Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Api.ai is joining Google

api.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–159 of 159 posts

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#151

Post by corobo »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #105
linkregister wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google. He had designed and contributed a decent portion of the core of the product. One of his projects for the company had about 50 stars on github. n=1

> One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google amazing: they spend n million dollars just to get that talented individual, and then just throw it all away. My question is how is this expense reported/justified and who gets the difference? What about shareholder value?

They have many talented individuals who could probably figure out what does what with the code they just bought

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#152

Post by ThrustVectoring »

asabjorn wrote: post #118
jshevek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

That doesn't make sense at all. I do not see why a PhD would disproportionally filter out people with talent for coding, so that the graduates even after years of industry experience afterwards would still be unable to be great at coding.

No, but not having a PhD filters out people without a talent for coding. Same with not having a college degree at all - it's not that going to college makes you worse at coding, but that getting a coding job without a college degree requires you to be better at coding.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#153

Post by ThrustVectoring »

inputcoffee wrote: post #52
BatFastard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For AI engineers is 10M per engineer. http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-sel...

Are you guys distinguishing between what the buyer pays and what the engineer gets? To put it another way: if you personally promised the engineer $5 million (vesting over 3 years) they may switch. This means the buyer must see some value in the company over and above the engineers. (IP? Customers?)

The value of the team is also larger than the individual engineers on it. Plus, a package bid is less risky if you're looking to get the entire package.

Oh, and poaching has another risk - that you get only the worst employees.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#154

Post by ModernMech »

ryanSrich wrote: post #81
ModernMech wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Google, but I've heard of this happening during other acquisitions. A friend of mine with a Ph.D. in CS worked at a startup that was just acquired. He was responsible for the a lot of the tech in the platform they were acquiring, yet since he didn't pass their algorithms heavy interview they didn't want to hire him. He ended up working for one of the other companies interested in buying the startup…

Lol wut? This can't be serious. Can you please name this company so everyone can avoid them?

I'll just say it starts with a "P" and ends in "interest"

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#155

Post by ModernMech »

yitchelle wrote: post #147
jshevek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

Horses for courses. If you to do R&D, go with PhDs, if you want D&D, go with devs.

> if you want D&D, go with devs.

I'll go with a mage, thief, and warrior instead ;)

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#156

Post by pc86 »

plinkplonk wrote: post #134
jshevek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

What a PhD in CS teaches you is how to do research in CS. This skill may or may not be valuable for a specific company and may or may not intersect with raw dev chops. Production Dev is a distinct skill from CS research.

As a dev who has both interviewed and worked with several dozen PhDs and ABDs, the intersection of skills required to both be a great developer and complete (or nearly complete) a PhD are nearly zero.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#157

Post by tkxxx7 »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #140
linkregister wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000+ stars is a pretty big deal! I imagine you could leverage this to gain software development job interviews if you were looking. Do they matter? It is just one of many metrics of how useful a repository is. I think it's one of the most public metrics that can be distilled to a single factoid on HN. There are absolutely better metrics to judge the quality of software.

Well, I am not sure I can use it, since it is a book :-) https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textboo... Also I am not in US.

teaching people to build web apps, especially without a framework in a language like Go, should buy you tons of leverage.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#158

Post by thewhitetulip »

tkxxx7 wrote: post #157
thewhitetulip wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am not sure I can use it, since it is a book :-) https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textboo... Also I am not in US.

teaching people to build web apps, especially without a framework in a language like Go, should buy you tons of leverage.

I wasn't aware of it, thank you :-)

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#159

Post by zump »

fratlas wrote: post #100
zump wrote: post #94

Literally never heard of this company. Serious question: How can I find a company that is likely to get acquired by Google?

Companies that solve a problem Google is facing (i.e. look at Uber acquiring Otto).

They seem to buy a lot of useless stuff though.
Post reply on HN