Agreed entirely. I only meant that when you choose do work harder than you have to, the necessary trade off is that you're sacrificing time with other people you love.
A typical dev could probably work 60% of a normal schedule and afford a comfortable life for their family. You could go home at 1pm every day and that'd be fun, but you can also sacrifice a bit of that and make change.
Sorry guys, I know the typography needs works. The orange-on-grey is tough on my color-blind eyes. We've been stretched thin getting ready for this conf (CodeMash) and launching Hungry Academy.
Thanks Allan, I hope people get excited about this.
I really believe there's going to be a kid out there with some junky computer, a dial-up net connection, who participates in what we're doing and becomes a developer. If one of those makes it, then it's worth it.
Maybe a library with a webcam-equipped computer? Friend with a camera phone? Volunteer somewhere for a few hours in exchange for using their equipment?
Yep, that's my understanding -- it's basically "we spent $xx,xxx training you, then you left. We think you owe us $yy,yyy."
That being said, it's a company of humans. What good is a developer who's shackled to their desk while a spouse is distressed in another state? None. There will be a way to work it out. We want you to be happy and great at building software, not imprisoned.
One big motivation for the video is that it's much harder to fake. It's easy to have my friend write some BS essay for me and submit it for a job, it's a lot harder to do it on camera.
Effective development teams are powered by communication in code, writing, and face-to-face. To be a really excellent candidate, we need all three.
If face-to-face is something people feel uncomfortable with, there are still SO MANY great opportunities to be a developer -- they're just not the right fit for our team.
I don't think they're common, at least not in the dev world. One of my training clients runs a six month "get familiar with the company" program where new hires do different jobs -- it's the same spirit but totally different intensity. Theirs is like "hey, it's better than an intership" and ours is like "this is more valuable than college. Work hard, learn hard."
I expect there will be many "technology switcher" applicants and am working to have diverse skill sets represented -- including those of us who've been developing for awhile.
I would say do the Gist essay, and at the close of the essay say "And I'm getting started with programming, here's a Github repo".
That way you'd get past the person who's checking "Did this applicant follow the directions (submitting only two URLs)?" But we can (likely) check out the code during the in-depth review.
The LivingSocial in house team knocked it out in a couple hours -- they're crazy good. I couldn't believe we used "found light" in a hallway and had respectable results.
You should probably talk straight to the HR people who have all the expertise/knowledge about these things. Email them at hungryacademy at livingsocial dot com.
This detail is still under discussion, but I anticipate people will fan out to some of the other LivingSocial offices like Seattle, Boulder, or other up-and-coming spots.
It's unlikely that you could remote from home / some other place because we want to keep the in-person mentorships alive.
The program is onsite-only and the content is directed by what you need for the LivingSocial engineering team, which means Ruby, Rails, and many other related technologies. Sorry!
A typical dev could probably work 60% of a normal schedule and afford a comfortable life for their family. You could go home at 1pm every day and that'd be fun, but you can also sacrifice a bit of that and make change.
IMO, life without friends and family is wasted.