Who Y Combinator Companies Want • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#511

Post by oskarth » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 3:20 PM UTC

sireat wrote: post #505

oskarth wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered saving up enough money to quit and give yourself 3-6 months to find a job you enjoy?

Somehow it seems wrong to be saving 6 month salary just to get into another job (even if you enjoy it). My Euro-biased perspective is for the job to be something that you don't actively hate doing. The fun stuff(hobbies, family, etc) can be done outside of that.

For what it's worth, I too am European (Swedish). I think whatever works, well, works - If OP is fine doing what they are doing, there's no problem really. However, a lot of people seem to be (a) afraid of quitting jobs they hate (b) bad at saving money.

Learning to quit a job you hate and to save money are both vey useful skills on their own. In reality, it might just take a few weeks of intense effort to find a new job in a different field - but it's always good to have a buffer, especially if you want to re-skill to a completely different field.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#512

Post by a-dub » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

DrScump wrote: post #494

a-dub wrote: post #360

When I look to hire a lawyer, I'm going to evaluate potential candidates by asking them to write statutes from memory in full on a whiteboard under time pressure, because I really want to see how well they think on their feet. As a forward thinking technology executive, I am certain this strategy is correct, because Google does it.

If you are going to hire a lawyer, you should be more interested in their knowledge of case law rather than how well they memorize statutes.

We understand that our hiring process produces a lot of false negatives, and given that our applicant pool is already generally of high quality, we are able to fool ourselves into thinking that it has been a key to our ongoing success.

Perhaps more importantly, we're not going to change it because this is how Google does it.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by jenshoop » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

chmullig wrote: post #50

jenshoop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just having this conversation -- is there any precedent for offering different teams and/or differing levels of tenure different vacation packages? My husband used to work at Groupon and said it was really challenging to give all entry-level sales people unlimited vacation because they tended to abuse it. However, unlimited vacation may work well for more tenured positions or even for different types of teams (en…

It's definitely done. A traditional method is that the longer you've been at a place, the more vacation you earn. Another technique I've seen is to have a divide, eg "VP and above get an extra 5 days per year." Facebook, Google, etc commonly use the contractor technique, where anyone you want to work for you but not give benefits becomes an independent contractor, or works for a vendor. Eg, the cooks in the Facebook…

Yeah - I've seen tiered vacation days based on seniority, but I'm wondering specifically about giving some folks unlimited and others a prescribed number of days. That seems to straddle an almost philosophical issue.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by engi_nerd » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

knughit wrote: post #469

engi_nerd wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is contracting. They bill cost plus, so performance is irrelevant

Tell that to my boss.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by lsc » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #465

lsc wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The difference is that "cultural fit" means a different thing at every different company, so it would have to be proven to be discriminatory on a case-by-case basis. That takes too much work, so it doesn't happen very often. IQ tests are well known to have a disparate impact on some protected classes, so you are treading on extremely thin ice to use one.

>IQ tests are well known to have a disparate impact on some protected classes, so you are treading on extremely thin ice to use one.

Really? I mean, I know that the racists have been going on about how some races are dumber than others for as long as the idea of race has existed... but is this an idea that would be taken seriously by the courts?

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by TranquilMarmot » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #411

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best programmers do apply. Whatever you think a work-hire test is, that wasn't it. A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. It's a chance to demonstrate their skill. It's also far better: anything is better than the fake contests they're currently forced to endure. Which would you prefer? Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app, or spend…

I don't know if I'm a "best programmer", but I definitely enjoy "add a little feature to our fake app" tests. A friend of mine's company usually sends out a little canvas-based browser paint app with a bunch of features, and asks them to implement a few things, like flood fill. It's really enjoyable.

Favorite interview I've done was something similar to this; they gave me a small, pre-made project with tools they knew I was familiar with, asked me to implement some specific functionality, and then told me to "have fun with it for a few hours". So I did, and the project blew them away.

Unfortunately, they then flew me out to their office, whiteboard hazed me, and sent me home. Called me a few weeks later to tell me I didn't get the job, but that they sent me a hoodie in the mail (felt like a consolation prize).

It's a pretty comfy hoodie. They spent that VC money well.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by jschwartzi » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

engi_nerd wrote: post #397

jldugger wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does that anecdote reflect poorly on the interviewer, or the interviewee?

I personally would be hard-pressed to answer that question. If they mean diversity by gender and ethnicity...well, for some reason I always find myself in teams largely of white males. Not through any selection process of my own, it's just that is how it works out.

What about teams where some of the white males solve problems or think differently from others? How about foreign language proficiency helping with suppliers? Not all diversity involves overt differences. Sometimes it's as simple as one guy's test-driven mentality shipping something on time.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by TranquilMarmot » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #293

I've had 10+ interviews in the last month and it's really a shit process. First of all, I'm terrible at technical interviews. There's just something about being in that "we're watching your every move" environment that makes me freeze. I found myself literally reading the same for loop line over and over again, not even trying to comprehend it, but rather zoning out on it as my brain continued to focus on what I thou…

This sounds like exactly my experience as of late with interviews, so it's nice to know I'm not alone; unfortunately, I don't have a "network" and live far away from where any "network" could be set up so I'm a little stuck in the mud.

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

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Post by TranquilMarmot » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #193

rowborg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this as a comment on the original post, but will make the point here... Large organizations are often more dysfunctional than small ones, yes, especially when it comes to building software. But that doesn't mean they aren't filled with very smart people. The fact that enterprise programmers can't get hired at startups is not, in my opinion, a reflection of the dysfunctional nature of software development at…

There is also a bias against enterprise developers in that most often their work is on proprietary systems, leaving no code artifacts to view on Github, which a lot of companies have started using in their recruiting process.

This has been a huge issue for me- I used to be very active on Github, but the past year or so I've been working either on proprietary systems that are internal to the company I'm at, or working on private projects that I don't want in public repos. So, if you were to look at just my Github profile, you'd see almost no activity. That doesn't mean I'm not constantly working, though!

Re: Who Y Combinator Companies Want

#520

Post by TranquilMarmot » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

api wrote: post #202

frostmatthew wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually at least two to three generations behind on every technological trend It's easy to refactor (or completely rewrite) for whatever the hot new fad is when you're dealing with small codebases ( It has nothing to do with "pointy haired bosses" - believe it or not a lot of us [enterprise developers] care more about actually getting stuff done then bragging to our friends how we're playing with whatever is hip th…

I think that's a valid point but it only explains a small fraction of the ugliness of enterprise software. It explains why it tends to trend a bit behind, but it does not explain why you need 2gb of RAM to run a web application server or why you need ten pages of XML vomit to add a record to a database. Those kinds of things smack of over-engineering (usually via premature generalization and "architecture astronautis…

> You can operate there but it's painful and everything about it gets in the way of doing the right thing

Yikes, that hit close to home. Where I'm working now is very "enterprise", but when they brought me on they gave me a huge amount of autonomy and it's worked out great for them- I started fresh on new projects and was able to make them lightweight, fast, and pretty.

And then they toss at me a behemoth of an ancient, 10-year-old project with services that connect to services that connect to services (all on the same machine!) and probably uses more than 2GB of RAM for simple CRUD screens. There's no funding and it's too big and "vital" to rewrite, so they're stuck with it (probably for another 30+ years, just like they were stuck with the COBOL system it replaced)

It was around that time I started looking (and am still looking...) for a new job.