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7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

from the article >>> "In other words, the agency of the government in charge of bulk buying isn’t paid for saving money, but for spending too much of it. The IFF also incentivizes the GSA to get the government to outsource to contractors anything it can, simply to get more budget. The IFF has been creating problems like the McKinsey over-payment for a long time."

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

this post was obviously just satire. but, just so we're clear, Paul graham's article on this concept unequivocally says this is NOT how you build a start up.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

After 10 years, you will definately notice a huge difference in reliability between a BMW and a Toyota.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

yes, the masses just want signalling, that's why individual car models are not given their own model names. car manufacturers are just emphasizing their brands.

But the true enthusiasts don't care much for signalling or Brands but prefer the visual styling and the capabilities of the car.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It's way too easy to overspend on a car (almost any new car), that's definately true.

But, I think he meant in terms of car capabilities: features and amenities. They all have decent acceleration, AC, heating, windshield wipers, electric windows, defrosters and hundreds of other features, even on some of the cheapest cars (new cars). car capabilities are far greater than most people will ever use.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

If they're highering engineers at "20% above Facebook compensation", it really doesn't make sense. In china they could higher roughly 15 top engineers for the price of 1 engineer in the bay area (in China there's an even bigger surplus of engineering talent).

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful! There are so many terrible APIs out there that waste so much time needlessly.

Then I found stripe. What a treat. Everything was documented and the documentation itself was both readable and didn't go in endless circles like the paypal ones. The error messages were helpful. And every api endpoint had an example, which is hugely helpful: HUGELY! All the other API developers out there can learn from this: you can't underestimate the value of having a working example. Not only that but the testing is much easier in stripe, and there's no need for a bunch of seperate accounts and sandboxes that don't make sense.

Oh and did I mention that the variables describe themselves: the first 3 or 4 letter of an ID says what it is (subscription or etc). Genius! It's little things like this which make Stripe stand out orders of magnitude above the rest of all the APIs in the world.

I hope you guys rule the marketplace for payment processing and wish you all the success you deserve.

Stripe's success in payment processing sends a clear signal to the Paypals and API developers of world: If you're producing an API that sucks, it creates an opportunity for someone else to come eat your lunch. :)

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

working in the bay area i've never met any software enginer like that, senior or otherwise.

What cities/type of companies to you find "senior" engineers who struggle with basic technical concepts?

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Believe me I know. They'll never be able to fill those 11$/hour roles without paying more. That's why local inflation is so high. Anything service related becomes increasingly expensive (child care, plumbing, etc). Child care costs 1800$/mo around here vs 600$/mo in other big cities more affordable. the cost of housing raises the eventual total COL

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

There's strong demand for software engineers now. We can enjoy it while it lasts. But, if you look at some of the latest dev surveys, you'll see there's a ton of fresh talent entering the work force and it's only a matter of time before they become mid-level and senior (5-10 years). At that point, the supply of engineers will far exceed the demand and the same thing will happen to engineers as any other white collar profession.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

The thing is, there's plenty of blue collar waitress/waiter/cook style jobs. Here in the bay area almost every cafe and restaurant has a now hiring sign. But, white collar jobs that require degrees are exceedingly rare. amongst my MBA friends (producers, managers, analysts, etc), their facing an unemployment rate of over 30%!

What this indicates is a vast oversupply of workers with degrees. We've just got too many people running around with degrees and not enough blue collar workers.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It was inevitable, that eventually we would end up with an oversupply of Software engineers. I think we're now getting to that point. No one likes getting rejected, but, when you have too many applicants and not enough jobs, rejections are going to happen more frequently regardless of what interview process you use.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Someone who's been writing code professionally at a software company (especially google or twitter), definitely has at least a moderate if not high level of proficiency in software engineering.

if these highly competent people can't answer your questions, you really need to take a second look at your Questions.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

one of the bad reasons for bad hiring practices I've seen is that hiring managers throw engineers into interviewing situations a bit too unprepared, often times with very little interview training/experience.

There needs to be a interview training/mentoring period where you have engineers sit in on interviews to learn how and what questions to ask but without actually having veto/accept power. this allows them to get experience without screwing up the whole interview process.

Most inexperience engineer interviewers think you get the best candidates by having the highest reject rate, and that's simply not true. Only interviewing experience and training can improve this.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

has anyone else here gotten the situation where you get a couple of job offers, but get rejected by the company/position for whom you felt you were the best fit for?

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> And I mean that literally: they're at a loss at how to write a function that adds two numbers or counts the number of elements in a list.

Seriously, Where are you finding these candidates? seriously.

I've worked at a number of mid-sized companies, and interviewed dozens of candidates, and I have never, ever, ever come across a candidate that couldn't write code on this level: "write a function that adds two numbers or counts the number of elements in a list".

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

must be nice getting so much traffic that it brings your server down. Geez.