5 ms·

Pardon my ignorance, but I don't get it. Why would you want to hire someone that "sprays" their application across 25+ companies?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
shazow 16y ago
The reality of an applicant is that there is extremely little information about a startup and its reputation, and what little there is is almost always identical to every other startup (free food, have an impact, big challenges, blah blah blah). You only really discover whether it's a good fit or not after you've worked there for months. If you're really lucky, after you've had all the interviews. But really never ever before you've even applied. During the application process, I'd argue that the employer has the best idea whether the fit would be good or not.
- cyen 16y ago
  What happened to wanting to work on a product you (can) love?
  - shazow 16y ago
    Product changes more frequently than the team or culture.
- edanm 16y ago
  This is especially true of YC companies, I suspect. I'm pretty sure all YC-funded startups have great working conditions, and most of them have pretty good ideas and a good chance of making it.
prog123hn 16y ago
Why do you see Glade advertise Glade PlugIns on prime time television? Because sometimes you turn on the television to watch True Blood and still decide to buy a Glade PlugIn. This model helps centralize the process for the popular companies, and it gives the less popular ones access to quality candidates. Everyone has a hiring problem.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  True blood is on hbo; no commecials
nicholasjbs 16y ago
There are several reasons. For one, most of the best engineers and hackers have jobs already. Even if they're not super happy with their jobs, the prospect of seeking out better places to work, submitting lots of resumes and cover letters, etc, has a high activation energy. The YCommonApp is a convenient way for people to get introduced to a whole bunch of high-quality and exciting places to work in a short amount of time. Also, since it's a custom application, anyone responding to it will have taken the time to fill it out specifically, which eliminates the standard resume-sprayers on craigslist, et al.
Tichy 16y ago
Why not?
euroclydon 16y ago
Because it's P.R. for HiveHire. Why does P.G. use Posterous sometimes?
- pg 16y ago
  Actually I didn't tell the 25 startups to use HireHive. The HireHive founders convinced them. It was easy because they're all desperate to hire. And Posterous I use because I genuinely like it. Before Posterous we never blogged at all, because it seemed like too much trouble.
  - vegashacker 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure I remember a Y Combinator Weebly blog. Also there was the Infogami PG blog, but I suppose that was you, not your company.
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    Yeah, I didn't think you told them to use it. I've just noticed that the YC community seems to use eachother's products in order to achieve a compounding synergy-type effect, even if it sometime seems a bit odd, like this. Also, I didn't draw the distinction between your essay site and "blogging." Makes sense now.
pg 16y ago
Why would you turn away someone good because they'd applied to other companies?
- dschobel 16y ago
  As an employer, wouldn't you demand someone be interested in the specific problems you're trying to solve though? Do kids who want to be part of $generic_sexy_yc_startup last long? (that's a sincere, non-rhetorical question)
  - aaronbrethorst 16y ago
    I think there are interesting, challenging problems to solve at any and every funded startup (why else would they have been able to receive funding?). I'm far more interested in working on The Next Big Thing—especially if it's a big challenge—than I am in a specific problem domain. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired; maybe it's a reflection of my skillset. My guess is that the kind of person who would be attracted to the idea of working at any and all YC-backed startups is the same kind of person who is more interested in tackling big, challenging problems than any particular problem domain. Maybe I'm wrong and just projecting. What do you think?
    - dschobel 16y ago
      It's a subjective question so don't feel bad about projecting. I was coming from the diametrically opposed position where I have a very specific interest and background (robotics) so I couldn't go write web-apps even if the business side ("the next big thing") was extremely compelling. I was mostly trying to understand how (and if) YC's alpha engineers would happily go work on "the next big thing", largely independent of what that thing was.
  - acgourley 16y ago
    I agree that the person should investigate the company a bit more before shotgunning out his or her application. I don't agree the domain matters so much, what matters is something fuzzier. I'm not sure exactly how to define it, but consider that at the 'trenches' level YC funded companies do a lot of the same day-to-day tasks with the same technologies.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

shazow 16y ago

The reality of an applicant is that there is extremely little information about a startup and its reputation, and what little there is is almost always identical to every other startup (free food, have an impact, big challenges, blah blah blah). You only really discover whether it's a good fit or not after you've worked there for months. If you're really lucky, after you've had all the interviews. But really never ever before you've even applied. During the application process, I'd argue that the employer has the best idea whether the fit would be good or not.

cyen 16y ago
What happened to wanting to work on a product you (can) love?
- shazow 16y ago
  Product changes more frequently than the team or culture.
edanm 16y ago
This is especially true of YC companies, I suspect. I'm pretty sure all YC-funded startups have great working conditions, and most of them have pretty good ideas and a good chance of making it.

prog123hn 16y ago

Why do you see Glade advertise Glade PlugIns on prime time television? Because sometimes you turn on the television to watch True Blood and still decide to buy a Glade PlugIn. This model helps centralize the process for the popular companies, and it gives the less popular ones access to quality candidates. Everyone has a hiring problem.

aaronblohowiak 16y ago
True blood is on hbo; no commecials

nicholasjbs 16y ago

There are several reasons. For one, most of the best engineers and hackers have jobs already. Even if they're not super happy with their jobs, the prospect of seeking out better places to work, submitting lots of resumes and cover letters, etc, has a high activation energy. The YCommonApp is a convenient way for people to get introduced to a whole bunch of high-quality and exciting places to work in a short amount of time. Also, since it's a custom application, anyone responding to it will have taken the time to fill it out specifically, which eliminates the standard resume-sprayers on craigslist, et al.

Tichy 16y ago

Why not?

euroclydon 16y ago

Because it's P.R. for HiveHire. Why does P.G. use Posterous sometimes?

pg 16y ago
Actually I didn't tell the 25 startups to use HireHive. The HireHive founders convinced them. It was easy because they're all desperate to hire. And Posterous I use because I genuinely like it. Before Posterous we never blogged at all, because it seemed like too much trouble.
- vegashacker 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure I remember a Y Combinator Weebly blog. Also there was the Infogami PG blog, but I suppose that was you, not your company.
- euroclydon 16y ago
  Yeah, I didn't think you told them to use it. I've just noticed that the YC community seems to use eachother's products in order to achieve a compounding synergy-type effect, even if it sometime seems a bit odd, like this. Also, I didn't draw the distinction between your essay site and "blogging." Makes sense now.

pg 16y ago

Why would you turn away someone good because they'd applied to other companies?

dschobel 16y ago
As an employer, wouldn't you demand someone be interested in the specific problems you're trying to solve though? Do kids who want to be part of $generic_sexy_yc_startup last long? (that's a sincere, non-rhetorical question)
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago
  I think there are interesting, challenging problems to solve at any and every funded startup (why else would they have been able to receive funding?). I'm far more interested in working on The Next Big Thing—especially if it's a big challenge—than I am in a specific problem domain. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired; maybe it's a reflection of my skillset. My guess is that the kind of person who would be attracted to the idea of working at any and all YC-backed startups is the same kind of person who is more interested in tackling big, challenging problems than any particular problem domain. Maybe I'm wrong and just projecting. What do you think?
  - dschobel 16y ago
    It's a subjective question so don't feel bad about projecting. I was coming from the diametrically opposed position where I have a very specific interest and background (robotics) so I couldn't go write web-apps even if the business side ("the next big thing") was extremely compelling. I was mostly trying to understand how (and if) YC's alpha engineers would happily go work on "the next big thing", largely independent of what that thing was.
- acgourley 16y ago
  I agree that the person should investigate the company a bit more before shotgunning out his or her application. I don't agree the domain matters so much, what matters is something fuzzier. I'm not sure exactly how to define it, but consider that at the 'trenches' level YC funded companies do a lot of the same day-to-day tasks with the same technologies.