jon_dahl

55 ms·

511.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Talk to other similar companies and ask them who they use (and if they like them). If you're a tech startup, you really want someone who understands both technology and startups.
512.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
In what way is this different? I've done both (hired friends and partnered with friends), and they seem to have similar advantages and disadvantages. Advantages: you enjoy the people you work with; deeper level of commitment and trust. Disa
513.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
If you're in business with friends, either the friendship or the business needs to come first, and everyone should clearly know what that is. Are you willing to harm your friendship for the sake of the business? Or are you willing to let yo
514.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Agreed. Some people can work just fine at a home office or basement. Others (like me) find that a strict separation between work and home makes both go more smoothly.
515.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Personally, I think the article is half-right. "Let an attorney handle your legal questions" is absolutely correct - Random Guy on Internets should not be making legal decisions for you, and you should always have good legal representation
516.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Agreed. If you have partners, employees, licensing agreements, or any other contracts, then you should hire a lawyer for good organizational documents. And don't copy & paste out of a book or website. :) This is true even if you're good
517.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
1. You can probably file LLC papers with your state (or another state) for ~$200. I did that for my first company and didn't hire a lawyer until 3 years later. I highly recommend doing this before you launch your startup. You really should
518.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
After you've met a salary/benefit baseline, the most important thing to recruiting good talent is the work. Often, a good employee will take a fair salary for really interesting work over a great salary for boring work. I've talked with p
519.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I second this recommendation. Possibly the best overview of each of the many, many different roles that an entrepreneur needs to play.
520.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I'm admittedly ignorant on alternatives on the Ruby side, but would be interested to see what other web frameworks people have built and the pros cons vs. Rails. Merb is the big one. Think Rails, but more lightweight, greater emphasis on
521.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Not much with the language directly (though Ruby owes a lot to functional programming). But the Ruby culture puts emphasis on learning about these sorts of things.
522.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Well put, and this is a great article. I use Ruby, and I don't consider myself a fanboy. I know that Ruby and Python are roughly equivalent in most ways; that Java and .NET are better than Ruby for some systems; that the web is run on PHP a
523.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Personally, I wish the criteria was more like "anything of interest to hackers in their capacity as hackers". I'm interested in politics, religion, lolcats, and baseball, but I'd prefer not to see these things overrun Hacker News.
524.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I started the book but didn't finish. With that caveat, here's my take: Ferris's approach is great for side projects, but no so great for a main project. His ideal is not having to work hard, so he can travel the world and kickbox. Personal
525.
Functional programming and looping(railspikes.com)
6 points by jon_dahl 18y ago|2 comments
526.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
This is better than most "college is a waste" articles, but it repeats a common mistake: thinking that people are hired for their skills. When I'm hiring, I don't want someone with a "web design" certificate or a "Python programming" certif
527.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I think there's a difference between an engineer working for someone, and the person making the product decision. If you're a developer for a software company building accounting software, and you don't have much use for accounting software
528.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Heh - I'm working on a MapReduce blog post as we speak (see http://tinyurl.com/6oylnr ). So I suppose I'm prone to his attack. I actually think he makes one good point, that virtually no one actually needs to use MapReduce, let alone imple
529.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Thanks for being a part of the discussion, Sam. As a startup founder, here are my privacy concerns. -- I'd like internal details of my startup to NEVER be released without my knowledge (including ownership breakdowns, investment amounts, nu
530.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Here's what i did. I was a consultant before I started raising money, so I could carve out a chunk of my time for fundraising before any money came in. When the money came in, I jumped over full-time. If you're not independent yet, maybe
531.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I'd say they're both ready, and I've used them both for over a year now with no problems. My guess is Hg, as it's simpler. 90% of my SVN work is done with update, checkout, and commit. Really, why so many more commands for essentially the
532.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
If my team invents the next google... The article described a situation like this (well, not quite Google maybe), but the company wanted to single out 1-2 team members for reward, while ignoring the rest. I'm all for being paid better for
533.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
I think you're right, but I don't think that the merit-based pay described in this article is simply based on the total contribution. The problem was that not everyone on the team could "exceed expectations".
534.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Ruby has a major problem right now; module authors have no respect for each other... they will happily modify core functions (and other classes) when you load them. Just to give the other side, while metaprogramming can be dangerous, in 3
535.
Ask HN: how do you find a good salesperson?
13 points by jon_dahl 18y ago|8 comments
536.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
The problem is that it's anti-competitive. If Google owns the search business (and they do, more or less), they can drive other companies out of business by tweaking their listings - even companies that have nothing to do with search. What
537.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Very interesting - I've often wondered what the rest of us can learn from Taleb's advice. I've seen a slightly more watered down approach at use. Put 60-70% of your money in government bonds (regular and inflation-indexed), and the other re
538.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
Works for an individual, but more tricky for a publisher.
539.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
$120K is a lot for a YC-style startup (ramen noodles, web app, and no non-founder employees), but isn't isn't unusual in the larger world. Our seed funding was similar to that, and was basically a F&F round. And for a hosting company, I
540.
by jon_dahl 18y ago
The most important thing, besides the general desire to keep the community positive, is this: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and st

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