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lzecon's comments

lzecon | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I be concerned about this job offer?

Even if you have a weak academic and employment background you can ABSOLUTELY get a dev job that won't be designed to fuck you over, like this one is.

You might have to move, you might have to get a (paying) internship (they definitely exist), and you might have to send out some cold emails to people you don't know to ask. But there's no reason you should be waiting tables.

lzecon | 10 years ago | on: BYOT: Bring your own team

This is cool, but to really make this game changing they'd revamp their interview process to interview all members together (or in pairs of 2-3) some people just perform better with their partner and the interview process itself should account for it (if they're assuming that's true).

lzecon | 10 years ago | on: BYOT: Bring your own team

I think (know) many companies actually do this informally all the time. It's fairly common to hire designers in particular this way. Stripe is smart to formally and publically announce a streamlined process. Obviously the whole point here is either everyone or no one gets an offer - honestly if I had to guess the amount of people they actually hire this way will be really small, but making it formal will increase the number of talented people they see total.

lzecon | 10 years ago | on: Renting a Friend in Tokyo

Besides the influx of tech people moving to San Francisco in the last 5-10 years (many of whom disappear in a downswing, ask anyone living in SF for 99-05), I haven't heard or seen anything that suggests the mass adoption of countercultural criticisms have at all influenced social awkwardness or atomization in CA. It's a BIG state.

lzecon | 10 years ago | on: What I Learned From Blowing An Interview

Great post. I've seen feedback from hundreds and hundreds of interviews, both technical and non, and by far the most common reason for rejecting someone is they did not answer the interviewer's question directly.

Speaking in specifics is important, but more broadly, you didn't do well because you didn't actually answer the question asked. People often get tripped up in their explaination of the answer, or their theory or thinking behind it and just forget to say what they actually did.

lzecon | 11 years ago | on: How Airbnb Rewrote Its Recruiting Playbook

Your experience (and others like it) is the reason Airbnb decided to redo recruiting from the ground up. Almost the entire recruiting team has been hired in the last 2.5 years. Clearly it needed to happen.

lzecon | 11 years ago | on: Diversity and Startups

HR for startups wouldn't and shouldn't be like HR for big companies. It doesn't have to slow a company down at all, and it's definitely a function that can enhance a company culture in really positive ways without dampening it.

However, if you think sexual harassment doesn't happen in small startups, you're not paying attention. At the end of the day, HR is a mediator for the company to protect it from lawsuits. HR can stop a little issue from turning into a big, expensive issue, which is positive for both the company and employees.

lzecon | 11 years ago | on: New Venture Capital Fund Gives Entrepreneurs a Cut of the Profit

That's a good point and honestly, that kind of sucks for early employees, but it's not going to affect whether or not a founder decides to take money from this fund or if it's successful.

Early employees at many successful startups have a long, accomplished history of getting royally screwed over on their equity to work ratio. In my experience, I've seen how that can build into real resentment over time, but of course they can't leave until they've vested, so they're just stuck doing all the work and getting compensated well, but no where close to they might deserve or what the founders end up with.

Employees, early or not, have absolutely zero input into what investments founders decide to take. It's also possible that employees may join before a start-up gets an investment from this fund, making the (potential) screwed-overness even worse. Employees can get as mad about this as they want, but they'll have pretty much zero recourse in any situation.

lzecon | 11 years ago | on: Startup advice: cold recruiting

Totally agree. Reputation is the most important factor in response rates. Not to say this isn't a good approach to cold emails, but expecting anyone but the CEO of Stripe to get a 90% response rate using this template is kidding themselves. It's frustrating for recruiters because this is obviously something they have little control over, but pretty much the most important factor in their job success.

lzecon | 11 years ago | on: Startup advice: cold recruiting

It's totally company's fault in that case, although not the recruiter's. If you get contacted by a company who previously gave you an offer, that means the company isn't investing their recruiting function by taking the simple step of buying a decent applicant tracking system. There's poor communication between the executives and the people they hire or contract, and they have zero HR.
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