HN user
Engineer at YC
In the React Native case specifically, I've found that searching github issues is often super helpful. The project is very popular, changing really really fast, and still has a bunch of rough edges. So if something really seems wonky (and isn't a bizarre use case), it's pretty common that someone has already brought it up there.
Reading the code is pretty much always a good idea, too.
Started last summer.
http://adage.com/article/digital/bmw-runs-ads-medium-twitter...
It won't be 100% but I bet the bots aren't 100% either
Bots having tons of false positives doesn't really matter (except to the bot maker, maybe). But GitHub having tons of false positives means customers get annoyed by false alerts, locked data, whatever.
Figured this was the case but assumed it didn't changed the gist of the answer too much. tl;dr actually employing people in other countries is difficult
Automattic "employees" outside of the US and Canada are contractors.
(I used to work at Automattic)
Is there any way to delete a video once I upload it?
> I can't name a single ad that I have seen over the past week
Ads aren't trying to get you to remember the ads, they're trying to get you to recognize, like, buy, etc the product. That can happen without remembering or actively paying attention to the ad.
I won't go on a hunt for a list of research confirming it, but there are about hundreds if not thousands of examples explaining that marketing does work, whether its audience thinks it does or not.
tl;dr Even if you believe you'll never click an ad, you're probably still hurting the advertiser and therefore the publisher.
analog, which part of the GPL does that violate?
I think you're wrong. The GPL governs code, not services (even services that use GPL code).
That's incorrect. https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/
This isn't really accurate. WordPress supports overriding the database class. Here's an example of a plugin that supposts Postgres http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/postgresql-for-wordpress...
Is there any significance to Ron Conway not being in the group anymore?
APC is also the most likely by 1000x to be merged into PHP core, so I would rather use/support/fix that.
A friend of mine made a very cool documentary called Under City that you'd probably like if you're into this kind of stuff.
Lots of things might happen based on any non-standard terminology, but in general it's not something we worry about. It's meant to be a little fun, a little different, and attract people that are a little fun and a little different.
If someone wants an account director job at Automattic and never makes their way the Account Engineer link, that's okay. If someone is a bit intrigued by our non-standard titles and looks a bit closer at them because they stand out, that's cool, too.
Anything that isn't normal might confuse people. The goal of our jobs page isn't to confuse the fewest people possible.
I work at Automattic (our office is in the pier, we're one of the companies being kicked out). I'm usually at the pier about twice/week. I have absolutely no idea what's unsafe about it. As far as I know, we've never been told. As far as whether it's justified, there's a lot of not very reliable information involved in the answer to that question, so I'll just say that if it is justified I couldn't tell you why or how.
Why include /post/ if the blog is on the root domain?
It's ironic that a post about URL tidiness would be here: http://reillybrennan.com/post/7686471401/even-a-url-tells-a-...
Right, I got that. It was still confusing (or perhaps misleading) since the post you wrote wasn't about that.
This is a fine blog post, but it's really got little to do with being an early startup employee, which is reasonably obvious from the first sentence, "I've never been an employee at a startup, but I wish I had."
Coke is the biggest soft drink. Apple is the biggest consumer electronics company. Both advertise like it's the freaking antidote. No need to paint every company with the same brush. Different tasks, different tools.
The "we don't do marketing" thing is both unnecessarily extremist and usually a lie. See Square for a very recent example.
"If you are looking for a technical cofounder you should stop searching and learn to code."
Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. I just can't get my head around thinking otherwise. Can it work your way? Yup. Can it work other ways? Yup. All over-generalized advice works some of the time, that's why it exists in the first place. It probably even works most of the time. My problem isn't with the advice's hit rate--nothing is perfect--it's with the logic behind it.
"I keep seeing big name firms repping pre-funded startups, which is a death wish in my opinion."
If a big name firm is working for a startup before it's funded I'd bet a lot of money that they're doing it for stock or deferred comp. That's almost never cash. Whether that's a good deal depends on the firm, the startup, the deal, etc, but no agency is getting $20k/month out of a startup that hasn't raised anymore unless it's very well self-funded.
"Companies and PR firms just throw up garbage press releases a lot of the times and this could be some valuable feedback for them."
Lots of agencies suck at this is an example of it. No disagreement here. And I don't think advice on PR from a journalist is necessarily bad, but I believe not enough scrutiny is directed at the source. To be fair, I say the same thing about fundraising advice from VC's. Not a bad thing, just silly to take it on face value.
I'm sure his conclusion is correct for most people reading this, but is logic is garbage. It's like saying you don't need a VP Engineering because a founder should do it. Completely fine conclusion if it works, as it often will, but still total nonsense.
If you're paying a PR agency $10k-$20k per month and they're getting your company into blogs where the author reads every comment, you're getting screwed. No doubt about that. And if you can do it yourself through networks and hard work, then paying someone else to do it might not make sense.
But to argue that PR firms are not effective is just a lie. I won't go through linking to the major news coverage that any startup would kill for that PR firms got, but there is plenty.
There are two interesting dynamics at play in this sort of post, which comes up every week or two.
1. No one ever seems to question the source, which seems odd. We have a journalist telling companies how to run their PR. Talk about the fox watching the hen house. I'm not saying this guy or any of the others that write this same blog post on other blogs are being disingenuous, but the conflict of interest is certainly there. It's worth pointing out in my opinion.
2. PR firms, ironically, suffer from being in a position to almost never get positive word of mouth (at least publicly). When they succeed, you never know they're involved; go read the front page of the NYT business section, I promise it produces lots of PR high fives every day but almost no one reading it will ever know that. When a company succeeds with a PR firm, there's not much incentive in beating their chests about it, but when the relationship is a failure it's become fashionable to...well, write something like this except from the company's perspective. To top it off, the really great PR firm successes often masquerade as the sort of companies that are just great stories told by great founders (Mint and Pandora come to mind, both of which use agencies).
I used to work at a PR agency about 2 years ago, but don't any longer and have absolutely 0 financial stake in this sort of thing. I still help/advise a lot of friends on PR and I really just think this is overly generalized advice that leads to a nasty case of groupthink. First principles, guys.
The "personalized news service" idea is my default example for startups that people keep trying and users keep ignoring. Entrepreneurs constantly want to build this thing and it consistently falls on its face like few other ideas.
Maybe it's because they just haven't been good enough, and as soon as someone cracks the code it will be great. However I think a much more likely answer is that only a very, very small number of people have a news discovery problem.
I'd gladly accept $1/minute to do interviews (probably less if I actually thought about it, but $1 is a no brainer).
The no embargo policy is really only enforced for startups that don't know what they're doing. That happens to be a lot of otherwise-unknown YC startups that choose to launch on TechCrunch.
I don't see how it's at about principles at all or at odds with giving stuff to readers--it's always been about embargoes getting broken, and nothing else, as far as I know.
I would bet most do on a normal day, and nearly all do when they have to wake up at 3:30am after going to sleep at 2am.
Well, cool. On that note, I have two questions:
1) The form I went through said $60 while the blog post says pre-order prices would be $50. From your explanations it sounds like I'm being counted in pre-orders, but it's unclear. I think I was in the paypal group that got the $5 refunded, but I honestly don't remember very well at this point.
2) Should I have received an email from you? Fyi I have not.
Actually after looking again the fields don't show up at all. I loaded the site in an incognito browser and it's there, but in my main browser it's not. This is a new computer since the time I would have preordered so I'm not sure how you're figuring my email out at that stage.
I'll trust that you have my email address, though there is a reasonable chance that the one I gave you when I pre-ordered no longer works. Regardless, if I get a Wakemate and no email I won't really care.
Edit: Just noticed there is a logout link, which I guess means I'm logged in but again I don't remember doing that. This is all quite clever if you actually have my email address.
I just placed an order on the site and the confirmation said you would email me. Oddly, I don't remember giving you my email address in any of the forms. Am I missing something?
Whether or not it's more often verified, it is definitely more verifiable.
One is a count that is likely in the millions or tens of millions of people and made up of nearly-anonymous people from around the world. The other is likely in the tens and made up of people in a single building.
A journalist could come to your office and make a pretty good guess at how many people work there. That's not to say people don't lie about it, but I think it's reasonable to expect an independent third party to be able to roughly figure out how many people work at a company even if the company wants to lie about it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the same with web traffic.