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hi :) > To him, submitting a long design doc where you go "I am going to use Galactor. I will make sure the project is florp-ready. I will fleem." is the exact

hi :) > To him, submitting a long design doc where you go "I am going to use Galactor. I will make sure the project is florp-ready. I will fleem." is the exact opposite of cool. Am I supposed to guess this much? Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Finally, I made it abundantly clear that I am uncool, so giving me the "go ahead", simply to satisfy their curiosity... I hope they are treated the same as they treat other people. No ill will against you, if anything you are giving me a plausible explanation where I have none. I just wish I had come across a post like mine earlier, and I hope that we, as a collective, start categorizing any job with a "take-home" as a job for the "cool kids". That way, all of us boring and experienced engineers may force companies to adapt if they actually want our labor. And those that do not adapt, we can infer the type of company that "offers" the role.

sceptic123 1y ago
I'm curious what you would have done differently if you had come across a post like yours?
saagarjha 1y ago
> Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Quite frankly: yes, I am pretty sure they did. You said you "had heard about Kagi Search as a reputable company" but the point is that they make a specific product for a specific group of people and if you don't "get" that they are not going to hire you. There are a lot of startups like this, mind you, and many of them are weird cults so I understand the hesitation to spend the time learning what everyone's gimmick is. But Kagi is not one of those companies where you get in without knowing what they want. It's not Google where you can get in by knowing some algorithms or your local medical startup that just wants anyone who can write React. Notably I say this without making a value judgement of whether it is "better" or "worse" than those companies. That's just…how it is. Smaller companies, and ones that are more founder driven, tend to have more unusual and specific things they are looking for. Re: the rest of your post; I think you deserve to be upset that you wasted your time here, and that they didn't communicate clearly with you. That much is pretty obvious. Regardless, I feel like you're still missing something here, and that makes me a little sad. Kagi is definitely not the right place for you, and they should have done better here. You are not "uncool" and take-homes are not for "cool kids". You just have a different working style or stack or whatever than what Kagi was looking for. I am sure your work is fine and that there is someone out there that thinks your project is cool and what Kagi was looking for was boring. Kagi thought my work was interesting but I assure you that a lot of people would find it incredibly tedious and uninteresting. My goal here was to give you my view of what I think their view was. I'm not really here to condemn or praise it as there are plenty of other people doing that. I just want you to understand it, rather than it leaving you confused and upset.

sceptic123 1y ago

I'm curious what you would have done differently if you had come across a post like yours?

saagarjha 1y ago

> Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Quite frankly: yes, I am pretty sure they did. You said you "had heard about Kagi Search as a reputable company" but the point is that they make a specific product for a specific group of people and if you don't "get" that they are not going to hire you. There are a lot of startups like this, mind you, and many of them are weird cults so I understand the hesitation to spend the time learning what everyone's gimmick is. But Kagi is not one of those companies where you get in without knowing what they want. It's not Google where you can get in by knowing some algorithms or your local medical startup that just wants anyone who can write React. Notably I say this without making a value judgement of whether it is "better" or "worse" than those companies. That's just…how it is. Smaller companies, and ones that are more founder driven, tend to have more unusual and specific things they are looking for. Re: the rest of your post; I think you deserve to be upset that you wasted your time here, and that they didn't communicate clearly with you. That much is pretty obvious. Regardless, I feel like you're still missing something here, and that makes me a little sad. Kagi is definitely not the right place for you, and they should have done better here. You are not "uncool" and take-homes are not for "cool kids". You just have a different working style or stack or whatever than what Kagi was looking for. I am sure your work is fine and that there is someone out there that thinks your project is cool and what Kagi was looking for was boring. Kagi thought my work was interesting but I assure you that a lot of people would find it incredibly tedious and uninteresting. My goal here was to give you my view of what I think their view was. I'm not really here to condemn or praise it as there are plenty of other people doing that. I just want you to understand it, rather than it leaving you confused and upset.