markhelo

"Microsoft has been killing it over the last decade regarding dev tooling and experience, so it is not a big surprise."

To be fair, for all the flack Microsoft got/gets, the dev tooling for Windows ecosystem is miles ahead of anyone else and world class. Perhaps I am biased as I worked there at one point, but since I don't anymore, I have also seen tooling from Apple and Google and they are a couple of decades behind. There is some truth to why Steve Ballmer went ballistic with his Developer chant, they really built great tooling for developers.

Its likely that both OS's allow you to do it, because it is part of their testability APIs. I have used an app on Google to fake my location because a restaurant that is hard to schedule (90+mins waiting) requires you to be within 1 mile of it before getting on their waitlist.

I don't remember her name but I once met an experienced market researcher about 10 years ago who worked for Lego in the 80's and 90's to study their users and figure out how to grow the company. She basically went on to explain the complete strategy that you still see them executing. Lego identified that at the core, there are 4 different needs. 1. Kids who like to imagine and create characters on their own and build Legos they can play with. This is typically at an early age. Hence the generic sets around trains, cars, dollhouses, etc. 2. Kids who love their favorite characters and play with them - hence Lego did partnerships with Marvel, StarWars, Disney, etc. 3. Kids who like to display their work with pride, build it once and never touch it again - hence the architecture series. 4. Kids who like to build and rebuild different things from the same set - hence Lego technic.

She used Kids to mean not just by age but anyone who is a kid at heart :) After hearing it, I can't unsee it in a Lego store and am always amazed at the genius of doing market research. We have glorified these things in startups, but when done properly it helps any company.

What about the third option which is you building 100% of a competitor who knows how everything works and can compete effectively?

Vida Health | Engineering | SF, Austin, Remote | Full Time | vida.com

Hello, I am Amol, VP of Engineering at Vida and looking to hire engineers (backend, mobile, data) to join our 35+ engineering team. We use Python extensively on the backend, we are mostly on GCP and we use React for Web.

Vida is a health platform that helps people with mental and physical chronic conditions using digital tools and connecting you with high quality network of healthcare providers.

We are growing rapidly due to an increasing demand where patients are going virtual during COVID and because we are polychronic and we treat a lot of different conditions (hypertension, diabetes, mental health, weight loss, etc) on a single platform leading to better outcomes. So instead of just treating you for a single issue, we are able to find the best treatment

Apply here - https://www.vida.com/join-us/

Life360 | Software Engineers, Product Managers | San Francisco, San Diego | Onsite | Full-time

With over 10 million active users and $90 million in venture funding, Life360 is the world’s largest mobile app for families. Today, we are very focused on location sharing and safety, but our mission is to become the must-have Family Membership that gives families peace of mind anytime and anywhere.

Our team is focused on building technology that helps families feel safe and together even when they are outside of the home and apart. From personalized location-based alerts that help make daily coordination easier, to advanced sensor tech that can detect if you are in a car crash and automatically send you an ambulance, we are leveraging smartphones to their fullest extent to reinvent how families get through the day.

You will be joining Life360 at a key moment in our history. We doubled active users and tripled revenue in 2017, and we are scaling our team to accommodate this rapid growth. We currently have 75 full time employees, with offices in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and San Diego.

Reach out to us at jobs@life360.com

Life360 | iOS, Android, Platform, Product | San Francisco

Life360 is the world’s largest network for families available for Android and iOS. Using proprietary location-based technology, Life360 processes over 1.3 billion location requests per day and enables over 50 million families to privately share location, provide vehicular crash detection for safety, communicate with ease and stay connected with alerts, lists and in-app messaging. The app operates in a convenient and secure way reducing friction and offering peace of mind to make family life easier. Founded in 2008, Life360 has raised $76M in venture financing and is headquartered in San Francisco with 50 employees.

For the Android/iOS roles, we are looking for engineers who are interested in designing polished UI or deep passion for functional programming which are two major areas of work this year.

For the backend roles, we are interested in engineers who are comfortable with scale and interested in stream processing and machine learning.

If you are interested, checkout out all our roles here - https://www.life360.com/jobs/

Our interview process is a phone screen and a day of 5-6 interviews followed by a quick decision. We interview for software design skills, general relevant technical skills and overall communication skills. Above all we are looking for people with passion for Mobile Parenting.

If this is interesting, contact us at jobs@life360.com or directly apply from the link above.

Life360 | San Francisco

Life360 is the world’s largest network for families available for Android and iOS. Using proprietary location-based technology, Life360 processes over 1.3 billion location requests per day and enables over 50 million families to privately share location, provide vehicular crash detection for safety, communicate with ease and stay connected with alerts, lists and in-app messaging. The app operates in a convenient and secure way reducing friction and offering peace of mind to make family life easier. Founded in 2008, Life360 has raised $76M in venture financing and is headquartered in San Francisco with 50 employees.

For the Android/iOS roles, we are looking for engineers who are interested in designing polished UI or deep passion for functional programming which are two major areas of work this year.

For the backend roles, we are interested in engineers who are comfortable with scale and interested in stream processing and machine learning.

If you are interested, checkout out all our roles here - https://www.life360.com/jobs/

Our interview process is a phone screen and a day of 5-6 interviews followed by a quick decision. We interview for design skills, general relevant technical skills and overall communication skills. If you have those three, we can work with everything else.

If this is interesting, contact us at jobs@life360.com or directly apply from the link above.

Sam's entire post has one line about Hillary and ten about Trump.

Instead of trying to demonize Trump, perhaps it is important for you to advocate for your candidate. As the president said, go work for your candidate. People are not dumb. The contrast will be clear and then people can make their own choice.

I know its hard to compare, but would you say, "Buy my product to stop the other product from being successful because the other product makes claims that are outrageous". Rightly everyone then says, "Why buy any of the products?" Or "Let me try a third product".

Professor Jared Diamond explains more of this beautifully in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. Definitely a great read and there is also a Nat Geo documentary narrated by him.

I love this idea. However I am not too surprised that YC is doing this. YC is a different kind of corporation. Instead of hiring engineers, they hire startups. And just like any well established company, they are now investing in R&D. Make no mistake, there will be a commercial bent to the R&D that YC does and there is nothing wrong about that. R&D should not be just about publishing papers but advancing new ideas in the market too. So overall I hope this takes off and they bring ground-breaking research out of this venture.

Wello - San Francisco, Software Engineering

We are Wello, a small company acquired by WeightWatchers last year? It is a best of both worlds, brand recognition and no more fundraising and worrying about stability.

Here's why you should consider us:

We were a team of 4 acquired by Weight Watchers International, a brand recognized by almost everyone, including our moms.

We have already built a few products that were launched and are growing under the WW brand.

We are looking for engineers with Mobile, Web and Backend expertise. We are also looking for developers who want to have fun with large scale data. Did you know that the WW has been tracking food data from members since since 2003. Imagine the stuff you can build on top of that long history of data.

We offer competitive compensation and great health benefits.

All 4 of us are staying even after the 1yr mark and now growing because we love what we do and believe in our mission to make people healthier. We have diverse backgrounds (Stanford, Bain, Google, Netflix) and we are looking for you to come join and teach us new tricks!

If you are interested, email me at amol dot kher at weightwatchers dot com and we can catch up over phone or coffee.

Clinkle did raise 25 million as well, nevertheless this looks cool and hope it is affordable.

Isnt there a Step 1.5 - Make your own internal messaging app then?

Curious to hear what team you were applying for?

Wello - San Francisco, Software Engineering

Wello (recently acquired by WeightWatchers) has a mission to help people get healthier. Being backed by a leader in weight loss programs has many advantages, we have an abundance of users, resources and data.

Here's why: We were a team of 4 acquired by Weight Watchers International, a brand recognized by almost everyone, including our moms. We are left alone to build new products for WW and have some interesting products we are working on. We have to worry less about stability, legal and other non-technical stuff and can focus on doing what we love. We offer competitive compensation and great health benefits. All 4 of us are staying and now growing. We just hired our intern full-time! We love what we do and believe in our mission to make people healthier. We have diverse backgrounds (Stanford, Bain, Google, Netflix) and we are looking for you to come join and teach us new tricks! If you are interested, email me at amol dot kher at weightwatchers dot com and we can catch up over phone or coffee.

Wello - San Francisco, Software Engineering

Have you considered working for a tiny company recently acquired by a big company? It could be a great fit and a best of both worlds (stability and innovation). If you are thinking, you should consider us. Here's why:

We were a team of 4 acquired by Weight Watchers International, a brand recognized by almost everyone, including our moms.

We are left alone to build new products for WW and have some interesting products we are working on.

We have to worry less about stability, legal and other non-technical stuff and can focus on doing what we love.

We offer competitive compensation and great health benefits.

All 4 of us are staying and now growing. We just hired our intern full-time! We love what we do and believe in our mission to make people healthier. We have diverse backgrounds (Stanford, Bain, Google, Netflix) and we are looking for you to come join and teach us new tricks!

If you are interested, email me at amol@wello.com and we can catch up over phone or coffee.

Isn't that Home Depot?

If you set up your domain on Cloudflare and use their SSL, you literally do not need to worry about SSL certs.

Somehow Netflix never got that memo and they seem to be doing just fine.

Netflix has done a great job building that service and it is easy to underestimate how hard it is to build. Amazon has EC2 and Google has Youtube. There are no other realistic competitors in the streaming service at that scale for now in my opinion.

The book is a great read and talks about his research on talking to people. He provides interesting examples of people who you might think do boring jobs but can manage to get in flow and how they do it. Overall, he proposes a theory on how we get in flow and techniques we can use.

I wonder what he thinks about focusing on one geography vs. opening it up.

What expertise do you specifically mean? Btw, Labdoor was in our batch, they test nutritional supplements and tell you whats really in them.

IMO, you don't really go to RH for funding but for all the opportunities they can open for you if you really have something that is cool and working. The funding is a cherry on the top.

Thought it said 250 per year after first year.

Not realistically enforceable.

YC company approaches VC and says we have a soft commit from a YC partner. VC calls the YC partner and invests. I am not saying there is anything wrong in the old world. It is what it is. When its your company and there is money involved people get creative and work around rules. Some companies raise successfully and some others dont. If VC's (with all their resources) are taking their cues from YC Partners then something else is broken not the entrepreneur.

Disagree. In 30 seconds Carlsen has a much higher recall of the vast number of boards he has played than an average person. This is a mismatch even if Bill Gates is really smart. So in 30 seconds whatever plans an average chess player can conjure up, Carlsen has already seen them 10 moves ahead.

Besides the already good technical book suggestions, I am going a bit off the path here, but these books have made me a better developer. "Endurance" about Sir Ernest Shackleton's incredible failed expedition to the South Pole has a lot of parallels to any software project. Teaches you about setting a high goal, finding the right team, overcoming failure, being scrappy, and keeping your team together inspite of the odds. Another non-standard book is "Finding Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which is about psychology of happiness at work or life.