10 ms·

A lot of this can be simplified to three questions: 1. What problem is your company solving? If you don't get an answer, beware. If the answer sounds vague, b

A lot of this can be simplified to three questions: 1. What problem is your company solving? If you don't get an answer, beware. If the answer sounds vague, beware. If the answer makes no sense, beware. If the answer is multifaceted, beware. This suggests that the company will not even begin the process of becoming profitable. 2. Who has this problem? You should get a clear picture of an actual person. If not, beware. If that person has no money, beware. If that person has no pull within an organization, beware. If that person is high maintenance or fickle, beware. This suggests that the company will never find the revenue they seek. 3. What's your solution? If the solution doesn't actually address the problem, beware. If the solution is too expensive for the customer, beware. If the solution can't be differentiated from its competitors, beware. If the solution has no competitors, beware. If there are a dozen solutions, beware. This suggests that no matter how amazing the technology or technical team, the company will not be able to execute on its business plan.

bpodgursky 4y ago
If I was interviewing a candidate who asked me these questions it would be a pretty negative signal because it would tell me they had not even done cursory research before interviewing. I would prefer clarifying questions about the product or market showing they had done basic research but didn't grok everything, but there are no cookie-cutter questions for this. (startup role, but I'm not sure it matters)
- hawk_ 4y ago
  Fair enough. How many startups/company websites clearly state what they are actually doing? The problem is particularly bad in B2B space where the descriptions are replete with buzzwords and don't convey anything more than "Lorem Ipsum"
- contravariant 4y ago
  Eh that's easily parried by just asking how you would answer those questions. It's a pretty easy argument that the company seeking to hire someone should be able to answer these questions and that a direct answer will be more valuable than a statement on a webpage.
- Cheezewheel 4y ago
  There is a huge difference between the sort of PR crap that companies post on websites and actually sitting down with a human being and have them explain it to you. "What problem is your company solving?" is pretty general, to be fair, but it would be a red flag for a startup that is selling a product but cannot articulate what problem customers have that the product is solving. It is in fact a pretty central differentiator between startups that succeed and startups that fail. They are all good questions, but you would probably want to say more along the lines of "I understand that X is your companies product. Can you go into some more detail about what specific problems this product is solving for your customers?"
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    Exactly this. Good luck identifying the actual problem a startup addresses from their website. Most of the websites are deliberately diffuse for prospecting purposes.
    - TuringNYC 4y ago
      1999: We are a distributed n-tier b2b and b2c e-commerce platform 2022: We use AI on the blockchain to change the world.
- jandrese 4y ago
  It depends if you are hiring for HP or some startup that is still in stealth mode.
- roberthahn 4y ago
  That would presume the cursory research turns up clear answers. Or that the answers the interviewers give will match the answers online. I have seen both presumptions invalidated enough not to think poorly of anyone asking and if the interviewer decides I’m wasting their time if I ask questions like this then it was never going to be a good fit.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  I'll do cursory research which makes me intrigued enough to apply and show up to the interview. I'll do my sales pitch of myself when you ask me questions about myself. Why is it a "negative signal" for me to expect a sales pitch about what you're selling here? I know some basic facts, I can read what your polished marketing blurb, but I want to hear you speak about your team and your product and your market like a human, from first principles. Too much to ask? (I'd probably have more specific clarifying questions as follow-ups to the open-ended ones. Judge me on those if you wish, though that's not why I'd be asking them.)
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I guess it’s fine if the company doesn’t ask the candidate any questions either, right? After all they have the resume to look at.
OmarIsmail 4y ago
Funny enough these are the exact questions that founders need to ask themselves before committing to an idea. YC has overly broadened this to “make something people want” which at first order needs to be true. The questions you’ve laid out here are the direct implications of “make something people want”.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Companies manufacture crap all of the time that people don't really need, and these companies spend significant sums convincing consumers that they do, in fact, need or want them. I don't think people need to want your product now. You can also make something that people will want as well as what people do want.
  - edouard-harris 4y ago
    Most startups don't have significant sums to spend to convince consumers that they want or need a product. Unless yours does, there's no way to succeed other than to make something people want today.
  - SkyMarshal 4y ago
    Not necessarily as a startup. Big companies with established products, existing revenue streams, and profits can afford the marketing budget to convince a wide swath of consumers they need this new thing that they really don’t. But startups with just one product or service generally can’t afford to be pushing on a string like that.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Yeah and "spend less than you make" is the other one.
xwdv 4y ago
By the time you get to the interview the answers to these questions should be obvious if not then you’re probably just shopping around for jobs at whatever company comes your way.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> 1. What problem is your company solving? I kinda agree, but this question should be resolvable by looking at the source material. The reason why "does your product have good market fit?" is so effective is that it forces the people to justify why, or why they don't have market fit. This gives you lots of chances to ask followups and figure out if they are hand waving, misinformed, know what they are doing, or just plain naive. The other two questions are very good, and well worth asking. The essence of all these questions is to figure out if they have put any thought into the business side(if they are a startup) or how well the business is doing, if they are more established. The crucial thing that often gets lost is that tech is there to fulfil a business function, not the other way around. Figuring out the business model helps you predict what _should_ be built later on.
- avereveard 4y ago
  It's not about the marketing cooy itself, it's about knowing if the team is aligned with that.
saiya-jin 4y ago
I guess all fine questions if you apply for unknown startup position. In any serious company, first would give you a big fat warning for ignorance of not preparing for interview at all and checking company. Normally that's 5 mins effort max. Second would mark you as clueless about whole business segment company operates is, and then why hire clearly inexperienced you, unless asking for intern/junior position. Third is fine in any environment I guess, but can be weird in say banking. What happened about asking about team, job, workflow, methodologies and tools, management structure, office structure, WFH and so on?
foobiekr 4y ago
I like these questions a lot. Nicely done. The set I use is below, with explanations. Note that this is entirely a b2b list. I don't think there is a meaningful list one can ask for consumer startups, since in my view the consumer space is purely the domain of the ycombinator "throw it at the wall and then double down on what sitcks" - there is no engineering, marketing, etc. that you can apply to a b2c startup that isn't working and I don't think you can ask anything other than "how fast are you growing?" for consumer stuff. For everything else, though ... 1. What is the critical problem on the customer side? How intense is the problem? The company should be able to explain one or two very crisp, very clear customer-side issues. This goes beyond "what problem are you solving" because solving problems aren't enough to get a buyer to take action. Diffuse or "nice to have" problems means you never have a champion or buyer who will simply say "take my money" and most likely the reason for the diffuse/dull/etc. issues are behavioral or structural and that no one will actually pay to solve them. I cannot emphasize enough that PLANS TO ADDRESS STRUCTURAL ISSUES AT CUSTOMERS ARE ACTUALLY THE LINES IN A STARTUP SUICIDE NOTE. The other thing you see a lot is that people try and shore up crap businesses by throwing a lot of things in the solution to address a lot of problems at once with the idea that the sum is more valuable than its parts - that is a body shop mentality, not a good startup position. Startups should have something that they address that people want to buy, not be the business equivalent of a "52-in-1" Atari cartridge. A collection of dull, diffuse issues means the solution will usually not have buyer priority. Worse is purely hypothetical """problem""" where product is just a vitamin or insurance = no buyer outside of compliance, which is super low margin and low urgency (lots of security plays have this, or worse, fail to recognize it). Let garbage vendor-integrators like IBM or Cisco weakly assemble an array of crap, low-margin products into a "solution", that is not a good startup business. 2. What is the solution? What does the solution directly and completely solve in terms of the critical problem? Why now? Is the solution a necessary part of other changes or is it in and of itself sufficient to have day one+ value without big changes on the customer side? Another issue you see a lot is that the solution only works if the customers make other changes that would also partially alleviate the problem, and so the solution is actually part of a collection of important customer-side changes that are going to be impossible to get done in a repeatable way. The solution has to deliver value without large changes on the part of the customer, especially changes that would have helped alleviate pain _already_ since there's an obvious issue there that the solution startup is missing. Customer-side-changes also means sales repeatability will be very poor which is a death sentence for startups. 5. What is the customer type? Who is the buyer? What existing budget are you redirecting if any? This is another issue that shows up a lot: businesses are broken into groups of functions with independent owners. If the startup's business spans multiple business areas and multiple business owners are going to need to cooperate (not just agree, but they have different timing, different priorities, and so on) that is a big problem. If buying the solution has to come from multuple discrete budget line items, that is a big problem because that implies trying to coordinate what is effectively a sale to each of them, with different trade-offs and different priorities and timeframes, and then conclude the real sale after all of that. This is a serious momentum and timing problem because it's hard enough to rendevous with need-and-now customer side without having multiple gates. If _both_ are required, that's a death sentence. 3. What is the value of solving the problem? ... And the actual cash on the table value of solving the problem is critical. Even if you have a very real problem, and even if that problem has acute frustration/pain/etc. on the customer side, it doesn't matter to a startup. There are, unfortunately, lots of real problems, even critical ones, that customers view (and can perhaps justify with a pure $ argument) as not being high value. No value = no margin. You need to be reducing CAPEX, OPEX, increase efficiency, increase user experience (and be very, very careful of this one because a lot of people kid themselves), etc. 6. What megatrends are in favor of this solution? Also known as, "how much education are you going to have to do?" Also, you have to ask yourself, "are mega trends independently solving the problem in a different way? are megatrends sucking the oxygen out of the room in terms of buyer attention?" Lots of businesses have "transformation" plans dictated by executives that intend to solve (or not) some business problem for purposes of their brand, and most of the time these are actually just trends at the CIO level, and they may not even be aligned with real pain points. These can sink you if the trend is against you. 7. Who is the team? Why is this team the right one? Why are they the ones to deliver a technical solution? (self explanatory - they need experience) 8. What is the GTM/sales motion to get to the person in the customer most impacted by the critical problem? 9. What other business challenges are involved with the solution? 10. What is the demo? What is the sales talk track? Who is the buyer? What will be the objections of the operational team? 11. Who are the competitors? Which of them is good? How much traction are they seeing?
sjtgraham 4y ago
As a founder I can tell you that candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions are lot more attractive, i.e. anyone that has done even a modicum of their own research stands head and shoulders above their peers. At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
- mpweiher 4y ago
  > why have you applied for a job there Because the company head-hunted me?
- switchbak 4y ago
  You're asking candidates to answer questions like "What problem is your company solving?". Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but if the founder is looking to hires to answer these questions, that sounds very concerning, and probably a place I'd avoid. Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a bit of a different angle).
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    I may be mistaken, but I think you misunderstood the comment. The questions are meant to be asked by the job candidate, not by the employer.
    - switchbak 4y ago
      "candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions". "Candidates ... their own good ideas for answers". Yes: the candidate asks these questions, but the commenter seemed to suggest that they also want candidates who have good answers ready for those questions. That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.
UkrainianJew 4y ago
Well, if you can properly formulate these questions, distinguish a good answer from a bad one, AND know how to write code, you should be talking to investors (or prospective customers) rather than applying for coding jobs.
- mmmpop 4y ago
  Couldn't agree with this more, sadly the other missing piece is the personality required to do that. When added to the other three traits that are already uncommon to find in one person, you're talking about a very unique individual.
  - UkrainianJew 4y ago
    Well, then as patronizing as it may sound, if you are looking for regular developer job, you should care more about the technology stack (as it affects your resell value for the next job), what big features the company recently delivered (to see whether you'll be stuck doing soulless maintenance) the cash part of your salary (since you don't really control the value of that equity), the amount of work hours per week, and how much of an asshole your boss is going to be.
- packetlost 4y ago
  This makes me wish I lived in a tech hub so I could have some semblance of an idea of what the market wants. The Midwest sucks for tech work. Maybe I should be reading TechCrunch more often lol
  - dangerlibrary 4y ago
    I see this sentiment all the time, and it is so backwards. Startups in tech hubs tend to solve problems that people in tech hubs have. "I'm rich and lazy, I want someone to deliver me food from my favorite restaurant and I don't care if it costs 2-3x as much and takes 90 minutes." "I need some place to put my piles of IPO money that might appreciate because returns are down elsewhere, and also I think securities laws are confusing and bad." These startups attract a lot of venture money because investors in tech hubs have similar problems and so they are attracted to them. But they are fundamentally not productive. They are market makers or middlemen or financial products. There is a much lower ceiling on what people will ever be willing to pay for these kind of things relative to, say, some novel industrial software that gets purchased by multi-billion dollar companies. Those industrial companies are tech companies, make no mistake, and they are almost universally not headquartered in SF or NYC. There's also a much higher ceiling on the potential market because your customers are actually making things.
spikej 4y ago
Typically, the company expects you've done your homework before asking them these questions...
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  what is on the website and what is actually happening on the ground are two different things that may or may not match
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  I expect recruiters and hiring managers to do their research too, but every time they reach out I'm still astounded how poorly they've done it. Then they still have the gall to expect you research them, which takes more than a light glance at their page written in a way to sell themselves. It's about time we push back on this. If they need employees so bad, how about they stop making demands which resemble being in a position of power?
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  Many company websites and resources like to describe what they do with word salad bingo instead of getting to the point. At best you can know what market they are in. Even more so for startups who don't really know what their solution is.
coding123 4y ago
I don't know WHAT problem my company is solving either but they are profitable.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
To some extent you have to help them answer one of these questions. One of these answers has to be flawed, and you fill it in, then they see you as a companion on their adventure.
whoopdeepoo 4y ago
Much better than the startup culture buzzwords in the article, thanks.

bpodgursky 4y ago

If I was interviewing a candidate who asked me these questions it would be a pretty negative signal because it would tell me they had not even done cursory research before interviewing. I would prefer clarifying questions about the product or market showing they had done basic research but didn't grok everything, but there are no cookie-cutter questions for this. (startup role, but I'm not sure it matters)

hawk_ 4y ago
Fair enough. How many startups/company websites clearly state what they are actually doing? The problem is particularly bad in B2B space where the descriptions are replete with buzzwords and don't convey anything more than "Lorem Ipsum"
contravariant 4y ago
Eh that's easily parried by just asking how you would answer those questions. It's a pretty easy argument that the company seeking to hire someone should be able to answer these questions and that a direct answer will be more valuable than a statement on a webpage.
Cheezewheel 4y ago
There is a huge difference between the sort of PR crap that companies post on websites and actually sitting down with a human being and have them explain it to you. "What problem is your company solving?" is pretty general, to be fair, but it would be a red flag for a startup that is selling a product but cannot articulate what problem customers have that the product is solving. It is in fact a pretty central differentiator between startups that succeed and startups that fail. They are all good questions, but you would probably want to say more along the lines of "I understand that X is your companies product. Can you go into some more detail about what specific problems this product is solving for your customers?"
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Exactly this. Good luck identifying the actual problem a startup addresses from their website. Most of the websites are deliberately diffuse for prospecting purposes.
  - TuringNYC 4y ago
    1999: We are a distributed n-tier b2b and b2c e-commerce platform 2022: We use AI on the blockchain to change the world.
jandrese 4y ago
It depends if you are hiring for HP or some startup that is still in stealth mode.
roberthahn 4y ago
That would presume the cursory research turns up clear answers. Or that the answers the interviewers give will match the answers online. I have seen both presumptions invalidated enough not to think poorly of anyone asking and if the interviewer decides I’m wasting their time if I ask questions like this then it was never going to be a good fit.
kspacewalk2 4y ago
I'll do cursory research which makes me intrigued enough to apply and show up to the interview. I'll do my sales pitch of myself when you ask me questions about myself. Why is it a "negative signal" for me to expect a sales pitch about what you're selling here? I know some basic facts, I can read what your polished marketing blurb, but I want to hear you speak about your team and your product and your market like a human, from first principles. Too much to ask? (I'd probably have more specific clarifying questions as follow-ups to the open-ended ones. Judge me on those if you wish, though that's not why I'd be asking them.)
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I guess it’s fine if the company doesn’t ask the candidate any questions either, right? After all they have the resume to look at.

OmarIsmail 4y ago

Funny enough these are the exact questions that founders need to ask themselves before committing to an idea. YC has overly broadened this to “make something people want” which at first order needs to be true. The questions you’ve laid out here are the direct implications of “make something people want”.

formerkrogemp 4y ago
Companies manufacture crap all of the time that people don't really need, and these companies spend significant sums convincing consumers that they do, in fact, need or want them. I don't think people need to want your product now. You can also make something that people will want as well as what people do want.
- edouard-harris 4y ago
  Most startups don't have significant sums to spend to convince consumers that they want or need a product. Unless yours does, there's no way to succeed other than to make something people want today.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  Not necessarily as a startup. Big companies with established products, existing revenue streams, and profits can afford the marketing budget to convince a wide swath of consumers they need this new thing that they really don’t. But startups with just one product or service generally can’t afford to be pushing on a string like that.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yeah and "spend less than you make" is the other one.

xwdv 4y ago

By the time you get to the interview the answers to these questions should be obvious if not then you’re probably just shopping around for jobs at whatever company comes your way.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> 1. What problem is your company solving? I kinda agree, but this question should be resolvable by looking at the source material. The reason why "does your product have good market fit?" is so effective is that it forces the people to justify why, or why they don't have market fit. This gives you lots of chances to ask followups and figure out if they are hand waving, misinformed, know what they are doing, or just plain naive. The other two questions are very good, and well worth asking. The essence of all these questions is to figure out if they have put any thought into the business side(if they are a startup) or how well the business is doing, if they are more established. The crucial thing that often gets lost is that tech is there to fulfil a business function, not the other way around. Figuring out the business model helps you predict what _should_ be built later on.

avereveard 4y ago
It's not about the marketing cooy itself, it's about knowing if the team is aligned with that.

saiya-jin 4y ago

I guess all fine questions if you apply for unknown startup position. In any serious company, first would give you a big fat warning for ignorance of not preparing for interview at all and checking company. Normally that's 5 mins effort max. Second would mark you as clueless about whole business segment company operates is, and then why hire clearly inexperienced you, unless asking for intern/junior position. Third is fine in any environment I guess, but can be weird in say banking. What happened about asking about team, job, workflow, methodologies and tools, management structure, office structure, WFH and so on?

foobiekr 4y ago

I like these questions a lot. Nicely done. The set I use is below, with explanations. Note that this is entirely a b2b list. I don't think there is a meaningful list one can ask for consumer startups, since in my view the consumer space is purely the domain of the ycombinator "throw it at the wall and then double down on what sitcks" - there is no engineering, marketing, etc. that you can apply to a b2c startup that isn't working and I don't think you can ask anything other than "how fast are you growing?" for consumer stuff. For everything else, though ... 1. What is the critical problem on the customer side? How intense is the problem? The company should be able to explain one or two very crisp, very clear customer-side issues. This goes beyond "what problem are you solving" because solving problems aren't enough to get a buyer to take action. Diffuse or "nice to have" problems means you never have a champion or buyer who will simply say "take my money" and most likely the reason for the diffuse/dull/etc. issues are behavioral or structural and that no one will actually pay to solve them. I cannot emphasize enough that PLANS TO ADDRESS STRUCTURAL ISSUES AT CUSTOMERS ARE ACTUALLY THE LINES IN A STARTUP SUICIDE NOTE. The other thing you see a lot is that people try and shore up crap businesses by throwing a lot of things in the solution to address a lot of problems at once with the idea that the sum is more valuable than its parts - that is a body shop mentality, not a good startup position. Startups should have something that they address that people want to buy, not be the business equivalent of a "52-in-1" Atari cartridge. A collection of dull, diffuse issues means the solution will usually not have buyer priority. Worse is purely hypothetical """problem""" where product is just a vitamin or insurance = no buyer outside of compliance, which is super low margin and low urgency (lots of security plays have this, or worse, fail to recognize it). Let garbage vendor-integrators like IBM or Cisco weakly assemble an array of crap, low-margin products into a "solution", that is not a good startup business. 2. What is the solution? What does the solution directly and completely solve in terms of the critical problem? Why now? Is the solution a necessary part of other changes or is it in and of itself sufficient to have day one+ value without big changes on the customer side? Another issue you see a lot is that the solution only works if the customers make other changes that would also partially alleviate the problem, and so the solution is actually part of a collection of important customer-side changes that are going to be impossible to get done in a repeatable way. The solution has to deliver value without large changes on the part of the customer, especially changes that would have helped alleviate pain _already_ since there's an obvious issue there that the solution startup is missing. Customer-side-changes also means sales repeatability will be very poor which is a death sentence for startups. 5. What is the customer type? Who is the buyer? What existing budget are you redirecting if any? This is another issue that shows up a lot: businesses are broken into groups of functions with independent owners. If the startup's business spans multiple business areas and multiple business owners are going to need to cooperate (not just agree, but they have different timing, different priorities, and so on) that is a big problem. If buying the solution has to come from multuple discrete budget line items, that is a big problem because that implies trying to coordinate what is effectively a sale to each of them, with different trade-offs and different priorities and timeframes, and then conclude the real sale after all of that. This is a serious momentum and timing problem because it's hard enough to rendevous with need-and-now customer side without having multiple gates. If _both_ are required, that's a death sentence. 3. What is the value of solving the problem? ... And the actual cash on the table value of solving the problem is critical. Even if you have a very real problem, and even if that problem has acute frustration/pain/etc. on the customer side, it doesn't matter to a startup. There are, unfortunately, lots of real problems, even critical ones, that customers view (and can perhaps justify with a pure $ argument) as not being high value. No value = no margin. You need to be reducing CAPEX, OPEX, increase efficiency, increase user experience (and be very, very careful of this one because a lot of people kid themselves), etc. 6. What megatrends are in favor of this solution? Also known as, "how much education are you going to have to do?" Also, you have to ask yourself, "are mega trends independently solving the problem in a different way? are megatrends sucking the oxygen out of the room in terms of buyer attention?" Lots of businesses have "transformation" plans dictated by executives that intend to solve (or not) some business problem for purposes of their brand, and most of the time these are actually just trends at the CIO level, and they may not even be aligned with real pain points. These can sink you if the trend is against you. 7. Who is the team? Why is this team the right one? Why are they the ones to deliver a technical solution? (self explanatory - they need experience) 8. What is the GTM/sales motion to get to the person in the customer most impacted by the critical problem? 9. What other business challenges are involved with the solution? 10. What is the demo? What is the sales talk track? Who is the buyer? What will be the objections of the operational team? 11. Who are the competitors? Which of them is good? How much traction are they seeing?

sjtgraham 4y ago

As a founder I can tell you that candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions are lot more attractive, i.e. anyone that has done even a modicum of their own research stands head and shoulders above their peers. At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?

mpweiher 4y ago
> why have you applied for a job there Because the company head-hunted me?
switchbak 4y ago
You're asking candidates to answer questions like "What problem is your company solving?". Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but if the founder is looking to hires to answer these questions, that sounds very concerning, and probably a place I'd avoid. Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a bit of a different angle).
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  I may be mistaken, but I think you misunderstood the comment. The questions are meant to be asked by the job candidate, not by the employer.
  - switchbak 4y ago
    "candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions". "Candidates ... their own good ideas for answers". Yes: the candidate asks these questions, but the commenter seemed to suggest that they also want candidates who have good answers ready for those questions. That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.

UkrainianJew 4y ago

Well, if you can properly formulate these questions, distinguish a good answer from a bad one, AND know how to write code, you should be talking to investors (or prospective customers) rather than applying for coding jobs.

mmmpop 4y ago
Couldn't agree with this more, sadly the other missing piece is the personality required to do that. When added to the other three traits that are already uncommon to find in one person, you're talking about a very unique individual.
- UkrainianJew 4y ago
  Well, then as patronizing as it may sound, if you are looking for regular developer job, you should care more about the technology stack (as it affects your resell value for the next job), what big features the company recently delivered (to see whether you'll be stuck doing soulless maintenance) the cash part of your salary (since you don't really control the value of that equity), the amount of work hours per week, and how much of an asshole your boss is going to be.
packetlost 4y ago
This makes me wish I lived in a tech hub so I could have some semblance of an idea of what the market wants. The Midwest sucks for tech work. Maybe I should be reading TechCrunch more often lol
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  I see this sentiment all the time, and it is so backwards. Startups in tech hubs tend to solve problems that people in tech hubs have. "I'm rich and lazy, I want someone to deliver me food from my favorite restaurant and I don't care if it costs 2-3x as much and takes 90 minutes." "I need some place to put my piles of IPO money that might appreciate because returns are down elsewhere, and also I think securities laws are confusing and bad." These startups attract a lot of venture money because investors in tech hubs have similar problems and so they are attracted to them. But they are fundamentally not productive. They are market makers or middlemen or financial products. There is a much lower ceiling on what people will ever be willing to pay for these kind of things relative to, say, some novel industrial software that gets purchased by multi-billion dollar companies. Those industrial companies are tech companies, make no mistake, and they are almost universally not headquartered in SF or NYC. There's also a much higher ceiling on the potential market because your customers are actually making things.

spikej 4y ago

Typically, the company expects you've done your homework before asking them these questions...

spookthesunset 4y ago
what is on the website and what is actually happening on the ground are two different things that may or may not match
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
I expect recruiters and hiring managers to do their research too, but every time they reach out I'm still astounded how poorly they've done it. Then they still have the gall to expect you research them, which takes more than a light glance at their page written in a way to sell themselves. It's about time we push back on this. If they need employees so bad, how about they stop making demands which resemble being in a position of power?
xboxnolifes 4y ago
Many company websites and resources like to describe what they do with word salad bingo instead of getting to the point. At best you can know what market they are in. Even more so for startups who don't really know what their solution is.

coding123 4y ago

I don't know WHAT problem my company is solving either but they are profitable.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

To some extent you have to help them answer one of these questions. One of these answers has to be flawed, and you fill it in, then they see you as a companion on their adventure.

whoopdeepoo 4y ago

Much better than the startup culture buzzwords in the article, thanks.