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Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#51

Post by reitanqild »

metamet wrote: post #25
draw_down wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example of why working at a place with such restrictive PTO is a trap. But, around here we like to have philosophical discussions about how unlimited vacation time is the real trap. I dunno, guys. It seems to work pretty well for me.

Or just start off with a proper number of days. Two weeks seems so short, especially if you get sick. 15 days total seems about right.

Another great thing about the country I work in ATM: 5 weeks "paid" vacation each year (of course this means salaries are slightly lower, but nice anyway)

Edit: And, you are supposed to use them. Not making sure your employees spend their holiday days can land at least the company if not the employee as well in legal hot water.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#52

Post by L_Rahman »

s_kilk wrote: post #46
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…

>> have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard) Wait, what? Is it really this bad in the States?

Yup. 10 days paid time off is the de-facto standard for just about every company based in this country.

Some people negotiate additional PTO as part of their compensation package but I don't need to tell HN that engineers are notoriously bad at doing this.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#53

Post by aerovistae »

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…

Of course, if one plans things well, one has the leeway to leave one job and take a few weeks off before finding another...

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#54

Post by rifung »

cogware wrote: post #3

"Two large YC companies (both with machine learning teams) have told us that they consider interest in ML a negative signal." I wonder why this is? Since ML/AI are currently "hot" those programmers may be trend followers? Or maybe interest in ML is correlated with being a junior programmer (those that are more senior specialized when ML/AI were not so cool and consequently are in different domains)?

I can't speak on their behalf, but I can see how this would be interpreted as a negative signal. If someone is really excited about ML stuff, and you aren't going to hire him for your ML team, then I would be afraid that the person will be disappointed that the work we give him/her is less about solving complex problems and more about getting stuff done. There's also the issue that this person is probably going to jump ship the second he gets an offer to work on ML stuff.

As someone having a strong interest in math and theoretical computer science, I think their bias is fair. I think I'm a pretty good programmer, better than most I've met with similar experience, but I'll admit that I don't care as much as people who are really passionate about building stuff. They will write sloppy code sometimes, but they'll also focus on getting stuff shipped, whereas I naturally want to focus on solving interesting issues like that bug which only seems to happen 1/20 unit tests but no customer has reported.

It took me some time to learn how industry differs from university programming, and if I were recruiting, I don't know if I would want to deal with the hassle. Obviously now that I know I accept industry for what it is and make sure I do my best, even when it doesn't align with my own interests necessarily, but that takes some maturity (not that I am particularly mature), and I can see why hiring managers would rather avoid the risk when hiring and firing is very expensive and annoying.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#55

Post by trishume »

lazyant wrote: post #37

So, random. Also the company interviewing the first candidate, couldn't they just told him that they wanted testing?

Indeed, it's an issue when interviewers believe that the best candidates will feel a compulsion to test their code without being prompted. I worked at a company that was big into TDD without ever having done it before, it was no problem and I wrote lots of tests, and so did everyone else on my team who didn't have a TDD background before.

On the job people will tell you if they expect tests, so why interview people in a different situation?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#56

Post by jessedhillon »

dagw wrote: post #42
draw_down wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example of why working at a place with such restrictive PTO is a trap. But, around here we like to have philosophical discussions about how unlimited vacation time is the real trap. I dunno, guys. It seems to work pretty well for me.

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 employer for shifting that responsibility onto them.

If your employer balks at your idea of reasonable time off, then you might think about switching employers. But if you balk at the idea of having some input into your employer's expectations of you, then you need to take more responsibility, or move to a company with a less collaborative culture.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#57

Post by [deleted] »

reitanqild wrote: post #43
[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

Patently false. Just because you get hired every time you have experience with a companys tech stack doesn't mean a lot of us has to jump through a lot of hoops without knowing why. Me? I have wondered if I should make job applications a hobby regardless if I want a new job right there or not. (oh, btw: I have had good work, without time between since 2007, when I had a few weeks between two jobs. I'm just so tired o…

[deleted]

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#60

Post by minimaxir »

reitanqild wrote: post #5
minimaxir wrote: post #2

For a blog article under a data subdomain, there's surprisingly few numbers and quantitative analysis, which is disappointing. And one matrix of survey data as the only visualization. I get that startups do not want to reveal their competitive advantage, but there has to be some give-and-take. Taking an analysis on blind faith alone is frustrating.

I found the detail level close to perfect. It explains a lot of my feelings towards the recruitment process.

That's confirmation bias, which is dangerous especially since a lot of people in this thread seem to have similar sentiment.

Quantitive data would confirm if the patterns are stereotypes or not.

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