2 ms·

“to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” - In 1994, this would have intrigued me, in 2004 I would view with skepticism, in 2014 I would laugh “you should be

by klik99 3y ago

“to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” - In 1994, this would have intrigued me, in 2004 I would view with skepticism, in 2014 I would laugh “you should be able to do so in about one-third the time” - No matter the era, this kind of language is a big red flag to me - More often than not people who say this have no idea what they're talking about, the kind of people who call themselves "idea men" “Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-workers.” - meaningless phrase I don't know how recruiting messages were in 1994, but unless this is the Velvet Underground of influential recruiting messages (not many people got this email, but those who did started startups of their own) this reads like a generic recruiting email. Given the state of things in 1994 the "pioneer commerce on the Internet" would be interesting enough to learn more though.

_ea1k 3y ago
IDK, if someone advertised an AI job like this in 2023, I bet it'd pique some people's interest.
- Dwolb 3y ago
  You’re on target. sama on this: “want to be stressed, watch some GPUs melt, and have a fun time? good at doing impossible things? send evidence of exceptional ability to chatgpt-eng@openai.com” [1] [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1630724485828714497?lang=en https://twitter.com/sama/status/1630724485828714497?lang=en
  - klik99 3y ago
    That sama tweet is very effective, he's known to be the real deal, his startup is known to have external funding and therefore validating, and the humor shows the work environment. A real equivalent would be a nobody, with no external funding (first external funding of amazon was 1995), promising equity and requiring a move. Let's say you got an email 2 years ago from someone you've never heard of saying: "Self-funded startup seeks extremely talented developers to work on AI. You must have experience building large and complex, yet easily maintainable systems, and work in 1/3 time that others say is possible. Top-notch communication skills are required. Familiarity with [the technology you'll be building for] would be helpful but is not necessary. Must be willing to move to Seattle." Not quite as interesting as sam altmans tweet...
- klik99 3y ago
  Yeah, it would pique interest, as I said "would be interesting enough to learn more though." - but I'm responding to the comment saying his reaction would be "“holy cow this is the future and I want to be a part of this”, then you’d roll the dice and apply." - which I really don't think so, there's a lot of big talkers and people new to the industry get burnt working for deluded individuals, and there's nothing obvious in the email to indicate if this is real deal or not.
muskmusk 3y ago
As the comment above you pointed out, then this job wasn't for you. If you made a job add for e.g. the job of an Olympic level swimmer most people would consider the add bonkers, not those who are actually olympic level swimmers. Believe it or not there is in fact people who can maintain systems in 1/3 of the time most competent people think possible. There is also people who love the thrill of going as fast as possible and who would prefer this over a more leisurely pace. Of course the amount of people this applies to is probably less than 1%. But those people are going to really like the job.
- klik99 3y ago
  As someone who prefers working in fast paced environments and have responded to calls like this in the past, I have found that people who say "I want someone who moves fast" often are really bad at managing and have unrealistic views of how long things take. People who write that phrase might think they have Steve Jobs reality distortion fields, but are mostly deluded. The fact that this particular posting was made by someone who actually walks the walk is not obvious - I don't judge people by what they say but what they do. All I'm saying is that this would have been mildly intriguing because of the ecommerce angle, which was a new problem at the time, but would require sussing out of the Bezos fellow to see if he's the real deal or deluded. Hindsight is 20/20, but if you were reading this blind in 1994 you wouldn't say "WOW This is an AMAZING OPPORTUNITY!", but, if you were the right person, "Hmm, this could be interesting, I want to hear more". I actually find this pretty interesting and cool that the first call was so banal. Weird that this read of it is so controversial...
  - muskmusk 3y ago
    > As someone who prefers working in fast paced environments and have responded to calls like this in the past, I have found that people who say "I want someone who moves fast" often are really bad at managing and have unrealistic views of how long things take. People who write that phrase might think they have Steve Jobs reality distortion fields, but are mostly deluded. The fact that this particular posting was made by someone who actually walks the walk is not obvious - I don't judge people by what they say but what they do. There is a very fine line between walking the walk and delusional. Amazon employee number 1 was not super fond of Bezos when he left (Shel Kaphan). Amazon employee number 2 lasted less than 2 years. As you point out it is clear after the fact that Bezos walked the walk, but he might also have been delusional depending on your point of view. Any success tends to contain a non-trivial amount of luck. Whether someone is ends up a lunatic or visionary often depends on factors that person doesn't control. Kaphan also says he loved the first 3 years and then it gradually fell off from there. I have had a similar experience at a previous employment. Point is; startups change dramatically quite often. The same person might transition from bat shit crazy to the opposite (and back) in a rather short timeframe. You certainly can find someone who is just a through and through asshole who have learned to say the right things, but I honestly haven't met very many of them. Most of them are just trying really hard without knowing what they are doing so they make a lot of mistakes. Managing that sort of person is a skill. Since most founders are in this category its a rather essential one. Not trying to bash the founders, the very definition of a successful startup means that most of the employees are way out of their league. When a start up doubles every year (or faster) then half the company has been there less than a year. They are just getting started and they now have double the reports they had a hear ago. Everything is on fire in both the good and the bad sense. Its just the nature of the game. > All I'm saying is that this would have been mildly intriguing because of the ecommerce angle, which was a new problem at the time, but would require sussing out of the Bezos fellow to see if he's the real deal or deluded Totally, you need to do your due diligence :) > Weird that this read of it is so controversial... Lately HN has turned into a place that is best personified as 50+ year olds looking for a stable and relaxing gig where they get paid a ton of money to play with technology. Unfortunately I see that this kind of attitude is getting quite mainstream (even among significantly younger engineers). There is nothing wrong with wanting that. I see the appeal. Its just annoying deal with. It is weird that HN which has startup roots are starting to adopt such a posture. After re-reading your post I can see that it wasn't actually the angle you came from it just read very closely to that kind of narrative. You got caught in the crossfire :P
kodah 3y ago
This job is aimed at people who make infrastructure software. I work primarily as an infrastructure SWE and although the community of people who work on such products is bigger than in 1994 it's still pretty niche. To a lot of folks the knowledge you need to have is viewed as esoteric. The web has spawned off a number of jobs that are abstracted above the system level that require very little deep integration with the system(s). DevOps, web backend devs, web frontend devs, designers, etc all live a layer or two of abstraction above building OS tooling and services that serve as significant a purpose as the webserver. That's to say, he knows who he's talking to.

by klik99 3y ago

_ea1k 3y ago

IDK, if someone advertised an AI job like this in 2023, I bet it'd pique some people's interest.

Dwolb 3y ago
You’re on target. sama on this: “want to be stressed, watch some GPUs melt, and have a fun time? good at doing impossible things? send evidence of exceptional ability to chatgpt-eng@openai.com” [1] [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1630724485828714497?lang=en https://twitter.com/sama/status/1630724485828714497?lang=en
- klik99 3y ago
  That sama tweet is very effective, he's known to be the real deal, his startup is known to have external funding and therefore validating, and the humor shows the work environment. A real equivalent would be a nobody, with no external funding (first external funding of amazon was 1995), promising equity and requiring a move. Let's say you got an email 2 years ago from someone you've never heard of saying: "Self-funded startup seeks extremely talented developers to work on AI. You must have experience building large and complex, yet easily maintainable systems, and work in 1/3 time that others say is possible. Top-notch communication skills are required. Familiarity with [the technology you'll be building for] would be helpful but is not necessary. Must be willing to move to Seattle." Not quite as interesting as sam altmans tweet...
klik99 3y ago
Yeah, it would pique interest, as I said "would be interesting enough to learn more though." - but I'm responding to the comment saying his reaction would be "“holy cow this is the future and I want to be a part of this”, then you’d roll the dice and apply." - which I really don't think so, there's a lot of big talkers and people new to the industry get burnt working for deluded individuals, and there's nothing obvious in the email to indicate if this is real deal or not.

muskmusk 3y ago

As the comment above you pointed out, then this job wasn't for you. If you made a job add for e.g. the job of an Olympic level swimmer most people would consider the add bonkers, not those who are actually olympic level swimmers. Believe it or not there is in fact people who can maintain systems in 1/3 of the time most competent people think possible. There is also people who love the thrill of going as fast as possible and who would prefer this over a more leisurely pace. Of course the amount of people this applies to is probably less than 1%. But those people are going to really like the job.

klik99 3y ago
As someone who prefers working in fast paced environments and have responded to calls like this in the past, I have found that people who say "I want someone who moves fast" often are really bad at managing and have unrealistic views of how long things take. People who write that phrase might think they have Steve Jobs reality distortion fields, but are mostly deluded. The fact that this particular posting was made by someone who actually walks the walk is not obvious - I don't judge people by what they say but what they do. All I'm saying is that this would have been mildly intriguing because of the ecommerce angle, which was a new problem at the time, but would require sussing out of the Bezos fellow to see if he's the real deal or deluded. Hindsight is 20/20, but if you were reading this blind in 1994 you wouldn't say "WOW This is an AMAZING OPPORTUNITY!", but, if you were the right person, "Hmm, this could be interesting, I want to hear more". I actually find this pretty interesting and cool that the first call was so banal. Weird that this read of it is so controversial...
- muskmusk 3y ago
  > As someone who prefers working in fast paced environments and have responded to calls like this in the past, I have found that people who say "I want someone who moves fast" often are really bad at managing and have unrealistic views of how long things take. People who write that phrase might think they have Steve Jobs reality distortion fields, but are mostly deluded. The fact that this particular posting was made by someone who actually walks the walk is not obvious - I don't judge people by what they say but what they do. There is a very fine line between walking the walk and delusional. Amazon employee number 1 was not super fond of Bezos when he left (Shel Kaphan). Amazon employee number 2 lasted less than 2 years. As you point out it is clear after the fact that Bezos walked the walk, but he might also have been delusional depending on your point of view. Any success tends to contain a non-trivial amount of luck. Whether someone is ends up a lunatic or visionary often depends on factors that person doesn't control. Kaphan also says he loved the first 3 years and then it gradually fell off from there. I have had a similar experience at a previous employment. Point is; startups change dramatically quite often. The same person might transition from bat shit crazy to the opposite (and back) in a rather short timeframe. You certainly can find someone who is just a through and through asshole who have learned to say the right things, but I honestly haven't met very many of them. Most of them are just trying really hard without knowing what they are doing so they make a lot of mistakes. Managing that sort of person is a skill. Since most founders are in this category its a rather essential one. Not trying to bash the founders, the very definition of a successful startup means that most of the employees are way out of their league. When a start up doubles every year (or faster) then half the company has been there less than a year. They are just getting started and they now have double the reports they had a hear ago. Everything is on fire in both the good and the bad sense. Its just the nature of the game. > All I'm saying is that this would have been mildly intriguing because of the ecommerce angle, which was a new problem at the time, but would require sussing out of the Bezos fellow to see if he's the real deal or deluded Totally, you need to do your due diligence :) > Weird that this read of it is so controversial... Lately HN has turned into a place that is best personified as 50+ year olds looking for a stable and relaxing gig where they get paid a ton of money to play with technology. Unfortunately I see that this kind of attitude is getting quite mainstream (even among significantly younger engineers). There is nothing wrong with wanting that. I see the appeal. Its just annoying deal with. It is weird that HN which has startup roots are starting to adopt such a posture. After re-reading your post I can see that it wasn't actually the angle you came from it just read very closely to that kind of narrative. You got caught in the crossfire :P

kodah 3y ago

This job is aimed at people who make infrastructure software. I work primarily as an infrastructure SWE and although the community of people who work on such products is bigger than in 1994 it's still pretty niche. To a lot of folks the knowledge you need to have is viewed as esoteric. The web has spawned off a number of jobs that are abstracted above the system level that require very little deep integration with the system(s). DevOps, web backend devs, web frontend devs, designers, etc all live a layer or two of abstraction above building OS tooling and services that serve as significant a purpose as the webserver. That's to say, he knows who he's talking to.