VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/500friendsinc/vp-of-engineering/cWzS0cMM0r4OrNeJe4egig?detail=HackerNews&remail=&rfirst=&rlast=&sid=161

by polemic • 13 years ago

116 131 13 years ago

jobscore.com

chetanahuja3• 13 years ago

Yeah obviously. Who wants to hire gross old people in their shiny new startup.

switch33• 13 years ago

Lol, this is probably the reasoning.

muench2• 13 years ago

Agile is only 12 years old [1], so it might be related to the old programmer joke about HR posting job ads that require 'x' years experience with 'y' year-old tech, for some x > y.

But that's grasping at straws, and if that is the intention it's a really unfortunate way of putting it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

* edited to address the < / > mistake MaysonL pointed out. Thanks!

fingerprinter3• 13 years ago

"agile methodologies" are certainly not only 12 years old. The Agile Manifesto coined the phrase "agile" in 2001 (read your link wikipedia page), but the ideas were around long, long before this.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

The joke is actually only funny for x > y ;-)

justinY17• 13 years ago

500friends founder/CEO here. Look at my team - 500friends.com/team. Most people are who you may consider to be "old." And we wouldn't be where we're at without them. We do not discriminate against age.

freework• 13 years ago

This company has been looking for a VP of Engineering since at least last summer. I applied for this position back then. They got back to me with a ridiculous busy-work problem they wanted me to solve. I forgot then about them.

justinY17• 13 years ago

It has been no longer than 3 months...

hga3• 13 years ago

That's worse, it means you're running through them rather quickly....

tjbiddle2• 13 years ago

The only reasoning I can come up with that could possibly support this is maybe they have the idea in mind that those with more than 12 years experience would be less able to adapt to newer ways of thinking?

Jailbird• 13 years ago

That counts as ageist for me.

JshWright• 13 years ago

It likely does for the law as well.

tjbiddle2• 13 years ago

And I don't disagree - It's just the only thing I can possibly come up with to make sense of it.

nilkn• 13 years ago

Maybe they assume someone with 12+ years of experience would demand a higher salary than they can offer? They might identify such a candidate with a C-level position like CTO more than a VP position. I don't really know; I'm just trying to come up with a non-ageist explanation.

It might not be any different from how someone with 5+ years of experience normally wouldn't be considered for junior roles.

Or it might just be ageist.

rhizome5• 13 years ago

So...put a top salary number in the ad? If this is a hard question, maybe they should be asking it in their interviews instead of linked-lists.

qnk• 13 years ago

I am not a lawyer, but is this not illegal in the U.S.? Checking The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website[1], it says under the "PROHIBITION OF AGE DISCRIMINATION" section:

  (e) Printing or publication of notice or advertisement indicating preference, limitation, etc.

[1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

clone10182• 13 years ago

Seems like they're breaking the law to me, but it's not completely black and white. In the odd chance it would happen, wouldn't saying "20+ years of experience required", prevent anyone younger then 20 years from joining the company?

dlgeek• 13 years ago

Actually, in the US, discrimination against younger people isn't illegal - it's only illegal to discriminate the other way 'round.

frankc• 13 years ago

It is actually legal to discriminate against young people. It's only illegal to discriminate against people over 40.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

Also, requiring experience is reasonable anyway since its easy to make a case about why it's required to do the work. I'd dying to here what kind of BS hand-waving argument could be constructed for why having too much experience prevents you from doing the work.

frostmatthew3• 13 years ago

I'm not a lawyer but my guess is requiring years of experience isn't discrimination since it would only help, not hurt, the protected class (older workers).

rosser• 13 years ago

They're not putting specific limitations on age, but on experience. I'm pretty sure the latter is as kosher as matzoh.

el_fuser7• 13 years ago

No... It falls under disparate impact.

chetanahuja3• 13 years ago

so you're sayin "no more than 12 years experience" is not a code for "no oldies" ?

KevinEldon5• 13 years ago

Nah, they can say "the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, we were just screening out bogus resumes". Of course anyone submitting shitty resumes, who really wanted the job would just tailor their resume to make it appear that they'd been managing agile teams since the day after the manifesto was published. Probably not illegal.

KevinEldon5• 13 years ago

One way to interpret this is that the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, so although it's possible you managed agile teams before 2001 it's unlikely, or if you've been successfully managing agile teams since before the manifesto and you're interested in a startup... what's wrong w/ you (seriously... if you're crushing it w/ agile for 12 years and now enterprises are all scrum-happy and you aren't making boatloads of cash consulting why are you considering a startup... oh, you're a serial startup guy... that's cool then you won't give a shit about some nonsense in a job posting, you'll work your network to get an interview or contact the founders directly and convince them you're worth talking to... and if you can't do that you're probably not VP material. No?)

One way to respond to this kind of job posting is "fuck that, I'm not going to waste my time w/ that shit".

kyro• 13 years ago

That was quite a performance of mental gymnastics.

KevinEldon5• 13 years ago

I may have ingested performance enhancing liquids.

epoxyhockey• 13 years ago

I think that your analysis is great. However, I'm not confident that Justin put as much thought into the posting.

KevinEldon5• 13 years ago

I do not know this startup. But I suspect your spot on... this feels like the kernel of a good idea, a way to filter out the wrong kind of application (not necessarily too old) and it's being interpreted (or misinterpreted). I honestly hope the best for this startup and hope some woman or man qualified to help them gets an interview... I suspect, for top candidates, the language will be awkward (but maybe top candidates... not guys like me... see through that).

el_fuser7• 13 years ago

Nah... Lightweight processes were discussed as alternatives to waterfall way back in the 90s during my software engineering courses. "Rapid application development" and RAtional unified process were the "hot" lightweight methodologies when I started work in 1996. Scrum has been with us since 1995.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but when the Agile Manifesto was signed, a giant red button was pressed that reset the entire industry's memory.

All that existed before 2001 was waterfall. Nothing else. Just waterfall. Only waterfall. You are mistaken in thinking that iterative delivery, spiral models, joint application development, daily build-n-smoke, test harnesses or any such practice or technology existed previously.

Then in 2001, Agile sprung fully-formed from the brow of Zeus and saved us. Agile has no predecessors whatsoever and completely invalides decades of careful observation, discussion and investigation by generations of software developers and managers.

All books and articles published before 2001 can be safely ignored, and nothing can be learned therefrom.

KevinEldon5• 13 years ago

Agree, no debate about when you might have managed agile teams... could be you're Ken Schwaber (yeah, had to look up his name), but it then begs the 2nd question I raised... why would you want to do a startup? If you have 12+ years of experience with what is now a very hot process why, why?, WHY? would you want to work at a startup?

A VP role doesn't sound like a C role. It doesn't sound like a really big equity play. You're not going to be a founder w/ a big payout (probably). So why do it?

I'm repeating myself. It really doesn't matter at all... someone will apply or they will not and the company will hire the right person or they will not... you and I will go along with our lives just fine.

justinY17• 13 years ago

500friends founder/CEO here.

It's not that people with 12+ years of experience are not as good. We were trying to screen out candidates (many of them who are smart) but have been "managers" for so long that they can't get their hands dirty and solve issues themselves (something you have to do at a very small team).

Don't take my word for it, 26% of people on our team are older than 38. If you're bored, check out some of their bios at 500friends.com/team

Admittedly however, this was not clear in our post, and it has since been edited.

Thanks!!

NelsonMinar• 13 years ago

shhh, you're not supposed to say the "no old people" part out loud.

melbourne_mat• 13 years ago

This must be the ageism that everyone's been talking about. The whole team is probably under 30. The kids will never learn!

el_fuser7• 13 years ago

Not only is it blatantly ageist... It's stupid.

They want someone that has been building engineering organizations for 5-12 years, after having been an individual contributor.

Then, they want you to drop back into an individual contributor role. At least initially. Wink wink nudge nudge.

emidln• 13 years ago

It's not ageist. It doesn't say People who are 50 need not apply. From reading this job posting, someone who is 80, worked as a mechanic, a waiter, a clerk, and then picked up some newfangled technology might qualify.

Besides the whole Agile not being codified for more than 12 years thing, if you've been out of the loop managing for 12 years, they say they don't want you. Part of the process apparently involves showing that your technical skills are still there.

el_fuser7• 13 years ago

As i posted above... Lightweight processes were discussed as alternatives to waterfall way back in the 90s during my software engineering courses. "Rapid application development" and RAtional unified process were the "hot" lightweight methodologies when I started work in 1996. Scrum has been with us since 1995.

And yes, it's blatantly ageist... It falls under the disparate impact provision:

"In addition to prohibiting intentional discrimination against older workers (known as “disparate treatment”), the ADEA prohibits practices that, although facially neutral with regard to age, have the effect of harming older workers more than younger workers (known as “disparate impact”), unless the employer can show that the practice is based on an RFOA."

justinY17• 13 years ago

Thank you sir.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

ramchip• 13 years ago

500friends, 42floors, 37signals... it's like Yahoo handlenames of the past, but for companies.

felipebueno• 13 years ago

500px

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

83iq... where there are more PMs than products and executives outnumber engineers!

19yearsold... with free dinner after 8:00, unlimited vacation (subject to managerial approval) and equity (at-the-money options on 0.02%, subject to vesting and cliff)!

logn• 13 years ago

39andUnder

faddotio• 13 years ago

xX81Buddies69Xx.io

coldcode• 13 years ago

It's Count von Count's favorite kind of company.

DannyBee2• 13 years ago

Could be worse, could be xbox live user names.

tomphoolery• 13 years ago

Only18 [NSFW] did it before all these suckers.

Truly, a pioneer of start-up branding.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

It actually makes sense. It's not about age. Middle management has an expiration date. If you've been a middle manager for 15 years, that's bad bad bad. (Being an IC for 15 years is respectable; but once you move into management, you should make director in 5 years and VP in no less than 10.)

Programming has an ageism problem largely because it's run by career managers (who think all of us want to be them-- and we don't); engineers themselves aren't ageist. Management is where the ageism comes from and it's even worse in their world. It's not that they care about age so much as they want to avoid hiring terminal middle managers, and I can't blame them for the latter. This fact has absolutely nothing to do with age, but terminal middle managers are toxic.

demachina• 13 years ago

You can be fairly confident there some startups out there founding by 20 somethings, populated by 20 somethings, who think having someone over 30, or certainly over 40, on their team or even in their office would be akin to the plague. They would probably place them in the same camp as their parents.

I totally understand why coders like Agile, hey I like it because hacking code is the fun part :) Its also kind of a good fit for the app store era, where you throw something out there and see if its sticks before you actually develop most of it. Not entirely sure its actually a good way to develop nontrivial software.

kamaal4• 13 years ago

The biggest problem with age is, its not static.

If in your 20's you feel, some one over 30's is a plague. You have a big reason to be worried, because you will be in your 30's in less than 10 years. That's too less time for comfort.

justinY17• 13 years ago

Hello sir. 500friends founder/CEO here.

Don't take my word for it, 26% of people on our team are older than 38. If you're bored, check out their bios at 500friends.com/team

Admittedly however, this was not clear in our post, and it has since been edited.

Thanks!!

jbae29• 13 years ago

It appears to say that they want (ideally) someone with 5-12 years of experience managing a team, after a successful career as an individual contributor. To me, that implies that they don't someone who has been just a manager for the last twenty years.

So it's possible that you could have been a developer for twenty years and then a manager for ten years and still be within their ideal range. Considering the CEO is about 24 years old, it's hard to believe that that is the case, though it is possible.

justinY17• 13 years ago

YES, YOU ARE CORRECT, THANK YOU.

And my team is very senior - check them out @ 500friends.com/team. We definitely value experience at 500friends.

kenjackson2• 13 years ago

This posting is so bad and offensive, I hold it against the leadership team of this company. I certainly would think less of someone if someone else mentioned, "Oh they were on the leadership team at 500friends".

justinY17• 13 years ago

What we meant is that we're looking for someone who has coded in the past decade. Someone that has been managing 1,000 people at Oracle may not be the right fit for a company of our stage. Make sense?

kenjackson2• 13 years ago

Hi Justin. It makes sense, but why didn't you say something more like that to begin with? Something like "Active development skills are part of the hiring criteria". You already mention doing Ruby development -- someone who hasn't coded in a decade, probably doesn't have much Ruby experience.

It just seems odd that of all the possible ways to ask for what you describe above, you choose arguably the most offensive and least effective way to do so. And I think as a marketing company, you should know better. The message matters -- not just the intent.

Seriously, think about a better way to phrase the requirement. There are several preferable ways to phrase the question (not just from a legal perspective, but even in terms of simply capturing the pool of candidates you desire).

sytelus• 13 years ago

Not sure why "best of the best" would be so inclined to join a company that has mission to help marketers (primarily retailers) increase their customer lifetime value.

brown9-22• 13 years ago

Somewhere out there is a great 30 year old who started working at 18 that this dumb company is missing out on.

wheaties• 13 years ago

I work with a few of them actually. I loved college but these guys were cutting their teeth on tech when I was cutting mine on beer pong. All of them are too smart to ever think about a job description like that.

justinY17• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

bjpcjp2• 13 years ago

Speaking on behalf of a LOT of people - F 500friends and the under-30 horse they rode in on.

justinY17• 13 years ago

Brian,

In our original job post, we had specified that the ideal candidate would, "not have more than 12 years of MANAGEMENT experience." We UNDERSTAND that this could be misunderstood to indicate that we do not value experienced people. As you can see from the seniority in our team however, this is far from the truth. The intent here was to indicate that we are looking for a "hands-on" VP of Engineering. Someone who has coded in the last decade and can solve issues themselves (rather than asking their engineering manager to then delegate it to a developer :).

Don't take my word for it, check out the people who work at my company - 500friends.com/team. 50%+ are 30+, and 25%+ are 38+

bjpcjp2• 13 years ago

Update

Justin, thanks for the private reply as well. Props for the consistent and genuine efforts at damage control.

far33d• 13 years ago

Crap. I have 11 years experience doing some pretty awesome shit. I guess this is the last year I can get a legit job in a startup.

yen223• 13 years ago

Just tell them you have 1 year experience 11 times.

fingerprinter3• 13 years ago

This is totally off topic, and might be considered a rant, but I see this from time-to-time in startup land.

Not understanding titles.

First, this is for a "vp of engineering" that is "hands on". Are you really looking for an architect that codes? Perhaps a Sr. Engineer/Team lead? Do the engineers directly report to this "vp of engineering"? What happens when the team gets to big?

Second, you are locking yourself into something prematurely. If you want someone hands on with management experience and capacity to grow into a future leader, state that and start looking. Make your interview quick on the technical assessment, heavy on the social and ask "what would you do in ..." or "how would you handle this ..." type of questions. See if the person has 1. experience 2. common sense or 3. good intuition on process/people.

Lastly, what does the rest of the company look like when the VP of Engineering clearly has an inflated title. Are all the C level/VP level people equally inflated?

Anyway, sorry for the rant. It seems a common occurrence in Startupsville to see people running around with titles that mean nothing for the sake of having the title.

"Oh, cool. I'm the VP of engineering at blah blah".

"nice, what do you do everyday."

"Oh, you know, code reviews".

Whatever.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

Michael O'Church observed that if you're at or near the ground floor of a startup, titles are easier to get than money or equity.

Which seems harmless, but if and when money starts flowing, something primitive in the status=money&equity hindbrain clicks and such a title makes it easier to negotiate for a better deal.

bgilroy26• 13 years ago

I agree, an organization that views titles as cheap/free either does not have the imagination to forsee the scenario you describe or they do not seriously expect to grow.

kamaal4• 13 years ago

>First, this is for a "vp of engineering" that is "hands on". Are you really looking for an architect that codes?

Sorry but why can't a VP of engineering be somebody who should code(even if occasionally) or some who could be competent at a code review. Its precisely this kind of attitude that gives ammunition to the MBA culture of appointing people who are clueless about their current job to manage the best people under them.

The net result is getting people appointed who know nothing about the people they managing, or the line of work. And just take blanket common sense based decision which most of the times are wrong with regards to the domain they lead.

Regardless of who you are- architect, VP or whatever fancy title. If you claim to be the leader of a group of people with some specific skills you should be somebody who at the very least has mastered those skills.

According to me anybody who claims to lead a group must be the best among that group, in the job that group performs.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

According to me anybody who claims to lead a group must be the best among that group, in the job that group performs.

I think this is an error. Taking your best coder and then spending their time on not-coding is wasteful of their talents.

Furthermore, insofar as you create competition to hold that position, you're creating a destructive work environment. Software development is a cooperative activity that can't be efficiently partitioned.

fingerprinter3• 13 years ago

According to me anybody who claims to lead a group must be the best among that group, in the job that group performs.

I'm sorry, and this is going to sound harsh, but this is awful, awful advise. And pitifully shortsighted.

So, a manager that leads developers should be the best developer?

What about a director that manages developers AND architects? Or developers AND QA? Does the director have to be the best at both those functions? Or some "best of the combination" of the two?

What about the VP? Now the VP of engineering likely leads (in a large enough organization) directors of QA, engineering, product, maybe some other roles like IS as well. In turn, they might lead managers or some function directly. Is this VP the uber of all those roles?

And then we get to the CEO.

No, this is terribly short sighted. Amazingly so.

In sports is quite commonly known that the best players usually make terrible managers. There are quite a few theories on why, but the end result is that very few great players have been great managers (oddly enough, MLB has more ex-player managers than the other leagues, and is more immune to the above criticism...again, many theories why). In fact, quite a few of the best managers in some sports are typically borderline players, if they played at all. Using your "best should lead" theory, only the best ex-basketball, ex-football, ex-baseball players should be running teams in the NBA, NFL or MLB.

No, the best leaders should lead. Doesn't matter if they are not the best developers And how good a developer one was becomes irrelevant past "team lead" or manager at best.

geuis• 13 years ago

This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I'm looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I'm going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question.

I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn't even on the call. They had pulled some poor engineer off of whatever he was doing, shoved my resume in front of him, and said "go".

The list of things that our "interview" contained:

    1) Late in calling me at our scheduled time.
    2) Scheduled person was not present on our interview call.
    3) Engineer that was put on the call was ill-prepared for the conversation.
    4) Questions asked of me were a combination of very basic and others being completely unrelated to the nature of the position being interviewed for. 
    5) The scheduled person appeared at the end of the call barely long enough to say his name before hanging up on me.
    6) Hung up on me suddenly.

#6 was what really got me. It was literally, "Hi this is <x>, we're out of time, click."

If you advertise a position as requiring a certain set of skills, then ask prospective employees about those skills! Go through their experiences and see if they're a good engineer outside of the narrow scope of "solves logic puzzles well". You might be surprised that someone who doesn't normally write linked lists in javascript or implement 2500 year old prime-solving algorithms on a weekly basis actually has skills and experience to contribute.

My personal recommendation for anyone considering 500friends is to skip over them. There's much better companies more deserving of your time and consideration, and you'll certainly be treated better.

## Just to add on, I don't have a problem with logic problems. But too many people only ask them and don't do real interviews. Yes, I can do linked lists in javascript. Does that tell you anything useful about what kind of engineer I am? No, it doesn't.

rdouble• 13 years ago

Not to excuse that sort of behavior, but this is a pretty typical HR experience in the Bay Area. Late calls, no-shows, awkward questions, either too easy or too hard, abrupt endings, obviously haven't read the resume, etc. Happens all the time, unfortunately.

speeder• 13 years ago

I had a interview failed like that from Amazon...

Granted, I think it was accidental on their part (ie: the person that interviewed me was newbie at Amazon himself and quite lost, but seemly the person that was going to interview me had a serious problem of sorts and could not do it)

brown9-22• 13 years ago

The good news for the candidate is this type of behavior is a great leading indicator of what working for the company will be like.

nugget• 13 years ago

A friend of mine had a very similar experience with this company and their C level team. Maybe some public feedback will help them reflect and improve.

applecore• 13 years ago

Their behavior sounds terrible, but I'd expect any decent programmer to be able to write a linked list or prime number solver.

jpalioto• 13 years ago

Cargo cult interviewing at its best. It seems like they may be more experienced interviewing for jobs rather than properly interviewing candidates and building solid teams.

justinY17• 13 years ago

via 500friends founder/CEO.

As I mentioned to you in my initial apology, we had a fire drill. That being said, the tardiness was inexcusable, and I talked to the developer about that.

Regarding our interview questions, they were meant as an "initial screen." We do ask more practical questions in person. However, we figure that most smart software engineers can write a linked list or prime number solver.

abhishekg• 13 years ago

Could also just be a publicity stunt

zpk4• 13 years ago

Hey right over here everyone!!! This is called ageism.

If you write code and you are over 35, you are toast. Yes even you the "above average coder"...done and done.

Now wait till that immigration bill passes, make 150k? GOOD ___ing BYE.

krapp2• 13 years ago

If you write code and you are over 35, you are toast.

In SV, maybe. Hopefully not so much elsewhere or I'm gonna have a hard time paying off my student loans...

zpk4• 13 years ago

I hate the fact you have to say that...it pisses me off to hear this. I was lucky I had minimal loans, and school was 1/2 the cost. If I can give a word of advice, spend less on car #1 and attack that loan, pay it off. Get to 0 debt.

trimbo• 13 years ago

It's not even true in SV.

hga3• 13 years ago

D.C. area as well.

justinY17• 13 years ago

that is not true...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

hardwaresofton• 13 years ago

What if we gave them the benefit of the doubt, and they were posting "no more than 12 years" because they want someone who's seen what happens but not someone who is steeped in it? Someone who is familiar with the problems but hasn't dealt with it so long that they are still naively excited about trying to change it?

For example, if x guy has been doing TPS reports for 12 years,maybe they are figuring that he has already just adjusted to a gotta-do-my-TPS-reports mindset?

just giving some benefit of the doubt

justinY17• 13 years ago

Thank you sir. my response here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

Justin (500friends founder/CEO)

justinY17• 13 years ago

The reason for this is that if you haven't been coding (just managing) for 12+ years...you probably are not "hands-on" enough for a company of our stage.

We have gotten a lot of very smart but "big company" people who had applied for this position.

Sorry for the confusion however, most of our team is actually MUCH holder than the typical start-up: 500friends.com/team. We may be a lot of things but are definitely not ageist.

el_fuser7• 13 years ago

Before you edit much further:

We want someone who has less than 12 years of MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE. The reason is that if you haven't been coding for 12+ years...you probably are not "hands-on" enough

This arbitrary cutoff makes absolutely no sense. I'd like to see your quantification of skill drop off per year of management.

If what you are wanting is a hands-on technical manager, then you need to say so.

And it shouldn't matter if the person has been hands on for 5 years or 20.

But I feel I'm being a little too generous regarding your motives here.

justinY17• 13 years ago

this has caused so many misinterpretations that I have edited it out of the post completely...

But essentially, the ideal candidate was someone who was CODING 5-12 years ago...

throwawaykf02• 13 years ago

I think I know what you mean, but really, there must be a much better way to express this. For instance, instead of being quantitative, be qualitative. Don't say, "no more than 12 years", but say something like, "but still be able to code your way out of complex, practical software problems." Or maybe "code your way out of FizzBuzz"... Whatever. Just don't put a numerical value on it, because it is 1) insulting to many, 2) legally questionable, and 3) unlikely to actually find what you're looking for.

andrewcooke• 13 years ago

it seems to have been removed (the 12 years part) btw.

i saw it earlier. perhaps it was a joke - agile manifesto was published 12 years ago? (an argument for this is that 12 years is a strange number to use otherwise).

[edit] and now there's a broken link on the front page saying that 26% of their team is older than 38. i hate to say it but (1) i told you so (2) do people lose their sense of humour with age? (3) i am 46 myself...

mhewett• 13 years ago

I had an interview like this at Willow Garage about 5 years ago. The interviewer said he would call at 8:30am. He called at 8:54 and sounded like he'd had about 2 hours of sleep. Then he said he had a 9:00 meeting and would call me back at 12:30pm. He called about 12:55 and proceeded with a lackluster interview during which he confused knowledge representation with graphics programming. Perversely, the interview made me want to join Willow just to see the train wreck in progress. (In their defense they have produced some good robotics platforms since then.)

VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

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