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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#441

Post by rifung »

swalsh wrote: post #330
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,…

"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.

When you figure out how you can memorize your way through Google's interview process, please give me some advice. I study algorithms constantly out of interest, and still only managed to do well enough that they gave me another try a week later.

Do I think algorithm questions predict how well you do on a job? No. However I certainly don't think they are just memorization unless you mean memorizing run time of various data structure operations, but that's actually useful to know.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#442

Post by noarchy »

steven2012 wrote: post #381
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…

It sounds like you don't live in the Valley. I interviewed for jobs recently, and I studied my ass off for 6+ weeks, every night doing different coding questions, and spending weekends learning new things and coding algorithms for 6-8 hrs a a day. It paid off, I got multiple job offers, and am pretty happy with the end result.

>It sounds like you don't live in the Valley.

Indeed, I don't. I even asked, in one of my replies, if this was a "Valley" thing.

I'm ok with being asked to code or write things out during interviews - that is, if it is pertinent to the job I'll be performing. If I'm expected to do complex DB queries, for example, it is reasonable to see if I can write one. If I've been doing it for years, I should be able to handle such a task.

>I interviewed for jobs recently, and I studied my ass off for 6+ weeks, every night doing different coding questions, and spending weekends learning new things and coding algorithms for 6-8 hrs a a day.

But this... this seems more appropriate in the context of a university exam than a job in real-world software development. As I said in elsewhere in this thread, I can understand asking such questions of a prospective junior developer, as they won't have much experience, and the CS 101 material may be fresher in their mind.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#443

Post by ScottBurson »

throwaway456789 wrote: post #371
reefoctopus wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're making $400k, but you don't really love your job, my suggestion would be to save as much money as you can, to the point that you can become financially independent. Then you can start your own startup if you want; or take a year off, half to relax and half to learn some new stuff, and get a different job, if that's what you want.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#444

Post by lsc »

marme wrote: post #134
lackbeard wrote: post #22

This is interesting data. I liked what Joel Spolsky said a long time ago. Basically that companies should want two types of engineers. 1. You want a few who are experts in the company's tech stack. 2. The bar for everyone else is just that they're smart and they get things done. I guess the core problem is that we don't have a good objective measure of the latter. (Maybe an IQ test for smarts, if that wasn't politica…

IQ tests are not only politically incorrect they are illegal in the US. It is illegal discrimination to make hiring decisions based on IQ scores. You can only use a test that shows those with higher scores perform better at the job. A general IQ test can not be shown to do that. Basically you can not ask questions that test skills that would not be used in the job the candidate is applying for. You must be able to de…

>IQ tests are not only politically incorrect they are illegal in the US. It is illegal discrimination to make hiring decisions based on IQ scores.

Oh come now. Every company in the valley emphasizes "cultural fit" and that's about as subtle a dog-whistle as an '88' neck tattoo.

It's pretty obvious that nobody here cares about even the most clear-cut discrimination against protected classes (and it's not at all clear to me that less intelligent people are a protected class.)

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#445

Post by [deleted] »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #343
noarchy wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I'm suspecting that this is a "Valley" thing, would that be wrong? >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 d…

Where have you interviewed that hasn't asked you to implement X algorithm by memory?!? I'd love to interview there!

[deleted]

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#446

Post by hibikir »

sytelus wrote: post #426
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pref…

Work-hire test works for positions that requires failry narrow skill sets. You need iOS 2D game developer or nodejs to MongoDB plumber or single page JS app developer? Sure it would work beautifully. However most companies are not looking for such very narrow skill sets. Companies look for people who are generalists at heart and can be specialized in given area with little ramp up on demand . One week you might write…

If you want generalists, you won't really be able to test them properly by asking questions at random: All you are hoping for is that they share the same background as you do. The moment it's you asking the question, and they can't really check sources, you have already lost.

As far as hardcore computer science abilities, a test still won't help, because what you are really testing is how far people are from college: Generalist cs is touched in college, but there are entire sections of computer science that someone with 10 years of experience might not have had to touch. I've had to do pretty specific CS stuff for work, but to get any of that done, I started with weeks of research, and then add my own spin to our specific situation top. You can't test the ability to do that by just checking if someone has memorized Raft, or black red trees, or any other random problem. I don't have a lot of CS algorithms memorized: that's why there's the internet, and why I have Knuth in my shelf.

You want to check for hard cs, ask the candidate to choose his favorite CS topic, and ask for am impromptu presentation on that. anything else is just going to fail at finding candidates that have different backgrounds than you, and that's PRECISELY the people you want to hire.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#447

Post by ScottBurson »

throwaway456789 wrote: post #432
vorg wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... The languages in your list are: * declarative: HTML, CSS, Groovy (for Gradle), SQL * scripting: Shell, Perl, JS, Groovy (for testing) * Java-clones: C# I found it difficult to pick up Clojure and Haskell "in a few days" when all I had was experience in those types of languages. I…

I agree with you about Clojure in particular. I did do some non trivial work in Lisp in a graduate class, but its not the same as using it all day. I don't believe I would seek out an opportunity where a Lisp dialect was the programming language of choice, anyway... (I found ML to be easier to work with than Lisp. I guess it's technically not a pure functional language though).

Neither is Lisp a pure functional language, though it might have been taught that way in your class.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#448

Post by soham »

mquander wrote: post #419
soham wrote: post #150

Hi Ammon/Harj, Thank you for that effort and laying it out. Very helpful. Just so the readers don't miss the context: By definition, most companies referred here, I'm guessing, are startups. And startups will definitely want more product-focused engineers, in order to keep moving fast. Interviewing in general, is closer to a date, than it's to a standardized test. The smaller the company is, the more pronounced that…

When I was a Director of Engineering at Box, the engineering team was tasked with hiring 25 engineers in a single quarter. For several quarters. When hiring at that scale, it's hard to hire based on personas and elaborate preferences. I just watched another startup in the same reference class grow at a similar speed, and I don't believe you. Suppose it takes 20 interview loops to hire one very good engineer, and each…

Not sure which part you're referring to, that doesn't work.

Average 10% spend by an engineer towards hiring is quite normal, from my experience. Obviously, it's average, so there are some who spend way more than 10%, and there are some who don't spend any. 4 out of 40 hours a week including phone-screens, on-sites and deliberations is easy to get to.

I'm sure you know, that a lot of hiring at that scale is systematized and (hence) heavy-lifting is done by non-technical recruiting people.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#449

Post by henrikschroder »

ammon wrote: post #154
vonmoltke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no strong noes This is the problem. It allows one interviewer with a pet peeve to torpedo an otherwise excellent hire. Where I work, whoever ends up on the wrong side of the majority needs to make a case good enough to convince the majority to switch. Being strongly in the minority is not good enough. The culture of accepting high false negative rates leads to the "no weaknesses" hiring the GP was complaining about…

Yeah, I totally agree. We actually asked YC Companies about their fire rates. The fire rate at most of the companies was under 6% (documenting a high false negative rate approach)

Isn't it kind of weird that startup culture is supposed to be all about failing fast, MVP, and pivoting, but when it comes to hiring, it has to be perfect from the start?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#450

Post by gizi »

I am growing less and less negative about recruiters. They can be a bit pushy, but I think that recruiters can learn how to modulate and not exaggerate. If a company wants good candidates, it will have to go to them, because the good candidates will not come to them. Good candidates are usually already too busy to bother. That leaves the company no other choice than to appoint a recruiter and try to take the initiative in contacting the good candidates anyway.
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