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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#371

Post by throwaway456789 »

reefoctopus wrote: post #354
throwaway456789 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who ever said I was interviewing for a job? I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole. Read some of the comments (and the article). The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn' write tests. Hiring is so subjective. This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state o…

What sort of company do you work for? Is it a government contractor? I've known many highly paid people in that line of work that are not fit for startups.

All I'm willing to say here is that I work in financial services.

Actually, one of the reasons why I mentioned patio11 above was because it would interesting to talk to him about this kind of stuff given he's also trying to change how tech companies hire talent.

I've thought about trying his star fighter project, but it's another example of "invest a lot of time on the side in doing something tangentially related to work that may be construed as fun, and you can maybe get an interview from it".

That's what has been illustrated in a lot of the comments on this thread. "Why not learn Ruby?" "Why not contribute to OSS on the side?" "Why not keep up with new technologies?" It's work, that's why. Sure, it can be fun and fulfilling but I already spend 55-60 hours a week doing this stuff, and I have other interests. Am I really expected to do all of this stuff on the side just to get a job at a highly desirable place like a YC startup?

Let's use star fighter as an example. I already work in financial services. To some people who work on apps and user interface design and have never worked in financial services before, I could get the appeal of working on something new... But to me, star fighter is just doing my job outside of work hours in an attempt to get another job. I would rather keep solving problems at my own company, and increase my value to them in the process...

...but that means I'll just write more "Enterprise" Java, and not learn new things! It's a catch-22.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#372

Post by jon_richards »

arebop wrote: post #353
erichmond wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that he's referring to startups, not monstrous companies like Google. I think the reason you whiteboard for google interviews because you will necessarily be a cog in a wheel, and the focus of the cog is to code. At smaller companies / startups, you will potentially be expected to design, architect, gather requirements, code, etc.

I have worked at companies that don't expect candidates to code during interviews, and I have worked at companies that do. I was personally acquainted with programmers who couldn't write working code at the former, and I have never heard of a programmer who couldn't write working code at the latter. I'm sure this perfect correlation anecdote fails to generalize to all workplaces, but I would not accept a job at a com…

See also: FizzBuzz

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#373

Post by ethbro »

engi_nerd wrote: post #349
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,…

The defense industry is strange . I've had three jobs in it. In every single interview, the most technical question that anyone ever asked me was, "What do you like to do on the weekends?" And all three jobs have been engineering positions.

> "What do you like to do on the weekends?"

I code for fun in Ada.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#374

Post by aaalll »

amyjess wrote: post #342
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…

For very young companies, it's also typically a case of "we don't know how to write a handbook and policies, so we'll just wing it, make up our attendance policy as we go along, and approve people's vacations on a case-by-case basis". Since it's a young company, most employees are indespensible, and without any written guarantee saying "you have X days of vacation a year", everyone is too afraid to even ask for any t…

I just had my company go over and put this in the manual I basically took 3 days in the last two years i was like yeah we need to fix this.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#375

Post by meowface »

engi_nerd wrote: post #349
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,…

The defense industry is strange . I've had three jobs in it. In every single interview, the most technical question that anyone ever asked me was, "What do you like to do on the weekends?" And all three jobs have been engineering positions.

I've only interviewed at one, but yes, it was the exact same for me. They asked me about school projects and times I acted like a "leader". No technical questions whatsoever, other than asking stuff like what programming languages I liked.

I left feeling very confused, but after I received the offer, I realized it was basically a grunt work position, despite what the original job listing said.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#376

Post by steven2012 »

ammon wrote: post #321
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.…

I think there is probably value for inexperienced programmers, or people that don't know how to properly write their resume, but for experience programmers, it seems like an unnecessary extra step. Going through a bunch of interview questions from TripleByte just to skip a 45 minute phone screen is absolutely unnecessary and not worth it, especially since you will have to go through the entire onsite anyway.

As I mentioned, I had about a dozen interviews, with both YC and non-YC companies, and had no trouble getting contacted directly by any company.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#377

Post by fredliu »

I'm not a java programmer (my knee jerk reaction to quickly bang out an MVP would mostly be python), but this negative attitude towards Java seems unfair. There's a lot more to the Java universe than just enterprise Java. There are companies using Java that do cool stuff at large scale, and very reliable. Netflix is heavily Java, and nobody would (at least I wouldn't) argue that their tech is dull. Even if you are looking for pure hip factor, there's things like vert.x, and all these other JVM languages, which are not Java per se, but one of the selling points of those languages is it can utilize tons of libraries in the java ecosystem if needed. The last argument against java would be its verbosity and productivity (lack of), but I'd argue Java has one of the best IDE support among all languages, which helps alleviate the problem significantly.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#378

Post by cpitman »

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…

It also doesn't matter if you are actually the one taking the test.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#379

Post by ssalazar »

js8 wrote: post #35

This reminds of psychological study about superstition. They studied fishing habits of South American Indian tribes; the tribes that fished in lakes, had consistent and reasonable rules about when/where to go fishing. However, the tribes that fished in the ocean, where you cannot predict the catch, had rather random and superstitious rules about when/where to go. This is due to our brains seeing patterns in randomnes…

> This reminds of psychological study about superstition. They studied fishing habits of South American Indian tribes; the tribes that fished in lakes, had consistent and reasonable rules about when/where to go fishing. However, the tribes that fished in the ocean, where you cannot predict the catch, had rather random and superstitious rules about when/where to go. This is due to our brains seeing patterns in randomness.

Thats really interesting. Would love to read more about it if you have a source for that off hand.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#380

Post by lojack »

pauldelany wrote: post #135
vinceguidry wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found my current job through a recruiter, I think I will find all subsequent jobs through one as well for this reason. Applying for a position is fundamentally an act of sales, so it behooves you to either be a salesman yourself or to hire someone to do it for you. Otherwise you're throwing yourself at the mercy of people's deep-seated fears and prejudices.

True, but also consider that you're the product in this case, and the salesman (in many cases) doesn't care who he makes the sale to. It may be better to first research and shortlist companies that you want to target, and then find a recruiter who has them as a client? Never done that myself, so don't know how practical it might be.

That's why it's helpful to find and maintain relationships with the good recruiters. Really good recruiters are a very rare extremely valuable thing. They know how to find companies that are a good match and understand the time investment on both sides on the hiring spectrum. They are also good at identifying qualifications and requirements to avoid wasting time when it shouldn't be.

Good recruiters very much care about their reputation, because a sale isn't always a sale when either side ends up unhappy.

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