ditonal

14 ms·

181.
by ditonal 11y ago
Thank you for the informative response. 1) Ok, Google/FB common shares were worth something. Those are extreme outliers in exits, and had ethical founders. But founders have another option if they drive the common share value to nothin
182.
by ditonal 11y ago
Absolutely not! I do, however, think it's extremely questionable when VCs lobby for taxpayer money to fund for-profit bootcamps that they invest in to train people for the skills their companies need. It's outsourcing the cost of
183.
by ditonal 11y ago
Very glad the NYTimes ran this piece. The only part they underplayed is they made it sound like the startup "stumbled." No, it sounds like it went exactly as planned. Blackberry got the acquisitions, investors got their money, exe
184.
by ditonal 11y ago
Feel free to steal mine: #1 me: the candidate seemed pretty good, even if he made some mistakes. CEO: a false negative is better than a false positive! Better to reject and err on the side of caution! ...later CEO: we can't find people
185.
by ditonal 11y ago
Sure, but the ability to stay focused enough to write high-quality code for hours on end is a talent in and of itself. I know many programmers who I think I am equal to if we both sit down fully rested and program for a few hours, but they
186.
by ditonal 11y ago
Keep all these spurious rejections and arbitrary hiring processes in mind next time pg or BigTech's lobbyists bemoan the desperate shortage of great programmers.
187.
by ditonal 11y ago
This is like a telemarketer asking what's the best way to sell their life insurance policy when interrupting someone's dinner. The problem is that there is a general lack of empathy in almost all of these 'introductions'
188.
by ditonal 11y ago
I still meet a ton of engineers, who while being surprisingly analytical in other aspects of their life, think their worthless equity packages are worth something. Some people don't even know what percentage their shares represent. The
189.
by ditonal 11y ago
I had multiple companies bait and switch me on your site and you did nothing. Hired is a waste of time until you clean up bad actor companies.
190.
by ditonal 11y ago
Just search for JOBS in the filing itself, I've quoted it a few times in other comments. Here's a link talking about the regulatory change: http://ww2.cfo.com/regulation/2015/03/sec-approves-new-rule
191.
by ditonal 11y ago
But in fact they are IPOing on the NYSE using the new regulation that just changed: http://ww2.cfo.com/regulation/2015/03/sec-approves-new-rules... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar&#x2F
192.
by ditonal 11y ago
I am not talking about Shopify specifically, the reason it's relevant is because they are IPOing using a new set of rules based on the JOBS act. This IPO would not have been possible even two months ago. Read the filing and read more a
193.
by ditonal 11y ago
Sure, but for smaller companies you will ONLY see the paid PR , whereas big companies have a lot more critics since they are better known, have more employees, etc.
194.
by ditonal 11y ago
First of all, limited VC involvement? They raised $122 million from VCs: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shopify These investors include VC firms like First Mark Capital, which are NYC based - and oh yeah, the
195.
by ditonal 11y ago
I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that ha
196.
by ditonal 12y ago
That's because most hackathans can't decide whether they want to be hackathons or pitchathons. As you have picked up, they really can't be both. Hacking is experimental, and it's fun, and it definitely is not optimized a
197.
by ditonal 12y ago
AdWords is basically a listing, directed at the most appropriate audience. You seem to be mixing up advertising and marketing.
198.
by ditonal 12y ago
I don't disagree that there is huge room for unethical behavior in these corporations, and we as citizens and employees need to be vigilant about them. I just don't think engineers working on ad-tech because it pays well is necess
199.
by ditonal 12y ago
You don't make any case for your argument. If one person is making a car, and another person is looking to buy a car, you are contributing value to society by matching them up to make a transaction. I don't dispute that advertisin
200.
by ditonal 12y ago
Personally, I think the idea that Google/Facebook are hurting people by paying talented engineers a lot to work on ads is just not true. I think that if you act ethically (which is admittedly a question mark sometimes for any big corpo
201.
by ditonal 12y ago
Do you realize that there was a class-action lawsuit where the "competitors" Google, Apple, Adobe etc were working together to not poach each other's employees? You're acting like I'm a conspiracy nutjob when there
202.
by ditonal 12y ago
Strongly but respectfully disagree, see my comment which is sitting at the bottom because it ruffled some feathers.
203.
by ditonal 12y ago
Sure. In general, I am not against tough interviews. I just think that if you have elite hiring standards, you better be an elite company making elite offers. But you can't say "we only hire the best of the best!" and then co
204.
by ditonal 12y ago
In my experience, a lot of companies are combining _all_ these things. So you're expected to do a phone interview, a test project/coding test, a whiteboard test, and the management brown-nosing at the end of it where you get to pi
205.
by ditonal 12y ago
No CodeJam victories or at the top of the TopCoder leaderboard? Extensive Coursera certificates? No-hire. Plus I'm beginning to doubt that you've even solved several Project Euler problems in a variety of functional programming la
206.
by ditonal 12y ago
There's no doubt she was playing the same games. Doesn't change the fact that she was discriminated against for being a woman, and in retaliation she's looking for the millions she wasn't paid and letting all of us lowly
207.
by ditonal 12y ago
Wrong, I do have facts on my side, and we do have a big chunk of the story because it's being aired out in a high profile court case for those of us paying attention. I've been to several VC-funded companies that involved things l
208.
by ditonal 12y ago
Very convenient that this 'bad egg' in VC happens to be one of the 4% women in the field, and who again, seemed to do a far, far more competent job at the actual job description of picking the right companies to invest in, rather
209.
by ditonal 12y ago
I don't see how you could possibly not see how it has larger implications. For years we've been told that the reason there's no women in tech is because of all us sexist brogrammers, despite the typical programmer being the o
210.
by ditonal 12y ago
The author challenged your perspective and you provided no rebuttal. Neither side has any evidence, but in my anecdotal experience I agree with you. I've worked in pretty much every type of tech organization imaginable and the ones tha

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