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Well-capitalized Seattle start-up seeks Unix developers
- swombat 17y agoOn a serious note, this is exactly how you should write job ads if you want exceptional hackers, imho.
- j_baker 17y agoPerhaps minus the degree requirement though.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- swombat 17y agoTrue. I disagree with degree requirements for hacker jobs too.
- vinhboy 17y agoso, we always say this... but doesn't the success of amazon, and other "degree" driven companies mean we are wrong?? maybe having a degree does matter?
- j_baker 17y agoCorrelation does not imply causation. That said, I won't say that a degree is worthless. I will say that too often we think of a degree as a bullet point on a resume or a job listing rather than thinking of it as a means to actually learn something.
- gaius 17y agoThat is the trick to admissions at elite colleges. They admit people who would succeed regardless. Sure the name brand and the alumni you know helps, but it helps by saving time, you don't need to prove yourself so much. You still need to be you tho'.
- cookiecaper 17y agoThere are many counter-examples. What about the success of non-degree-driven companies like Microsoft, where the founder dropped out before completing school? Does that prove that degrees are silly and worthless? The thing is that degrees might mean something or they might not; it's not too hard to get through higher education without retaining anything or even learning anything relevant in the first place, but by the same token, some people do some really cool and meaningful work at college and it means a lot. You just have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
- jbarham 17y agoNo, it's a false dichotomy to say that because Bill Gates dropped out of college that all degrees are therefore "silly and worthless". He dropped out of Harvard (where simply being accepted is an achievement in itself) in order to found the the company that would eventually make him the wealthiest person in the world. There is no doubt that he would have been capable of completing his degree had he chosen to. For regular people who need to persuade someone else to hire them, having a degree certainly helps and is often a requirement.
- chc 17y agoThat is the point. Not having a degree doesn't imply that one wouldn't be capable of completing a degree. Bill Gates is an example of that. People here also aren't saying that that a degree isn't "often a requirement" in job listings — they're saying it shouldn't be, not that it isn't. Incidentally, I would bet most people who don't have degrees could have one if you gave them a full free ride. Getting a degree these days requires several years of your life and huge gobs of money, but that's pretty much it.
- chc 17y agoIf degrees "might mean something or they might not," then they don't mean anything. In order for a predictor to be useful, it has to be reliable. If I have to take it on a case-by-case basis anyway, why would I bother looking at the degree itself? That puts it on the same level as the applicant's star sign and blood type.
- spudlyo 17y agoI got hired there in '97 without one, so it wasn't a hard and fast requirement.
- lsc 17y agoNearly every job I've gotten past the age of 17 listed a degree as a requirement. I have about as much college now as I had when I was 17, which is to say, almost none. Considering that I've never had trouble finding employment, I think that a degree being listed as a requirement in the job ad is quite often another meaningless bullet point that will be overlooked if you are attractive enough otherwise. (obviously, there's some pretty strong observer bias here; the companies where that really was a hard and fast rule wouldn't have approached me, or wouldn't have given me an interview if I approached them. Still, I find that 'required' doesn't actually mean 'required' in many cases.)
- chc 17y agoYes, but it might be a bit deceptive if I started signing my recruitment ads as "Jeff Bezos."
- mhartl 17y agoTrue, but the ad is from 1994. I doubt many people had heard of Bezos at that point. :-)
- argv_empty 17y agoI'm not sure the ad as it stands quite convinces me I'd be doing interesting work (though it is possible I'd have thought of "commerce on the Internet" as pretty interesting at the time).
- cookiecaper 17y agoTo be honest if I ran across this ad in the wild it would turn me off. Maybe I've just been burned too many times, but when someone suggests things like "do it in one-third of the time competent people think possible", that is a huge red flag to me. Every time I've taken a gig with someone who has said this I've found it to be at least literal, though often you have even less time than they list. It's not just a fancy way of saying "can do work quickly" in most situations, it's more a declaration that "ignorant people are going to constantly and unreasonably hound you regarding completion of the project and they won't be satisfied when you get it done". I once had a guy who was looking for "rockstars" expect me to finish what is reasonably about a month of work in four days. Aside from that, it's typical corporate-speak: "excellent communication skills", etc. Not very attractive as a whole imo.
- SkyMarshal 17y agoWhile real communication skills are valuable, 'excellent communication skills' is certainly vague corporate speak implying whoever wrote the add doesn't even understand precisely what communications skills they need and why. Try this instead: Wanted: The ability to explain complex technical problems and concepts clearly and concisely, to make things as simple as possible but no simpler (a la Einstein), so that the group can make sound, correct judgements and choose the best solutions.
- Tamerlin 17y ago"do it in one-third of the time competent people think possible", that is a huge red flag to me." I think your response is wise. That sort of statement usually means that it's a sweatshop.
- LiveTheDream 17y agoExcept the part about building in 1/3 the time...to get away with that you need to have some kind of reliable reputation so it is interpreted correctly.
- adamt 17y ago[quote from link] Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership. [/quote] Yes, but will it ever be worth anything? ;-)
- oscardelben 17y agoIf you have to ask then maybe it's not worth. I think that wherever you go you have the chance to make something meaningful if you really want to. Edit: I didn't realize the date at first, so the downvotes are in order. I still believed in what I said tough.
- pascal_cuoq 17y agoYou got downvoted for accidentally raising the very good point that the e-mail does not contain enough information to allow a prospective candidate to decide what equity would be worth? I don't know who gets downvoting power around here but they sure do not have much of a sense of humor.
- daleharvey 17y agowhat does an email that has sufficient information to valuate a company look like? That email has more than enough information to tell me that its probably a good candidate to find out more about.
- mkramlich 17y agoAn email only has sufficient information to gauge the future value of some startup if that email has been sent back in time from the future. Preferably it is still smoking and glowing blue and placed in your hands directly by Christopher Lloyd himself.
- donaq 17y ago1) You get to downvote when you have enough karma. 2) Humorous comments do get upvoted here, but they have to be a) funny and b) intelligent. Take, for example, this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225654 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225654 I'm not saying that was terribly intelligent or funny (hence only 3 upvotes), but yeah. [Edit] Two far better examples would be http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1268430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1268430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1268430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1268430 And right in this thread! I am humbled by their wit. :)
- imp 17y agoHmm.. I didn't know their original name was Cadabra.
- kirpekar 17y agoBezos changed the name from Cadabra to Amazon because Yahoo would return search results alphabetically.
- tigerthink 17y agoHoly shit.
- joe_the_user 17y agoI can't verify your claim one way or another. Humourly, Amazon themselves don't seem to have a clue, giving both answer plus lots of spam: http://askville.amazon.com/Bezos-changed-cadabra-amazon-sounded-cadaver/AnswerDetails.do?requestId=1141883&responseId=1142952 http://askville.amazon.com/Bezos-changed-cadabra-amazon-soun...
- alexsolo 17y agoI'm not sure if this is true, but I was told that it was because Cadabra sounds too much like "cadaver".
- akl 17y agoFun fact: it was changed because of concern people might hear 'cadaver' instead of 'cadabra'. (or so this book said: http://www.amazon.com/amazon-com-Inside-Revolutionary-Business-Changed/dp/0066620414 http://www.amazon.com/amazon-com-Inside-Revolutionary-Busine...)
- Scriptor 17y agoIf anyone doesn't recognize the name of the poster (like me), this is what ended up happening: http://amazon.com/ http://amazon.com/
- barmstrong 17y agoI like how he says "you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible"
- jimbokun 17y agoMy first thought was "How do I become someone who designs and builds large and complex (yet maintainable) systems in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible?"
- justinlilly 17y agoThe best way is to have done it before. Its easy to implement something in 1/3rd the time as someone else, if you've done it before and they haven't.
- Tamerlin 17y agoDrop the "maintainable" part.
- brettnak 17y agoDoes anyone know if Amazon's tech has been developing at 3x the speed that most competent people think possible?
- Tamerlin 17y agoHaving worked there, I'd say that's a resounding NO.
- krosaen 17y agoyeah, only issue is it might skew towards the egomaniacs. some of the best hackers are very humble
- _pius 17y ago... and very pessimistic, if they've actually built a complex system or read The Mythical Man-Month, which saw its first edition in 1975.
- iseff 17y agoOnly very tangentially related, my scrappy, not-too-well capitalized (from Founder's Co-op: http://www.founderscoop.com http://www.founderscoop.com) Seattle start-up (AppStoreHQ: http://www.appstorehq.com http://www.appstorehq.com) is also seeking developers: http://blog.appstorehq.com/post/482789903/appstorehq-is-looking-for-one-developer-entrepreneur http://blog.appstorehq.com/post/482789903/appstorehq-is-look... EDIT: Err, why the downvotes?
- graywh 17y agoInappropriate. There are better way to announce jobs on HN.
- ams6110 17y agoHeh.. I was actually job-hunting about that time. Wish I'd seen it....
- TorKlingberg 17y agoThis part is cute: "Familiarity with web servers and HTML would be helpful but is not necessary." Shows just how new the web was in '94.
- tybris 17y agoMost software engineers at a company like Amazon or Google never start Apache or see a line of HTML. Bezos knew exactly what he was looking for.
- wmf 17y agoA great contrast to all the other job openings in 1994 that required five years of Java, HTML, and Linux experience.
- paulitex 17y agoWow, that's a really tough requirement. Java was first publicly announced in 1995.
- zackattack 17y agoYou get one point for being smart enough to notice that Java wasn't announced til 1995. You lose two points for not being smart enough to realize he was joking.
- starnix17 17y agoI find it even more amusing that his one other newsgroup posting is on finding a good dog obedience school in the Seattle area: http://groups.google.com/group/seattle.general/browse_thread/thread/4565a0ffdb19670b/0f3ba2135943ce01#0f3ba2135943ce01 http://groups.google.com/group/seattle.general/browse_thread...
- leftnode 17y agoFunnily enough, it's not even him posting, it's his wife, Mackenzie, posting under his account.
- easp 17y agoAh yes, the good old days of sharing email accounts with your spouse/partner. When I search for my name on Google, most of the results are for recipes my now-wife posted to rec.food.cooking back in the early 90's.
- reduxredacted 17y agoMy wife did that for a while on a bunch of amazon forums bashing the Twilight series. It was one of the driving factors for me buying her a laptop of her own that I never log into. I really need a prospective employer or friend Googling my name and seeing that I not only read Breaking Dawn, but that I felt strongly enough about it to bash it with a bunch of other ladies. EDIT: Just to clarify: the forum was 99% women according to my wife. I am not implying that Real Men don't read Twilight, just that I'd feel like less of a man if I read it. To each his own.
- Raphael 17y agoSadly, the logo no longer contains capitals.
- jmtame 17y agowhy would that make anyone sad?
- frouaix 17y agoAmazon is still hiring ;) www.amazon.com/jobs I don't know if we're developing 3 times faster than possible, but from the inside it's amazing to see how many projects launch on any given week without any part of the machinery ever stopping.
- zackattack 17y agoThere's a bug with my amazon prime account. Every time that I pay, I have to manually select "use my amazon payments" balance. I can't save this preference, in a payphrase or just as a normal cookied setting. Thanks!
- theycallmemorty 17y agoNote the signature on his message. "It's easier to invent the future than to predict it." -- Alan Kay
- SkyMarshal 17y agoSaw it, and to be pedantic, isn't that a bit of misquote? I've always seen it as: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html
- enntwo 17y agoIf Google offered its first public services in '98, where did these posts originate from? Did Google merge an existing message board system into Groups when it was released?
- jonknee 17y agoUsenet. They bought Dejanews and have archives back to the early 80s.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoDejanews had been archiving usenet as far back as the mid-90s but they (now google) actually have usenet archives donated by others dating back to 1981.
- swombat 17y agoYes. Groups mirrored the newsgroups which have existed for a number of decades.
- donaq 17y agoGoogle's servers achieved sentience in 2002, traveled back in time and saved all the previous Usenet threads.
- durbin 17y agoMaybe this guy Larry should apply. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/msg/88fa10845061c8ba?pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/msg/88fa108450...
- swolchok 17y ago(1994)
- lsd5you 17y agopoorly-Capitalized uk Start-up seeks Money