Who Y Combinator Companies Want • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#321

Post by ammon » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

steven2012 wrote: post #288

What is the point of interviewing through TripleByte and going through their interview process, if I just have to interview with the YC company again? It's something I would completely avoid. I already know that almost 100% of the companies I send my resume to will respond, so what is the point of adding another set of interviews, which as the article points out, only adds a random level of success.

Several reasons: 1) people who go through us skip the screening steps and go straight to a on-site interview at the YC companies. 2) We've sent a bunch of people to most of these companies, and have a good idea what they are looking for. We help you avoid failing interviews for the reasons mentioned in this article. 3) Perhaps you have no trouble getting responses to your resume, but a lot of (strong) programmers do. We help them. 4) We help candidates negotiate offers.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#322

Post by Retra » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:19 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #281

Swizec wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you? Your only obligation to the company is the time they pay you for. The time they don't pay you for is yours.

We're not longshoremen. Virtually nobody has a contract saying "just show up when and if you feel like it, and we'll pay you for that".

I don't think Swizec was implying that this time couldn't be coordinated in advance with your employer.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#323

Post by natrius » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:20 PM UTC

bjacks wrote: post #76

I'd really like to know what it is about a resume or in an interview that makes someone seem like more of a 'product programmer'. Is it the particular things they have worked on at other jobs, i.e. their experience, or is it the way they talk about what they want to build? I'd be really interested to hear how I can make myself sound like more of a product programmer.

If you want a product focused career path, start getting "product" in your job titles. Every employer knows I'm a product engineer because "Product Engineer" is on my resume.

Like others have said, the rest is mostly about the way you talk about what drives you. Solving hard problems is nice, but demonstrating that you can think well about building something people want is what you should aim for.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#324

Post by shimon » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:20 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…

Good point. This is possible for surgeons because medicine is a stricter hierarchy of professions that software: you decide to become a surgeon or a nurse or a PA early in your career, compete for that privilege, and don't change. Advanced specialist doctors often work in teaching hospitals and devote a large chunk of their time to research; at lower-level medical professions, you might get continuing education credits. These tiers are well established over many years in the industry and the schools that train the next generations of participants.

I'd say that top achievers in the software industry can also command similar benefits, but the mechanism is different. Instead of leveraging a credential into research and leveraging cool research stories into grant funding, software people get to do what they want by leveraging hard work, luck, and great stories about what they can do into great jobs or investor dollars. There are pros and cons to each system, but one big virtue of the less structured software world is that it tends to respond to market opportunity a lot more efficiently than something like medicine.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#325

Post by ammon » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #280

ammon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I thought that sillysaurus3 was talking about a work trial period (days or a week), but it seems they are talking about asking question during that interview that are similar to actual work. I retract me objection :) If only it were that easy. I am not at all opposed to work-trial tests. They are almost certainly more accurate. But a high percentage of programmer will never apply to a company that requires one.…

Why don't we let the interviewee choose between a few interview methods? Or bypass it if they think their public code proves their ability?

I think this is the best solution. It does raise issues of how you keep a consistent bar between the various options, but I think it's better than the alternatives. Currently we let people do a project track where they do a project on their own time, or an interview track where they answer interview questions. We also give them a choice of interview questions in a number of areas, to try to increase the probability that we see a strength.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#326

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

Fiahil wrote: post #217

taurath wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not completely random, but by my estimation being self-taught fully 40-60% of engineering organizations (trending higher as they get bigger) care much more deeply about academic CS than they do about whether you're able to ship a product. Those companies are looking for people who fit a mold (a generalized interface) so they can scale their teams out. Startups and smaller companies tend to value people who are flexib…

I agree, I've been far more successful with startups than with bigger organizations. The irony is, I have a Master's degree in software engineering, but I never gave (until now) too much attention to these common O(n) sorting problems. In practice, I would end up using whatever standard library's default sort function and it would be perfectly okay for most use cases. I wish tech screens didn't rely so much on these…

Well, you could argue that maybe they aren't looking for somebody to use a library, maybe they're looking for someone to write a library.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#327

Post by Retra » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

jessedhillon wrote: post #56

dagw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is to my boss "unlimited" might mean 15 days and to me it might mean 4 month. If we come in with wildly different ideas about what is OK, we're both going to end up very unhappy.

Or you could have a straightforward discussion with him/her about your expectations. The real issue with unlimited PTO is that many people are so conflict-adverse (except on the internet) that they cannot initiate basic conversations about how much vacation time they think is reasonable. And instead of taking responsibility for communicating their expectations like adults, they stew in resentment against their employ…

The whole reason you have policy and leadership is to handle these kinds of situations though. People are conflict averse, especially when they are not in a position of power over the person they need to talk with.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#328

Post by switch007 » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

d4rti wrote: post #180

kelnos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Come to the Uk, 20 days is minimum, 25 is fairly common, plus 8 bank holidays. Sick days are extra, not taken out of holiday. Usual disclaimers about not every company etc.

Sick days are sick days!

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#329

Post by coffeemug » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:30 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…

> However, I'm a really good programmer.

How do you know?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#330

Post by swalsh » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:31 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,…

"whiteboard hazing"

there are two types of whiteboarding questions. The kind that's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask (i've had people ask me to develop some simple system... which I think is reasonable, because i'll do that as part of the job)

but then there's the solve x algorithm questions. Which ultimately is an exercise in memorization. At this point I've just accepted that i'll have to do that.