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I think the real value in recent grads (from a startup perspective) is that they're young and naive enough to work long hours based on 'team spirit' and the dr

by m12k 8y ago

I think the real value in recent grads (from a startup perspective) is that they're young and naive enough to work long hours based on 'team spirit' and the dream of 'making an impact' rather than silly old ideas like earning a real salary or a getting a big enough amount of equity to matter. And they usually don't have families to keep them from working long hours either. They'll drink whatever kool-aid the startup is based on much more readily than some grumpy old-timer.

raarts 8y ago
"Do you want to help disrupt <........> ? Want to work with < blockchain, microservices, ML/AI>, and want to work 16 hours a day without or with little ownership? Join us, we are a young dynamic international team, free organic lunches, free Macbook, we're all bros here. Take our whiteboard interview and see if you're a cultural fit!"
- monksy 8y ago
  Don't forget about the week-long "coding challenge"
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  There's so much of this around. Can't stand it.
crdoconnor 8y ago
None of that actually provides real value though. There's zero point to overworking programmers - that's how you get crap. I think it's probably just VC bias driven by the number of unicorns which had young founders (VCs aren't after 'moderately successful startups', where founders tend to be older, they're after wildly successful unicorns). Those young founders hire "people like themselves" which naturally means people their age or younger. There's a certain degree of implicit age discrimination baked into the default hiring process of most startups too - all of those questions about reversing binary trees or implementing quicksort biases hiring toward recent grads who have just learned it and away from the experienced devs (because 99% of devs simply never use this kind of theory). tl;dr VCs cargo cult and end up investing in young founders, young founders cargo cult their interview process and hire people "like themselves".
- monksy 8y ago
  I've seen this in large corporations as well. ("They want to be 'more agile'")
- rhizome 8y ago
  VCs also want people who "disrupt" like Facebook has disrupted personal information and data, or Uber and driverless cars. Older people have to be evil (subject to opinion) to start a company to do that, but younger people see Zuck's $$ without knowing where it comes from and want the same thing. They can modify their ethics if necessary, and it only happens bit by bit, which makes it easier.
sokoloff 8y ago
A long time ago, back when I was a recent grad, I often worked long hours simply because coding is so damned fun. I remember thinking, "Damn, I can't believe that they pay me this much for something that I'd do for free anyway! What fools!!" That hasn't completely escaped, but with a family and 25 years experience, I put that into a different perspective now.

by m12k 8y ago

raarts 8y ago

"Do you want to help disrupt <........> ? Want to work with < blockchain, microservices, ML/AI>, and want to work 16 hours a day without or with little ownership? Join us, we are a young dynamic international team, free organic lunches, free Macbook, we're all bros here. Take our whiteboard interview and see if you're a cultural fit!"

monksy 8y ago
Don't forget about the week-long "coding challenge"
52-6F-62 8y ago
There's so much of this around. Can't stand it.

crdoconnor 8y ago

None of that actually provides real value though. There's zero point to overworking programmers - that's how you get crap. I think it's probably just VC bias driven by the number of unicorns which had young founders (VCs aren't after 'moderately successful startups', where founders tend to be older, they're after wildly successful unicorns). Those young founders hire "people like themselves" which naturally means people their age or younger. There's a certain degree of implicit age discrimination baked into the default hiring process of most startups too - all of those questions about reversing binary trees or implementing quicksort biases hiring toward recent grads who have just learned it and away from the experienced devs (because 99% of devs simply never use this kind of theory). tl;dr VCs cargo cult and end up investing in young founders, young founders cargo cult their interview process and hire people "like themselves".

monksy 8y ago
I've seen this in large corporations as well. ("They want to be 'more agile'")
rhizome 8y ago
VCs also want people who "disrupt" like Facebook has disrupted personal information and data, or Uber and driverless cars. Older people have to be evil (subject to opinion) to start a company to do that, but younger people see Zuck's $$ without knowing where it comes from and want the same thing. They can modify their ethics if necessary, and it only happens bit by bit, which makes it easier.

sokoloff 8y ago

A long time ago, back when I was a recent grad, I often worked long hours simply because coding is so damned fun. I remember thinking, "Damn, I can't believe that they pay me this much for something that I'd do for free anyway! What fools!!" That hasn't completely escaped, but with a family and 25 years experience, I put that into a different perspective now.