Reddit is hiring

http://blog.reddit.com/2010/08/reddit-is-hiring.html

by jedberg • 16 years ago

27 38 16 years ago

blog.reddit.com

wihon• 16 years ago

That is one damn cool application process!

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Let's hope they don't need to do a DNS update or they're going to have to allow multiple 'good' answers.

Very funny way of weeding out the non-coders. I also hope it will stay secret long enough and that the reddit repository can handle the traffic ;)

StavrosK3• 16 years ago

You don't have to check out the repo (I didn't). It takes five minutes or so to solve, so it's not that time-consuming if you are at least a bit technical.

eru• 16 years ago

Yes, you can just use the alternative clue for that.

wwortiz• 16 years ago

I had no idea what the hell the \a character was, I do now, so I just checked out the repo (only 19M).

But I'm glad they gave a way to check if you got it right without applying.

jedberg5• 16 years ago

Or we just update it so it evals to the same answer. :)

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Interesting sub-problem, work out how many possible combinations there are given that SOA serial numbers have to be monotonically increasing and you need the same number of '1' bits in them.

Hey, there is actually a slight ambiguity in the specification there, after all you could be referring to the serial number as used in the DNS or the ascii characters representing that serial number in the record.

Those would have different numbers of '1' bits. Are there two valid solutions or just one?

tptacek8• 16 years ago

I don't know why they gave away the \a clue; you'd think they'd want to select for people who want the job bad enough to actually have a Reddit checkout.

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Two out of the four terms are things that a seasoned programmer would know by heart, one selects for either IBM mainframe programmers or people that know how to use git, the first is an easy lookup.

All in all not that much of a stumbling block for anybody determined enough, but I think it will drastically cut down on the number of unusable applicants as long as the answer isn't leaked.

Alternatively they could leak a false answer themselves and disqualify anybody that sent mail to the false answer.

aresant2• 16 years ago

I'm a fan of Reddit, I think working there could be a smart resume / connection building move, but:

a) You work as a contractor, are not guaranteed to be hired as an employee anytime soon, receive no benefits and no stock.

b) The company has already been acquired.

c) Reddit's corporate overlords seem most interested in pumping the asset vs. expanding, may be a stifling environment.

If it was me I'd do the app but send it instead to Hipmunk (Reddit co-founder's new start-up)

jedberg5• 16 years ago

This is all true. reddit is a great place to work if you want to learn a lot, get some great experience, and have a really strong influence on the product. But it is not a startup -- there is no big upside.

And I don't think Hipmunk is hiring yet. :)

aresant2• 16 years ago

It's funny, still hard for me to think of Reddit as not a start-up, but I guess I'm running at least two years behind - http://blog.reddit.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html - :)

Appreciate your response - hope you guys find somebody great and certainly HN is the right place to start.

akkartik• 16 years ago

I met the reddit guys for breakfast one day maybe six months ago. I had left my job, been hacking on a website for several months, launched. I was trying to show it to someone new in person everyday. I was trying for all sorts of people.

By the time we finished breakfast, I blurted out, "So, y'all hiring?" They're just that cool.

It doesn't always have to be a startup.

sanswork• 16 years ago

I think one of the better upsides is the chance for people to work at scale with a small team where they still have a lot of influence.

I'm in the same position currently and it certainly adds a ton of value to the work.

Plus maybe it would teach some of the armchair scaling experts why they are almost always wrong about what they "know" is a simple solution.

tptacek8• 16 years ago

They are going to get flooded with job apps because they have a community of geek users who love them. It's actually another reason not to apply; supply/demand works in your favor right now almost everywhere else but at Reddit.

Kind of the same reason you don't want to work for a game company.

jedberg5• 16 years ago

That's a silly reason not to apply. If anything, you can feel good knowing that you beat the crowd.

spocksynder• 16 years ago

Did anybody get a reply from reddit if you sent an email to the solution? I am wondering how long should I wait to be vindicated.

By the way, to get around the problem of slow, asynchronous bounce for the wrong solution address, I connected over SMTP to see if the answer email address(recipient) is valid or not for reddit.com. You can probably use that as a quicker test to validate if you have the right answer.

jedberg5• 16 years ago

I've been replying as quickly as I can. If you said anything that requires more than "Yep, you got it" it'll take a little longer.

studer2• 16 years ago

If you made a serious attempt to solve the problem, and got three alpha-numeric characters followed by a null byte, I'd say you're pretty much guaranteed to have the right answer.

If you want to triple-check, I registered an HN user with that name at about the same time jedberg submitted this entry. Don't want to spoil his fun, though, so I'm not going to post anything with that name just yet :-)

Reddit is hiring

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