<story><title>Who Y Combinator Companies Want</title><url>http://data.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want-c1880a08ac88</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>Who ever said I was interviewing for a job?  I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole.  Read some of the comments (and the article).  The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn&amp;#x27; write tests.  Hiring is so subjective.&lt;p&gt;This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state of our industry, and why I don&amp;#x27;t usually write comments on the Internet and why I wrote this under a throwaway account.  Thanks for making my point:&lt;p&gt;To repeat: &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re all talk.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If you can learn Ruby in a few days why haven&amp;#x27;t you done it yet over the last 10 years?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s why: I made well over 400K this year at my job.  I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need.  My time away from work is too precious to me.&lt;p&gt;By the way, I am paid 400K because I am a really good programmer and problem solver and can use whatever tools I need to to get the job done. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I&amp;#x27;ve never used the language before.  I will figure it out.&lt;p&gt;Plus: most places won&amp;#x27;t even talk to me because I make more than what they are willing to pay.  Oh wait; I guess this is all talk too.&lt;p&gt;PS: If patio11 is reading this comment, I will happily verify these facts with him via my real personal email.  To prove that this comment isn&amp;#x27;t just &amp;quot;all talk&amp;quot;.  I really hate the Internet sometimes.</text></item><item><author>tinco</author><text>Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you&amp;#x27;re all talk. You say you&amp;#x27;re a great programmer, and could learn to program in Ruby in a few days, yet in 10 years you&amp;#x27;ve never done it, even though you are apparently applying for jobs that are interested in that skill.&lt;p&gt;If you can&amp;#x27;t even bother with learning the language that&amp;#x27;s requested in the advert in a few days, why should a hiring manager be interested in you?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also in my late twenties, and have been programming for money for over 10 years and I also like to brag about how I&amp;#x27;m a great programmer and am fluent in over a dozen programming languages, but you bet that if I&amp;#x27;d go for a job that requests Node.JS experience (I wouldn&amp;#x27;t), I&amp;#x27;d brush up on my Node.JS and make sure my resume lists it as a core competency. You can&amp;#x27;t just go around saying you&amp;#x27;re a great programmer and expect people to believe it from ten years of Java experience.</text></item><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s funny you say that.  I can&amp;#x27;t name one factory pattern off the top of my head...  Never needed to learn one.  I should clarify -- I&amp;#x27;m in my late twenties, and I&amp;#x27;ve spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code.  I don&amp;#x27;t understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.</text></item><item><author>alexwebb2</author><text>Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; pile right off the bat.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that those candidates, in my experience, tend to throw up way more red flags than others - their code is extremely verbose, they rattle off factory patterns like they&amp;#x27;re reading a textbook without any inkling what sort of problems they&amp;#x27;re actually solving, they parrot popular opinions without being able to articulate the reasoning behind them, they&amp;#x27;re not comfortable with developing a new feature without extensive documentation, and they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to things like testing and code organization.&lt;p&gt;Enterprise programmers usually leave me with the impression that they&amp;#x27;re heavily indoctrinated into one specific mode of thought, and that they would struggle to break out of it.</text></item><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m an &amp;quot;enterprise&amp;quot; programmer because I write in Java...  I&amp;#x27;m also older than the average age of a start-up employee (late twenties).  I&amp;#x27;ve never written a line of Ruby, and I&amp;#x27;ve never written object oriented JavaScript or used Node.js.&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;m a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; good programmer.  I just happen to write the majority of my code in Java.  If tomorrow we decided to use a new language, I could pick it up in a few days...  I have a feeling the &amp;quot;enterprise&amp;quot; thing is just veiled age-ism.  Anyone can feel free to correct me if I&amp;#x27;m wrong, but at this point, it&amp;#x27;s literally &lt;i&gt;impossible&lt;/i&gt; to learn &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; new technology.  And anyone whose worth their salt should be able to learn a new environment and programming language without too much trouble.&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that the enterprise thing is just a way for these employers to screen out the older, more experienced programmers.&lt;p&gt;This will probably get this throwaway banned, but Michael O&amp;#x27;Church (who I am not) writes a lot about this on his blog.  I tend to agree with him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m slightly busy this week with the impending launch of Stockfighter and would prefer to not be HN&amp;#x27;s designated notary public, as I&amp;#x27;m just another geek here, but if you want to chat about career stuff my inbox is always open.  (Offer good for anybody.)&lt;p&gt;FWIW I have _zero_ difficulty believing &amp;quot;finance company pays talented programmers $400k&amp;quot; and equally zero difficulty believing &amp;quot;startup folks mystified how this could possibly happen when that programmer hasn&amp;#x27;t even installed NodeJS.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Who Y Combinator Companies Want</title><url>http://data.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want-c1880a08ac88</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>Who ever said I was interviewing for a job?  I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole.  Read some of the comments (and the article).  The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn&amp;#x27; write tests.  Hiring is so subjective.&lt;p&gt;This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state of our industry, and why I don&amp;#x27;t usually write comments on the Internet and why I wrote this under a throwaway account.  Thanks for making my point:&lt;p&gt;To repeat: &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re all talk.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If you can learn Ruby in a few days why haven&amp;#x27;t you done it yet over the last 10 years?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s why: I made well over 400K this year at my job.  I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need.  My time away from work is too precious to me.&lt;p&gt;By the way, I am paid 400K because I am a really good programmer and problem solver and can use whatever tools I need to to get the job done. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I&amp;#x27;ve never used the language before.  I will figure it out.&lt;p&gt;Plus: most places won&amp;#x27;t even talk to me because I make more than what they are willing to pay.  Oh wait; I guess this is all talk too.&lt;p&gt;PS: If patio11 is reading this comment, I will happily verify these facts with him via my real personal email.  To prove that this comment isn&amp;#x27;t just &amp;quot;all talk&amp;quot;.  I really hate the Internet sometimes.</text></item><item><author>tinco</author><text>Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you&amp;#x27;re all talk. You say you&amp;#x27;re a great programmer, and could learn to program in Ruby in a few days, yet in 10 years you&amp;#x27;ve never done it, even though you are apparently applying for jobs that are interested in that skill.&lt;p&gt;If you can&amp;#x27;t even bother with learning the language that&amp;#x27;s requested in the advert in a few days, why should a hiring manager be interested in you?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also in my late twenties, and have been programming for money for over 10 years and I also like to brag about how I&amp;#x27;m a great programmer and am fluent in over a dozen programming languages, but you bet that if I&amp;#x27;d go for a job that requests Node.JS experience (I wouldn&amp;#x27;t), I&amp;#x27;d brush up on my Node.JS and make sure my resume lists it as a core competency. You can&amp;#x27;t just go around saying you&amp;#x27;re a great programmer and expect people to believe it from ten years of Java experience.</text></item><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s funny you say that.  I can&amp;#x27;t name one factory pattern off the top of my head...  Never needed to learn one.  I should clarify -- I&amp;#x27;m in my late twenties, and I&amp;#x27;ve spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code.  I don&amp;#x27;t understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.</text></item><item><author>alexwebb2</author><text>Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; pile right off the bat.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that those candidates, in my experience, tend to throw up way more red flags than others - their code is extremely verbose, they rattle off factory patterns like they&amp;#x27;re reading a textbook without any inkling what sort of problems they&amp;#x27;re actually solving, they parrot popular opinions without being able to articulate the reasoning behind them, they&amp;#x27;re not comfortable with developing a new feature without extensive documentation, and they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to things like testing and code organization.&lt;p&gt;Enterprise programmers usually leave me with the impression that they&amp;#x27;re heavily indoctrinated into one specific mode of thought, and that they would struggle to break out of it.</text></item><item><author>throwaway456789</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m an &amp;quot;enterprise&amp;quot; programmer because I write in Java...  I&amp;#x27;m also older than the average age of a start-up employee (late twenties).  I&amp;#x27;ve never written a line of Ruby, and I&amp;#x27;ve never written object oriented JavaScript or used Node.js.&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;m a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; good programmer.  I just happen to write the majority of my code in Java.  If tomorrow we decided to use a new language, I could pick it up in a few days...  I have a feeling the &amp;quot;enterprise&amp;quot; thing is just veiled age-ism.  Anyone can feel free to correct me if I&amp;#x27;m wrong, but at this point, it&amp;#x27;s literally &lt;i&gt;impossible&lt;/i&gt; to learn &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; new technology.  And anyone whose worth their salt should be able to learn a new environment and programming language without too much trouble.&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that the enterprise thing is just a way for these employers to screen out the older, more experienced programmers.&lt;p&gt;This will probably get this throwaway banned, but Michael O&amp;#x27;Church (who I am not) writes a lot about this on his blog.  I tend to agree with him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LordHumungous</author><text>I should work in finance.</text></comment>