4 ms·

NYC Should Bus In Hackers from Carnegie Mellon & MIT

21 points by MediaSquirrel 16y ago

toxicflavor 16y ago
From where I'm standing NYC has no recognizable shortage of young technical talent. Hackers from Carnegie Mellon & MIT don't need to be "bussed in" because they're already drawn to NYC in droves, as are young people from all areas of the country. The talent pool and the startup scene are both thriving. The author believes he has the solution to a problem that I just don't recognize as a significant one in NYC.
- MediaSquirrel 16y ago
  HAHAHA. Are you a startup founder? Have you ever tried to recruit a web hacker for an early stage startup in NYC? Early stage companies are desperate for talent.
  - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    Your problem must have been that you had no money. It's no problem hiring hackers in NYC if you can pay what all the heavy hitters are paying. And by heavy hitters I mean the other funded startups, not wall street. Nobody in NYC is going to work here for 65K and options like they do in SF. You can make more money teaching public high school.
  - jorgeortiz85 16y ago
    Recruiting is a hard problem for early stage startups everywhere, not just in NYC. By definition, you're competing for talent against much more well-known companies with much deeper pockets.
  - nicholasjbs 16y ago
    In my experience, early (and later) stage startups in the valley are also desperate to find good hackers.
    - BrandonM 16y ago
      And good hackers are desperate to find good startups. Why does this have to be such a hard problem?
      - anamax 16y ago
        > And good hackers are desperate to find good startups. Why does this have to be such a hard problem? Both have a recognition problem. Also, there are multiple definitions of "good". Cool problems are great, but if you're offering below market rate compensation, you can't offer below market rate risk. Many hackers can do arithmetic on equity. 1% after dilution is >$1M only on a >$100M exit, which is relatively rare. We've no objection to you getting rich. However, it isn't worth much to us either.
      - moron4hire 16y ago
        I don't think this is like the 20th Century DotCom bubble, where you could get rich off of stock options as an employee. Working for a startup is ultimately no different for the employee than working for an established company. If anything, it's possibly worse, as the employee is expected to put in a lot more effort "for the good of the company" than for their own good.
        hga 16y ago
        Well, in theory you don't have to deal with established company garbage ... but startup problems can be far worse (after all an established company has shown some level of competence to get there). And you can have a much greater effect, opportunities to do things right or at least OK instead of trying to fix up stuff that was done wrong long ago. But the post-SarBox "more work for less compensation" trade off is anything but attractive, and to bring this back to NYC, it's clear it's one of the areas that don't particularly respect hackers (I suspect most are that way (the D.C. area is) and places like Boston and Silicon Valley are the exceptions).
  - cageface 16y ago
    I'm on the West Coast looking for startup gigs in NYC and haven't seen that many listed. Who needs people?
    - krschultz 16y ago
      Check out startuply, union square venture's portfolio of companies, new york tech meetup, and nextNY. I asked the question you are asking on HN about 3 years ago, someone gave me the answer above (thought startuply didn't exist at the time), and ended up at a startup I wound up loving to work for not 2 months later, so good luck and maybe the kharma will be passed on.
      - cageface 16y ago
        Thanks very much for the pointers. Looks like a good start.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Question: Are you a startup founder? Have you had trouble finding talent in NYC? Have you thought that maybe the problem was not NYC but you? There are people looking for work specifically in the startup space in NYC, I was one of them about 3 years ago. When I found companies it was immediately clear which founders were good to work for and which were not. Just becuase you have a "startup" doesn't mean you are a going to attract talent. It has to be a good startup. The bar of what is an attractive startup for employees might be lower in Silicon Valley because so many people are there for "startup culture" above all else. In NYC there are other options that are good and a startup isn't better simply becuase it is a startup, it has to be better on its own merits.
novum 16y ago
As a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, I can assure you that many (if not most) CS/IS/MISM graduates already end up in NYC or San Francisco. Yours truly included (hello from SF!) DC, Pittsburgh, Baltimore are popular too, though much less so.
loumf 16y ago
If you need incentive to come to NYC, you aren't going to make it.
- MediaSquirrel 16y ago
  It's not incentive, it's awareness.
  - loumf 16y ago
    Sorry. If you've never heard of NYC, you're not going to make it :)
- brianmwang 16y ago
  I think there are plenty of incentives for hackers to come to NYC but it's mainly from the finance sector. Wall St firms wining and dining their hire prospects is common practice. Matt's recommendation is to show that the startup community can entice hackers in its own way. Startups might not be able to pay the salary + bonus that finance firms can throw at you, but perhaps they can gain influence in other ways.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Salary isn't everything, the I-bank guys can be miserable. I know a guy who just backed out of his offer from JP Morgan for less money at a smaller firm that did something entirely. It is less money and the same hours, but the project is more fun. Milage may vary but I know that for me +/- 10k is about what I call equal offers. I was just in a position picking between two offers. One paid about $8k more than the other in salary, but the lower offer sounded more fun. I took the lower offer. Promptly after my start date they told me about a bonus I'd be getting that I didn't know about that comes to about 10k, so I ended up coming out ahead, but even if that hadn't happened I'd be OK with my decision.
adolph 16y ago
Why buses? Are the trains not working today?
- brianmwang 16y ago
  Trains are a fair bit more expensive than buses. We don't want scrappy startups sending mixed signals ;)
moron4hire 16y ago
I don't get the city competition, but maybe that's because I didn't grow up in my city (Philadelphia) and I was never a recognized member of my previous small-town community (for various reasons, none important). Who cares if your city is the "Silicon Valley of the East Coast"? Suddenly that means tech isn't going on in all the other East Coast cities? You show me even a small town that doesn't have at least 5 different tech companies. Why does a particular city need a "startup scene"? How is having NYC known as a place that tech companies like to call home, versus tech companies just going about their business without drawing attention to the fact that they are in NYC because it doesn't mean anything to the 90% of their customers who don't live there, going to do anything for NYC? Attract more businesses for more tax revenue? Then why would the type of business matter at all? Reversing that question, why does any startup need a particular city? What does it matter that DuckDuckGo is in Valley Forge, PA (even though everyone says Philly, because Valley Forge is toootally inside Philadelphia city limits when it's down the Turnpike past even King of Prussia. Might as well say New Ark, DE is in Philly)? It's still a decent upstart search engine, and would be the same decent site if it were in Bethesda, MD (where people would probably say it was in DC). If the price is right, you can find talent anywhere (cities don't have a monopoly on growing smart people out of test tubes), and if the biz is right you can find funding anywhere (or would an investor seriously give up a good opportunity just because the company's HQ is more than a lunch-hour drive away?). None of these things have particular geographical components, unless you're in some dead-end, old, mining enclave on the side of a mountain in up-state Pennsylvania. Or maybe not, maybe you got so good of a deal on land that you don't mind the capital cost of getting started from stone-age-scratch. But at any rate, it means nothing to me if, say, Orlando, FL has more tech firms than Philly. That's them, not me. Where they are certainly has to have no more impact on me than if they lived next door to me.
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  Why does a particular city need a "startup scene"? As a startup employee, a practical reason to live somewhere with a "startup scene" is so that I can get another job easily if something doesn't work out. I don't want to have to move from Valley Forge to Orlando when DuckDuckGo tanks.

21 points by MediaSquirrel 16y ago

From where I'm standing NYC has no recognizable shortage of young technical talent. Hackers from Carnegie Mellon & MIT don't need to be "bussed in" because they're already drawn to NYC in droves, as are young people from all areas of the country. The talent pool and the startup scene are both thriving. The author believes he has the solution to a problem that I just don't recognize as a significant one in NYC.

MediaSquirrel 16y ago
HAHAHA. Are you a startup founder? Have you ever tried to recruit a web hacker for an early stage startup in NYC? Early stage companies are desperate for talent.
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  Your problem must have been that you had no money. It's no problem hiring hackers in NYC if you can pay what all the heavy hitters are paying. And by heavy hitters I mean the other funded startups, not wall street. Nobody in NYC is going to work here for 65K and options like they do in SF. You can make more money teaching public high school.
- jorgeortiz85 16y ago
  Recruiting is a hard problem for early stage startups everywhere, not just in NYC. By definition, you're competing for talent against much more well-known companies with much deeper pockets.
- nicholasjbs 16y ago
  In my experience, early (and later) stage startups in the valley are also desperate to find good hackers.
  - BrandonM 16y ago
    And good hackers are desperate to find good startups. Why does this have to be such a hard problem?
    - anamax 16y ago
      > And good hackers are desperate to find good startups. Why does this have to be such a hard problem? Both have a recognition problem. Also, there are multiple definitions of "good". Cool problems are great, but if you're offering below market rate compensation, you can't offer below market rate risk. Many hackers can do arithmetic on equity. 1% after dilution is >$1M only on a >$100M exit, which is relatively rare. We've no objection to you getting rich. However, it isn't worth much to us either.
    - moron4hire 16y ago
      I don't think this is like the 20th Century DotCom bubble, where you could get rich off of stock options as an employee. Working for a startup is ultimately no different for the employee than working for an established company. If anything, it's possibly worse, as the employee is expected to put in a lot more effort "for the good of the company" than for their own good.
      - hga 16y ago
        Well, in theory you don't have to deal with established company garbage ... but startup problems can be far worse (after all an established company has shown some level of competence to get there). And you can have a much greater effect, opportunities to do things right or at least OK instead of trying to fix up stuff that was done wrong long ago. But the post-SarBox "more work for less compensation" trade off is anything but attractive, and to bring this back to NYC, it's clear it's one of the areas that don't particularly respect hackers (I suspect most are that way (the D.C. area is) and places like Boston and Silicon Valley are the exceptions).
- cageface 16y ago
  I'm on the West Coast looking for startup gigs in NYC and haven't seen that many listed. Who needs people?
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Check out startuply, union square venture's portfolio of companies, new york tech meetup, and nextNY. I asked the question you are asking on HN about 3 years ago, someone gave me the answer above (thought startuply didn't exist at the time), and ended up at a startup I wound up loving to work for not 2 months later, so good luck and maybe the kharma will be passed on.
    - cageface 16y ago
      Thanks very much for the pointers. Looks like a good start.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Question: Are you a startup founder? Have you had trouble finding talent in NYC? Have you thought that maybe the problem was not NYC but you? There are people looking for work specifically in the startup space in NYC, I was one of them about 3 years ago. When I found companies it was immediately clear which founders were good to work for and which were not. Just becuase you have a "startup" doesn't mean you are a going to attract talent. It has to be a good startup. The bar of what is an attractive startup for employees might be lower in Silicon Valley because so many people are there for "startup culture" above all else. In NYC there are other options that are good and a startup isn't better simply becuase it is a startup, it has to be better on its own merits.

novum 16y ago

As a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, I can assure you that many (if not most) CS/IS/MISM graduates already end up in NYC or San Francisco. Yours truly included (hello from SF!) DC, Pittsburgh, Baltimore are popular too, though much less so.

loumf 16y ago

If you need incentive to come to NYC, you aren't going to make it.

MediaSquirrel 16y ago
It's not incentive, it's awareness.
- loumf 16y ago
  Sorry. If you've never heard of NYC, you're not going to make it :)
brianmwang 16y ago
I think there are plenty of incentives for hackers to come to NYC but it's mainly from the finance sector. Wall St firms wining and dining their hire prospects is common practice. Matt's recommendation is to show that the startup community can entice hackers in its own way. Startups might not be able to pay the salary + bonus that finance firms can throw at you, but perhaps they can gain influence in other ways.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Salary isn't everything, the I-bank guys can be miserable. I know a guy who just backed out of his offer from JP Morgan for less money at a smaller firm that did something entirely. It is less money and the same hours, but the project is more fun. Milage may vary but I know that for me +/- 10k is about what I call equal offers. I was just in a position picking between two offers. One paid about $8k more than the other in salary, but the lower offer sounded more fun. I took the lower offer. Promptly after my start date they told me about a bonus I'd be getting that I didn't know about that comes to about 10k, so I ended up coming out ahead, but even if that hadn't happened I'd be OK with my decision.

adolph 16y ago

Why buses? Are the trains not working today?

brianmwang 16y ago
Trains are a fair bit more expensive than buses. We don't want scrappy startups sending mixed signals ;)

moron4hire 16y ago

I don't get the city competition, but maybe that's because I didn't grow up in my city (Philadelphia) and I was never a recognized member of my previous small-town community (for various reasons, none important). Who cares if your city is the "Silicon Valley of the East Coast"? Suddenly that means tech isn't going on in all the other East Coast cities? You show me even a small town that doesn't have at least 5 different tech companies. Why does a particular city need a "startup scene"? How is having NYC known as a place that tech companies like to call home, versus tech companies just going about their business without drawing attention to the fact that they are in NYC because it doesn't mean anything to the 90% of their customers who don't live there, going to do anything for NYC? Attract more businesses for more tax revenue? Then why would the type of business matter at all? Reversing that question, why does any startup need a particular city? What does it matter that DuckDuckGo is in Valley Forge, PA (even though everyone says Philly, because Valley Forge is toootally inside Philadelphia city limits when it's down the Turnpike past even King of Prussia. Might as well say New Ark, DE is in Philly)? It's still a decent upstart search engine, and would be the same decent site if it were in Bethesda, MD (where people would probably say it was in DC). If the price is right, you can find talent anywhere (cities don't have a monopoly on growing smart people out of test tubes), and if the biz is right you can find funding anywhere (or would an investor seriously give up a good opportunity just because the company's HQ is more than a lunch-hour drive away?). None of these things have particular geographical components, unless you're in some dead-end, old, mining enclave on the side of a mountain in up-state Pennsylvania. Or maybe not, maybe you got so good of a deal on land that you don't mind the capital cost of getting started from stone-age-scratch. But at any rate, it means nothing to me if, say, Orlando, FL has more tech firms than Philly. That's them, not me. Where they are certainly has to have no more impact on me than if they lived next door to me.

maxawaytoolong 16y ago
Why does a particular city need a "startup scene"? As a startup employee, a practical reason to live somewhere with a "startup scene" is so that I can get another job easily if something doesn't work out. I don't want to have to move from Valley Forge to Orlando when DuckDuckGo tanks.