacation at all 2) 15-25 days of vacation a year 3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2.

2) 15-25 days of vacation a year

Really? 25 days is 5 weeks; I feel like the standard for PTO is 10-15 days, and often it's 10 days, but you get bumped up to 15 after you work at a place for a year or two.

3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2.

Is that really true? I have very limited first-hand experience; only two of my employers have offered unlimited vacation. For one of them, it was as you describe. For my current company... well, by the end of this calendar year, I think it'll add up to a little over 5 weeks, which is fairly unusual by US standards.

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