Web app for interviewing technical candidates in the browser

by paf31 • 13 years ago

119 28 13 years ago

neur0mancer2• 13 years ago

Great idea! I hope others will follow your example.

Btw, could you clarify exactly which type of licence you are using (https://github.com/paf31/initialround/blob/master/LICENSE). Is it something like BSD?

paf317• 13 years ago

Yes, I finally decided to go with the BSD license, since I'd like to enable people to benefit from this, which might mean being able to add new tests without revealing the model answer :)

neur0mancer2• 13 years ago

"Distributed under the terms of the BSD 3-clause License."

It was clarified in the README. My bad.

evolve2k• 13 years ago

Nice one! And it's probably good for you also as it helps you draw a line under it by giving it away.

paf317• 13 years ago

That's the idea. The plan is to move anyone who wants to keep data onto private Azure instances, and then to close up shop. Maybe if anyone is interested in developing a customized version of the code, then I'll work on that in the future.

praveenster• 13 years ago

Can you also share insights on how/why the startup failed? Also, do you plan to keep the site operational for the free customers or completely shut it down?

cfontes• 13 years ago

Would be awesome to get some screenshots of it.

paf317• 13 years ago

There are some on the actual homepage here: http://initialround.com/#Tour

Sovietaced• 13 years ago

azure? lol

kalagan2• 13 years ago

what's funny with azure?

icedog• 13 years ago

Indeed, nothing is funny about azure. However, using ASP.net Web Forms is hilarious.

eksith• 13 years ago

I feel bad your startup failed, but I'm grateful you decided to open source the project. I wish more people did the same since there are plenty of lessons to be learned. Plenty of public bulletins and blog posts discuss -- sometimes at length -- over what part management difficulties and other obstacles have played, but very few actually release technical details. Even more rare to see the source released.

Hope you fare better in your next venture. If you haven't started, you should.

Good luck!

pkfrank• 13 years ago

While building Texts.com, my CTO and I learned a ton by studying the path of GetchaBooks. They had shut down and decided to open source their code (http://getchabooks.com/open-source.html), which is a generous and noble thing to do.

I see it as good coding karma; and you never know the contacts you might make (I initially wanted to hire one of the creators; but I settled for buying him a few beers since he had just accepted another offer).

mwhite• 13 years ago

Hi Frank, I wrote most of the backend for GetchaBooks. Glad you got some value out of the source.

Even though I invested a fair amount of time in continuous refactoring while actively developing it, refactoring and documenting to a point where I wasn't embarrassed to make it public and could realistically say that someone else would be able to use (which ended up happening with tuftstext.com) and perhaps modify or extend it was a significant learning experience.

IIRC I spent a few weeks on that, but I think it was worth it. Instead of setting aside the project with a vague idea of the right way to do some things, I ended up actually having done them the right way, so now when I encounter a similar problem I know how to do it the right way the first time.

This is basically the same situation you would face if you were handing off code when leaving a company. This experience is one reason why I think it's important to develop and document your project to open source quality standards throughout the lifetime of the project.

And what better way to do that than to open source your code even for an active company? Usually you're probably not competing on tech, and I bet any community contribution you'd get is greater than the likelihood that someone will actually manage to maintain an instance of your code.

The books-by-course space is a perfect example of this. So many "startups" have duplicated so much work building these sites, when what you actually need to succeed is marketing. (The thing we took away from it, I think, is that you need per-school branded sites.) They should start sharing resources more.

What do you know, here's the college bookstore part of GetchaBooks extracted into an HTTP API, now with parallel scraping, that I just made public on Github: https://github.com/mwhite/bookstore-api Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to get working. But expect to get sued.

sourc3• 13 years ago

I thought I was the only person who attempted at creating startups with asp.net/azure before I switched to RoR. It looks like I was not alone! Kudos to the OP for open sourcing it.

jcampbell12• 13 years ago

It is very cool to open source your software. That being said, I'd recommend you work with a native English speaker on your marketing if you plan to pursue another startup. The copy writing on the marketing site is bad enough that your code never mattered.

paf317• 13 years ago

I am a native English speaker. I appreciate that the marketing site is lacking in a lot of ways, but I didn't see my English as part of that problem.

sdesol• 13 years ago

As a techie who is doing his own thing, I can see why jcampbell would assume English was not your native tongue. Copy writing is really an art form where it's almost a language of its own. Although your sentences may be grammatically correct, the nature in which they are presented seems unnatural.

To be honest, even if you involved an English professor, the outcome would probably be the same. Asking a native English speaker for marketing/copy writing advice is not the right thing to do. Find somebody who is good at copy writing or learn how copy writing works.

jcampbell12• 13 years ago

Even if you are a native speaker, some outside advice would help.

"Recruit Top Developers with Feedback-Driven Interviews"

That doesn't make logical sense. Recruiting is about finding candidates. "with interviews" makes no sense in this context.

"Feedback Driven Interviews" means nothing to anyone. Google doesn't know what it means. It is not an industry term. It is bullshit bingo. That never works.

Why not start with "Improve your hiring process by ..."?

I am no copy writing pro, but you need to learn to invert. Become the customer and sell yourself. Write in the active voice.

chatman• 13 years ago

SQL Azure? Bwahahaha..

dodyg• 13 years ago

Thanks for open sourcing this. It looks like a useful web application.

Web app for interviewing technical candidates in the browser

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