How I got a job at Stack Overflow

http://blog.mattjibson.com/2012/04/How-I-got-a-job-at-Stack-Overflow-8

by mjibson • 14 years ago

128 60 14 years ago

blog.mattjibson.com

maz29• 14 years ago

Thoughtful story. Its posts like these that keep me going and give me the motivation to pursue my outlandish ideas.

I'm glad to hear this worked-out in the end for you. I got my current job through SO Careers as well. Of the firms I applied to on there, most asked me for an interview, and most of those were pretty good companies. The one I chose in the end was love at first sight. And they too told me during the on-site they were going to make an offer. I've been happy ever since.

prophetjohn4• 14 years ago

How did you go about coordinating the move to New York? I'm strongly considering moving to Brooklyn when I graduate in December, but the logistics of getting there and finding an apartment seems pretty difficult. I don't know if I should field offers first or just have 10 grand in the bank and head there unemployed to look for a job.

memset2• 14 years ago

Lots of people decide to just pick up and move to NY, but I myself wanted to have a job in hand first. Maybe it isn't true in tech, but I know lots of folks who "just moved to NY," worked at a restaurant for a couple of years, and ended up moving back home. All depends on your risk tolerance and confidence in being able to find gainful employment!

I was so eager to leave my previous gig that I stayed at a youth hostel for the first two weeks while working and finding an apartment.

It was hard, but not completely unmanageable. The biggest blocker for me were price expectations; I had a 600 ft^2 1br for $650/month in NC, whereas I'm paying $850/month for a 4br share in Harlem. If you decide to live in Williamsburg (or a 'nice' part of Brooklyn) then you'll pay a lot more; $1500-$2000 per month in rent is fairly common for a newly-minted young professional who's decided that they want to live in a shoebox in midtown.

prophetjohn4• 14 years ago

Yeah, the rent is definitely (too damn) high. I've also considered western Queens (LIC, Astoria, Sunnyside). But I don't think I could share an apartment several people I don't know, so I'm preparing myself to pay something in the $1500 range.

I think my best idea so far is to just find a 1-month arrangement on AirBnB where I can get settled to find a job and apartment.

Michiel• 14 years ago

I live in Europe and I pay €250 in rent. So I can't relate to this at all. How much of your salary goes into rent if you pay $1500 and you're a senior web developer in NYC?

cletus• 14 years ago

Let me help you with this.

New York can be a very expensive place to live. It can also be a cheap place to live. 10 grand, done right, will last you a long time in New York.

My advice would be:

- If you have a car, get rid of it. Do not, under any circumstances, bring it to the city. This alone will save you a ton of grief (parking, tickets, rules about which side of the street you can park on and when and so on) and money (insurance in the city I believe is higher) and you simply don't need it;

- Get rid of your stuff. You need a suitcase of clothes, a computer and, well, that's about it. The more of the rest you can get rid of the better;

- There are decent parks of Brooklyn and Queens you can find a room for $1000/month or less. Ideally you want to find a room and not sign a lease right away. It's more flexible;

- You can live out of the city and commute in for job interviews. This will save even more money.

I live in New York and love it. New York is the kind of place where attitude matters. You have to decide to like it. If you do you'll love all the great things: the energy, the proximity, things going on, etc. If you decide to hate it you'll notice the bad things.

Good luck.

prophetjohn4• 14 years ago

    If you have a car, get rid of it. Do not, under any circumstances, bring it to the city.

Ah, I have a small truck and wanted to drive it there, so I could bring my bed, and then sell it when I get there. I guess I need to decide if I can sell a small truck in the Austin area for enough more than in New York to cover the cost of a new bed.

benihana• 14 years ago

>Get rid of your stuff. You need a suitcase of clothes, a computer and, well, that's about it. The more of the rest you can get rid of the better;

Don't deal with the hassle of selling it on craigslist, just take it all to Goodwill and make a large tax deductible charitable donation.

wahnfrieden• 14 years ago

Just one tip about finding rooms on Craigslist. Listings usually get ~50 responses within the first couple hours of going up, so there's fierce competition. What this means is you'll need to stand out somehow as a good choice in the email, but primarily that you'll need to respond to them as soon as possible after they go up. So prioritize brand new entries over ones that look nicer but are a couple days old.

Try to line up a ton of them because most are going to "interview" a bunch of people and choose one among them.

mjibson2• 14 years ago

I stayed with friends in Princeton for the first week (~1.5 hour commute into the city), and hired a broker to find me a place. Stack Exchange has a nice relocation package that made this quite affordable.

Also, I only took clothes, a computer, and my desk chair with me. I was able to fit all of my stuff into my car and just go. Now that car is parked at my friend's place, and I'm considering selling it.

mwsherman3• 14 years ago

Coming here unemployed is not without risk. How good a programmer do you think you are?

If you feel like you can demonstrate skills, then once you get here you can go to tech meetups and let people know you are looking. You'll get interest.

prophetjohn4• 14 years ago

I'm confident that I'm good enough to land a job in this market. Beyond that, it's hard to say. As the least experienced developer on my team, I feel like I'm able to consistently contribute at a level beyond what's expected of me. I coast through most programming-intensive courses at my university.

My goal over the summer is to make significant contributions to open source, which I just don't have time for now with my schedule. Going to meetups is a very good idea. Is there a good way to find out about these other than just Googling "ruby meetup nyc"?

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

You're definitely piling on extra risk by moving before finding a job. But after someone else mentioned that relocation might count against you to a potential employer, maybe the added risk isn't that significant.

I'm also planning to relocate - to London, ASAP - and I'm looking for the job before I make the move. I've been lucky enough to find one or two very exciting opportunities that offer relocation, but with that aside, it's not an easy thing to co-ordinate.

mythz• 14 years ago

We also liked Matt's Open Source stuff, he hacked on just cause he wanted to learn (keen, winning attitude :) - https://github.com/mjibson

mwsherman3• 14 years ago

Also notable is that Matt had no experience with our particular technology stack. He won us over with problem solving skills and curiosity.

JasonPunyon• 14 years ago

Word. Jibby is awesome and I'm glad to have him on the team.

jtheory2• 14 years ago

Neat followup: ask the companies who declined for a little insight.

Particularly now that you've found a position and they know you're not going to argue with them about their conclusions (that'd be my worry, as the interviewer, if someone was asking this kind of question), many of the interviewers might be able to shed some light on that decision.

There might have been cultural differences (though that's sometimes really hard to gauge in a short time...), or maybe random errors you made that concerned them (but nervous people make odd mistakes...), or they may have found another good developer who didn't need to relocate (the need to relocate probably would count against you by default, even though you were dying to move).

If this is possible, I'd be curious to hear what they say.

irahul2• 14 years ago

> Neat followup: ask the companies who declined for a little insight.

The main reason you aren't going to be getting any answers is anything the companies say can be extrapolated to prove discrimination. No one is going to invite lawsuits by giving you constructive feedback. The reasoning that you already have a position doesn't matter.

kiba• 14 years ago

Maybe they should able to do that to anybody. Nobody wants to work for racists, assholes, or sexists.

gnosis2• 14 years ago

"The main reason you aren't going to be getting any answers is anything the companies say can be extrapolated to prove discrimination."

That might be part of it. Another part of it is that many people are loathe to criticize anyone, and would find it uncomfortable to give a negative, but honest evaluation of someone to their face (or even through email).

Another reason for not giving evaluations to rejected applicants is that people are busy, and feel like their own time would be wasted for the benefit of someone who's not a part of their company.

A related reason is that the employers feel it would not benefit them in any way to give a rejected applicant an evaluation. It would only benefit the applicant.

Finally, I think a lot of people just don't really care much about others. This goes double for people who they barely know, have no business relationship with, and will probably never see or hear from again.

gutnor• 14 years ago

Here in the UK they do it all the time. If you use a (good) agent, you get feedback on what the company liked/disliked during the interview and why they declined. Help you prepare for the next interview (if you gave a wrong impression).

Estragon• 14 years ago

What are the laws and/or precedents which establish the risks you're claiming here? Why does giving a candidate general feedback on their interview presentation expose a company to accusations of discrimination?

I have received straight-up feedback on job applications in the past, so I don't think every employer sees it the way you do.

zorlem3• 14 years ago

One of the possible reasons it took the companies two or more weeks to give a negative answer to Matt (OP) would be that usually the candidates are "ordered" by preference. When you get several strong candidates you propose to the one you consider the best fit (culturally, as specific strengths needed for the team, or professional abilities). Unfortunately, after you make the offer it usually takes some time for the person to consider the conditions you propose (salary, equity, bonuses, perks, etc.). One has to keep in mind that there is additional time involved in signing the contract. During this time it's a tough call closing the door on the other strong candidates in the backlog. Because of this, if you're not the primary candidate it could take some time before they give you a "no" or make you an offer, if the negotiations with the alpha candidate fell through.

That's an unfortunate side effect of trying to recruit the best talent. On the one occasion I had to interview and select candidates I informed two of the people that I liked that there is another candidate that we're currently talking with, but if the things don't work out with him I might get back to them in the next 15 days after the interview. Luckily we managed to reach an agreement with the guy that I considered the best fit, so I called the backups and told them that $COMPANY will not be able to hire them. They sounded grateful for the extra information and not being kept in the dark, but I'm still not 100% sure that it was the best decision, given the circumstances. What would have happened if I had to call one of the guys and tell them that we didn't reach an agreement with the primary candidate?

Have any of you guys and girls handled and solved this problem?

kjleftin2• 14 years ago

"I figured getting a job at Stack Exchange is at least as difficult at getting a job at Google (to which I did not apply, because I thought I wasn't smart enough)"

As a Google engineer who has spent lots of time interviewing and recruiting, this is an attitude that potential candidates need to get over. Google's a software company that will ask you software questions during the interview. There's no magic aptitude test. There are no riddles. Just read Steve Yegge's great blog post on interview preparation and apply! (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...). If you can code and solve problems, you might get hired.

mjibson2• 14 years ago

I came to this same conclusion. Knowing what I know now, I would have applied to Google.

mkopinsky3• 14 years ago

As someone who can code well but has never taken a formal data structures/algorithms course, I have so far assumed that I wouldn't be able to pass a Google interview which, from what I've heard, tend to be pretty algorithm-focused. (Once I get around to taking an algorithms course, this will change, of course.) Do you think I'm wrong in that assumption?

bartonfink• 14 years ago

Note that I do not work for Google and have never even applied. I have no knowledge of their interviewing process and can only speak to my own experiences and prejudices.

I can't say that you wouldn't pass a Google interview, but right now, you likely wouldn't pass an interview I gave without knowledge of data structures. Algorithms are problem-specific, but data structures (arrays/lists, trees, hashtables, graphs) are universal. If you get your data structured properly, in many cases it's of trivial importance which algorithm you use to operate on that data. I don't care about big-O performance beyond a back-of-the-envelope calculation. I don't care about someone knowing the ins-and-outs of A* search, but I do care if they've never heard of a graph. I care very much if I'm going to have to explain to you the difference between a hashtable and a list (as I did on Friday to one of our front-end engineers who thought he'd do some work on our API...).It's not a difficult gap in knowledge to fill, but it's an important one.

Aftershock21• 14 years ago

I interviewed at Google 5 years ago, and they asked me tons of puzzles and math questions (game theory and theorem proving!!). I was being interviewed for a programming job. Looks like the process has changed.

exim• 14 years ago

While Joel's articles are interesting and, as a user, I like their products, from an outsider's point of view, I have an impression that their internal engineering is, as we call it - "yet another CRUD job", but "packed" in a shiny way.

It would be great to hear insider opinions.

lazerwalker• 14 years ago

"Let's compare: the first three declined offers took two weeks to respond to me. Stack Exchange took two minutes."

I was job-hunting recently (also looking to move to NYC, no less), and experienced a similar phenomenon: a few of the places I interviewed seemed like they were good matches (smart people working on cool things, my interviews went fairly well), but they took weeks to respond to anything. The team I ended up joining made me an offer less than a day after my on-site interview.

kylec• 14 years ago

Indeed. I, too, was recently job hunting and accepted a job offer a few days ago. I had met the hiring manager before so I was automatically moved along to the phone interview step once I expressed interest in the position, and I had an on-site interview followed by a job offer just over a week later. Because it was generous, I decided to immediately accept.

Meanwhile, other companies I had submitted stuff to around the same time were just getting around to asking me to do phone interviews, and I had to tell them that I had already accepted an offer at another company. It's possible that I would have liked some of these companies even more than the one I'm going to be working at, or their offers might have been even more generous, but they missed out because they didn't act quickly enough.

arupchak• 14 years ago

Smart companies understand that good candidates are rarely on the job market for more than a few weeks (if at all). The recruiting speed of a company is usually indicative of their overall speed.

msutherl• 14 years ago

Similar thing happened to me. Applied for a few jobs in NYC. Nobody got back to me except for my dream company, who made me an offer shortly after a single phone interview. Shows that good employers are looking for people who are passionate about their product above anything else.

rpicard• 14 years ago

I started an internship at what I'd consider a "dream company" a little over a month ago. I found that technical experience really isn't the most important thing (I'm a freshman in college without a ton of previous experience) as well. It seems to me that unless you're talking about a real computer science job (e.g. advanced algorithms), if you have the fundamentals of programming down you can learn the details of what you'll be doing on the job. I don't have enough experience to judge how broadly that applies but it has been the case for me. You can see my submissions to read about how I got my internship (not sure of the etiquette for posting your own link).

Great post!

jesseclay• 14 years ago

Awesome article. Nicely written and engaging!

biller• 14 years ago

I mean almost any city in better than NYC. Nice article but it sucks that you're now living with such a low std of living.

appleaintbad• 14 years ago

I have a lot of respect for Joel and Fog Creek, and those that work for them. Good job getting a position there. That said though, if I were working for Joel, I'd not be writing blog posts about getting a job, I'd be doing my job.

jackmaney• 14 years ago

Thank you for sharing these lessons. It's good to know that you can get a job at an awesome company without being a God/dess of Software Engineering that spoke in bits before the universe made its way out of the dark, lifeless void...

lhnz• 14 years ago

This guy's passion and love for the product are worthy replacements of any rockstar technical ability.

How I got a job at Stack Overflow

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