Launch HN: The  Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm Deepak, founder of The Lobby, from YC's W18 batch. We're building a marketplace where you can buy mock interviews, resume reviews, and coaching calls from company insiders, starting with top finance roles. (https://www.thelobby.io/)
I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn't come to recruit on campus. As a result, it was really hard not only to get interviews and job offers, but also to figure out what these companies were looking for in candidates in the first place.
I got lucky and landed jobs at big banks and it was always because I somehow found someone on the inside who was willing to coach and mentor me in a very personalized way. I used that experience to help 50+ friends from similar backgrounds land jobs at top firms, and that's what inspired the idea for The Lobby.
We have some incredibly happy users who've already landed jobs, and a very high repeat purchase rate both amongst students and career switchers because of the value in speaking to people in the specific teams and companies they're interested in vs. generic company-wide advice.
It has, however, been challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach. Even though people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college (to ultimately land a good job), it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies.
We've had 2 schools buy packages of calls where they subsidize the costs for their students, and are thinking through ideas to pass the cost away from students, even though this service is not just meant for college (our best users are career switchers). We've also received a lot of interest from companies who are interested in getting access to our best-rated candidates because they've been pre-screened by real humans who've done the job, vs. recruiters who have not.
Any feedback and ideas from the HN community on how to convey the cost/benefit of what we're offering to students, recent grads, career switchers, parents, and even schools is much appreciated. <comment><USER5> This is extremely smart. I hope you succeed, especially considering I was initially filled with cynicism for the first five seconds until _I read your marketing type._ Others might disagree, but it won me over because it reminded me of similar products in other markets.

A good analogy in the audit space would be a pre-assessment. You pay for a pre-assessment to get an informal walk through the process on a much smaller timeframe to get a better understanding of your gaps. Examples could be SOC1 or SOC2 pre-assessments, where failing the pre-assessment is a no-impact matter. Failing an actual assessment which produces results could mean having an exception-filled report to give to clients or potentially even deciding that disclosing such a report poses more downside in converting sales, meaning you just wasted a six figure assessment by burying the report.

Lobby conversations/interviews could result in referrals, which means these effectively act as no-risk interviews with people in the know with hiring processes at the desired firms.

This looks like a potentially solid initial go at a practice market, where the risk of utterly bombing an interview and potentially getting turned down for future opportunities at a desired firm might actually run high.

There's a market for practice runs in anything where the final result will be materially impactful in the long term, especially where final results pose potential significant downside compared to the base state.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! Do you have any thoughts on how to convey this benefit to users? Most of them get it, but sometimes we get people who compare us to "reaching out on LinkedIn" which clearly is not the case, since any other kind of conversation isn't really a practice run - it's the real thing!

<comment><USER5> Let's talk. I have some ideas, but I also have another vertical in mind that thrives on connections. I'm on keybase as bryant.

As for the simplest way: convey the benefits of practice runs (even if you don't want to call them "practice" \-- maybe pre-screens?) not just as means for improving the odds of suitable outcomes but also for reducing the odds of adverse outcomes in an environment where character testimonials spread fast. It's not just the careers that are in demand, it's the desire to gain upside for a person's own brand.

You may benefit well from investing in strong marketing type

<comment><AUTHOR> Love this - amazing ideas. Writing all this feedback down to improve our offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> About 10 years ago, I had a similar idea (called RungJump).

It allowed you to fill out a detailed job dossier about your position at a particular company, and then users could purchase the dossier; RungJump would take a cut, and the person who wrote the dossier would get the rest. It was kind of like a premium version of Glassdoor, where the expectation was the dossiers would contain more candid info.

Here are some of the problems I ran into:

* You had to solve the chicken-and-egg problem twice. Once to attract insiders and once to attract paying users. It was hard. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, and in fact possibly even to a larger degree, since my dossiers were "write once and then forget about it" whereas The Lobby is scheduling phone calls, so the insiders need ongoing availability.

* Quality control is hard, because of the information imbalance. Who's to say whether a particular insider is actually giving you information that's worth the price of admission? If you knew enough about the company to call B.S., you wouldn't be paying for the service. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem.

* Employers really, really do not like their employees being paid on the side to dish about the company. And employees were (rightly, I think) hesitant to potentially put their jobs on the line to make a little side cash. In fact, the more exclusive and well-paying the job, the less likely it was worth the risk for insiders to participate. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, especially since it's starting out with a narrow focus on "elite finance" roles, and promising anonymity only goes so far.

* As Deepak noted, it can be hard to persuade job seekers to pay. One big reason for that? If you don't have a job, money is probably tight. And when your target demographic is, in general, hard up, it can be a very difficult business model to get right. The Lobby is trying to get around this problem by partnering with colleges who subsidize the costs; I think that's a smart move, and I wish them luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for this! Great points. Here's how we think of them:

chicken & egg: we build hyper local liquidity the way Uber tackles neighborhoods or cities, hence the initial focus on investment banking. The few similar products we've seen try this inevitably try to do dozens of industries or hundreds of roles and this makes it impossible to achieve true liquidity or to allocate marketing dollars properly.

Quality control: To me, this is the beauty of The Lobby. We're not trying to get the best written content, or to get the CEO of a company with highly specialized knowledge. It's junior level people talking about how they got their job. If you're bad at this or your quality sucks, our ratings will indicate that and you won't be picked further. If you're a great insider, your ratings will indicate that too and you get more demand + more money.

But the main point here is: this knowledge is not rocket science. Any analyst at a specific team in Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch will have very similar answers on how to land the job. That's what we see at The Lobby too.

No one can guarantee that the information the insider is giving is 100% accurate, but we think with the right reward & incentive systems in place, the best insiders rise up and the crappy ones get booted out.

Edit: To the last points you added. The myth that because you're a job seeker you don't have money is the one we're fighting with our analogy. People spend money on all sorts of things they don't need and absurd amounts of money on schools, bootcamps like GA, and more. Those are all for career advancement.

If you believe our premise that learning from insiders about what life is really like, what it takes to break in, getting personalized tips, etc. is the way to get the best careers, then suddenly a large portion of that spend can go to something like The Lobby, which I profoundly believe is a better use of your cash.

One example that I kept hearing from the YC partners themselves: "If I had your service when I was a freshman, I would have spoken to 2 lawyers, asked them what they do all day, only to realize that I don't want to be a lawyer." Think of the massive opportunity cost of learning what to do or WHAT NOT to do way before even pursuing a career or becoming a full-time job seeker.

Last point: our best users are career switchers, they already make money and want to make a career move. For me, moving from finance to tech was borderline impossible and I had money to spend. I just didn't know what to do or what path to take. The Lobby would have solved or mitigated that too.

<comment><USER7> > Employers really, really do not like their employees being paid on the side > to dish about the company. And employees were (rightly, I think) hesitant to > potentially put their jobs on the line to make a little side cash. In fact, > the more exclusive and well-paying the job, the less likely it was worth the > risk for insiders to participate. I would imagine The Lobby will face the > same problem, especially since it's starting out with a narrow focus on > "elite finance" roles, and promising anonymity only goes so far.

I think you skipped this point, or I misunderstood. I work as a management consultant and get regular request to help people (eg is the job something for them, practice interviews, etc). It's internally encouraged to help in this way, but I'd be extremely hesitant about taking money for it because I don't think it passes the blush test (couldn't tell this to a colleague without blushing), and creates wrong incentives (eg there are things about the recruiting process that should not be shared)

Anonymity only strengthens the impression that it's not 'kosher' for me

What are your ither ideas to tackle this? (And perhaps you get sufficient people with just anonymity, that's fine too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out - I missed it here. Answered a similar question elsewhere in the thread:

"Definitely agree that this could be a problem. Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep for these questions anyways.

It all comes back to our main point - if you don't have an inside connection, you don't get the juicy insights someone with that advantage does. So your odds of landing the job, let alone knowing what it takes to land it, are always lower. We bridge that gap - everything else in our view is a solvable problem because this engages current/former employees in the recruiting process + helps companies discover more talent."

The summary is that we're fine with keeping it anonymous now and here we have to take a bit more of a disruptive approach. Airbnb and Uber were both illegal (As in literally breaking laws) and still scaled and ultimately succeeded because they believed in the fundamental benefit of their service to the world.

The Lobby is completely legal, just maybe against some company policies, but we feel the benefits far outweigh the cons of some random company policy, even for the company itself as described above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Advice: tell this story! Create a video where you describe this same thing, and promote it on the right channels. You can even add production value by showing b-roll of specific points of your story, such as footage from on- campus recruiting. Perhaps include interviews/testimonials from those happy customers that you mentioned.

Your point about spending thousands on education while simultaneously having an aversion to paying recruiters is especially prescient. When presented in this manner, it's likely an aha moment (was for me), and is probably going to improve conversion rates.

Stories sell, and you have a good one here.

<comment><USER9> Another part of the story that I didn't see in your launch HN summary that you should definitely play up:

Companies _desperately_ _want_ to hire people from schools they don't cater to with career fairs. They don't want to be perceived as monocultures where they only hire from the same three schools. At the same time, they can't feasibly do career fairs at the next 50%ile of schools. Great candidates from "top 100" schools get passed over all the time.

... Well the monoculture observation is at least true of tech companies. For finance companies, hiring only from Harvard/Yale might be an explicit goal. I have no idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This is awesome feedback. We know that banks also want to diversify where they recruit people from. They're having trouble finding people from the non-Ivy schools, females, and also diverse backgrounds. We've heard that from people who handle recruiting there and it's an important initiative. We think that's an emerging trend in other industries like tech too, as you say!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading your answers below, I feel you haven't really addressed the issue of breach of company policies / confidentiality, and specifically about people being paid for it. It is true that many people will, for free, help their friends get interviews at the companies they work for. This does not mean that doing the same thing for money would be acceptable to their employer.

To use a distasteful analogy: in the US, two consenting adults having sex is legal - two consenting adults having sex where one pays the other for the 'service' is not.

So I think there will definitely be a subset of companies and employees where this will be a problem. One way to allow this subset of employees to take part in your service might be to offer some (non-political) charitable donation in exchange for their time. That way they can contribute, feel like they did some good in the world, and still be able to say to their employer (if it ever came up) that they didn't receive any compensation in exchange for helping potential new hires.

Assuming for now that the basic business is legal, and that the only issue is compliance with company policies, another potential 'hack' might be to just let people get 'karma' that builds up in their account at The Lobby, that can be converted at any time into cash. Then the people providing this info could choose to 'cash out' later, when they leave the company, or use it to pay for intel about _other_ companies when they themselves are looking to move

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Appreciate your deep dive on the thread and agree that if we look at bits and pieces of my comments, it's not totally clear. So let me write up a unified answer here.

In some cases, this is definitely against the company's policy. For those companies, we focus on former employees most of which are no longer bound by any contract (if any).

We protect our insider's identity and that leaves them protected, but we also encourage them to check with HR to make sure they're allowed to do this.

I already addressed the ethical/moral bits - we are simply giving more people access to the same insights you would get if you had a friend on the inside. You're just paying for it in this one interaction, whereas the privileged person paid for it by being born into or falling into the right circles (higher kindergarten, middle school, high school, college tuition, and being in the right families or circles).

Without The Lobby - the alternative is to live your life cold emailing and trying to find these connections, which is both inefficient and in our view very different. If you get some of these folks to answer you - you're not sure if they're going to be helpful or just discount you as a non-eligible candidate because you don't have what they're looking for. Being in a friendly dynamic where their goal is to help you makes this the opposite.

In terms of legal risks, please look up GLG, AlphaSights, and other expert networks. They have been doing this in what I consider to be a real ethical gray area with higher up executives and much larger dollar sums - and still is legal. Let me be really clear here - I'm not agreeing with what they do, I'm just pointing to it as an example where this has worked with much more sensitive information than "interview prep" and has maintained to protect its supply side and operate, which is why I'm confident we will be able to as well.

The only thing I hope this thread proves is that HN or those seeing The Lobby execute is that we have the right intentions. That goes a long way - <USER2> you agree with our particular approach or not.

This was a personal problem, and our solution we've seen solve a real problem mainly as an information gap. Solutions like the ones you're suggesting on karma points or donating to charities as suggested below are on our roadmap- but for now we're staying focused on making this work well first :).

Hope this answers the question and if anyone wants to chat on this topic further - please reach out! email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I sit squarely in the "insider" role here, and normally would be very interested in anyone who is proactively calling me up and saying "i want to work on your team" \- but to avoid breaking any protocols / laws we would want the interviewee to come in the front door as usual.

All I suspect that is happening here is if I sign up as one of your insiders, you drop me interesting candidates and then they have to go through the normal channels. So I may be missing the point but if an individual reaches out through LinkedIn looking for a job that's a plus sign, of a recruiter does it, that's just the usual noise. What is being added?

Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot be to pay me (the insider) cos that breaks many ethical and probably legal rules. And if they are successful I am guessing you get a cut?

<comment><USER12>
      Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot
      be to pay me (the insider)

It's a question of whether the insider is on your side of the table or the company's.

There are some pieces of career advice that are, if not employer-hostile, then at least not entirely employer friendly.

For example, will my strong foreign accent block me from promotion into the upper echelons of your company? Someone on the company's side of the table would tell me what the recruitment website says: "We're an equal opportunities employer and don't discriminate, communication skills are important of course" whereas someone on my side of the table might give a more frank response, like "Yes you're going to need to work on that"

<comment><USER13> > For example, will my strong foreign accent block me from promotion into the > upper echelons of your company?

The thing is, if people can't understand you when you communicate, you will have major league issues with your team in my experience.

I had a rockstar "10x" programmer on my team who was fired because his communication style was...let's just say he wasn't a fountain of unbridled optimism. He would yell at interns and generally treat people like shit, that was his communication style. The thing is, he is a genuinely nice person. It's just that his negative view of the world seeped into his communication style, and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

I'm not disagreeing with your original point, though. You can get unfiltered career advice that may or may not align with whatever ideals the company claims to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As several mentionned, "spilling the beans" about the ins and outs about a current employer, and getting paid for it, is really frowned upon in some industries.

At least in Europe, in the industries I worked in, I always had a clause in my contract about releasing company information that was ground for termination without pay and/or damages. Being paid to reveal intel would be ground for termination.

I get it, we all do spill the beans at industry gatherings for instance, even sometimes publicly on hn! I also try and help young graduates get good jobs at great companies but I do it as a former student...or as a side help when I part-time teach classes at universities. (and I pay attention to who I mentor and where I suggest them to apply to)

While I don't agree with this state of mind, I know quite a few companies where a prospective employee is considered a potential asset but still an outside. The interview process is gamed to bring the brightest at the smallest pay possible. Be paid to counter these tactics...not good.

Being paid to essentially deliver intel to an outsider will not go well at some companies.

The interview process is confidential/privileged information. Revealing specifics would/could be in breach of employment contract. Being paid by TheLobby would be actual proof/reasonable doubt that you breach the contract.

(Despite this comment, I like your idea and your personal story and I'm glad someone was there to help you/mentor you when you needed it, I just wanted to expose what was, to me, a potential pitfall )

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I'm copy pasting some stuff from the thread below.

"Definitely agree that this could be a problem. Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep with information the company wouldn't want you to know anyways.

It all comes back to our main point - if you don't have an inside connection, you don't get the juicy insights someone with that advantage does. So your odds of landing the job, let alone knowing what it takes to land it, are always lower. We bridge that gap - everything else in our view is a solvable problem because this engages current/former employees in the recruiting process + helps companies discover more talent.

The summary is that we're fine with keeping it anonymous now and here we have to take a bit more of a disruptive approach. Airbnb and Uber were both illegal (As in literally breaking laws) and still scaled and ultimately succeeded because they believed in the fundamental benefit of their service to the world.

The Lobby is completely legal, just maybe against some company policies, but we feel the benefits far outweigh the cons of some random company policy, even for the company itself as described above."

<comment><USER14> You're probably not going to launch very soon in Europe/France/Belgium but please do pay attention to these issues on the other side of the pond (which might still exist in the US, I guess you'd know better than me :-) )

The fact I anonymously revealed company information does not bring meany immunity wrt my current contract. I can still be terminated if they find out. Would I risk getting fired for $100? No way. If I don't want to take this risk, I'm not going to be a "customer" of The Lobby and thus, you get the chicken & egg problem others talked about.

I think I'm primarily "opposed" (for lack of a better word at 2AM, but you get the idea) to your pitch for ethical & risk profile reasons. These reasons are inherently personnal and the next guy over can be entitled to a very different pov.

However I think that the legal risk for the employee and thus the marketing/sourcing risk for The Lobby, still stand?

Wish you all the best :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! See your points. We'll have to agree to disagree :). Good night!!! Appreciate the candid feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know this isn't quite on topic, but this is the best possible crowd and I can't resist mentioning. I'm looking for a technical partner/CTO for The Lobby in NYC (I'm the founder/CEO of The Lobby to be clear): [https://blog.usejournal.com/im-looking-for-a-technical- partn...](https://blog.usejournal.com/im-looking-for-a-technical-partner-cto- vp-of-engineering-cofounder-chief-hacker-or-whatever-6f5e8c63fc46)

<comment><USER15> Advice: You could write a book "How I got into YC without a technical cofounder" and sell a million copies to solo non-technical founders.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha will keep it in mind!! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a quick note - your pricing page seems to have a mathematical error that would turn me off as prospective buyer. The "Standard" package offers three calls. The crossed out price ($190) should be equal to 3x the basic price ($60), or $180. Seeing sales pages with lies or mistakes around the savings makes me worry that I'm getting cheated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey benmanbs. Thanks for the kind words. We'll fix this, but this wasn't meant to be misleading.

It's actually more because not every call costs $60. For example, ~90% of our users buy calls that are in the $65-$70 range as one of their many calls.

We tried to convey that even in the 1 call option it's an "Average" price of $60, but we still haven't done a good job of conveying this.

Assuming you choose 3 calls that are more than $65 or $70, the number is actually even higher than $190, but we still discount it down to $170 no matter who the 3 insiders are, to entice you to buy multiple calls.

Hope this makes sense and will work on improving how this is communicated.

<comment><USER16> Now that I've looked back, I noticed the "Average Price" bit. I understand the model now, and would definitely recommend making that a bit clearer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will definitely make it clearer. Thanks for the candid feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I was job hunting about 10 years ago I came across a recruiting firm who pitched me well enough to come in and bring my wife. Their pitch sounded similar, in that they had "inside info" on companies, an extremely high success rate, but they needed me to pay them money.

Being in high demand (tech/programming) I scoffed at them and found my own job. I think they were asking for around $3-5k?

I think the only way this would work for me personally is if I was having trouble finding a job, and if I paid them _after_ I got hired.

I need to somehow confirm this company's actual worth in the hiring process, without feeling like I'm being given a sales pitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely, when you're in high demand your needs are very different than the vast majority of people The Lobby helps today. Also - our cost is much lower (calls range from $60 - $100), instead of the $3-$5k your recruiter asked for.

Further - they are asking you for $3-$5k up front to get a job, so until they deliver you said job, they're failing.

The Lobby asks you to pay for specific tactical things you do on a 30m call - a mock interview, a resume critique, strategy & actionable tips to improve your interview outcomes.

The value is delivered instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an awesome idea. Any plans to allow someone to pay for this based on their success of landing a job? (taking a % of their future salary kind of like Lambda School).

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had people suggest it - but right now we're too far removed from the actual moment someone gets hired to even consider it.

I think that's a very creative model with good alignment of incentives, but frankly I don't know if it works well. A few friends who tried something similar told me they felt that in that model, the people who end up getting jobs the most are typically the ones who needed you the least and can make for some very unhappy customers who don't know if it's worth paying you a % of salary well into their jobs.

We'll consider it though :).

<comment><USER19> >paying you a % of salary into their jobs

Wow, that's a very ambitious idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are the insiders paid, and do their employers know they're working with you guys?

<comment><AUTHOR> Insiders are paid as individual advisors. We don't work with employers, so we ask insiders to make sure this is OK with their company. In some cases, there are employer policies against them doing this, and in those cases, we focus on former employees.

Former employees still have the network and the knowledge on what it takes to land the job, what the culture is like, and how to help someone prepare for interviews.

<comment><USER21> I'm helping build a similar service in a tangentially-related market. I hope you don't mind a few questions:

Do you offer "insiders" a percentage cut of each service purchased?

How do you find "insiders"?

We're planning on paying our "insiders" via Stripe and letting "insiders" sign up themselves and go through a short vetting process.

We're still about 3 months from being launch-ready, but I'm intrigued to see a service that operates so similarly to our plans.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hi Deepak,

I met you at TreeHacks this year, where I was critical of your product. I saw your post looking for a CTO and I feel compelled to warn you against pursuing this idea, again. The lobby is a bad idea because:

1\. The careers space is crowded

2\. Your customers are not earning money and have a multitude of free alternatives

3\. Your product is extremely expensive

4\. Your product is a liability for the supply side (it is a risk for employees to advise outsiders about careers at their company)

5\. You overvalue the time of the customer and undervalue the time of your business side users. Being the middleman in a low-volume business like this makes no sense.

You seem like a nice guy and I don't want to see you fail. __This is a terrible idea __. You don 't have product market fit and your CTO is going to quickly burn through your capital. The people here seem optimistic but do you really think you're going to make your million off of these interviews? I advise you to pivot/restart as best you can.

If you still believe in the lobby, just put a phone number on the website and handle everything yourself until you're up to your eyeballs in customers.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Thanks for the candid feedback. Only time will tell :). best of luck

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This seems pretty interesting and useful!

It does seem like the pricing structure does not incentivize people actually getting jobs though. With a small pool of people (people looking for top finance jobs) it seems like the way to make the most money is to perpetually sell job seekers mock interviews, rather than prioritizing a job seeker to find a position on the first go. Is this a fair reading of the situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Glad you see it's merits.

As discussed below, today we focus mainly on coaching & prep. We think that it's a service that should exist no matter what for the reasons discussed in the thread.

Beyond that - we are working on creating a structure where job seekers can get "assessments" from these insiders and if they are above a certain threshold, we can help them get noticed by employers.

If they do poorly on the calls, then at least they get real feedback on how to improve. We've also learned that most employers have liability reasons that prevent them from telling you why you didn't get hired, so here we also solve for that in the "worst case scenario" which is that the insider didn't think you are a good fit for the role today.

At least you'll know why and how to solve for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> First thing that comes to my mind is will any of these calls violate part of an employment agreement.

Consider a tech company that has unique problems for candidates to solve. A service like this could encourage an employee to get paid to release these problems to the public. In theory you'd hope an NDA stops this type of thing, but in practice a bit of money could incentivize people to do otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely agree that this could be a problem.

Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep for these questions anyways.

It all comes back to our main point - if you don't have an inside connection, you don't get the juicy insights someone with that advantage does. So your odds of landing the job, let alone knowing what it takes to land it, are always lower. We bridge that gap - everything else in our view is a solvable problem because this engages current/former employees in the recruiting process + helps companies discover more talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hey Deepak - love the idea. I was fortunate enough to go to a "target" school but still had a tough time doing finance recruiting without the help of some very kind classmates. Your post brought back some memories of how much wasted effort could have been redirected positively if I had some initial guidance instead of learning everything the hard way.

One of my "side projects" when I was still in school was collating what I and some other friends had learned about the recruiting process into a doc for younger students to use. It was helpful for some, but The Lobby is doing it in a much more democratized manner.

I'm a few years out of the finance game, but let me know if you'd be interested in chatting as I'd love to help (no strings attached.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Glad to hear you saw the same problem and would have benefitted from The Lobby. I was personally surprised by the amount of people we get from "Target" schools using the service because it's also very competitive to get the 5-10 spots every bank allocates for hundreds of applicants at those schools. Feel free to email me at email@example.com - would love to get you involved!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Many companies offer mid to low four figure referral bonuses for referring candidates that are hired in hard to find fields like finance, engineering.

Perhaps you can pre-screen "long-tail"[1], high potential candidates and connect them with insiders.

You could give a portion of the insider's referral bonus to the candidate to drive that side of the market.

Candidates don't have to come out of pocket to incentivize training (if your candidates have a good chance of getting hired) as the insider will get paid by the company.

Different take on this idea. Maybe it already exists?

[1] edit: maybe not the right term of art here, but I mean under the radar candidates (non-ivy, good grades, good work ethic, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> hello! i like this idea - we'll keep it in mind.

again my only concern is when The Lobby does pre-screening without giving any coaching, we again resort to arbitrary measures such as resume, good grades, etc. instead of trying to be a source of coaching, insight, & improvement for candidates.

For the candidates that reach a certain threshold on The Lobby (say, 3 insiders screened them over a call and see potential), then something like this makes sense so they can make their money back. Vettery gives candidates a $500 incentive to use them to get hired, which is a nice idea. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome! FYI - I entered my email at the top of the page and clicked "Get Started", and nothing happened.[0]

Would love to know when the jobs expand to tech. Junior-level software engineering positions are becoming more difficult to get as the number of CS majors has exploded, and allowing them to practice with CS managers would be very helpful.

[0] The javascript error in the console:

      Uncaught TypeError: window.fbq is not a function
          at HTMLFormElement.<anonymous> (custom.js:1)
          at HTMLFormElement.dispatch (jquery.min.js:3)
          at HTMLFormElement.r.handle (jquery.min.js:3)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! Thanks also for the bug - we're working on fixing it asap.

We want to move to tech later on - we think the right move is to win in one industry and move onto others. Also, this is the industry we have more domain expertise in and that has seen much less innovation than tech for example.

But we're definitely planning to expand soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do you also charge the companies?

Seems to me that would turn you into a regular, standard hiring website - <USER3> it could be remunerative if you could capture the 20%-of-first-year-salary companies will pay for recruiters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Today we don't charge the companies. We only want to charge them later on when we can just send them the candidates that did best on our calls (a.k.a qualified candidates).

If we charge companies today, the only we could do that is to let them choose who does these calls on their end, and that defeats the purpose because you get company-filtered advice.

We're going for a more personalized version of Glassdoor. Does that make sense?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This sounds like a really interesting idea outside of just jobs. For example, I would really love to use this service for market or industry research. I tried to sign up, but there's a form that requires me to enter a bunch of info related to job-seeking. I'm not sure why that's necessary if all I want to do is pay to talk to people in companies?

Also a few nitpicks: The frontpage sign up didn't work for me on Firefox and there's a 24 char max password length, which shouldn't be necessary if you're hashing passwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We are changing the onboarding flow to make it simpler to just book a call and not have to give us all that data unless you're about to book it. However, we are laser-focused on job hunting because otherwise we'll suffer the same fate of everyone who's tried similar ideas: losing focus.

There are 1,000 things you can ask professionals inside companies - <USER4> starting focused on careers it's easier to market and attract the right audience and get our supply used to those kinds of interactions as well. Industry & market research is more like GLG - and that can be much more complex from a regulatory standpoint (i.e. insider trading).

<comment><USER28> Makes sense regarding trying to focus on a niche and scale up. It's very hard solving the chicken and egg problem for marketplaces, I've been there before.

As for regulatory concern, I'm not familiar with the laws, but is it really your responsibility to prevent things like insider trading? It doesn't seem like it would be any different from someone just waiting outside of a company's office to approach its employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly on chicken & egg - but we feel the hyper local approach is a really actionable way to solve it, we're already seeing it work in our niche.

It's not really our responsibility at all, even to make sure people abide by company policies or to prevent insider trading.

I still however answer all these questions because we think about the ethical implications a lot and we thought through everything in detail before choosing this model. I'm comfortable with the risks, I believe the rewards far outweigh them. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [Slightly off-topic]

There are a lot of people here talking about how it is impossible to find a job at one of the top investment banks without any connections.

Why do you need to have connections to land a job? Why aren't the best candidates filtered from the job application pipeline like it happens at all of the big tech companies?

By requiring connections to get in, Investment Bankers are biasing their employee tool from "the best" to "the people that went to their school".

Maybe that's intentional...

<comment><USER30> [Slightly sarcastic, but my opinion based on working in banking for a 3 month internship and then bailing to tech after graduating from college.]

At the lower levels, investment banking doesn't take much brainpower. Analysts spend 95% of the day: making PowerPoint slides, doing research online, or un- doing the changes they made the day before because the VP on the team didn't like the changes the Associate wanted.

The most interesting part of the job (financial modeling) can be learned in a couple of weeks. And then the Managing Director will just tell you what they want the model to spit out and you fudge the numbers to make it happen.

There aren't really 10x investment banking analysts like there are 10x engineers. In investment banking, once you know the basics of finance and get your foot in the door, the hiring becomes very behavioral. I've found that people want to hire other people they'd like to hang out with.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very insightful and perceptive, especially for just doing a 3 month internship. I agree with pretty much all of it.

However - you'll find most people hate IB for the same reasons, but also know their only way to more interesting roles like private equity, hedge funds, and more is to do investment banking first.

Engineering is no doubt more challenging in many respects; IB after a certain point becomes more about endurance, politics, and being good at repetition. But it's still a high-paying job, a gateway to other more interesting careers, and at least for me, a good way to develop a crazy disciplined work ethic.

I'm sure you can get many of those other ways too - just thought this was worth mentioning.

<comment><USER30> Completely agree with your analysis. Wish you the best of luck with the company, it seems like it could definitely add value in the space.

Sidenote - might be able to help you with some introductions on the technical co-founder front. I'm NYC-based as well, contact info in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks gringoDan! Reaching out to you now - really appreciate the help + kind words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I really love this concept and hope it succeeds. Lowering the barrier to entry to highly technical fields is a win-win for everyone. Congrats on your progress so far!

My only question is how a highly productive individual at a top bank or startup justifies taking the time out of their day to speak to a newbie. I know they get paid, but I would imagine it's peanuts compared to their 6 figure salaries. What is their main motivation in scheduling calls?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words jakemor!

We're surprised at this ourselves - they seem to enjoy being in the "expert" seat because most of them are junior level people who aren't traditionally thought of as experts or people whose insights are worth money.

I think we're learning it's a powerful combo - get paid to talk about yourself, show off how smart you are + help other people out who are struggling to overcome what you already did.

<comment><USER31> Very cool. Just signed up and will give it a try :)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have any questions whatsoever, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. let me know what you think!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You may want to reach out to the founders of HackerRank (S11) via bookface or whatever if you haven't already. They started with what sounds like a similar business model (and got turned down by YC) before pivoting to their current model. I'm not affiliated with them in any way - I just happened to listen to a YC podcast featuring one of the founders last week (and Baader-Meinhof has been hitting me hard since then).

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard this podcast too! I've also heard of people trying similar ideas. I have many strong opinions on why it didn't work for them and others. The main reason for Hacker Rank (And he says it in the podcast) is that in India the money you make per session is insignificant to build a business on vs. the US - and they didn't start focused enough on a few companies or an industry. It was just "software engineers" at large.

It still might not work - like I say below, our guiding compass is happy users + growing numbers and we try not to bias ourselves with what others have / haven't done. In true PG fashion I hope!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great idea Deepak and all the best moving forward.

I am currently considering moving away from tech. When I started out, I had dreams but absolutely no contacts. I am especially bad at bullshitting my way through recruitment agencies and nothing has changed in 10 years. I am still at the same job.

Somewhere along the line I wish a service like this existed as it would have made all the difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Fifer82! Really appreciate your kind words. It sounds fluffy, but this is the kind of thing that inspired me to do The Lobby.

I went to a school where no one really gets the "top jobs" but a select few of us figured out how to do it, and that expanded to over 50+ friends who now all mentor their own networks to do the same.

I think these things have a crazy ripple effect and I think beyond what can be measured from a few calls, the insights people get and the jobs they can land thanks to them can have really exponential (positive) effects.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: Thanks so much to the HN community for all the amazing support + critical feedback. Deeply appreciated! Apologies if I don't see / respond to more comments, will try to check back and answer when I can. If you want to keep chatting, please reach out here: firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER34> How do you prevent companies from sending you fake applicants to find internal leakers?

An anonymous person whose known to work at a particular can be easily identified by the information to which they have access and possibly their communication still itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> definitely a concern. For something like this to happen, The Lobby has to have already reached a very large mass (i.e. employers wouldn't care otherwise), but we'll think of guard rails or measures to avoid this from happening. I think something to verify the candidate's identity in the onboarding before booking calls is a good way to do that - but haven't thought through it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What a great idea, Deepak.

I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn't come to recruit on campus.

Many, many of us went to schools like this. Thanks for championing this cause.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey maxtynan! appreciate the kind words. I'm glad you see the problem we're trying to solve, most of our users tell us the same thing and you'd be surprised how many users even in target schools need more help.

This is the most important decision of your life at any given time (maybe except for who you marry) and we still rely on generic forums, our own networks, or spamming people on LinkedIn. We hope this makes it more efficient & accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting idea but I left the site once I got to the pricing page as it goes super thin and impossible to read on my iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks LiamPa - we'll look into that on iPad. I'll reach back out when it's responsive there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is great!

One way to offset the cost for job seekers is to take some part up front, and the rest in ~90 days when they get hired.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this! We'll consider it :).

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU Low priority: On the blog, the newsletter popup is added to the browser's back queue. A bit annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into this - thank you very much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Deepak, if a company in the Finance industry wanted to be added to the pool, what is the process?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please reach out at email@example.com and I'll onboard you personally!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Deepak, how are mock interviews performed?

<comment><AUTHOR> In our process of booking a call, we ask you to specify your objectives, just write "mock interview" there and any other relevant info (behavioral, technical, etc.). Does that make sense?

<comment><USER39> So, you are essentially paying for 30 min of time to do with whatever you want - got it. Thanks Deepak

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! We are working on segmenting the calls but really up until a few months ago, it was still all MVP and the different use cases helped us realize they need to be segmented differently (and sometimes even priced) differently. For example, having someone tell you about their job can probably be done in 15m and at a lower cost than someone who goes through the trouble of prepping for a mock interview. Working on it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Deepak first let me say I choose to view this community as a group of people who win together, therefore I want you to win, and sincerely wish success for your team. Now let's get to work on your feedback.

 _> >[It's challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach]_

This provides no information. It's an entrepreneurial truism. Do you think a large percentage of startups visit sand hill road and never get rejected? Even most of the unicorns have their stories. Google, E-Bay (good luck selling barbie dolls), etc.

Big caveat though: Listen carefully to every person who rejects you. Yes some comments will be dumb, but in general you're asking smart people and their comments can often be uniquely invaluable.

 _> >[it's controversial to start a recruiting company charging job seekers instead of hiring companies]_

Are you sure this is the controversial part? I see no inherent controversy in the concept of applicants being customers, although if you mean there's limited precedent of success that makes it more difficult to get people's buy in, that makes sense. It can always can be a problem.

It's also a signal to your team to reflect, and question yourselves regularly on what's so different about what your doing that hasn't been tried before? Why will you will be the ones to show it's possible to disrupt conventional wisdom? Why are you so sure it will ever happen? Don't answer those, the questions are rhetorical. I know you have your answers. The real point is I'm suggesting you never stop trying to find flaws in those answers. Every flaw you find makes you more powerful because you can harvest them to adapt, fine tune, improve.

I'll try to comment more directly on the model now. I try to keep an open mind on these things, but haven't heard enough (not that my opinion counts :) here to get on board.

Ironically I was in a boat similar to the one you were in coming out of school. Strong ambition to get into the hottest software company in the world, which at the time was Microsoft, even if nowadays a lot of people think of them as about as hot as IBM, or lesser so :).

The problem was I also was still too immature to not be lazy and spend all my time with friends, and ended up earning my CS degree from Whatever University, which for some reason was one MS was no too interested in recruiting at.

You would think being so irresponsible I didn't have the chops anyway, but it's just been my thing forever and ironically I had a lot of projects under my belt already to show people - if they would have ever responded to my emails or resumes - which they never did, despite being clearly marked as from a WU graduate.

If I were in finance, doesn't it sound like a possible customer scenario for you? Assuming it could be, how could someone have lived the scenario, but still not be bought in the applicant customer concept?

Because today I believe there are already ways to solve the problems you are trying to sell solutions to (and to my old problem), that are free yet not necessarily any less effective.

As one example, a while back I suggested one possible path with specific steps on how to do it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15096335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15096335)

It's important note again, software development and finance are two different things. However I know just a bit about finance from startup experiences, and also from a best friend who's a VP of finance and whenever we go out won't stop ranting about it while all I'm trying to do is hang out and enjoy my beer. Do I mention algorithms to him? No, but I'm digressing...

The point is as different as the professions are, it seems like there are also a fair amount of parallels w.r.t. getting a job.

Therefore I would be concerned that there may be some similar path to my example above that allows a person a chance to show what they've got and land a job at a top company, given the right talent and hard work on preparation, and tailoring approaches to specific goals.

The Internet itself seems to be a big problem here. It's just not that hard to contact even executive level folks if you're willing to put in the time to get to them. Once in a while they even reply to your first LinkedIn request if your intro note happens to interest them.

Then again, everything I have said could be wrong and I hope it is, so that things can really take off big.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> hello! firstly, thank you very much for the kind words on wanting to help win + the thoughtful response.

\- To your points on challenging & controversy:

understand it's ambiguous, was trying to be concise. Basically the point is conventional wisdom is that in recruiting, companies pay, job seekers don't. And if you charge job seekers, certain people think you are preying on the vulnerable. We are continually tweaking our message to make sure people understand this is quite the opposite - giving the outsiders an advantage or at least a level playing field.

\- To your thoughts on the model 1\. It sounds like you described a perfect scenario. You were immature, but had projects and other things to show you were qualified. Still people wouldn't answer your emails or interview you. Hindsight is 20.20 and it sounds like today you have a successful job, but maybe it could've come much sooner if you would've landed some of those interviews. What's the price you can put on that?

2\. It's easy to say finance, software, and others are fundamentally different industries and that's why one will work better than the other. That's probably true in some ways, but the core insight is the same - the best way to get a job is to figure out what they're looking for and despite what you're saying - that most definitely is not available online. You can google Glassdoor forums and chats, but they become outdated only a few months after, and most of those are not at the specific group or team-level, they're generic. I cannot think of a better way to get timely, accurate, and personalized information than by getting it from a human being who is / recently has been on the inside. can you?

I am convinced that your advice is amazing - we have to continually ask ourselves if we're working on the right thing, if we're the team to beat conventional wisdom, etc. The best way I know how to do that is to see the numbers grow and focus on our initial niche before expanding.

Thank you!

<comment><USER40> >What's the price you can put on that?

As you might guess, I would have paid anything. I did eventually find a way in but that doesn't change the point.

Let it commence then. Ramp this thing up and make it scale. Do it so well I'll want to brag about even trying to challenge your ideas. For real man, make it so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! On it :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _it 's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job > seekers instead of just the companies._

There is no controversy.

It's just plain wrong.

<comment><USER42> A phrase that often passes through these forums is, "if it's free, you are the product!"

I encounter a lot of clowns when I work with recruiting firms. I'm open to new ideas where I'm treated as a valuable customer instead of a product.

[Edit] This is because I'm finding that recruiting is turning into spamming. Every recruiter gets lucky from the few candidates they place so they make a decent income from their commission.

[Edit] If I pay to work with someone who handles a high volume, would it streamline the process? Avoid the spam? I don't know, but I'm frustrated enough with the process to keep an open mind.

<comment><USER43> If you read the privacy policy you'll realise you're _still_ the product:

"The Lobby may create co-branded webpages with our third-party partners or contractors and in connection with these relationships we may pass your personal information to these partners in order to offer these co-branded Services."

<comment><AUTHOR> Like 99% of startups, we didn't write up each section of our privacy policy in an effort to be evil. We worked with templates and modified the parts that seemed more specific to us. Please don't villanize us for the wording here - it probably came recycled from others. We would never share important data without user's consent, and in the case of recruiting, they're usually joining because they want us to share certain data with employers (which we don't do at all today yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> We don't need recruiters nor resumes nor tests. Any programmer is able to evaluate another programmer just by talking. All methods of recruitement are biaised. They are harmful, unefficient and they alienate people (both the recruiter and the candidate).</comment>


How often should you change your sheets? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bustle.com/p/how-often-should-you-change-your-bed-sheets-its-more-frequently-than-you-may-think-for-good-reason-18711503 <comment><AUTHOR> >Fungal contamination of bedding (2006)

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7406800_Fungal_cont...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7406800_Fungal_contamination_of_bedding)

>Survival of Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa on cotton (2016)

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004051751665851...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0040517516658514)

>Bacteria in your bed (2018)

[https://www.amerisleep.com/blog/bacteria-in-your- bed/](https://www.amerisleep.com/blog/bacteria-in-your-bed/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've started making sure the sun comes into the room - I've read somewhere that this is supposed to help keep things clean w/out running the washer as often.

</comment><comment><USER3> bacteria are healthy</comment>


Faceboooo (Why I Loathe Facebook) - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2010/11/facebooo/ <comment><USER2> I didn't get the impression that he was left Facebook because of his principles, he was just annoyed by it.

But everything he says can be fixed. Privacy settings can be changed from their defaults, newly added friends can be sorted into restricted-access groups, apps such as Farmville can be removed from your news. As for you and your friends making silly comments which result in drama... well...

Of course, you don't have to use Facebook, but I don't think he gave any good reasons why he'd rather leave than spend a few minutes sorting out his account settings.</comment>


Ask HN: Why haven't you implemented AI in your software yet? - <AUTHOR> AI can perform a number of tasks more efficiently and accurately than a person. So why haven't you done it yet? (I am curious about barriers for companies to implement ML) <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of determinism

I used a simpler method to recognize shapes in the mean time (plan to move to tensorflow.js)

Need to produce training data for this as well

ML isn't always the right solution (panacea) at the start, really depends on the problem and business/idea status/goals</comment>


Ask HN: Where to Live in the US? - <AUTHOR> If you were to move to a city in the US, which one would you pick, and why?<p>I currently live in San Francisco, and sometimes I ask myself if (e.g.) LA would be a better choice. <comment><USER2> If your willing to leave the West coast, I was very impressed with the Dallas Fort Worth area. I can't really point out a single reason why other than very good infrastructure such as roads and transit and maybe the friendly safe feeling I got from the people there.

Before visiting Texas I had an unfounded opion of people from texas being gun toting rednecks but after spending a week in Irving, I can now say that Texans are a very friendly, generous and diverse people, nothing like the stereotypes I had heard and believed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stereotypes are stereotypes - reality is always different, maybe a bit, maybe a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This country is done for. Move to Canada if you can. Seriously. Montreal and Toronto are world-class cities. Ottawa is fantastic and underappreciated. Vancouver is beautiful. Victoria is a tiny gem. I am encouraging my kids to start thinking about it.

Source: 63-year old American who used to live in Canada and cannot believe that there was anything worse than Nixon, Reagan, or Bush II.

<comment><USER4> I'm an American in my 20's who travels to Canada often for business. Everything you said was accurate up until Ottawa. Nothing there for any single person. Extremely boring to say the least. Every person I've spoken to from Montreal and Toronto have said the same thing, some even gestured putting their finger in their mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a shame that the bullet train in California has not become a reality. It would have given many people the option to work outside the big cities and it would have given small towns an economic boost. And you a bunch of options. Anyhow, my advice is to keep your options open by trying different cities.

I would try Austin, San Diego and Portland. Los Angeles is nice but the cost of living is always rising and it's crowded. The reason is simply because it's a nice place to live. The weather is mostly great and there's so much to enjoy outside work.

But you could have said the same of San Francisco 20 years ago. Now there are lots of people who are trying to get out.

I think people in LA are beginning to question whether they should go somewhere else too for the same reasons San Franciscans are asking if they need to go elsewhere. I suspect that LA is not the best choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Those are fair considerations in regards to LA. Perhaps I still see LA as a more "real" city than San Francisco, not just because of its size, but also more diversity in the type of people you can meet or deal with. At least, that's my 0.02 based on having visited numerous times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> San Diego CA for that So Cal laid back beach atmosphere plus a good tech scene if you are or can be oriented toward biotech.

Santa Fe NM - feels like it has roots. Unique culture and great food. National Labs - Sandia and Los Alamos not too far away for a good science flavoring.

Boulder CO - great outdoor recreation opportunities, university and research institutes support science and tech vibe

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend just emailed me and told me about San Diego. Somehow I can't get to love the place. I don't know why.

Santa Fe: never been, on my list. Sandia and Los Alamos are two things that I never considered about Santa Fe.

Boulder: love it there. My wife and I even have a favorite restaurant, Frasca. If you happen to go, try it out. The owner is super kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just moved to the Charlotte, NC area. Love it here. Highly recommended. Cost of living is reasonable compared to SF/LA and tech jobs are plentiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my biggest things is weather - everybody says so, but I know it's 100% true for me. How's the weather there?</comment></comment>


PyData NYC 2013, Nov 8-10: Python, Big Data, and Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://pydata.org/nyc2013

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on the speaker selection committee, and I'm impressed with the line-up of talks this year.

We have Travis Oliphant talking about conda, Peter Wang on Bokeh, Wes McKinney on Pandas (of course!), Jake Vanderplas on SciKit learn, and many others!

I, myself, am giving two talks: one on advanced techniques using generators and one on different ways to embed Python into other applications (including a novel Python3-running-within-Python2 embedding!)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to hearing from Brian Granger (IPython) and Peter.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is going to be great!</comment>


Bootstrap-wysihtml5: a simple, beautiful wysiwyg editor - <AUTHOR> http://jhollingworth.github.com/bootstrap-wysihtml5/

<comment><USER2> Looks promising! Might be an interesting additional editor candidate in Create (<http://createjs.org/>). Though, Create is MIT and the wysihtml5 library used by this is GPL, so the licenses are not compatible.

Currently we use Hallo (<http://bergie.github.com/hallo/>) by default, and Aloha Editor (<http://aloha-editor.org/>) with bundled integration.

<comment><USER2> Opened a ticket at wysihtml5 to reconsider their licensing: <https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5/issues/22>

<comment><AUTHOR> It's now been updated to MIT ([https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5/commit/444bda34c16354ed05c...](https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5/commit/444bda34c16354ed05c233f58a9f35461334a616)) as has bootstrap-wysihtml5's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks very nice, but I was hoping it would work more like Google Docs:

* The styles dropdown should update to reflect the style currently under the cursor.

* Hitting tab on a list should further indent the list item.

Those were just a couple of things I immediately noticed.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is why I love open source. 30 minutes ago I was thinking "I wonder if there's a WYSIWYG editor that integrates with Bootstrap."

And now, here I am, reading about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks like the beginning of a very nice project!

I had a similar itch to scratch a few weeks ago when I wanted a nice simple editor for a project and modified the pagedown editor (the markdown editor from stackoverflow) to use bootstrap. Its here: <https://github.com/samwillis/pagedown-bootstrap>

You can see a demo here: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2690345/pagedown-bootstrap- demo/demo...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2690345/pagedown-bootstrap- demo/demo/browser/demo.html)

<comment><USER6> This is awesome. I was using tinymce but will switch to yours. Is there an easy way for allowing image upload as opposed to external link?

<comment><USER5> You would need to fork it and edit Markdown.Editor.js to change the dialogue to include the upload logic. Somewhere around line 1023 ([https://github.com/samwillis/pagedown- bootstrap/blob/master/...](https://github.com/samwillis/pagedown- bootstrap/blob/master/Markdown.Editor.js#L1023))

You really mustn't give me much credit for it, the guys here did the hard part: <http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice presentation and looks to have real promise, but the source output looks just as bad as WordPress (unless it is just the Developer Tools). I see spans with inline CSS, empty divs and br's all over the place. It doesn't look very clean but if I am wrong please correct me.

Also, for practical use it needs indent controls for lists and there is a need to deal with links.

<comment><USER8> I hear that but I feel like there are some things in life we'll never be rid of and messy markup from WYSIWYG editors is just one of those things. I've never known any GUI tool to produce clean code whether it be GUI settings managers on Linux or WYSIWYG editors on the desktop or web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What gets sent when the form is submitted?

<comment><USER10> This just decorates a <textarea>, you still need to create the form yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Totally broken for me. Firefox has weird selection behavior (trying to italicize one word often catches the previous one, next one, whole sentence - or works normal), with Chrome the buttons don't work at all and with Camino (older Gecko engine), I can't even place the cursor.

<comment><AUTHOR> can you try <http://tifftiff.de/wysihtml5/examples/advanced.html> and seeing if you see the same issues?

<comment><USER11> Works better, but it has its share of weirdness. Just by clicking around on a "lorem ipsum" text it seems to work okay in Firefox (beta) and Camino (i.e. two Gecko versions), not at all in Chrome dev (clicking on italic/bold/h1 won't change anything) and if I select a line in Safari to make it a headline, it also applies the transformation to the following paragraph. If I then click "h1" again, everything is back to normal. A third click then works as intended, i.e. only the selected line is turned into a headline. From then on, this line works normal, but the whole game repeats itself if I do it with another line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't want to be the spoil sport, but even though this looks nice, am I the only one here that still believes in hand-coding HTML?

(Disclaimer: I'm a zealot. I don't believe in IDEs, and I'll take grep over Eclipse any day of the week. <http://xkcd.com/378/>)

<comment><USER13> I think it's more a matter of context. In fact, I do believe in hand coding HTML. but this is a link for a simple wysiwyg editor. I would assume that this attracts mainly people that have _some_ need for a wysiwyg editor for _something_. So your demographic might be skewed inside this particular comment section?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sigh. Deal-breaker. Hitting 'Enter' creates
s and not
s and it looks like they don't plan to change it: <https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5/issues/13>

<comment><USER15> How about shift-enter for
?

<comment><USER16> Traditionally it works the other way around - shift-enter for br and enter for p.

<comment><USER15> Good point, and one I didn't realize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I currently use fckeditor for all client projects and I really want an alternative, so this looks perfect. I know it's probably not on top of your features list but inserting images would be a great add-on, most of my clients need it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inserting images and links is next on the list. <https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5> supports them all - I just need to add it to the UI

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It certainly is simple and beautiful but it also needs to be functional. I selected H2 and typed some characters, then backspaced to the beginning where it reverted to normal text but did not update the UI (still showed as H2).

</comment><comment><USER19> A simple, beautiful collaborative editor: <https://github.com/johnyma22/etherpad-lite-jquery-plugin>

</comment><comment><USER20> The new Basecamp uses wysihtml5 and we're quite happy with it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually found out about wysihtml5 after poking around in the new basecamp source code. I really loved your design thus why I made this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now THIS is what I was looking for. Simple. Clean. Integrates with bootstrap. In my case I need even less functionality. Just bold and lists. Will try this one!

</comment><comment><USER22> Very nice, although I'd say the icon for numbered lists could be better; right now it simply looks like a chunkier version of the bulleted list button.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is pretty awesome, the only issue I have is it seems to escape my HTML automatically preventing me from using it as the editor for my blog :/

</comment><comment><USER24> ok I am excited for this. Looks great and is super clean. If you could add support for predefined styles in the drop-down along with links and simple image insertion it could handle 90% of my wysiwyg needs for projects.

Of all the wysiwyg editors out there it seems that most are just too bloated and the lightweight ones are just too "ugly".

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding links and images is next on the list. wysihtml5 supports it, I just need to update the UI

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This looks amazing! I've been using TinyMCE on a few projects, but I'm definitely taking this for a spin. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER26> Given what I can do in notepad, this doesn't quite do it for me. Yes, notepad is not what-you-see-is-what-you-get, but it doesn't take that much to create a HTML repel and that followed by alt-tab allows me pretty much every thing I want. I am uncomfortable with 'some one else's idea of a good time' when it comes to feature selection---no
? Etc. Good idea in general, just not for me, not yet.

<comment><USER2> For a lot of users, WYSIWYG is good, especially if it really integrates with the web page you're trying to edit (not a non-styled IFRAME like in the traditional CMS editors).

I also usually write in Markdown, but the latest breed of editors is starting to be good enough that I may be able to swap. And as for
, that is usually configurable in the editor setup.

Disclaimer: I'm an author of one the new editors, Hallo.

<comment><USER27> Off topic but I'm currently looking for a font size plugin for hallo, do you happen to know if one exists? (or anything using a select box).

<comment><USER2> I don't think anybody has written that plugin yet. Could you post a ticket? I'm spending some days on Hallo and Create next week, and so could possibly write one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems like the start of a great project! Would love to see somebody add in support for mobile browsers too :)

</comment><comment><USER29> None of these wysiwig editors work properly on an ipad. I bet it is the same for smart phones.

<comment><USER30> Tell Apple about it: <http://openradar.appspot.com/7619599>

<comment><USER31> Odd, there were reports of iOS 5 fixing issues with contentEditable: [http://www.symphonious.net/2011/06/10/contenteditable-in- mob...](http://www.symphonious.net/2011/06/10/contenteditable-in-mobile- webkit-update/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Neat, but doesn't work at all. Just the lists.

</comment><comment><USER33> there's a non trivial lag when typing for me on chrome, makes it pretty hard to use

<comment><USER34> I remember the new Basecamp having the same problem just after they launched (it's gone/fixed now), maybe someone from their team could chime in on how they solved it?

<comment><USER20> Hmmm. Not sure what you're referring to. We've made some improvements ([http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3137-using-event-capturing- to...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3137-using-event-capturing-to-improve- basecamp-page-load-times)), but nothing specifically related to the editor/Chrome.

<comment><USER34> Hmm ok, well the first two days after you launched the editor had some lag for me on Chrome on my MBA, especially the time from clicking the editor until it expanded and let me type would last 1 to 3 seconds and typing itself had some lag too. Anyone else had this problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just what I needed! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER36> Are you happy to share your contact details? (If yes, say which) Are you happy to share your contact details? (If yes, say which)

You may not be able to supply all this information at this stage but please do register as much as you can with them to be in with an opportunity to be part of this. You may not be able to supply all this information at this stage but please do register as much as you can with them to be in with an opportunity to be part of this.</comment>


Yahoo Sunsetting Delicious? - <AUTHOR> http://yfrog.com/h3z89p <comment><USER2> I can't believe it. I have also an account on pinboard.in but I'm really missing the for: feature available in del.icio.us. When you want to share urls with colleague, del.icio.us works very well especially if you have to discuss a topic and use del.icio.us as common sharing tool. It's a sad day if the news is confirmed.</comment>


Facebook Buys Dedicated Data Center, Could Servers Be Far Behind?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/facebook-chooses-oregon-big-green-data-center-it-owns-all-itself

<comment><USER2> "...could servers be far behind?"

No, they're just going to buy a dedicated data center and rent it out to people. The hell kind of question is that?

<comment><USER3> FTA: _What's more, this move could clear a path for Facebook to design and build its own servers._

The question is about _custom_ servers, it just didn't make it into the title.

<comment><USER4> Facebook certainly has the expertise to build their own servers: [http://www.facebook.com/techtalks#/video/video.php?v=2085616...](http://www.facebook.com/techtalks#/video/video.php?v=208561675468) and they are hiring Hardware Engineers: [http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=822679](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=822679)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this a move to improve service, or to reduce costs? Facebook has been fighting for profitability, however reducing their costs would enable them to fight their profitability from both ends. Not only can they strive to increase income, but also decrease costs.

I would be interested to see the designs for an eco-friendly data centre. What type of systems have they deployed that others haven't?

<comment><USER6> I know Google employs highly efficient AC/DC converters that are far better than the ones that come stock in any old rack server, instead choosing to run DC lines through their facilities. This probably saves them a huge bundle in power costs to boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will this building be a single point of failure? Bad things happens. It's not that bad idea to spread servers around the world.

<comment><USER8> Yes, can you imagine the chaos the world will be plunged in if Facebook went down.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the worst tech article? - <AUTHOR>

Apropos to the title, what is the worst article you've ever seen on Hacker News or, generally, posted on the web and why? <comment><USER2> [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/why-im- returning-m...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/why-im-returning-my- imac_b_796104.html)

The entire article can basically be summed up as, "The path is difficult for me because I have so many preferences which I refuse to accept that there is any alternative to." Multiplied by about ten.</comment>


DHH's response to "7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails" - <AUTHOR> http://loudthinking.com/posts/13-thinking-about-the-big-rewrite

<comment><USER2> The CDBaby rewrite was well-known in the Rails community.

However, I don't recall anyone in that community telling him that it might not be such a good idea.

Anyways, compare Derek's current observations with this: [http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/01/cd_baby_rewrit...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/01/cd_baby_rewrite_in_postgres_an.html)

and

[http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2005/11/migrating_to_rub...](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2005/11/migrating_to_ruby_on_rails_and.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> the original post was not very pertinent anyway, as far as ruby/rails is concerned. All 7 reasons have almost nothing to do with ruby/rails:

#1 - "is there anything rails/ruby can do that php can't do? ... (thinking)... no."

#2 - our entire company's stuff was in php: don't underestimate integration

#3 - don't want what i don't need

#4 - it's small and fast

#5 - it's built to my tastes

#6 - i love sql

#7 - programming languages are like girlfriends: the new one is better because _you_ are better

<comment><USER4> He lost me at #1. Technically, there's so many things Rails and Ruby can do that PHP can't. If he means it pragmatically (they're both data/web connect-o- thingies), then he has a point.

<comment><USER5> <<So many things Rails and Ruby can do that PHP can't>>

Meta-programming? What else? Do you mean the language or accompanying libraries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why editorialize the title?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? That bad? Why not? I like editorialized titles, and without the editorial DHH's post is essentially a linkjack to something fairly old.

I toned it down. Is that better?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hackers of the news: How many domain names do you own? - <AUTHOR> Do you have retention policy? (dump old domains so the yearly domain name registration payment goes down?) I keep asking myself this question i see all the time people posting their side project specific domain names like sideprojectchecklist.com those are very specific.  how many domain names do these owners keep? 1 ? 10 ? how much does average HN side project junkie has? what about the yearly payment, you just pay for all this? <comment><USER2> 30 or so. I just pay for them. Several inactive ones point to a static site I set up called "ethical parking", where I tell people to get in touch if they have a cool plan for the domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow 30! i must say i suspected that i might get to that number if i created a domain for each of my side projects, i just thought it's unreasonable to have that amount of domains, but starting to understand developers with side projects are doing these things. 30 means like $10 X 30 = $300 yearly?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> others?</comment>


Go at Heroku - build your own Chubby - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/

<comment><USER2> At the very end, there's quote from Scala designer Martin Odersky:

      "I like a lot of the design decisions they made in the language.. Basically I like all of them."

Considering how (at least, to my eye) the design principles of Scala seem very different than Go, I find that surprising. I guess it makes sense if you consider that there are multiple valid design paths that one can take.

<comment><USER3> Someone described to me recently "Go is to C as Scala is to Java".

<comment><USER4> That doesn't quite sound right. The only premise I'd imagine in which it could be correct is to describe one as an "evolution" of the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some key quotes

 _"Previously, these operations people would write these in Python, but they're finding that Go is much faster in terms of performance and time to actually write the code."_

Go beating Python in time to code?

 _"[Node.js is] a single thread. In a very similar amount of code, you could write a goroutine-heavy server that could handle tens of thousands of requests and use all the cores on your machine, so that if the requests were expensive – if they were CPU-intensive – you'd have a chance of keeping up," Pike says.

"Node.js shows great numbers for heavy numbers of clients, and they've done a really good job. But if those clients are CPU-intensive, they've got no place to go. You can't get the parallelism you need. With Go, you get the best of both worlds: You get many clients easily handled, and if they're CPU intensive, you can imagine scaling to a much larger number of requests."

What's more, Gerrand argues, Go doesn't force developers to embrace the asynchronous ways of event-driven programming. ... "That lets you write asynchronous code in a synchronous style. As people, we're much better suited to writing about things in a synchronous style."_

Not quite true about CPU-intensive tasks. Node can use webworkers and leave the main thread for handling small requests. Obviously JavaScript is slower, webworkers open up heavy OS level threads (at least in browsers, not sure about node), but there is somewhere to go.

I like the competitiveness either way. Go deserves more popularity.

I wonder, is it possible to do some syntax rewrite to make it look like a weak/dynamic typed language and only use static types when you need the performance? That would give them a popularity boost from superficial Ruby/Python devs traumatized by systems programming.

<comment><USER6> > Go beating Python in time to code?

Yes, that's what they tell me. Among other reasons, static typing means catching programmer errors faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > [Go] gives a new breed of concurrency you won't find in other languages, > including Erlang. And this comes from goroutines. Goroutines aren't threads > or lightweight threads. They aren't callbacks. They're processes within a > single address space that can communicate with each other.

> Grasping the concurrency may take a little longer, even if you're experience > with something like Erlang – "the concept's a bit difficult to grasp if > you've never been exposed to message-passing inside of a program before,"

There are many interesting differences between erlang and go (eg single mailbox vs channels, process separation vs shared heap) but the above is misleading at best. Goroutines are very much like erlang processes and both languages make heavy use of message-passing inside programs.

Journalists: get your interviewees (ie the people who know what they are talking about) to proof-read articles!

</comment><comment><USER8> Source and docs at <https://github.com/ha/doozerd> and <https://github.com/ha/doozer>

<comment><USER9> Seems to, for the most part, break the Go convention of return an os.Error when something unexpected happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is the actual Doozer introduction by its creator: <http://xph.us/2011/04/13/introducing-doozer.html>

<comment><USER11> is it just me or are the embedded links unclickable?

<comment><USER10> Definitely not just you. I can't select any of the text either!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great article. It's barely about Doozer, it ends up being a great piece of journalism about the Go language.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also lots of additional material about the Go language if you read past the first page.

<comment><USER13> Single page version: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/print.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is nice about these lightweight thread multiplexing languages and runtimes is that you don't have to write your apps in the butt-ugly continuation passing style (doSomething("foo", function(result, err) { print(result); }). This is something that the compiler and runtime can do for you in Go/Haskell/Erlang/etc where using a blocking system call will effectively do the same, but it's automatically done, not by the programmer.

Of course you can get the same effect with Node.js/Boost.asio, but I find it a bit clumsy.

</comment><comment><USER15> What was wrong with Apache Zookeeper? No mention of it at all!

<comment><USER16> I think the Doozer people misunderstood Zookeeper. They claim that ZK is focused on providing locks, but ZK really just provides a consistent hierarchical datastore that can then be used to construct locks, perform leader election, etc. See <http://zookeeper.apache.org/doc/r3.3.3/recipes.html></comment></comment>


xkcd – Dependency (2020) - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2347/I <comment><USER2> Link is wrong, you added I after pasting it :D

<comment><USER3> Maybe because the original link has been posted 6 hours ago :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24193278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24193278)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Remove '/I' from the xkcd-link. :D</comment>


X-Plane's founder exposing patent troll scams - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 <comment><AUTHOR> Hope this goes viral in some way. I think it can make non technical people aware of the problem.</comment>


Rising Seas Turn Coastal Houses into a Gamble - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming-coastal-real-estate.html <comment><AUTHOR> I said this earlier (mostly because I see the questions before they are asked):

> Global warming, which he doesn't plan to do much about, will be a great > threat to coastal real estate (also controlled by the global wealthy).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036485)</comment>


Ask HN: What do I do if my raise-request is declined? - <AUTHOR> I am going from title Jr to Sr and was notified that salary would be increase by X. A small raise and I pretty much said no.
I checked out the web for relevant job listings with +- 20% of what I asked for. As well as a few LinkedIn companies that has contacted me. As well as a general description why I think I can demand a higher number.
Now I've been told they have looked it over and will get back to me with a new number.
My number doesn't feel unreasonable, it is fairly high but still below the highest listings I found with quite a lot.
I am fairly sure they won't blindly accept my number, but what do I actually do if they try to "meet me in the middle"? I would not be satisfied with a number in the middle, my number is almost my minimum.
I really enjoy working here, and frankly I don't want to move company, but at the same time I want to be paid what I feel I deserve (and as for my direct manager, he said that the number I gave is ok). I am also quite a non-confrontal person so I don't like pushing.
It's literally my first salary discussion I've had to say no to so far, the other ones I've had have been quite OK, until this one which I felt was not ok. <comment><USER2> Some resources:

Highly recommended Patio11's podcast: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast- episod...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast- episode-12-salary-negotiation-with-josh- doody/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kalzumeus-podcast- episode-12-salary-negotiation-with-josh-doody)

A general article on employment negotiation: [http://haseebq.com/how-not-to- bomb-your-offer-negotiation](http://haseebq.com/how-not-to-bomb-your-offer- negotiation)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like you're going to have to find another job. I would take what ever they give kill it at your new position for about 6-12 months and then find a new job. Give it enough time to show a new employer you can do the new job.

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you think that from the information I gave? I've been here for a long time, have excellent performance and zero complaints.</comment></comment>