5 ms·

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other

by 3uclid 7y ago

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps). ...Yikes.

sct202 7y ago
The CTO is a former Googler SWE.
- 3uclid 7y ago
  Nice -- they market the company as "made by former Google and Apple engineers", but built the product with...an intern? Lmao.
  - corporateslave5 7y ago
    Haha! Guaranteed that was the pitch somewhere
  - runawaybottle 7y ago
    I mean, isn’t that obvious. Our industry is just as ridiculous as any other. Cheers to a good lol.
- trianglem 7y ago
  I’m so furious I’m willing to say she was a “woman” hire.
  - thedance 7y ago
    Look at the linkedin for the company. Almost all women in fact.
    - pcunite 7y ago
      link?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
Aperocky 7y ago
For a company of its size, it certainly got a good amount of C-titled people. CEO, COO, CTO... Here's the thing I don't understand about them, I thought startups were averse to this? Am I wrong about startups or am I wrong about them being a startup?
- umeshunni 7y ago
  Titles are a form of compensation. When you are a cash-strapped startup, especially in a domain that's not particularly lucrative, you pay people with titles. If this incident hadn't happened, these folks could have proudly claimed that they were the CTO/COO/CPO etc of Shadow Inc on their LinkedIns and whatever article BuzzFeed/Forbes wrote about them.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    With the exception of CTO, none of them seem to be engineers. If I'm on the hiring end, this is not something that will help. Instead, if someone's going to sell me the importance of their title at their 6 people startup, it's going to negatively affect their chances.
    - umeshunni 7y ago
      It's the other way around - if you're trying to recruit an engineer or ops person from FAANMG, you can tell them "Well, I know you're an SWE 2 and make $300K/year, and we can't match that, but guess what, you can be the VP of Engineering at our 2-person startup and when we go public, you'll be a VP or SVP of a public company." You'd be surprised how many people fall for that.
    - neuromantik8086 7y ago
      The COO majored in Music Technology at Oberlin. That's quite a bit more technical than most people realize. TIMARA (the music tech program at the Oberlin Conservatory) involves a decent amount of programming and/or audio engineering. To put that in perspective, the founder of Macromind/Macromedia (Marc Canter) is also an alumnus of TIMARA.
thedance 7y ago
The career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking american democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.
- uoaei 7y ago
  Private sector everyperson-entrepreneurship has reached its logical conclusion.
- eagsalazar2 7y ago
  For most software development work a bootcamper is just as likely to be a solid team member as someone with a CS degree after a few years of good industry experience. They key issue isn't that they are bootcampers but that they are fresh bootcampers with no more senior people around to guide the project or mentor them. (similarly a fresh CS grad is fairly worthless in serious production work and will not improve much if they don't get the opportunity to work on serious projects with great sr devs and leadership invested in mentoring them)
  - thedance 7y ago
    That might be true, but if I get to choose between someone with no industry experience, and another person with no industry experience whose mind has been poisoned by a certificate mill, I’m taking the former. Those boot camps are, literally, worse than useless.
    - eagsalazar2 7y ago
      Yeah I guess I would choose a CS grad also but "poisoned by a certificate mill" is pretty dramatic. I don't have any illusion fresh bootcamp grads are awesome sr devs but seriously you can, again surrounded by more senior mentors, put a high potential bootcamp grad on a project and they will be far from worse than useless almost immediately and certainly after a few months be quite valuable because their albeit very minimal and focused training got them a toehold and some skills they could apply and expand on over time. Sounds like you had a bad experience.
  - 7y ago

by 3uclid 7y ago

sct202 7y ago

The CTO is a former Googler SWE.

3uclid 7y ago
Nice -- they market the company as "made by former Google and Apple engineers", but built the product with...an intern? Lmao.
- corporateslave5 7y ago
  Haha! Guaranteed that was the pitch somewhere
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  I mean, isn’t that obvious. Our industry is just as ridiculous as any other. Cheers to a good lol.
trianglem 7y ago
I’m so furious I’m willing to say she was a “woman” hire.
- thedance 7y ago
  Look at the linkedin for the company. Almost all women in fact.
  - pcunite 7y ago
    link?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

Aperocky 7y ago

For a company of its size, it certainly got a good amount of C-titled people. CEO, COO, CTO... Here's the thing I don't understand about them, I thought startups were averse to this? Am I wrong about startups or am I wrong about them being a startup?

umeshunni 7y ago
Titles are a form of compensation. When you are a cash-strapped startup, especially in a domain that's not particularly lucrative, you pay people with titles. If this incident hadn't happened, these folks could have proudly claimed that they were the CTO/COO/CPO etc of Shadow Inc on their LinkedIns and whatever article BuzzFeed/Forbes wrote about them.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  With the exception of CTO, none of them seem to be engineers. If I'm on the hiring end, this is not something that will help. Instead, if someone's going to sell me the importance of their title at their 6 people startup, it's going to negatively affect their chances.
  - umeshunni 7y ago
    It's the other way around - if you're trying to recruit an engineer or ops person from FAANMG, you can tell them "Well, I know you're an SWE 2 and make $300K/year, and we can't match that, but guess what, you can be the VP of Engineering at our 2-person startup and when we go public, you'll be a VP or SVP of a public company." You'd be surprised how many people fall for that.
  - neuromantik8086 7y ago
    The COO majored in Music Technology at Oberlin. That's quite a bit more technical than most people realize. TIMARA (the music tech program at the Oberlin Conservatory) involves a decent amount of programming and/or audio engineering. To put that in perspective, the founder of Macromind/Macromedia (Marc Canter) is also an alumnus of TIMARA.

thedance 7y ago

The career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking american democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.

uoaei 7y ago
Private sector everyperson-entrepreneurship has reached its logical conclusion.
eagsalazar2 7y ago
For most software development work a bootcamper is just as likely to be a solid team member as someone with a CS degree after a few years of good industry experience. They key issue isn't that they are bootcampers but that they are fresh bootcampers with no more senior people around to guide the project or mentor them. (similarly a fresh CS grad is fairly worthless in serious production work and will not improve much if they don't get the opportunity to work on serious projects with great sr devs and leadership invested in mentoring them)
- thedance 7y ago
  That might be true, but if I get to choose between someone with no industry experience, and another person with no industry experience whose mind has been poisoned by a certificate mill, I’m taking the former. Those boot camps are, literally, worse than useless.
  - eagsalazar2 7y ago
    Yeah I guess I would choose a CS grad also but "poisoned by a certificate mill" is pretty dramatic. I don't have any illusion fresh bootcamp grads are awesome sr devs but seriously you can, again surrounded by more senior mentors, put a high potential bootcamp grad on a project and they will be far from worse than useless almost immediately and certainly after a few months be quite valuable because their albeit very minimal and focused training got them a toehold and some skills they could apply and expand on over time. Sounds like you had a bad experience.
- 7y ago