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The Arc Effect | pg: You can see two spikes in unique visitors due to Arc here:http://ycombinator.com/images/news.yc.1year.pngThere was a spike in Jan when I said Arc was imminent, and then another when it came out. But if you squint your eyes and look at the whole curve, the underlying growth rate seems pretty constant.In other words, while it's true we've been getting a lot of new users lately, this probably would have happened anyway.What to do about that growth is another matter. I think a lot of users are alarmed at the sight of fluff links on the front page because they remember what that meant for other sites in the past. But the current fluff link (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=120816) was submitted by a long-time user, and there are no signs of statistical weirdness in the votes on it. I.e. statistically the users who upvoted that story are no different from the ones upvoting the other top stories. So at the moment I'm still hopeful that the bad signs are false alarms.I have a hunch that the way to fend off the hordes of 14 year olds is to keep up the quality of the stories on the front page. Then if they come across this site they'll decide it's boring and leave. |
The Arc Effect | yters: Does having 3 main hacker sites (this, proggit, /.) imply the retreat from 14 year olds will reach a stable equilibrium, and end the eternal September problem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_SeptemberThere are only so many 14 year olds in the world, so at some point the rate of change in users will be 0, incoming equals outgoing. |
The Arc Effect | andreyf: Why not just scale the weight given to a vote based on the voter's karma? Or would this encourage group think? |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | davidw: You could probably dive into Rails and get something working. Diving in and doing something is a lot better than trying to pick a framework. You can get started with anything, really, including the languages you know. Smalltalk has 'seaside', Java has a million frameworks. You would probably not have much trouble with Ruby or Python either. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | wenbert: PHP! Zend Framework FTW! http://framework.zend.com
and add a little jQuery into it. http://jquery.com |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | mcxx: If you're good in Smalltalk, check out the Seaside framework http://www.seaside.st/ |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | edu: As you are good a Smalltalk, I think you should take a look to http://www.seaside.st a framework for developing webapps in Smalltalk.To get a good overview read the HTTP RFC. IMO, JavaScript and CSS should be the last thing to learn. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | systems: ASP.NET: Soup to Nuts
http://www.benkotips.com/Default.aspx?tabid=798You won't regret it! |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | DarrenStuart: isn't web objects smalltalk based?Maybe your first port of call could be jsp |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | thingsilearned: If you want to first learn the fundamentals, PHP/MySQL is a good place to start.If you want to just jump in and make something frameworks such as Django and Rails make a nice level of abstraction above the database and even above the raw HTML.If you're looking for a recommendation, I love Django. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | lsb: For Javascript: Ruby is kind of similar to Smalltalk, and Javascript can be pretty Ruby-like if you use the Prototype/Scriptaculous frameworks.For CSS: I've never used Blueprint.css, but it looks pretty awesome. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | Tichy: For Java I would say Spring is the current standard, although I admit the web part of spring is a bit confusing at first (in reality it is quite simple, though). Don't use Struts, please.Maybe Seam would be interesting, too - created by the Hibernate guys, it is supposed to be inspired by Rails. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | nreece: You may as well start with JSP at a free web host like http://www.myjavaserver.com/ or http://www.eatj.com/ to play around. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | ratsbane: I don't think I'd want to starting out by learning to code relatively complicated things to a framework. If you learn a framework you won't be so much exposed to the real technologies - HTTP, HTML, CSS, Javascript. I think I'd start by reading the RFCs for those. Then write some web pages by hand with HTML and then try to write a program to do what you just did by hand. Also study the source of any other web apps you can find - open source software is great for learning. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | jsjenkins168: If your Java experience is with GUI programming, you should be right at home with Google Web Toolkit. You don't need to worry about complicated web-related tasks such as handling asynchronous calls, that is all abstracted for you. You can layout your pages like you would a Swing or SWT desktop app and that should get you started.: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/GWT is a higher level of abstraction than most other frameworks, which some like and some do not. The top-most layer is actually not coupled to anything specific related to javascript, DOM, or HTML in general. DOM manipulation and javascript are treated much like in-line native assembly code in a traditional high-level language. You can develop an entire web application like GMail without ever seeing anything below this high level abstraction. This may make it sound weak or limited, but its actually very powerful b/c you can focus on building rich functionality rather than debugging erratic cross-browser quirks. |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | chaostheory: I posted this before, but I can't find the link in YC...If time is critical, then I figure you'll want screencasts for the language/framework you need to use.I don't know of any that exist for any other language/framework, but Ruby on Rails has really excellent ones at:http://peepcode.com - not free but no one else compresses an entire Rails book in 5 hours of videohttp://railscasts.com - 5 to 15 min useful segments related to ruby on railsOnce you feel a little more comfortable after viewing the videos, the Pragmatic Programmer Series and Oreilly books are a good place to continue.Almost forgot - you can test out all you learned at (YC startup) http://heroku.com (nothing to install on your computer - easy to start) |
I want to make a webapp. Where do I start? | flashgordon: Yeah its a slow transition. Dont waste too much time trying to "decide" between a language. I just plunged into python (sorry all RoR fans out there, nothing personal)...django is a great framework for beginners.. start with sqlite for a quick db to use with django then get to postgres as soon as you can. |
Where do you stand on privacy? | pchristensen: I'm not sure how privacy works online, or who sees what. Having said that, as a hacker I probably understand it better than most regular people. When I decide to put anything (anything) online, I keep two things in mind:1) Anything I put up can be seen by anyone (not just the people I would prefer see it)2) Anything I put up will be around forever and I can't unring that bell.With those points in mind, here are some of the things I haven't put online:-the company I work for-my home address (I think I've mentioned the city, I have mentioned the metro)-any pictures of my daughter (maybe she has slipped in the background of some)-religious affiliation and (for the most part) political viewsOne the other hand, I've gone out of my publicize (here and on reddit) things I've written on technical and business topics. I want that stuff to be found, but I try to make sure it's something I wouldn't mind someone pulling out 10 or 20 years from now. My goal is that the worst thing that could happen to me based on what I publish online is that I'll be accused of being dumb or naive. I don't want my friendships or family to be affected by some web fad. |
Where do you stand on privacy? | spydez: I don't put anything online unless I'm comfortable with the idea of millions of strangers, and my mom and dad, looking at it.And I'm a pretty shy person, so not much of my life makes it onto the web. |
Where do you stand on privacy? | thinkcomp: Your experiences sound fairly similar to my own. When I incorporated, I was a freshman in high school, and the lawyer I used to file the papers hired me to build a web site for him. He never paid the bill in full. (I paid his, of course.) I've also had my share of negative experiences with business partners who respectively stole money from customers, stole common shares in my company from me, and wanted to steal information from customers. Each time, I thought I'd learned my lesson, to no avail.In general, from my perspective, if you find yourself disagreeing with (meaning "being more conservative than") most people in business about what constitutes an ethical solution to a problem, you're probably right. Most businesspeople have no morals. It took a while to get used to that.I have a biased view on Facebook and privacy, but a legitimate one nonetheless, I believe. You can find it here:http://www.news.com/Will-security-become-Facebooks-Achilles-... |
Where do you stand on privacy? | edw519: I value my privacy so much that I have no account on any social network and never will. A very few number of people have my cell phone #. Anyone can send me an email anytime they want.You say, "I deliberately marketed myself aggressively online because I figured that that was the best way to win the game".What game? I don't see the logic in that at all.People pay money to solve their own problems. Provide them with a solution. That's the only "game" I've ever been interested in "winning". The rest is smoke and mirrors.If you have a popular blog or had written a book and positioned yourself as an expert, that would certainly help your marketing effort. Of you could just as easily spend that time advertising, networking, and pounding the pavement the old fashioned way to generate business. At least that way, you preserve your privacy.Losing your privacy is like scattering feathers in a storm. Gone, never to be put back into the pillow case again. Ask him:http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/a_lesson_for_us_all |
Where do you stand on privacy? | bayareaguy: I've purposely made a lot of my real life information easy to get by anyone who actually knows me. If you knew the right url, you could have my address and phone in a second, which is exactly what I want. However, I generally avoid leaving anything around online that text technology alone could use to connect my comments back to me and I change my online identifiers every year or so. I'm sure someone who got access to all my personal DSL records for a few years could connect the dots but that doesn't worry me much.Hmm.. this account is about 257 days old now. Thanks for reminding me to abandon it in about 3 months. |
Where do you stand on privacy? | paulhart: Privacy is a competitive advantage if implemented well. |
Could you implement News.YC in your favorite language? | run4yourlives: Ok: Classic ASP, and about a week... or Python/django in about a day.So, why are you asking this? |
Could you implement News.YC in your favorite language? | myoung8: I built a version of it in Rails in a day or two once just for fun. It wasn't quite production-ready, but all the functionality was there. |
Could you implement News.YC in your favorite language? | pg: Arc / about a year and a half. |
Does anyone here play golf? | davidw: Cycling, of course! It can be both an individual or a team sport, has lots of tech if you want to get geeky about it, and is a great way to see the world up close without moving at a snail's pace. |
Does anyone here play golf? | dbrush: For me, the strategy comes into play when I realize I can only determine where the ball will end up with a marginal amount of certainty (in front of me or behind me). That said.. I love playing golf. Especially scrambles for the strategy reason. |
Does anyone here play golf? | dfranke: If you're looking for exercise, I recommend swimming. For recreation, paintball. |
Does anyone here play golf? | bayareaguy: I think golf is a good social hack when it allows people to conduct legitimate business "work" and get some good exercise in a nice setting at the same time. |
Does anyone here play golf? | eaken: find some like-minded friends and get outside and you'll have fun. |
how to be a VC? | jgrahamc: It sounds like you don't want to be a VC, you want to be an angel. I'd suggest you look at an angel network in your location and go talk to them about what you are thinking of doing. |
how to be a VC? | myoung8: Assuming you want to be a VC:1. set up a limited partnership (LP)--you'll need a good lawyer for this
2. word of mouth is how the business operates for the most part, but you could gain some exposure by hosting/judging at business plan competitions (e.g. Stanford's BASES Social E-Challenge, which is coming up--they're still looking for judges I think and I know the guy in charge, so let me know if you want to be put in touch)
3. Money needed = (# of boards you want to/can reasonably sit on * average amount of money you want to invest in a startup) + miscellaneous -- most VCs make 1-3 new investments per year in the $1-$10M range, so you would probably need about $30-$50M to have a reputable fund
4. major gotchas: VC investing isn't all about the money, it's really a people business. they spend 70% of their time talking to people, most people that can help their portfolio companieslike jgrahamc said, if you don't have a lot of time, you probably shouldn't be a VC, look into angel investing. if you're really serious about it, try to get in touch with Ron Conway or Mike Maples, they're two of the best known angels in the Valley. |
how to be a VC? | sharpshoot: You have to be an accredited investor - which means you must have greater than $1m in net assets. |
Consulting on the side | aagha: When I started consulting I was able to find small "gigs" here and there by tapping my personal network to find out if people I knew (or people they knew) had any projects aligned with my skill-set that needed working on.I was aslo willing to do a couple of projects in the beginning either for dirt cheap or free just to have a couple of reference customers--I found that trying to get a customer to pay for my service when I had no track record was difficult.One thing I think I did (I was doing software development) as a consultant was to form an company (C-corp, since I planned--and did--to grow and hire on staff) was get insurance. In 2001, $1M insurance cost about $4K if I recall correctly. That was an added piece of mind to customers.In terms of time management, you have to be careful. Back then, I didn't have a family, so coding during dinner time or late into the night wasn't an issue. a wife and kid later, that changes. Any consulting I do now is after the little one goes to bed and or on weekends.Best of luck! |
Giving raises after a series A round | sanj: I believe the goal should be NOT to be an outlier.Get a good sense of how the market would value you, independent of being a founder, and get paid that.Getting paid too much is just asking to to be singled out to be removed as a "cost saving measure."Getting paid too little makes everyone value you less. And you're at risk of being viewed as sucker.I have some strong memories of how annoyed I was at how much money our "new, post-series A management hires" were spending while I was still doubling up in hotel rooms with the other founders.At least we weren't still sharing beds... |
Consulting on the side | davidw: Why not work on your own stuff on the side, if you eventually want to do a startup, unless you just want the money? |
Giving raises after a series A round | RyanGWU82: I've been told that investors will generally veto any attempts by founders to give themselves "large pay raises." Series A investors will likely allow small raises so that you're not living off ramen anymore, but founders should still expect to be paid below market rate.My guess is that compensation would be a topic of board discussion -- especially executive compensation. In an early stage company, it would be politically impossible to argue that you should be paid more simply so that you don't jump ship. Threatening to quit does NOT go over well with investors.It's pretty common that early employees and non-founder executives are paid more than the founders. Obviously, the founders will own considerably more stock. |
Giving raises after a series A round | amohr: I've never been through this before, but I feel like getting through series A is a milestone and should be treated as such. I think founders who have been busting their asses to get this product up-and-running deserve some sort of bonus, especially because they just presumably diluted their equity. Maybe this could be solved with some sort of one-time bonus or at least a big effin' party of some sort. |
Consulting on the side | goofygrin: I've been doing consulting for a few years (4+) and quit a few 9-5 jobs during that time. Frankly, consulting full time offers great pay and a boatload of flexibility. For a long time I went through firms and they ate 20-30% of my "profits" although they dealt with the billing and finding work, which is worth quite a bit. Lately I've been on my own though.My startup activities are limited to at night (after the kid's in bed) and some time on weekends which does put a damper on things, but it also makes me more efficient and since I can think more (like when driving to a client) I tend to make less mistakes.And I echo what aagha said, incorporate early. Some clients don't do 1099, only corp-to-corp. There are some tax benefits to an SCorp as well (you can take a salary which you pay employement tax for and then take distributions which are not employment taxed). I probably would have saved $30k over the last couple years if I'd incorporated rather than been 1099. |
Giving raises after a series A round | Payton: In my opinion, getting a big injection of VC money doesn't make it alright to turn up your burn rate a significant amount.I have never been through a round of funding, but it would make sense to keep your costs down wherever possible. A founder who just got a round of funding should be thinking on ways to increase the value of the company instead of their salary.I would like to know what is the norm in VC backed startups. Are there significant pay raises or bonuses after a round of funding? Do the founders and the employees share the wealth? Or are things kept fairly similar to the status quo. |
Giving raises after a series A round | brezina: You should include your pay raises in your budget you provide VCs before closing your series A.I would suggest paying yourself somewhere around or a bit above what you would make at a big company if you were doing the 9-5 gig as an engineer or whatever other position you'd hold. |
Giving raises after a series A round | Flemlord: I ran into this situation about ten years ago. (With the exact same amount of seed funding and series A funding oddly.) I didn't want to do raises and my co-founder wanted to do a huge raise that would have doubled his salary. We compromised closer to my side and just did a slight raise.We also sold some personal stock to the Series A investor. I banked it and forgot about it. He went on a spending spree and his performance at work went down and never recovered. He ended up quitting a year later, wrangling high-dollar consulting contracts from a couple of our larger clients who later regretted it. Asshole.I suppose this is more of a lesson about picking the right founders than whether to give yourselves raises. But I'd be a bit wary of anyone who wants too large of a raise. |
Giving raises after a series A round | white: Be adequate with what you are asking for. You have the right to get paid fair salary. What investors may worry more then a few grands of salary raise, is how to keep your attention on the startup as much as it's only possible. If you're underpaid and cutting your expenses, you can't be a good person to develop a strategy on spending invested money. Know your value and you'll be fine. |
Does anyone know of am open source flash mp3 player? | cowmoo: JW FLV Player at
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=jw_media_playerProminent websites that utilizes the JW FLV Player for streaming mp3's, HypeMachine (hypem.com). |
documentation format? | jakewolf: Something formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper for printing out as a pdf and easy to navigate/search html.How long are we really talking about? |
documentation format? | wallflower: The writers at my company use Framemaker - it's pretty industry standard and expensive. They have started writing the documents using DITA. It's pretty powerful.DITA is an emerging documentation standard. It uses XML to describe the content and structure of a document. If you write your documentation in DITA XML, you can render it to PDF or online help easily. Yes, DITA is a little verbose.http://dita.xml.org/getting-started |
documentation format? | bugmenot: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/ is quite nice: A rich set of features, easily extensible by custom directives, Python, and a hell lot of export formats (LaTeX/PDF, HTML, S5 slideshows, ...). |
Is Apple becoming the next Sony? | ideas101: whenever company grows the chances of becoming arrogant also grows and this is what is happening with all big companies which includes apple and sony ... apple made a big mistake in trying to control the iphone market by locking the phone and having only one service provider --- on the top of that they pushed another program to make unlocked iphone useless - this has created a very bad taste in consumer's mind. This is the world of free market - the sooner u understand the better... apple could have instead sold the unlock iphone to begin with ... and with the help of unique marketing and distribution channel it could have profited big time - this would have also stopped the smuggling of millions of iphones to other countries. |
documentation format? | dfranke: Docbook. |
documentation format? | crystalarchives: Depends on the type of documentation, but I'm a fan of LaTeX since there are so many tex2____ programs out there that'll convert LaTeX to whatever format you want.The learning curve is steeper but the flexibility is high. |
documentation format? | chaostheory: there's an open source format (not software) that is pretty comprehesive (though at times repetitive): http://readyset.tigris.org/ |
documentation format? | bayareaguy: I currently use Scrivener, MultiMarkdown, TexShop, MacTex and OmniGraffle if I have a diagram or two.http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html is a combination outliner/editor for OSX. Most of its features are focused on allowing you to manage a lot of different bits of a larger document. There's a full XSLT generation engine inside it so you can get it to generate just about anything you want if you're willing to roll up your sleeves a bit.http://fletcherpenney.net/MultiMarkdown is a simple markup syntax (derived from Markdown) which Scrivener supports.Scrivener and MultiMarkdown together generate HTML or LaTeX from the base document, so you need to use something like http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop and http://www.tug.org/mactex to get something worth printing. |
documentation format? | kingkongrevenge: POD. Learn it in 10 minutes. Generates all formats. Embeddable in code, if appropriate.http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html |
any1 has invite codes for Xoopit, Orgoo, other hot startup? | bkrausz: So instead of posting invite codes here or telling people you have them in comments, we're supposed to email them to some gmail account for some HN account made a few hours ago, under the assumption that they will get redistributed?Alternate idea: if you have invites, let us know in the comments. If you want invites do the same. Bam, middleman removed.P.S.-Though I did get a chuckle out of your "super connection algorithm" |
any1 has invite codes for Xoopit, Orgoo, other hot startup? | johns: This is a joke, right? |
any1 has invite codes for Xoopit, Orgoo, other hot startup? | SwellJoe: Another fine example of why I wish I could vote stories down. Even if I only got one down-vote per week...that'd be great. I would use it right now, and it would feel real good.Worst place, "invitecodes". |
Any novel aproaches to being sick? | Xichekolas: I sleep.... for like 20 hours straight. Then I eat something, then I sleep again. Repeat until healthy. I think last time I was sick, it was with a stomach flu for about three days. I probably slept 18-20 hours a day, with the rest of the time spent puking and crapping my guts out. (Hey, you asked.) |
Any novel aproaches to being sick? | davidw: Going into the office is a great way to infect everyone else with whatever you have, thus multiplying productivity losses.I try and actually stay in bed and read something completely unrelated to work/business/anything requiring much thinking. My personal favorite is westerns... Usually I get sick because of stress, so relaxing for a bit is usually what's called for. |
Any novel aproaches to being sick? | JesseAldridge: Take a daily multivitamin. It really helps. You get sick much less often, and when you do it's much less debilitating. |
Coworking Owners, What are Your Membership Policies? | jyu: http://coworking.pbwiki.com/ email a couple of them, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help you out. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | edw519: Too late. That would be unethical. You'd be branded as someone who does unethical things. Not worth it. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | m0nty: No. That's one of the all-time big no-nos in recruitment. You're stuck with the recruiter, even if they hinder the process. Also, dumb as it may seem (most recruiters don't have a clue about technology) many companies have good reasons to use them, and probably don't want you subverting that process.Good luck with the job anyway :) |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | ambition: Build a positive relationship with the headhunter. If you leave the startup, they can help you find a new job. If you stay and the startup succeeds, they can help you recruit new teammates. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | brk: So what is the issue if they are all over you?A good, effective recruiter can be of HUGE value when you're looking for a job. They can help you better gauge salary range (and likelihood of the company extended the pay scale if you're top-notch but otherwise "unaffordable").While many companies will post jobs on their website as well, not many hiring managers actually like to screen through resumes.What you mostly have to determine though is if you're working with a quality head-hunter, or just someone who tries to find random personnel matches for random companies.Some questions to ask this, or any other recruiter:
Are they retained/exclusive for the search on this position? For the company overall or at some level (all development jobs, etc)?How do you compare to other candidates they have submitted for the position?What kind of feedback have the other candidates received so far?Who else have they placed at the current company (I know you said this is a 3-person company)?Who else at the company have they placed in the past in other positions?Who do they know on the management team, and what is their relationship with those people?What can they tell you about the company beyond what is on the "About Us" page? |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | vasudeva: I once was going through a headhunter -- a rather pushy and 'slick' one -- for a gig at IBM. During the initial phone interview with the hiring manager, it became clear that the position was not as described, and I wasn't a good fit for that piece of the project.As she described the scenario, it turned out she had a gap in a related position that was much more suited to my skillset. I told her so and she indicated interest.A few days later, the phone rang, and I picked it up to a torrent of profanity from the headhunter, who was accusing me of 'backdooring' him and swearing up a storm, promising I'd never work in this industry again and calling me all sorts of four-letter things.I was taken aback, and set him straight on what I had intended, not to mention how I did and didn't expect to be spoken to by a headhunter.The phonecall wrapped up with him unctuously promising to find me a 'real nice position' somewhere... but judging by the treatment I had gotten from him, I'd have to be retarded to have any further dealings with him. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | jraines: As a headhunter (my day job), I can tell you that this would be a real shitty thing to do. Unless of course they've been unethical towards you -- for example, like one commenter said here, trumping up the job description.Also, as another commenter implied -- you are going to get stronger consideration for the job by going through the headhunter than if you apply directly, especially if it's an attractive position that they receive a lot of applicants for. If they're good, they'll get you a better offer, too.Be nice to recruiters; most of us are trying hard to provide a valuable service. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | ten-seven: Stick with the headhunter. The company that engaged them expects to work with them. It seems odd that they'd also post the position on their own jobs page. It's possible they weren't getting any responses, so they added the head hunter. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | jsdalton: It's hard hiring tech people, and most small companies aren't very skilled at hiring people.My company had this difficulty recently...we posted the job on craigslist and on our site but didnt' get what we were looking for.A headhunter finally contacted me and offered me a great developer. We loved him and hired him. That was 6 months ago and he's still doing great work for us.The headhunter got a 5-figure fee on the deal...for what? Probably just helping my developer out with his paperwork and then interceding with us on his behalf. He couldn't have spent more than 8 hours working with us and working with our developer.And yet, I love my new developer and we would not have found him without this headhunter's help.Moral of the story: Think of headhunters like investment bankers. They make enormous sums of money (sometimes) and seemingly do no real "work", but they can play a very useful role in the functioning of the market (in this case the "talent" market).I'd stick with your guy. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | indiejade: My advice is contrary to what most people here are saying: avoid both the headhunter firm, and companies that utilize headhunter firms.To begin, there's a _reason_ they're "all over you." I know and have been there, too, sometimes getting several calls in one day from various agencies. Any phone call that begins with "I'm so and so with such and such IT staffing. I have a client that. . ." is a no-no in my book. Headhunters don't care how much money you make, only how much you can make them.They tend to like to leech the maximum amounts possible both from you and from the company you are sent to work for "for them." The really pathetic thing is most headhunters/recruiters don't even know what they're talking about tech-wise. Sure, they may have some smooth telephone skills, but that's about it. The most laughable one called me up to ask if I knew what RHEL stood for.The constant barrage of calls and such from them should tell you: (a) that there are more leeches like them than there are people like you and (b) that your time and talent are potentially valuable to somebody somewhere, but that various obstacles exist in your line of communication.Maybe I'm just a stickler for efficiencies, but seriously. Putting yourself behind a "brick wall" (IT staffing/headhunter) even if the company you want to work for is indeed on the other side of that brick wall can be really frustrating. It's especially frustrating when you have to re-arrange that brick wall every time, just to get anything done.One more thing to note: The fact that this "startup" is already utilizing a headhunter firm would worry me if I were you. Usually companies don't tend to need to pawn off hiring duties until they're unable to handle hiring on their own: this can be an early warning sign.I don't know if I can speak for the group, but I think most of us here on HN value our independence and as someone earlier mentioned "being stuck" anywhere just doesn't factor into the equation.P.S. I'm sorry, but it's not a "valuable service" when it's something that anybody can easily do on their own. MBA Rule #1: managers should not ask others to do something they can do themselves; this includes searching for, seeking out and talking to potential employees _directly_. |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | goofygrin: Early in my career I used headhunters to find a job simply because they either had a connection in the company and could circumvent some processing or because they were on "approved vendor" lists (bigger companies).10+ years later, whenever I need work, I never call a recruiter. My first calls/emails/IMs are to my network. They are infinitely more valuable than any headhunter.At the last startup I worked at, we used both direct hire and firms. I will tell you that there was a LOT more flexibility when going direct. I mean more pay, bonuses, vacation, etc. A recruiter makes a % of your salary. So if the company can pay up to 100k, and the recruiter will get 10% (usually it's more like 20+%) then how much do you think they will be able to pay you? I bet they won't offer more than 91k. If you'd come direct you'd've had more leverage to get that $9k as a bonus or straight salary.That said, I think that you might be too late in the process... |
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter | gruseom: Am I the only one who senses a bit of a red flag in a startup using a recruiter to find their 4th employee? I could be wrong; it's impossible to tell based on next to no information. But it does suggest that they might not be plugged in to the right communities, and/or that they're already afflicted with bureaucratic thinking.Edit: I think I'm probably just being prejudiced here. But I'll leave the comment because I'm curious to know what others think. |
Autoposting script? | aston: I was planning at some vague point in the future to make bots for Techcrunch, PG, PB and xkcd just to take away that way to game karma. I think it'd be a net positive for the community, personally. |
Autoposting script? | rms: Doesn't bother me, except sometimes xkcd isn't on topic. |
Autoposting script? | henning: It's clear now that many people have thought of or implemented autosubmitter bots. This could get ugly.Maybe there should be a News.YC spinoff exclusively devoted to karma-bot wars so that human users don't have to witness the carnage on the front page. |
Autoposting script? | tgdavies: What's the point of copying every article of anything which has its own RSS feed to news.yc?Anyone who wants to see every xkcd will already have the RSS feed in their reader. Posting it here is just noise. |
Autoposting script? | dcurtis: This is a terrible, horrible idea, and I think you should turn off your autosubmitting script.I think users should only submit things they personally think are awesome and would interest other people.Autoposting scripts remove the human element of "sharing links" which is what this site was built on. |
Autoposting script? | Tichy: Is really every XKCD cartoon appearing on HN? I don't subscribe to xkcd, and I was hoping only a few actually get posted here.The "problem" of bots and news sites is an interesting one, though. But why not experiment on Reddit, rather than HN? |
Autoposting script? | jgrahamc: Don't do that.If the community wants everything from a particular site submitted then let's ask PG to scrape their RSS feed.I'm sometimes tempted to post everything from my blog, but I look at things and decide whether I think the community here will be interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150865 |
Autoposting script? | ericb: Blind submission removes the implicit "I thought this was valuable" filter and decreases the signal-to-noise ratio. |
Autoposting script? | bkrausz: Ok, by overwhelming majority the script is down.Just don't flame me if I (as a human) post an xkcd that I actually find relevant :) |
Why should I use OpenID? | ivankirigin: Alternative question: why shouldn't I use OpenID?What are the common concerns, and which are valid/invalid? |
Why should I use OpenID? | sjs382: It's good business to be friendly to your users. Also, for people who already use OpenID, having OpenID on your site lowers the barrier for entry. |
Why should I use OpenID? | marrone: Well it is not too difficult to implement and it can speed up the registration flow for new users, which should always be a good thing.OpenID is still getting better though. Yahoo! just became an OpenID provider which should help it catch on. And the ClickPass guys have built a great tool on top of it as well. So it looks right now like OpenID will survive and become better in time and perhaps achieve the goal of replacing the registration flow.So while you say it is not the cure right now, I think that if you give it enough time it possibly could become one. |
Why should I use OpenID? | simonw: OpenID is not a replacement for your users table. The first time someone logs in with an OpenID you haven't seen before, there's nothing to stop you from asking them for their e-mail address (you can even send them a challenge e-mail if you want to be sure). All OpenID really does is provides your users with an alternative to setting up Yet Another username and password just for your site. It also lets people opt-in to correlate their accounts across multiple services, which is useful for both you and for them.If OpenID meant giving up the user database (the crown jewels of any site) it wouldn't have a chance of being adopted by anyone. |
Why should I use OpenID? | CPops: What percentage of non-techies has even heard of OpenID?What is important to the computer world is different from what most of the rest of the world values.For me, the ultimate answer would depend on how computer-savvy my intended audience is and how much extra effort is necessary to support it. |
Why should I use OpenID? | lizherring: It would've been nice if OpenID provided a way for Web sites to contact users without knowing their email address. This way, the Web site owner will not to put up an annoying page asking for an email address, and the user has control over who's allowed to contact them through their settings with their OpenID provider.Facebook is hopeing to be such provider and they're giving these nice features. There are a few Web sites that allow you to login to using your Facebook cridentials, and by doing so they can email you without knowing your email address. And, Facebook allows you to optout at any time and they also measure how many people opt out and put a cap on the offending Web sites if they start to spam people. It's a nice system, except for the vendor lockin part. |
Why should I use OpenID? | alex_c: For those who have already added OpenID support, or something like Clickpass - what is the adoption rate like? How many people use it versus the traditional login?I would be surprised if it's as high as 10% even for a tech-savvy site like News.YC, but I'm not basing that on any facts. Am I way off? |
Why should I use OpenID? | rshao: You would just have to assess your target audience and decide whether the cost of developing support for OpenID are outweighed by the benefits of allowing a portion of your users the convenience.I see little reason to implement it if your most of your users will be unaware of it. On the other hand though, having the support for it (and similar providers) may help you attract those users who do use them. If you do implement support though, make sure it doesn't obfuscate your registration and login processes. |
Why should I use OpenID? | brlewis: As a web site owner, I've always seen openid as a nice thing to have. It was #40 on my list. Then clickpass showed up and it moved to #3. Last week I implemented it. I integrate with disqus. Log in to either disqus or ourdoings via clickpass and logging into the other site is just 1 click. It's very slick. If people do adopt clickpass they'll be reminded that I'm one of "your sites" and come back. |
Why should I use OpenID? | art_wells: To re-emphasize/clarify previous statements, OpenID doesn't require visitors to know about OpenID. A website can offer a registration/login process that requires nothing more than the visitor's AIM screen name, or livejournal account. (See example http://nshrine.com/u/registerhere.html )This not only eases the yet-another-name-and-password problem, but it also allows services complimentary to existing services to ease information sharing. For instance, OpenSocial functionality will be a breeze if accounts are already using an OpenSocial provider's OpenID. |
Why should I use OpenID? | jlam: As a website owner, OpenID nets your site security. Most people reuse the same small set of usernames and passwords. A not-so-small number of sites store cleartext passwords; they can even mail it back to you. Regardless how well you execute security, a breach at any of these sites compromises security across many user accounts across many sites.Several weeks ago a Web 2.0 company launched a Gmail backup app that asked for addresses and passwords, which at least 1777 unwitting folks provided. In addition to backing up Gmail as expected, the app also socked away the address and password combo. When the scheme was exposed, the company said debugging code inadvertently made it to production. http://codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.htmlI can see scenarios where the government may be the least of our worries. Much more likely are significant others' jealous exes who are also system administrators, and other real or potential enemies. The sooner we move away from passwords and other shared-secret systems, the safer we'll be. |
Why should I use OpenID? | jlam: The reliably thoughtful Chris Messina just posted on the benefits and costs of OpenID, partly in response to a decision by linkmarking site http://Ma.gnolia.com to stop accepting traditional address and password registrations in favor of OpenID only. http://FactoryJoe.com/blog/2008/03/30/magnolia-moves-to-open...In the cat and mouse game between site owners and spammers, data on recent Ma.gnolia registrations showed an overwhelming number of spammers have begun using automated tools to proxy Captcha and create traditional address and password logins. For now, OpenID encumbers them by requiring presumably more valuable credentials. |
Why should I use OpenID? | brlewis: Given all the well-thought-out objections on this thread, I've decided to back out of the OpenID support I recently implemented. Details here:http://ourdoings.com/2008-04-01 |
Why should I use OpenID? | sabat: Good question! I mean that in the sense that I also have wondered about what I should do.From what I've read and researched (based on the answers here), Clickpass is the best way to go.It's also got PG's support, so it can't be all bad. :-) |
Extraordinary people who have inspired you | rw: In order:Gandhi, Einstein, Alinsky. |
Extraordinary people who have inspired you | airhadoken: Ben Franklin, for me. It seems like it will take the rest of my life to get a full picture of how his mind worked. |
Extraordinary people who have inspired you | euccastro: Agrelo (grade school teacher and cultural agitator)Friggi (ex coworker)NietzscheG. J. SussmanWill WrightDanielle BuntenTim PetersPGNorvig |
Extraordinary people who have inspired you | dcurtis: Warren Buffet, of course.And many, many others. |
Extraordinary people who have inspired you | tjr: Noah Webster. Guy Steele. Bill Cosby. |
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