Who Y Combinator Companies Want • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#301

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #258

ryandrake wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this not true in other professions? Why don't hospitals give preference to surgeons who like to dissect frogs in their spare time or build better scalpels on their garage workbench?

I know you are being rhetorical but to those that don't know it's because surgeons have a proper profession that protects surgeons from management/lobbyists/politicians etc bossing them around. Software developers don't have such protection and any mention of such a thing will get you blackballed within the industry by employers and ostracized by peers as most have bought in to the narrative that cooperating is bad f…

> However, my SO is a physician and they spend A LOT of time on skill mastery beyond med school and residency, however, their keeper is their profession, not their employer which is a major difference.

I spend a lot of time outside my job on skill mastery as well. I do not do it in ways or domains that translate into pretty Github portfolios.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#302

Post by jakub_g » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

lewisl9029 wrote: post #297

I apologize for being completely off-topic, but I find it completely ridiculous that we have to scroll past half the page to see the next highest-level comment. Are there any plans for implementing collapsible comment threads?

FYI HackerWeb has collapsible threads:

https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/#/item/10698009

It's designed for mobile web, but just zoom in and it should be fine

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#303

Post by buckbova » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

tedks wrote: post #117

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?

And yet the USA is the richest country in the world, with a culture steadily dominating and extinguishing all other cultures. There is a McDonald's in Red Square right now. You don't make an omelet without enslaving some chickens their entire lives, keeping them in barely one cubic foot of space from birth to death so they can push out eggs at maximal productivity, killing them as soon as they're no longer at peak pe…

And now we can serve breakfast all day. Take that world!

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#304

Post by schandur » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

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…

> I've never written a line of Ruby

I say this exact same thing on my Linkedin profile: "I have never written a line of Ruby... but I bet you can make me if it comes to that."

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#305

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

sillysaurus wrote: post #239

eropple wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. I'm not the best programmer, but I'm comfortable I'd slot in the top quintile, probably top ten percent, of people that walk through a startup's door. And I'd never even return your call. No work-sample test I've ever seen would take less than four hours. That's a $550 opportunity cost for me at my standard rates. What the hell makes you think y…

Our culture is rejecting the one effective test we have. Do we care about equality, or not? I tried not mentionining this aspect, hoping people would realize on their own. But a remote work hire test is also mostly anonymous. It doesn't matter whether you're black, white, male, or female. All that matters is whether you can do the work. On the flipside, what you're saying is that you genuinely want to spend a vacatio…

[deleted]

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#306

Post by MCRed » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #196

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…

I'll use myself as an example -- I work as a programmer in the Defense industry. I've wanted out for years. So every so often I start sending out resumes and going on interviews. After wasting about half of my vacation time on (multiple) rounds of interviews with each prospective employer (that ultimately lead nowhere -- most often, a potential employer who inexplicably stops communicating with me), I give up. Then,…

I suggest only doing interviews in the evening via phone. (not video. I've been discriminated against by video, but never by phone.) Do this in the evening. If the job is in your town and you feel its reasonable to meet them in person, do it in the evening or on a weekend.

Universally I've found that by being a little bit picky you filter out the people who aren't serious... and a lot of people aren't "serious". They might seriously want someone but they have no capability to identify that person accurately when they have found them.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#307

Post by Swizec » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

bjt wrote: post #299

Swizec wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're getting paid for a week of work, you can take a week of unpaid vacation from your day job. No vacation days burned. No money lost.

I suspect that the flexible "unpaid vacation" scenario you're describing is much more rare than you think. If your team is pushing for a major release and you decide just not to show up, your days are numbered. If you spend the week working for another company, you are quite likely to be fired from the old one. Ammon mentioned Weebly, above. They are one company that I've seen require an on-site week as a contractor.…

Thing is, most companies will fire you as soon as they notice you're actively looking for other jobs.

And I wasn't suggesting job abandonment. Asking for a week of unpaid vacation is a different conversation than asking for a week of paid vacation.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#308

Post by zo1 » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #231

noarchy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On top of the interview itself, there's the hours of studying you have to put in. Yikes, are people really doing this, or feel like they must? If I'm interviewing, I expect to be asked about previous projects, maybe my Github portfolio, and so on. I also expect to be asked how I might approach a given problem within my area of work. I can't imagine studying that - I'm paid to do this stuff every day. So are we talki…

Yes, people are really doing this. It's stupid, but to not do so puts you at a competitive disadvantage against other candidates. Competition for programming jobs is fierce. It is not enough to be able to implement quicksort. One must have the algorithm thoroughly memorized so that it can be scrawled onto the whiteboard in one smooth motion of the dry-erase pen. If you pause to say "hmm..." while re-deriving quicksor…

>"It is not enough to be able to implement quicksort. One must have the algorithm thoroughly memorized so that it can be scrawled onto the whiteboard in one smooth motion of the dry-erase pen. If you pause to say "hmm..." while re-deriving quicksort on the spot, you will be branded as "slow" and obviously inferior to the candidate who spent three days bashing his/her head against an algorithms textbook."

If at an interview they asked/expected that of me, it would promptly disinterest me in working for them. And I'd probably tell them that right there.

Optimizing for memorization of specific algorithms (of sorting even?) instead of problem-solving and domain-knowledge is quite a weird/perverse incentive. I'm surprised it's gotten this far, if it is true. The places I've interviewed generally ask prior experience, talk about solutions and approaches, and theoretical OO-questions of the fizz-buzz level just to be sure.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#309

Post by MCRed » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

brianchu wrote: post #283

jcadam wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll use myself as an example -- I work as a programmer in the Defense industry. I've wanted out for years. So every so often I start sending out resumes and going on interviews. After wasting about half of my vacation time on (multiple) rounds of interviews with each prospective employer (that ultimately lead nowhere -- most often, a potential employer who inexplicably stops communicating with me), I give up. Then,…

I'm a CS student and most students I know dislike whiteboarding too (and by extension many, if not most, YC startup employees do too). But I'm pretty okay at them now, having had lots of practice. The key advantage for students I think is the ability to have sustained practice over the course of a month (e.g. > 4 onsites over the course of a month), which most students can afford since their schedules are flexible. A…

IF they have you write code, think twice about taking the job. That's an indicator of a junior engineer conducting an interview in a company that didn't care enough to work out a good process.

Seriously. I've been working for startups and starting companies for 26 years, and for half that time I've been building teams. I stopped asking people to code a long time ago. If they can't code it will be obvious by their answers to your questions (And I'm not talking about coding brain teasers either.)

Ask them about a project they worked on and to explain to you how it worked. That's sufficient.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#310

Post by pinewurst » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #97

pinewurst wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely my perspective. I've been doing this for a very long time and it's evolved to the point where I actually start hyperventilating when thinking about interviews, at least the technical ones. I'm looking now and I don't think I can force myself through more than a few cycles before falling back to marketing/product management to avoid it.

Interesting that you think of product management as a "fallback" case. I've found getting hired as a product manager infinitely more difficult than getting hired as an engineer. For every company that says they are looking for a product person, there are at least 20 that say they are looking for engineers. Of course, the main point of my original comment still applies: "looking" definitely does not equal "hiring" in…

I think that I expressed that poorly. I've shifted to sales/marketing/product management but in my heart of hearts, I still think of myself as an engineer - an engineer who's been profoundly alienated from my means of production by this awful culture.

I agree with you that getting hired as a product manager isn't easy but, almost without exception (even at places like Amazon), the process is actually respectful, which makes a world of difference.