81–90 of 95 posts
(I have no connection to the firm, though I have read pretty much everything that Joel has written)
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I'm a Fog Creek employee who is also an immigrant and did not go to an Ivy League school. I also do a fair bit of interviewing at Fog Creek and we don't really care about which school you went to. We look for smart people who get things done. It's as simple as that.
"If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program." That doesn't really jive with the not caring "about which school you went to" bit. If that's the criteria it eliminates all but 2 of the top 25 public universities which is flat out ridicu…
In an interview the school you go to doesn't really matter if you can't code.
A great github account would probably help you more in our interview process than a degree from MIT.
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> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.
This is actually true, nothing smug about it. It's an internship, and a lot of companies look for people who might be interested in working for the company after school's over. If someone has that much to think about that they would need more time, then they clearly have no interest in the company itself- they're just looking to get the most money, regardless of who it's coming from. The differences in compensation a…
I don't really think there's a justification for exploding offers that prevent people from considering alternatives, it's mainly just a way for employers to attempt to get the upper hand. From what I've seen it's often a) arrogant employers who can't comprehend that they're not the only attractive place to work b) game-playing employers who know that most college-age people aren't going to stand up to unreasonable demands and that these sort of gambits can prevent them from having to actually compete directly with other employers c) employers who do have an urgent need to fill a position (i.e. who aren't hiring an intern).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a Fog Creek employee who is also an immigrant and did not go to an Ivy League school. I also do a fair bit of interviewing at Fog Creek and we don't really care about which school you went to. We look for smart people who get things done. It's as simple as that.
"If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program." That doesn't really jive with the not caring "about which school you went to" bit. If that's the criteria it eliminates all but 2 of the top 25 public universities which is flat out ridicu…
That doesn't mean you have to go to one of those schools to get in - which school you went to is treated as a weak signal in the resume reviews, and is ignored for the rest of the process. I went to a public school that falls outside of the 30% rule, for example, and another from my school will be joining us this summer.
> If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program. I personally think this is silly. If you want to be selective just focus on applicants who actually build things. If you look at collegiate hackathons at places like university of michigan…
Outside of that, school selectivity has been only a mediocre predictor for individual candidates. You shouldn't ignore it outright, but you shouldn't be entranced by it. We've had MIT candidates who couldn't really program and a guy whose school I don't even remember who killed it.
Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
On their website, they show a bug tracking app, a version control app, and some organizing app. Apart from the money, I don't see anything that would make me excited about working there. Do they work on anything else?
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It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the list this year: Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose Facebook - 6,200 + free housing Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing. Cisco - 22/hr Quora and…
Wow... this sounds kind of irrational. I mean, these are close to senior salaries annualized - Sales force is around 70K, while a senior gets about 100K across most of the US. Are 4 interns really more useful than 3 seniors? Really?
You're paying for more than the intern's time - you also get first crack at hiring them full time (with a 3 month interview to decide who you want). In the current job market, that's worth quite a bit.
As someone who did a summer internship last year at an amazing SF company, the pay-scale at fogcreek sounds pretty competitive (read amazing). $6,000 a month comes to a shade less than $40/hour. Bear in mind that most full time students work only in summers so although considerable federal tax is deducted from this amount, the intern is likely to receive most of it back when filing taxes next year. Also, catered lunc…
> If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program. I personally think this is silly. If you want to be selective just focus on applicants who actually build things. If you look at collegiate hackathons at places like university of michigan…
I never thought of Fog Creek that way before. In fact, I've always gotten the impression they were down-to-earth. But, that one shot of a spreadsheet in this post listing Brown, Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, etc. changed my mind. The other turnoff in this was the weeding out of candidates based on resumes. We hired an excellent employee out of a batch of horrid resumes- what a great hire, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the list this year: Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose Facebook - 6,200 + free housing Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing. Cisco - 22/hr Quora and…
Wow... this sounds kind of irrational. I mean, these are close to senior salaries annualized - Sales force is around 70K, while a senior gets about 100K across most of the US. Are 4 interns really more useful than 3 seniors? Really?
Those interns will turn into salaried FTEs whose first three year's annual compensation – amortised signing bonus, stock grants, and performance bonus included – will be ~150k. Compared to new graduate FTEs, interns are positively cheap!
The ~6.5k, housing inclusive, perks out the wazoo also all come from highly profitable, competitive companies falling over each other to recruit from a highly constrained pool. There are only so many Stanford, MIT, and CMU graduates a year, and an even smaller number of hackathon winners, open source contributors, inveterate interns, etc. For many, this is the last time they'll ever openly be on the job market.