6 ms·

Who Y Combinator Companies Want

74 points by allenleein 9y ago

danielvf 9y ago
Stockfighter.io ran into similar issues. The candidate that finished the competition we're far above average, but hiring companies still used the same filters and long timing on those candidates as for sketchy unsolicited resumes. I think the core issue is that hiring a bad programmer is so costly, and there are so many bad programmers in the hiring pool that companies tune their filters to avoid the worst, while thinking they are aiming for the best.
- quantumhobbit 9y ago
  Or companies would rather stick to the old methods even if they don't work. After all they can't blame you if you are just following HR's process.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  How can bad programmers be improved into hirable ones?
  - danielvf 9y ago
    I've been programing for eighteen years now. In that time, I've seen smart-alec kids turn into great leaders. I've seen stupid teenagers turn into responsible adults. I've seen responsible men turn into angry old guys. But I'm still at zero on seeing a bad programmer turning into a good one. It certainly feels intuitive that it should happen, but that's not what I've seen. If you are wanting to improve your own skills, I'd just write programs to solve problems you are interested in. Read the Pragmatic Programer and Code Complete.
  - tutufan 9y ago
    Put them into a niche where they can be successful. Skill is secondary. What is really needed is a readiness to learn, an openness to new ideas (and old ones). A great programmer in the wrong niche can destroy a project.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
keyanp 9y ago
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698009
fecak 9y ago
I've seen quite a bit of 'discrimination' against enterprise devs by startups over the past ten years as a recruiter (and JUG president for 15 years), and the data in this piece regarding Java/C# devs failing more interviews than counterparts is at least a little surprising. I generally attributed the discrimination to be more about dev culture than tech skills, whereas the enterprise dev maybe with a few years at a bank/insurance/pharma company might be too set in the traditionally slow pace in regulated industries or bureaucracies to adapt to the stereotype of a fast-paced startup. I never felt that startup leaders might actually think of them as lesser-skilled, and it wasn't discussed - the feedback on enterprise candidates would often be simply 'not a good fit' before an interview would even occur. I was always a bit uncomfortable with that reaction, as clearly there are many good enterprise devs of high quality regardless of what tools they use.
- quantumhobbit 9y ago
  I'm afraid I'm getting stereotyped as an enterprise dev against my will. I've been on interviews where that was certainly the vibe I got. No matter how much I stress that I'm interviewing while I have a job for the purpose of getting away from that culture, I can't shake that opinion it seems. Trust me I would gladly program in anything other than corporate Java if given a chance. I think I've got the worst of both worlds too, because before this I was in academia, where I was also bored with the slow pace of things.
  - jedberg 9y ago
    Your best bet is a side project. Do something fun in a language you enjoy, and talk about that in the interview instead of the work you do. Make it big enough that it warrants an entry on your resume. Or contribute to a well known open source project.
    - fecak 9y ago
      This is really good advice, and something I've advised to countless devs over the years. You can overcome some of that stigma by doing a side project in another language or even something outside the realm (like an IoT thing). Many Java devs will go with Scala, but I'd even try to go deeper and perhaps do a couple side projects and shift to something like Python or a Lisp (which often gets 'cred' points from startups).
dasmoth 9y ago
Slightly surprised -- and a little diappointed -- to see "academic programmer" as the least desirable archetype. Also, not sure these archetypes do a great job of capturing the process-oriented/results-oriented divide that shows up in the opening anecdote (and which I agree is quite real).
- whalesalad 9y ago
  Which is interesting to me because if you go through the triplebyte process the impression you'll get is that they are looking for a very academic/textbook CS student who can balance a binary tree on a whiteboard while verbally explaining the operational complexity of an unladen swallow. From my perspective, there is an impedance mismatch between the triplebyte process (heads-down algorithm nerd) and the findings that they are presenting here (product-focused, culturally well rounded hacker, been around the block a few times and has experience in other startups).
  - jstanley 9y ago
    > looking for a very academic/textbook CS student who can balance a binary tree on a whiteboard while verbally explaining the operational complexity of an unladen swallow. This doesn't describe academic programmers. In my experience, academic programmers tend to be glorified essay writers who can just barely produce parseable syntax if left alone for a few hours.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      Just what exactly are they working on in academia?
  - enknamel 9y ago
    Hopefully Triplebyte will take this data to heart and change their interview process (or even customize it per archetype). If you want a very product focused engineer asking algorithmic questions is almost pointless. Heck, most of the time even knowing what big-O is doesn't matter. What matters more is how fast and effectively you can execute and if people can understand the code you write.
SmellTheGlove 9y ago
A couple of things that jump out to me. Up front, I've been a little hard on Triplebyte in some threads here, but this article is great, and I think their heads are in the right place and motivated to solve one of the biggest problems we have in the corporate world (and I'm telling you this as an "enterprise" manager, so it is an issue across the board). Also that's one of my best run-on sentences, maybe ever. > I don’t want to be too hard on recruiters. Hiring and interviewing are hard, shortcuts must be taken to keep the team sane, and there are legitimate reasons for a company to enforce a specific engineering culture. But from the point of view of programmers applying for jobs, these company preferences are mercurial. Companies don’t advertise their preferences. People who don’t match simply apply, and are rejected (or often never hear back). This is your opportunity, and it's a tough challenge. Tell them what they need and make them believe it. Of course, be right, as well. Never said it'd be easy, but a huge opportunity. Preferences are mercurial because nobody knows what they actually need, only what they think they want, and truthfully there's a lot of latitude in the factors that lead to success. There's a real opportunity if you can figure this out and get companies on board with your judgment. I'm not suggesting one size fits all, but I am suggesting most companies don't know what size actually fits them, if I'm sticking with the cliche. > There’s more demand for product-focused programmers than there is for programmers focused on hard technical problems. [...] And the “Academic Programmer” (hard-problem focused, but without the experience) has half again the demand. This is another disconnect presenting an opportunity - minimize the whiteboard interview! That's essentially screening for the academic profile, isn't it? Again, enterprise guy here, so I'm guessing none of these companies would want to hire me based on the data presented, but I don't do whiteboard interviews at all, and I'd probably put my focus on the "product programmer" profile. Actually, I love your profile data, I've learned a lot about my own preferences just by reading this. > (Almost) everyone dislikes enterprise programmers. We don’t agree with this. We’ve seen a bunch of great Java programmers. But it’s what our data shows. This is really interesting. Again, enterprise bias here, but an enterprise programmer who's managed to get shit done in a big corporate environment should be highly valued. Not only can they program, they can also put up with all of the bullshit that it takes to get things through to production. There is something to be said about a programmer who can essentially handle the politics as well. But if you don't want 'em, I'll take 'em! Anyhow, great writeup here by the Triplebyte folks. I hope that companies in particular read and make good use of what you've put together. I plan to share this with my management team.
jedberg 9y ago
I can tell you why there is discrimination against Enterprise programmers. Two reasons: Most people who have worked in an enterprise have had at least one bad experience with an incompetent programmer who was just a seat filler. That means that the enterprise isn't a good filter, and even worse, it means that even if you are good, you're willing to suffer working with incompetence. The other factor is that enterprise programmers tend to prefer places with a lot of process in place. They want to see a well defined pipeline with tests and approvals and gates and so on. Pushing untested code to production isn't even in their mental space, but sometimes you just gotta do it at a startup when you got a press hit and your traffic just doubled. Basically, they tend to slow things down by demanding doing things right. Now, for the first problem, that's just wrong -- just because you were in an enterprise doesn't mean you are bad or you are willing to deal with bad people. It's just a cognitive bias. For the second problem, those people are right, there should be good process and it will be better in the long term. But in the short term it feels like they are slowing things down, because startups generally don't have the luxury of investing more time now for a bigger payoff later, or at least they don't think they do.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  One more reason: enterprise engineers see through the "change the world" and "disrupt" bullshit that startups often attempt to sell to juniors in order to overwork them until their souls are empty, and then expect them to go home and continue working. None of that in most enterprises. "Nine to five", while should not be taken literally, means following an order where there is work and there is life, and those should overlap only very rarely and only when absolutely necessary (no, an app crash or visual glitch is not it). I see it in my current employer vs my previous employer. While not a small startup by any means, I notice a clear attempt by many ranks to encourage working late and working from home, be it "we'll order pizzas for people that stay here until 20:00" to "we have crazy deadlines that we must!!!! finish now!!!!" nonsense to "we encourage open source but we don't give enough time to developers to handle community issues, and we implicitly expect them to do that on their own time at night or during the weekend". To me, this is very toxic for junior developers who cannot, or do not even know they should, resist it. None of that was there on my previous, enterprise job. Come to work at some hour, do what you do, go home. I try to push this "work from home during after hours" mentality as much as possible, but it's very entrenched. Regarding sear fillers, while true to some respect for enterprise, I'd say from many conversations I've had with people in the start up world, there exist many fillers there as well, often including founders and other "C"-level executives who only had the talent and know-how to give themselves a fancy title. Finally, this was posted here in another discussion, but I think it's interesting here as well: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
deboboy 9y ago
"but an enterprise programmer who's managed to get shit done in a big corporate environment should be highly valued. Not only can they program, they can also put up with all of the bullshit that it takes to get things through to production. There is something to be said about a programmer who can essentially handle the politics as well" - These people are gold, will hire them all day long... just did at one of our healthcare startups.
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  Screw you, stop stealing my people :) Seriously, though, the people that can endure the corporate marathon are uniquely skilled. Imagine that it's not the long hours and breakneck pace that kill you, but the exact opposite. The ones that can see their work through to the end are amazing in their own right.
rezashirazian 9y ago
If you want to work for a YC company apply directly to the YC company you want to work with. Say who you are, what you know and why you like this company. I also recommend not putting too much weight on arbitrary labels (trial and error programmer? child prodigy?) I've been a happy engineer with a YC company for close to three years now. I have led various teams and contributed to many aspect of the overall product during my tenure. I have also interviewed more than twenty people and I can assure you, there is no one size fit all when it comes to finding candidates that succeed. I also tried TripleByte a year ago, I figured it would be fun to see how they do things. I got to the interview section after doing well on the online quizz however failed to go beyond that. From my experience I can assure you that TripleByte has its own set of standards and values that may not match with you or the company you want to work with. They are overly interested in putting labels and pigeon holing candidates into specific categories that overlooks the fact that every individual is different. YC is a big family with varied products, teams, and problems. There are no one size fit all formula or set of labels for ideal candidates or ideal company. Your best route for success is to do the work yourself, find the company that interests you, directly connect with them and see how it goes. Also if someone can explain to me what is trial and error programmer, or a child prodigy I would be grateful? Can a child prodigy be also an enterprise programmer? Is there any overlap between product programmers, pragmatic programmers?
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"I've been a happy engineer with a YC company for close to three years now. I have led various teams and contributed to many aspect of the overall product during my tenure. I have also interviewed more than twenty people and I can assure you, there is no one size fit all when it comes to finding candidates that succeed." That's refreshing to hear, thanks. Your observations is in stark contrast to their proclamation that: "If you’re a programmer interested in joining a YC startup, apply to Triplebyte and we’ll match you with the ones you’d be the best fit for."[1] [1]http://blog.triplebyte.com/ http://blog.triplebyte.com/
- Harj 9y ago
  We're certainly not the only way to join a YC company, or any company, and nor would we claim to be. The specific reasons why you'd consider using Triplebyte are: (1) Companies are unlikely to reply if you contact them directly because your resume isn't impressive. Our entire screening process is background blind and we've built up enough credibility with companies for them to interview you if you do well on our process, when they otherwise would have rejected you based on your background. (2) Finding new company options that are are doing interesting work but you haven't heard about. We spend a lot of time finding and partnering with early stage startups that haven't become well known yet. (3) Saving time in your job search by identifying which companies are looking for your specific set of skills. We have a lot of data about what the companies we work with are looking for and can reduce the number of interviews you do where it becomes clear early on that you're just not the type of engineer they're looking for (e.g. they ask you complex algorithm questions on a whiteboard when your strengths are building and scaling web applications). We're focused on doing these things well and our process certainly isn't perfect. There will be times where we match you with a company and you weren't a fit or when we don't match you with a company and you might have been a fit. Achieving 100% accuracy in something as complicated as hiring is likely impossible but we believe our approach is still a lot better than the status quo of recruiters reading resumes and making gut calls on who gets through to an interview.
yanilkr 9y ago
I am sorry to be the one telling this. The startup founders (not all) are in no way position to be picky about programmers. Programming is an actual skill that takes significant amount of effort to learn and requires constant learning and improvement. After 5 years of good experience, programmers can see through the fragile nature of startups where everyone else other than them is some form of an executive in title but cannot deliver any value equivalent to writing working code. It's often the other programmers at startups judging the other programmers. Based on my personal experience, the best kind of programmer is the one that gets along well with others.
_e 9y ago
This is not just a problem for evaluating programmers but for ALL job candidates. My father-in-law made a wise suggestion, as a company, to always be in hiring mode. You don't want to hire someone because you need them at that very moment but always be hiring so you have redundancy.
blobbers 9y ago
Is it just me do the categories seem a little off (as described here: http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers#.i1987v68j http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers#.i1987v... ) Do you have an anonymous data set of resumes, interviews, and offers that someone could run some clustering against? While parts of it have self-description bias, it seems like the analysis would be a little more interesting than what you've provided. Possibly you may even uncover what companies really want, rather than what they say they want. Kaggle contest!!!!
cyclonetiger 9y ago
Current enterprise programmer. Former startup employee here. I agree that it is quite different at startups. The startup environment felt basically a glorified college environment compared to the large company culture. With that said, I would image eventually all startups have to grow up and embrace enterprise-style processes. Facebook is the example that comes to mind. When they first started, the followed the "Move fast and break things" mantra, but as they aged and took on more and more users, they had to change and become a company that valued reliability over new features. I believe their current mantra is "Move Fast With Stable Infra."?
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Funny, as going by many of their open source projects, I'd say "move slow and break things" could also suit them. ;)
koolba 9y ago
So the most desirable is the child prodigy who's built actual products in a practical way?
fahimulhaq 9y ago
This is an old post. Can moderators put 2015 in the title?
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  Yeah but there's good discussion going. Might as well allow it.

74 points by allenleein 9y ago

Stockfighter.io ran into similar issues. The candidate that finished the competition we're far above average, but hiring companies still used the same filters and long timing on those candidates as for sketchy unsolicited resumes. I think the core issue is that hiring a bad programmer is so costly, and there are so many bad programmers in the hiring pool that companies tune their filters to avoid the worst, while thinking they are aiming for the best.

quantumhobbit 9y ago
Or companies would rather stick to the old methods even if they don't work. After all they can't blame you if you are just following HR's process.
Apocryphon 9y ago
How can bad programmers be improved into hirable ones?
- danielvf 9y ago
  I've been programing for eighteen years now. In that time, I've seen smart-alec kids turn into great leaders. I've seen stupid teenagers turn into responsible adults. I've seen responsible men turn into angry old guys. But I'm still at zero on seeing a bad programmer turning into a good one. It certainly feels intuitive that it should happen, but that's not what I've seen. If you are wanting to improve your own skills, I'd just write programs to solve problems you are interested in. Read the Pragmatic Programer and Code Complete.
- tutufan 9y ago
  Put them into a niche where they can be successful. Skill is secondary. What is really needed is a readiness to learn, an openness to new ideas (and old ones). A great programmer in the wrong niche can destroy a project.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

keyanp 9y ago

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698009

fecak 9y ago

I've seen quite a bit of 'discrimination' against enterprise devs by startups over the past ten years as a recruiter (and JUG president for 15 years), and the data in this piece regarding Java/C# devs failing more interviews than counterparts is at least a little surprising. I generally attributed the discrimination to be more about dev culture than tech skills, whereas the enterprise dev maybe with a few years at a bank/insurance/pharma company might be too set in the traditionally slow pace in regulated industries or bureaucracies to adapt to the stereotype of a fast-paced startup. I never felt that startup leaders might actually think of them as lesser-skilled, and it wasn't discussed - the feedback on enterprise candidates would often be simply 'not a good fit' before an interview would even occur. I was always a bit uncomfortable with that reaction, as clearly there are many good enterprise devs of high quality regardless of what tools they use.

quantumhobbit 9y ago
I'm afraid I'm getting stereotyped as an enterprise dev against my will. I've been on interviews where that was certainly the vibe I got. No matter how much I stress that I'm interviewing while I have a job for the purpose of getting away from that culture, I can't shake that opinion it seems. Trust me I would gladly program in anything other than corporate Java if given a chance. I think I've got the worst of both worlds too, because before this I was in academia, where I was also bored with the slow pace of things.
- jedberg 9y ago
  Your best bet is a side project. Do something fun in a language you enjoy, and talk about that in the interview instead of the work you do. Make it big enough that it warrants an entry on your resume. Or contribute to a well known open source project.
  - fecak 9y ago
    This is really good advice, and something I've advised to countless devs over the years. You can overcome some of that stigma by doing a side project in another language or even something outside the realm (like an IoT thing). Many Java devs will go with Scala, but I'd even try to go deeper and perhaps do a couple side projects and shift to something like Python or a Lisp (which often gets 'cred' points from startups).

dasmoth 9y ago

Slightly surprised -- and a little diappointed -- to see "academic programmer" as the least desirable archetype. Also, not sure these archetypes do a great job of capturing the process-oriented/results-oriented divide that shows up in the opening anecdote (and which I agree is quite real).

whalesalad 9y ago
Which is interesting to me because if you go through the triplebyte process the impression you'll get is that they are looking for a very academic/textbook CS student who can balance a binary tree on a whiteboard while verbally explaining the operational complexity of an unladen swallow. From my perspective, there is an impedance mismatch between the triplebyte process (heads-down algorithm nerd) and the findings that they are presenting here (product-focused, culturally well rounded hacker, been around the block a few times and has experience in other startups).
- jstanley 9y ago
  > looking for a very academic/textbook CS student who can balance a binary tree on a whiteboard while verbally explaining the operational complexity of an unladen swallow. This doesn't describe academic programmers. In my experience, academic programmers tend to be glorified essay writers who can just barely produce parseable syntax if left alone for a few hours.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    Just what exactly are they working on in academia?
- enknamel 9y ago
  Hopefully Triplebyte will take this data to heart and change their interview process (or even customize it per archetype). If you want a very product focused engineer asking algorithmic questions is almost pointless. Heck, most of the time even knowing what big-O is doesn't matter. What matters more is how fast and effectively you can execute and if people can understand the code you write.

SmellTheGlove 9y ago

A couple of things that jump out to me. Up front, I've been a little hard on Triplebyte in some threads here, but this article is great, and I think their heads are in the right place and motivated to solve one of the biggest problems we have in the corporate world (and I'm telling you this as an "enterprise" manager, so it is an issue across the board). Also that's one of my best run-on sentences, maybe ever. > I don’t want to be too hard on recruiters. Hiring and interviewing are hard, shortcuts must be taken to keep the team sane, and there are legitimate reasons for a company to enforce a specific engineering culture. But from the point of view of programmers applying for jobs, these company preferences are mercurial. Companies don’t advertise their preferences. People who don’t match simply apply, and are rejected (or often never hear back). This is your opportunity, and it's a tough challenge. Tell them what they need and make them believe it. Of course, be right, as well. Never said it'd be easy, but a huge opportunity. Preferences are mercurial because nobody knows what they actually need, only what they think they want, and truthfully there's a lot of latitude in the factors that lead to success. There's a real opportunity if you can figure this out and get companies on board with your judgment. I'm not suggesting one size fits all, but I am suggesting most companies don't know what size actually fits them, if I'm sticking with the cliche. > There’s more demand for product-focused programmers than there is for programmers focused on hard technical problems. [...] And the “Academic Programmer” (hard-problem focused, but without the experience) has half again the demand. This is another disconnect presenting an opportunity - minimize the whiteboard interview! That's essentially screening for the academic profile, isn't it? Again, enterprise guy here, so I'm guessing none of these companies would want to hire me based on the data presented, but I don't do whiteboard interviews at all, and I'd probably put my focus on the "product programmer" profile. Actually, I love your profile data, I've learned a lot about my own preferences just by reading this. > (Almost) everyone dislikes enterprise programmers. We don’t agree with this. We’ve seen a bunch of great Java programmers. But it’s what our data shows. This is really interesting. Again, enterprise bias here, but an enterprise programmer who's managed to get shit done in a big corporate environment should be highly valued. Not only can they program, they can also put up with all of the bullshit that it takes to get things through to production. There is something to be said about a programmer who can essentially handle the politics as well. But if you don't want 'em, I'll take 'em! Anyhow, great writeup here by the Triplebyte folks. I hope that companies in particular read and make good use of what you've put together. I plan to share this with my management team.

jedberg 9y ago

I can tell you why there is discrimination against Enterprise programmers. Two reasons: Most people who have worked in an enterprise have had at least one bad experience with an incompetent programmer who was just a seat filler. That means that the enterprise isn't a good filter, and even worse, it means that even if you are good, you're willing to suffer working with incompetence. The other factor is that enterprise programmers tend to prefer places with a lot of process in place. They want to see a well defined pipeline with tests and approvals and gates and so on. Pushing untested code to production isn't even in their mental space, but sometimes you just gotta do it at a startup when you got a press hit and your traffic just doubled. Basically, they tend to slow things down by demanding doing things right. Now, for the first problem, that's just wrong -- just because you were in an enterprise doesn't mean you are bad or you are willing to deal with bad people. It's just a cognitive bias. For the second problem, those people are right, there should be good process and it will be better in the long term. But in the short term it feels like they are slowing things down, because startups generally don't have the luxury of investing more time now for a bigger payoff later, or at least they don't think they do.

LeoNatan25 9y ago
One more reason: enterprise engineers see through the "change the world" and "disrupt" bullshit that startups often attempt to sell to juniors in order to overwork them until their souls are empty, and then expect them to go home and continue working. None of that in most enterprises. "Nine to five", while should not be taken literally, means following an order where there is work and there is life, and those should overlap only very rarely and only when absolutely necessary (no, an app crash or visual glitch is not it). I see it in my current employer vs my previous employer. While not a small startup by any means, I notice a clear attempt by many ranks to encourage working late and working from home, be it "we'll order pizzas for people that stay here until 20:00" to "we have crazy deadlines that we must!!!! finish now!!!!" nonsense to "we encourage open source but we don't give enough time to developers to handle community issues, and we implicitly expect them to do that on their own time at night or during the weekend". To me, this is very toxic for junior developers who cannot, or do not even know they should, resist it. None of that was there on my previous, enterprise job. Come to work at some hour, do what you do, go home. I try to push this "work from home during after hours" mentality as much as possible, but it's very entrenched. Regarding sear fillers, while true to some respect for enterprise, I'd say from many conversations I've had with people in the start up world, there exist many fillers there as well, often including founders and other "C"-level executives who only had the talent and know-how to give themselves a fancy title. Finally, this was posted here in another discussion, but I think it's interesting here as well: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

deboboy 9y ago

"but an enterprise programmer who's managed to get shit done in a big corporate environment should be highly valued. Not only can they program, they can also put up with all of the bullshit that it takes to get things through to production. There is something to be said about a programmer who can essentially handle the politics as well" - These people are gold, will hire them all day long... just did at one of our healthcare startups.

SmellTheGlove 9y ago
Screw you, stop stealing my people :) Seriously, though, the people that can endure the corporate marathon are uniquely skilled. Imagine that it's not the long hours and breakneck pace that kill you, but the exact opposite. The ones that can see their work through to the end are amazing in their own right.

rezashirazian 9y ago

If you want to work for a YC company apply directly to the YC company you want to work with. Say who you are, what you know and why you like this company. I also recommend not putting too much weight on arbitrary labels (trial and error programmer? child prodigy?) I've been a happy engineer with a YC company for close to three years now. I have led various teams and contributed to many aspect of the overall product during my tenure. I have also interviewed more than twenty people and I can assure you, there is no one size fit all when it comes to finding candidates that succeed. I also tried TripleByte a year ago, I figured it would be fun to see how they do things. I got to the interview section after doing well on the online quizz however failed to go beyond that. From my experience I can assure you that TripleByte has its own set of standards and values that may not match with you or the company you want to work with. They are overly interested in putting labels and pigeon holing candidates into specific categories that overlooks the fact that every individual is different. YC is a big family with varied products, teams, and problems. There are no one size fit all formula or set of labels for ideal candidates or ideal company. Your best route for success is to do the work yourself, find the company that interests you, directly connect with them and see how it goes. Also if someone can explain to me what is trial and error programmer, or a child prodigy I would be grateful? Can a child prodigy be also an enterprise programmer? Is there any overlap between product programmers, pragmatic programmers?

bogomipz 9y ago
>"I've been a happy engineer with a YC company for close to three years now. I have led various teams and contributed to many aspect of the overall product during my tenure. I have also interviewed more than twenty people and I can assure you, there is no one size fit all when it comes to finding candidates that succeed." That's refreshing to hear, thanks. Your observations is in stark contrast to their proclamation that: "If you’re a programmer interested in joining a YC startup, apply to Triplebyte and we’ll match you with the ones you’d be the best fit for."[1] [1]http://blog.triplebyte.com/ http://blog.triplebyte.com/
Harj 9y ago
We're certainly not the only way to join a YC company, or any company, and nor would we claim to be. The specific reasons why you'd consider using Triplebyte are: (1) Companies are unlikely to reply if you contact them directly because your resume isn't impressive. Our entire screening process is background blind and we've built up enough credibility with companies for them to interview you if you do well on our process, when they otherwise would have rejected you based on your background. (2) Finding new company options that are are doing interesting work but you haven't heard about. We spend a lot of time finding and partnering with early stage startups that haven't become well known yet. (3) Saving time in your job search by identifying which companies are looking for your specific set of skills. We have a lot of data about what the companies we work with are looking for and can reduce the number of interviews you do where it becomes clear early on that you're just not the type of engineer they're looking for (e.g. they ask you complex algorithm questions on a whiteboard when your strengths are building and scaling web applications). We're focused on doing these things well and our process certainly isn't perfect. There will be times where we match you with a company and you weren't a fit or when we don't match you with a company and you might have been a fit. Achieving 100% accuracy in something as complicated as hiring is likely impossible but we believe our approach is still a lot better than the status quo of recruiters reading resumes and making gut calls on who gets through to an interview.

yanilkr 9y ago

I am sorry to be the one telling this. The startup founders (not all) are in no way position to be picky about programmers. Programming is an actual skill that takes significant amount of effort to learn and requires constant learning and improvement. After 5 years of good experience, programmers can see through the fragile nature of startups where everyone else other than them is some form of an executive in title but cannot deliver any value equivalent to writing working code. It's often the other programmers at startups judging the other programmers. Based on my personal experience, the best kind of programmer is the one that gets along well with others.

_e 9y ago

This is not just a problem for evaluating programmers but for ALL job candidates. My father-in-law made a wise suggestion, as a company, to always be in hiring mode. You don't want to hire someone because you need them at that very moment but always be hiring so you have redundancy.

blobbers 9y ago

Is it just me do the categories seem a little off (as described here: http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers#.i1987v68j http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers#.i1987v... ) Do you have an anonymous data set of resumes, interviews, and offers that someone could run some clustering against? While parts of it have self-description bias, it seems like the analysis would be a little more interesting than what you've provided. Possibly you may even uncover what companies really want, rather than what they say they want. Kaggle contest!!!!

cyclonetiger 9y ago

Current enterprise programmer. Former startup employee here. I agree that it is quite different at startups. The startup environment felt basically a glorified college environment compared to the large company culture. With that said, I would image eventually all startups have to grow up and embrace enterprise-style processes. Facebook is the example that comes to mind. When they first started, the followed the "Move fast and break things" mantra, but as they aged and took on more and more users, they had to change and become a company that valued reliability over new features. I believe their current mantra is "Move Fast With Stable Infra."?

LeoNatan25 9y ago
Funny, as going by many of their open source projects, I'd say "move slow and break things" could also suit them. ;)

koolba 9y ago

So the most desirable is the child prodigy who's built actual products in a practical way?

fahimulhaq 9y ago

This is an old post. Can moderators put 2015 in the title?

SmellTheGlove 9y ago
Yeah but there's good discussion going. Might as well allow it.