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sbisker

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Hi, I'm Solomon Bisker. I'm a growth engineer from San Francisco, California. http://www.cargocollective.com/biskerrific

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I’ve noticed that a lot of bootcamp grads are, in fact, legitimately hired by their bootcamps - just not to write code. They are often brought on term by term as TAs until they find work.

I suspect this practice is a bit disingenuous of the bootcamps, a way to pad their “successfully employed” rates while keeping labor costs low. But it is hard for me to fault the candidates for putting those experiences in their resume. They need that money to keep their job searches going, and recruiters are always biasing against gaps on the resume.

If you’re being paid by them for any reason, put it on your resume. (And if you’re not…move it to the education section, where it belongs.)

Yep, surveying the landscape now! Lens is incredible and I know particularly for shopping them, Facebook and Amazon are working on merchandise recognition. Honestly that’s part of what makes me interested in the space - the fact that it’s possible, but right now limited to the biggest players.

It’s early days, but I’m looking into more precise and domain specific object recognition in photos. Apple or Google will generally tell me if a photo contains a chair; I would like to know what kind of chair (is it a Herman Miller Aeron or a Herman Miller Embody). There are a few domains I am interested to apply this to, but at this stage I’m still learning the limitations of the tech (and any leads / insights would be appreciated!)

The headline struck me as unusually crass for HN even before I saw the parent comment. I was a bit surprised it wasn’t rewritten. So, I guess I’m a second person.

Maybe it’s generational, but I was taught to avoid using names in puns. I definitely grew up with people who would make last name puns like this to put undue emphasis on race.

If folks doesn’t even see why that would be a problem these days, I’ll take it as a win for society - but I think the question was in good faith.

Peloton | Full-Time | Software Engineers | New York, NY | Onsite | https://www.onepeloton.com/careers

We are looking to hire all sorts of positions, but my team in particular is seeking a full-stack feature engineer and a backend application platform engineer (think APIs and microservices). We're a highly collaborative team that focuses on learning, pairing, teamwork and using technology to build great things together. In this case, those things are typically around making the order and delivery experience of our fitness products as seamless and engaging as possible. We ensure our newest members have a fantastic experience "from checkout to first workout".

Recruiting was kind enough to give us this blurb to describe what we do: Peloton uses technology + design to connect the world through fitness, empowering people to be the best version of themselves anywhere, anytime. We have reinvented the fitness industry by developing a first-of-its-kind subscription platform. Seamlessly combining hardware, software, and streaming technology, we create digital fitness and wellness content and products that Members love. In 2020 Peloton committed to becoming an antiracist organization with the launch of the Peloton Pledge.

Senior Backend Engineer - https://boards.greenhouse.io/peloton/jobs/3080311

Mid-Level Full-stack Engineer https://boards.greenhouse.io/peloton/jobs/3316248

Excited to hear from people!

Actually credentialism could make sense in this case. Let someone study all of the Leetcode once, on their own terms, and use the same results for every company for the next 5-10 years. A credential has issues of access and privilege, but I think it’s clear at this point the lack of a credential is also posing serious problems.

Doctors don’t have to relearn everything on the boards every time they talk to a new job, and that definitely helps combat ageism in that field.

They do their best to prevent it, but a lot of students don’t even apply because they or their parents think they can’t afford it. Access to education about financial aid itself is a privilege. That has got to be the biggest limiter by absolute volume of people.

It “felt” more uncommon that someone actually turns down an MIT offer after they see the package, as they do their best to provide student work aid and students tend to be optimists about debt - but I only saw the people who said yes, so my data is totally biased. I’ll note that one common situation is folks who can technically “afford” MIT, but are offered a full ride elsewhere - a lot of folks I knew who joined felt some pressure to save money by taking the scholarship elsewhere, and struggled to turn it down.

On another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid.

Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he wasn’t admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely it didn’t carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track record to look at.

I’ll grant that when I read the article, I missed the part where he admitted to intentionally ignoring the invite. If they tossed him for what they considered a values mismatch, that’s obviously a little different. Still, I feel like a “Listen bub!” voice conversation could have helped here, versus relying on email - if only in delivering the bad news better, if not actually hearing out the apology and talking over potential next steps. And I give him points for admitting to that mistake - that strikes me as far more in line with their values than lying and saying his mother was sick (which he could have trivially done).

As for asynchronicity, I totally get that something will be lost. The question is whether enough will be lost as to render the participant totally unable to learn those values over, say, the next few days and catch up. But something might be gained as well - it’s possible that these synchronous moments are an actual bottleneck. Experimenting with async could result in them handling more students with less staff.

I’ve also seen organizations realize in that situation that they can change or automate things as to reduce the consequences of the exceptions, or to make rules simpler to follow, in justifying drawing that firm line. Trust is won when people see you as being fair, and part of being fair is knowing your perspective has been heard and considered.

I started reading this article excited that Recurse had gone online and, after following RC and Hackruiter for almost a decade, I might now be able to do it. I ended it in a similar state as the author - bewildered as what to think. I know the folks running that program don’t do anything lightly, and they thought long and hard about whether that decision best served their mission and goals. Still, I’m torn.

I understand people have to draw the line somewhere, but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous. In a remote first world, I think more and more things will be forced to become asynchronous, whether we like it or not.

I’m reminded of make-up tests. Professors dread making them, they take real time, and they indirectly “reward” those who can’t make the first sitting (with more study time, etc). Some do refuse to do it. Still, universities compel teachers to do it because the value of having each student tested is considered a crucial part of the mission.

I get that this is a different situation; there’s a social unity component, some experiences can’t be exactly recreated. But is completely booting someone for missing one initial meeting in spirit with the mission? Is so much lost from a recorded version that it is truly better for that seat to stay empty for 6 weeks and one less person to be able to join the next batch as a result of a time zone gaffe? And is it really fair to say that because no one else had this problem, the six months of evolution post-COVID should match the same intentionality and strictness of running an in-person program for a decade?

I hope that at the very least, folks over there are looking at what happened with an empathetic lens - especially if they are truly willing to take this person for the next batch, and want to see them succeed.

A number of the systemic issues with contract to hire have already been raised, but here’s another: taking a C2H job can immediately render you ineligible for unemployment, as you are now self employed. If the contract doesn’t work out, you could potentially have lost eligibility for not just unemployment benefits, but related food and health benefits. That’s particularly relevant now with the souped up pandemic benefits.

I don’t disagree that it would be nice if every candidate could take the time to try a company out before they join them, but the real world really can make that impractical. Some of the suggestions this thread makes around “buying” ones way out of these problems (such as knowing to have paid for COBRA ahead of time and being able to afford it) represent knowledge and opportunity that is all together distinct from ones ability to do the job.

Location: San Francisco / Bay Area

Remote: Onsite or Remote

Willing to relocate: Maybe

Technologies: Ruby Rails, Python, Javascript

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbisker

Email: username at gmail

Engineering manager and engineer, recently laid off. Specializing in growth work (marketing and sales, user acquisition, new user experience), both B2B and B2C. Open to manager, IC and/or co-founder opportunities. Also open to pure growth consulting. Excited to see what's out there!

Hired.com | Sr SW Engineer | Full Time | San Francisco, CA and Toronto, Ontario, Canada | ONSITE | hired.com/careers We’re on a mission to help get everyone a job they love. Find the job you love here at Hired!

Hired is an end to end SaaS hiring platform that makes it possible for companies and candidates to join together for an optimal matching experience. We combine our intelligent job matching algorithm with unbiased career counseling to help a wide breadth of diverse technical talent find a job they love. Through Hired, our candidates and customers gain insight into everything from sourcing and skills assessments to salary offers and benefits, providing full transparency into the hiring process.

We have two open roles - one for a senior software engineer working on our candidate experience (in San Francisco) and one for a senior software engineer working on growth, onboarding and acquisition (in Toronto).

We're a ruby and react shop located in downtown San Francisco (SOMA). We support healthy engineering practices, the development of careers and leadership (as I can attest to, being newly introduced to management myself) and creating a generally sane, empathetic, and introspective work environment. :)

We take all applications through our careers website (hired.com/careers). Please feel free to reach out to me with interest, leads or questions at solomon at hired dot com.

Hired.com | Sr SW Engineer, Sr Product Designer | Full Time | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE | hired.com/careers

We’re on a mission to help get everyone a job they love. Find the job you love here at Hired!

Hired is an end to end SaaS hiring platform that makes it possible for companies and candidates to join together for an optimal matching experience. We combine our intelligent job matching algorithm with unbiased career counseling to help a wide breadth of diverse technical talent find a job they love. Through Hired, our candidates and customers gain insight into everything from sourcing and skills assessments to salary offers and benefits, providing full transparency into the hiring process.

We have open roles for a senior software engineer and a senior product designer working on our candidate experience.

We're a ruby and react shop located in downtown San Francisco (SOMA). We support healthy engineering practices, the development of careers and leadership (as I can attest to, being newly introduced to management myself) and creating a generally sane, empathetic, and introspective work environment. :)

We take all applications through our careers website (hired.com/careers). Please feel free to reach out to me with interest, leads or questions at solomon at hired dot com.

Hired.com | Sr Growth Engineer, Sr SW Engineer, Sr Growth Product Manager, Sr DevOps Engineer | Full Time | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE | hired.com/careers

We’re on a mission to help get everyone a job they love. Find the job you love here at Hired!

Hired is an end to end SaaS hiring platform that makes it possible for companies and candidates to join together for an optimal matching experience. We combine our intelligent job matching algorithm with unbiased career counseling to help a wide breadth of diverse technical talent find a job they love. Through Hired, our candidates and customers gain insight into everything from sourcing and skills assessments to salary offers and benefits, providing full transparency into the hiring process.

I manage Hired's growth and acquisition engineering team, and I'm looking for both a senior engineer and my team's product manager. We also have open roles for a senior software engineer working on our candidate experience, and a senior devops engineer working with our systems team.

We're a ruby and react shop located in downtown San Francisco (SOMA). We support healthy engineering practices, the development of careers and leadership (as I can attest to, being newly introduced to management myself) and creating a generally sane, empathetic, and introspective work environment. :)

We take all applications through our careers website (hired.com/careers). Please feel free to reach out to me with interest, leads or questions at solomon at hired dot com.

If you're working at a software company in the US, the odds are good you make enough that you're not living near any significant crime unless by choice (for instance, for "city life"). Crime is seriously pocketed in the US. And (perhaps fortunately) the number of people I've known who've ever seen an illegally owned or used gun is vanishingly small.

I showed up very late to an Apple keynote about 10 years back, and was grabbed while walking in by some staffer to sit in a third row seat. I had no affiliation with Apple; I assume I was picked because I "looked the part" (which was, apparently, a college aged nerdy computer science student).

So yeah, I'm sure it's mostly Apple employees, with randoms like myself thrown in here to make the crowd shots less homogenous.

It sounded like if you are captured you are paid a dollar a day until you are released or can escape - but can't collect pay while "running away". It seemed unclear whether that was in lieu of normal pay or in addition to it.

I imagine it was worded this way so someone couldn't just be "escaping" for an unknown length of time and just disappear - removes the incentive to not return right away. Still, I'm not how anyone would be able to prove or disprove which day he escaped in the first place - not like his captors gave him a receipt - so the whole thing is pretty goofy.

Coinlist 9 years ago

On the plus side, token sales are actually mainstream - so companies will actually be able to choose this hacked together version of the old public securities model and controlling their own destiny via DAOs and, well, simply setting up shop outside of the US. Choice is a good thing for companies, and it's a clever compromise - but if the only way VCs can invest is with hacks like this, I'm not feeling bullish on America's chance of participating in this new economy.

I worked at a company that tried that for a while and eventually decided to completely abandon it, because it was correlating so strongly to a particular set of experiences shared by the (mostly male, CS degreed) interviewers. Particularly with more junior engineers, where having a sexy setup is more likely to correlate who you hung out with in college than whether you actually coded enough to find a need for it yourself. So if you're going to play with that as a signal, I'd advise you to be very careful.

Cruise 10 years ago

I did make you a beautiful logo, didn't I ;) Yes, it's been a while.

One of the reasons I signed and took your $25 offer was because I wanted to live in a future where I didn't feel massively entitled to someone else's successes. At some point it makes sense to lock in your friendship with your friend-who-you-decided-to-maybe-cofound-with-but-stayed-in-Boston-instead and move on with your life, before money gets in the way.

That said, every story is different. Just because all I made for borski was a silly logo, doesn't mean that this Cruise fellow didn't make a more significant contribution. For better or worse, it looks like that story will play out rather publicly now.