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just playing devil's advocate here, but why is slapping together an API with some javascript worthy of a job offer? what's so exciting about YT instant? from hu

just playing devil's advocate here, but why is slapping together an API with some javascript worthy of a job offer? what's so exciting about YT instant? from hurley's twitter message, it sounds like he asked this kid to drop out of stanford to join youtube, which sounds a little crazy. maybe I just have no imagination. (congrats to the kid in any case)

Mystalic 16y ago
The kid's innovative and imaginative, can clearly build and design product quickly, and has a Facebook and Stanford pedigree. That sounds like a winner to me.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Also, by encouraging him to drop out of Stanford, they obtain an employee with a somewhat lower market value if he ever feels like leaving youtube.
  - bartl 16y ago
    He's not dropping out of Stanford. FTA: >Aboukhadijeh will continue to attend Stanford while he works at the company.
gbrez1 16y ago
I agree and thank you for speaking what was on my mind as well. Anyone with moderate javascript skills could have a site like this up and running within 2 hours. I'm not even a fan of google instant though, oh well, to each his own.
- js2 16y ago
  Maybe anyone could, but it was Feross who did so. As well, I'm sure he still went through the YouTube interview process. YouTube Instant was just his foot in the door. What's with the sour grapes?
- city41 16y ago
  People often say "I could do that" when seeing a Jackson Pollock painting. The key is they didn't, Pollock did. Hindsight is 20/20 and skills in executing are a dime a dozen. I'd be willing to be the vast majority of HN users could have coded up Youtube Instant. The differentiator is Feross actually did it.
moondistance 16y ago
Feross also already had a great reputation (and resume). He is well known at Stanford, organizing ACM events, among other things.
spoiledtechie 16y ago
Why would anyone who has some coding skills and Rail skills build something like Twitter? Because of his imagination. Stupid idea, but worth millions. Innovative people are hard to find.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
wave 16y ago
Things are not measured by how difficult or simple it was to create. It is measured by the result it produces. He also validated for them that users want YouTube Instance without the company doing any work or taking any risks. For this reason alone, he deserves more than a job offer.
sangaya 16y ago
2nd Sentence from the Article: "Aboukhadijeh will continue to attend Stanford while he works at the company." He get's a job YouTube while finishing his education at Stanford. Sounds like a good deal. I don't see the downside.
alnayyir 16y ago
>but why is slapping together an API with some javascript worthy of a job offer? I was equally leery for the same reason. I've made tons of apps that bound events and pulled/updated data from cache layers I had setup. Apparently I didn't have the good sense to be a shameless self-promoter. This is frankly exemplary of the one thing I don't like about HN, even though I dearly love the community here. The emphasis on typical business values, rather than on true productivity and hard work agonizes my conscience on a regular basis. It makes me nauseous to think he got such publicity and a job offer for that. I hate to be sour about it, but damn. S'like hiring a B-school kid because he completed a rudimentary business plan, rendered it into PDF, and put it online and it happened to go viral for some absurd reason.
- justin 16y ago
  People who are on the sidelines are always claiming they could do it better, or otherwise downplaying other's attempts to make something cool. Apparently you haven't been able to make any apps that caught anyone's attention, and it sounds like you're jealous that something you perceive as equal to your efforts did. Honestly, I'd never intentionally hire anyone with your attitude.
  - alnayyir 16y ago
    I've used set theory to hack up a search engine for a collab project in an evening. I've made an app that gets around the lack of transactions in MySQL MyISAM and allows auditing of arbitrary django ORM models with logs. I wrote a micro-compiler last night using llvm and my own lexer, parser, and tokenizer. I simply don't write things that are necessarily "accessible" to the general public, and I don't go out of my way to promote them. The fact that I'm leery of people who are aggressive self-promoters or opportunistic doesn't mean I'm "jealous", I don't actually want to work for Google. I'm leery because in past experience, the aggressive self-promoters are covering for a lack of something, whether it be scruples or technical aptitude. I was making an observation and expressing reservation, you're outright saying you wouldn't hire me. But hey, lesson learned, I'll just make one-off apps that don't actually do anything and promote the shit out of them. God forbid someone express reservations about the enthusiasm over relatively unproductive demonstrations without getting publicly hammered by a well known startup personality. You shame yourself and demonstrate why many programmers I know don't take Silicon Valley seriously.

Mystalic 16y ago

The kid's innovative and imaginative, can clearly build and design product quickly, and has a Facebook and Stanford pedigree. That sounds like a winner to me.

hugh3 16y ago
Also, by encouraging him to drop out of Stanford, they obtain an employee with a somewhat lower market value if he ever feels like leaving youtube.
- bartl 16y ago
  He's not dropping out of Stanford. FTA: >Aboukhadijeh will continue to attend Stanford while he works at the company.

gbrez1 16y ago

I agree and thank you for speaking what was on my mind as well. Anyone with moderate javascript skills could have a site like this up and running within 2 hours. I'm not even a fan of google instant though, oh well, to each his own.

js2 16y ago
Maybe anyone could, but it was Feross who did so. As well, I'm sure he still went through the YouTube interview process. YouTube Instant was just his foot in the door. What's with the sour grapes?
city41 16y ago
People often say "I could do that" when seeing a Jackson Pollock painting. The key is they didn't, Pollock did. Hindsight is 20/20 and skills in executing are a dime a dozen. I'd be willing to be the vast majority of HN users could have coded up Youtube Instant. The differentiator is Feross actually did it.

moondistance 16y ago

Feross also already had a great reputation (and resume). He is well known at Stanford, organizing ACM events, among other things.

spoiledtechie 16y ago

Why would anyone who has some coding skills and Rail skills build something like Twitter? Because of his imagination. Stupid idea, but worth millions. Innovative people are hard to find.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

wave 16y ago

Things are not measured by how difficult or simple it was to create. It is measured by the result it produces. He also validated for them that users want YouTube Instance without the company doing any work or taking any risks. For this reason alone, he deserves more than a job offer.

sangaya 16y ago

2nd Sentence from the Article: "Aboukhadijeh will continue to attend Stanford while he works at the company." He get's a job YouTube while finishing his education at Stanford. Sounds like a good deal. I don't see the downside.

alnayyir 16y ago

>but why is slapping together an API with some javascript worthy of a job offer? I was equally leery for the same reason. I've made tons of apps that bound events and pulled/updated data from cache layers I had setup. Apparently I didn't have the good sense to be a shameless self-promoter. This is frankly exemplary of the one thing I don't like about HN, even though I dearly love the community here. The emphasis on typical business values, rather than on true productivity and hard work agonizes my conscience on a regular basis. It makes me nauseous to think he got such publicity and a job offer for that. I hate to be sour about it, but damn. S'like hiring a B-school kid because he completed a rudimentary business plan, rendered it into PDF, and put it online and it happened to go viral for some absurd reason.

justin 16y ago
People who are on the sidelines are always claiming they could do it better, or otherwise downplaying other's attempts to make something cool. Apparently you haven't been able to make any apps that caught anyone's attention, and it sounds like you're jealous that something you perceive as equal to your efforts did. Honestly, I'd never intentionally hire anyone with your attitude.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  I've used set theory to hack up a search engine for a collab project in an evening. I've made an app that gets around the lack of transactions in MySQL MyISAM and allows auditing of arbitrary django ORM models with logs. I wrote a micro-compiler last night using llvm and my own lexer, parser, and tokenizer. I simply don't write things that are necessarily "accessible" to the general public, and I don't go out of my way to promote them. The fact that I'm leery of people who are aggressive self-promoters or opportunistic doesn't mean I'm "jealous", I don't actually want to work for Google. I'm leery because in past experience, the aggressive self-promoters are covering for a lack of something, whether it be scruples or technical aptitude. I was making an observation and expressing reservation, you're outright saying you wouldn't hire me. But hey, lesson learned, I'll just make one-off apps that don't actually do anything and promote the shit out of them. God forbid someone express reservations about the enthusiasm over relatively unproductive demonstrations without getting publicly hammered by a well known startup personality. You shame yourself and demonstrate why many programmers I know don't take Silicon Valley seriously.