6 ms·
Ask YC: Where do you work?
For those of you that aren't working on your own startups yet, where do you work right now?
- e1ven 19y agoI'm working at 1-800-Free-411, a company that's moving through it's post-startup, not yet a midsized company phase. The company is actually a lot of fun to work at. The product is useful to a lot of people (Advertisement supported 411 Directory Assistance), and it's a great place to work, learn, and play. What I like best about the company is that it has a very high engineer to manager ratio ;) That's always one of my metrics when looking at new companies. Before that, I worked at Irrational Games (now 2k Games), as the IT manager of the US and AUS offices, working on Bioshock and other games.
- pchristensen 19y agoHow is your company doing now that 1-800-GOOG-411 is out? A lot of Google's side businesses are just for the data but some are out to compete for real. It'd be interesting to hear from the inside.
- e1ven 19y agoIt's great to see Google coming in and validating the market that we're in. The company's doing well financially, and continue to grow callers. It's an exciting place to work, and I'm glad to be here. When Goog-411 first came out, I was impressed: They do Call-Completion (auto-dialing the number you called), which we don't, and I'll admit it's a nice feature.. It's just expensive to do. (They eat those minutes) On the other hand, we have live operators, and were Google prefers automation, so there are always tradeoffs. .Our Automation is pretty great, but we know that some people won't get recognized, so we give a Liveop backup, and Google doesn't. I'm afraid I can't really go into details more than that without breaking agreements.
- pchristensen 19y agoThat's enough for me, I'm glad to hear things are going well. While it's hard to compete with Google's pocketbook funding the minutes, I think for a lot of Google services, they have a hard time competing with any competitor that has a human available in loop. People really, really value that and I'm sure you guys are reaping rewards from doing it.
- grandalf 19y agoare you guys still using Nuance?
- copenja 19y agoI currently work at 2K games! I'm a programmer there. In march we are relocating to form a new studio with the Bioshoch team... so I guess we would have worked together. Small world...
- Zak 19y agoI alternate between being a freelance programmer and a lighting designer for a band. A project I'm working on fuses the two; I'm writing better lighting control software.
- dawnerd 19y agoI'm a freelance web developer.
- jgrahamc 19y agoI work for me, but I do have a little company: http://www.extravalent.com/ http://www.extravalent.com/ which is really just me.
- wlievens 19y agoARM Ltd, Leuven office
- kingnothing 19y agoI'm a full time student and working on my startup.
- abstractwater 19y agoI work for Logitech
- JohnN 19y agostartup kid
- olifante 19y agoNokia Siemens Networks, in Portugal
- zemariamm 19y agoClusterMedia Labs, Aveiro :D Are you fom ist or feup ?
- pistoriusp 19y agoI have a home office.
- apgwoz 19y agoUniversity of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
- nextmoveone 19y agoi work at this place called expedited travel, we expedite u.s. passports in 24 hrs and get visas in less than 1 week. (web developer)
- nkohari 19y agoSoftware architect at a small consulting firm.
- davidw 19y agoAt my desk:-) Home office, Innsbruck, Austria. My company is DedaSys LLC (always looking for partners), and I do a mix of consulting and working on my own stuff.
- mpfefferle 19y agoExceptional Innovation (www.life-ware.com). We design hardware and software for smart homes.
- migpwr 19y agoI am a sys admin at an online bank.
- bluishgreen 19y agoprogrammer in a gaming company
- nostrademons 19y agoI'm on my own startup now, but previously was at a small financial software startup.
- maxwell 19y agoI'm a full-time student at the University of Maine, working on my world shattering thesis. I also work for the Department of Sustainable Agriculture and a software development house run by my academic adviser.
- jkush 19y agoCool, I live in Harpswell, work in Portland.
- redorb 19y agoI work at DentcraftTools.com as all around web guy.
- hollywoodcole 19y agoDeveloper for FedEx Services
- omnipath 19y agoI work for a small medicial anaylsis and storage company, primary making sure that the client's data is government compliant.
- ajkirwin 19y agoFreelance web developer, designer, programmer, all around technical handyperson. Hoping to become a startup :]
- jonp 19y agoR&D unit of a actuarial consulting firm. Problem-solving and hacking in areas where pensions, investment, finance and technology meet.
- supahfly_remix 19y agowhat kind of background do you have? I'm an EE doing chip design but am looking to get into something more business-oriented.
- jonp 19y agoGrew up with computers (started with a ZX-80) but for some reason lost interest as a teenager. Maths degree at university; mainly pure maths, group theory, number theory, topology etc. Didn't want to do research so sought a mathsy job and joined an actuarial consultancy, advising pension schemes through calculations and mathematical models. Found out that it was less technical than I'd expected and consulting was quite repetitive. Unofficially carved out an hour or so each day to get better at broader finance theory (derivative pricing, corporate finance etc) and programming, and re-discovered why I liked computers so much as a youngster. Not a well-defined career path, but more a case of doing things I found interesting, earning trust, and pushing myself and the firm in different directions. Then quit and did an MSc in artificial life for a year - unrelated but challenging and great fun. Then back to the same company, doing similar things. I'm reminded of an article posted here a few months back saying that it's tough to be the best in a narrow field, but being in the top decile in lots of areas is easier and makes you valuable. I'm not the world's best programmer, mathematician, finance theorist, researcher or communicator; but I'm not too shabby at any of them and the combination seems to work well, particularly when coupled with a good knowledge of a particular domain (pensions in my case). Some parallels to the startup world, even though I work for a big firm. In particular pg's The Power of the Marginal (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html) resonates and translates to my own experience.
- BKmke 19y agoI work for Brady Corp in the world of RFID & coach basketball at Cardinal Strich University, Milwaukee, WI
- bgutierrez 19y agoTrulia. Someone else's startup. It's amazing, and I highly recommend it.
- nextmoveone 19y agoCan we get in touch?
- bgutierrez 19y agoYeah. I'll send you an email.
- dgabriel 19y agoHarvard Business School
- wumi 19y agoNatural Gas software company
- Readmore 19y agoI'm working for a startup wireless carrier in Oklahoma. We're working to bring wireless phone service and wireless broadband to rural areas in connection with another major carrier.
- tjr 19y agoI am doing business on my own, but am also employed by avionics company Rockwell Collins.
- tirrellp 19y agoI work at Yahoo! in Orlando, FL
- nose 19y agoI too work for yahoo (just an intern)
- NoBSWebDesign 19y agoI'm a full-time student, a free-lance web developer and designer and marketing consultant, working on my own startup (ratemystudentrental.com), lead guitar for Flint-based rock band, Moment of Inertia, and work at a tier one automotive supplier as an engineering co-op.
- mechanical_fish 19y agoFreelance web developer. Previous jobs: research physicist, biophysics postdoc, semiconductor product engineer, and... web developer.
- wallflower 19y agoI work in a cube every day and strategize/dream of getting out of my cube, sometimes hourly
- rokhayakebe 19y agonobody works at starbucks?
- bgutierrez 19y agoNot lately.
- simianstyle 19y agoI work at http://auctionpal.com http://auctionpal.com - a startup in Waltham, MA. (I'll admit, i only do it for the rails experience)
- agotterer 19y agoWeb Developer for CollegeHumor / BustedTees also run priceadvance.com on the side.
- krschultz 19y agoBug Labs http://www.buglabs.net/team?page=3 http://www.buglabs.net/team?page=3
- cellis 19y agoJunior dev at an ecommerce co. I too am plotting my escape.
- crystalarchives 19y agoI'm a college student working at my university's tech support desk while doing freelance web design jobs on the side while simultaneously working on my startups. www.playforcleanwater.com
- mikelikespie 19y agoUnemployed/Graduating this spring/Looking for work
- modoc 19y agoI work from home as an ATG (www.atg.com) Architect. At the moment there is a ton of demand, which lets me do things like work from home. I work on side projects and startups as much as time permits. I love working from home. My stress level has dropped immeasurably since I left the office buildings of AT&T. No commute, no politics, no spending 5 hours/day trapped in a small conference room. My happiness, health, and waistline have all benefited from the change. Granted some folks can't work effectively from home, but I've found that since I generally really love what I do, it's easy for me to be productive without oversight.
- kobs 19y agoUnemployed undergrad looking for an internship
- kobs 19y agoI forgot to add that my e-mail can be found in my profile =). Looking for a software engineering summer internship located in NYC or Silicon Valley. (Hopefully this isn't a faux pas =)
- dag 19y agotech support at (aka Hell)
- vikas5678 19y agoI am a grad student at the san jose state university and a freelance programmer.
- rin 19y agoAt a financial start-up... and I'm looking into a tech startup. Neither is mine, though I am considering that route too.
- SethBrown 19y agoI work as the IT manager in a distribution company in Trinidad in the West Indies. I've built the company LAN from scratch, with Windows/Red Hat/Slackware/VMware virtual servers/thin clients and the company intranet with Apache/PHP/FreeTDS. We program reports directly in PostScript just for the hell of it. I fall asleep every day in my office and deal of escaping to an all-UNIX environment, just me and a room full of servers. Lord, I hate Windows!
- mov 19y agoFull-time developer and researcher working on a data mining project for a refrigeration compressor industry, at Brazil.
- neilc 19y agoInteresting. Can you talk a bit more about the nature of the data mining project?
- scw 19y agoI'm a developer for NCEAS, an ecological research center, attached to UC Santa Barbara.
- neilc 19y agoI'm working for Truviso, a startup in the Valley. We're building a data stream management system on top of PostgreSQL -- essentially taking PostgreSQL, and giving it the ability to evaluate SQL over live streams of data in addition to static tables. (BTW, we're always looking to hire good hackers -- send me mail if interested.)
- manvsmachine 19y agoFull time undergrad student. Over breaks I do network support for a non-profit medical group in the NYC / Mid-Hudson area.
- jalammar 19y agoGovernment organization (social insurance) in Saudi Arabia and developing a startup part time. Hope to make the jump some time soon.