I had an interesting discussion with a colleague yesterday who raised some questions I couldn't answer:1. Who funds open source projects and the main contributors to those projects? For instance, the Rails project has key contributors who seem to be working full-time on the project.2. Can an open source project get acquired by an organisation and become a proprietary product?
I still can't see how the base of the box is aligned :(
Interesting... as I don't rate fb's design at all...
OM had an article about why FB prefers MySQL and quotes FB's Mark Callaghan for his reasons.Did anyone ever ask whether Callaghan's previous 8 years at Oracle had any impact of why he is an evangelist for mysql?Furthermore, this Callaghan says "The implementations just aren’t as mature, he said, and there are no published cases of NoSQL databases operating at the scale of Facebook’s MySQL...
Thanks for participating in this thread. Just out of curiosity, how will your service differentiate from iCloud for Apple users?
You'll be doing all the work up front and then all the work maintaining and improving.
You're also not a flight risk as it sounds like you're in it for the long haul.
They also sound like they're not convinced, which means they either haven't though it through or they're not worth the risk.
Good luck with the decision. I would vote a no for them as it sounds like you deserve better and if you keep looking, you'll find some cofounders worth taking the startup risk with.
- ability to analyse the problem
- talk about possibilities, thus displaying communication skills
I have probably misled my comment by using the phrase "brain-teaser" when I really meant "design question".
Misconception 1: answering programming questions tells if the developer is awesome
No it doesn't. When an interviewer asks you a programming language-specific question, they are wanting to know how awesome you are at the language to see if you can hit the ground running on your first day. These sorts of questions only tell you one thing though, that the person you are interviewing has spent a lot of hours in front of the one programming language. I personally do not rate these types of questions for an interview because anyone can learn syntax, data structures and best ways to implement language-dependent code.
Misconception 2: brain-teasers don't tell you anything
This couldn't be more wrong... The reasons why an interviewer throws you a brain teaser or design question is to understand your thought logic and problem solving skills. While you talk through how you would solve your problem, they are assessing your communication skills, your process in solving a problem and also what knowledge you have as part of your experience.
Misconception 3: degrees don't tell anything
There is a lot of "show us your projects" being thrown around. While this is a fair call, one should not dismiss the degree. Simply being, that the degree is a project. It means that the candidate has had to spend three to five years juggling multiple subjects (read as 'projects'), while working part-time (read as 'projects') and managing their social life (read as 'drinking beer' and 'tuning hot people'). A degree is a testament of the students ability to see something through from start to finish... it's an example of their dedication.
Misconception 4: degrees aren't teaching students how to code, so how are they expected to code
Again, this is a fallacy. The degree is teaching students how to collaborate through group projects. How to work unsupervised and be resourceful while working unsupervised. It teaches the fundamentals so they can pick up any programming language (just another tool) and apply the fundamentals they have been taught.
I strongly agree with @marcamillion's statement about "developers being better over time". This is why I disagree with Misconception 1, as all this is doing is showing how much experience the interviewer has with the language they are quizzing someone on.
Overall, give the new coder a break. They most likely got hired because they: - fit into the work culture - possess strong problem solving abilities - can work unsupervised - can work within a team environment - have imagination
And if the new guy is asking you a question, it's because they're wanting to learn, so respect that as they're trying to be awesome like you.
Disclaimer: Sometimes people make mistakes though, and a dud ends up being 'that' coder that can't code ;)
Step 1: create fear through speculation
Step 2: investors get cold feet from step 1
Step 3: the tech sector suffers again
He is a prime example of someone with no software experience moving into the industry. However, I believe it worked wonderfully for him because he didn't shift from his primary industry where he held all of his domain knowledge.
Congrats if you're wanting to shift professions and industries as it is a brave move. I would suggest surrounding yourself with talented and experienced people in the software industry. There should be Ruby on Rails and web meetups in your area where you will be able to network and learn from approachable people.
All the best in your endeavours!
I've noticed an anti-pattern in job adverts of the mis-labelling of the job position of a "programmer" as a "software engineer". There are major differences between the two so why do job adverts do it?
Reliability: They run off Amazon web services which are continually expanding their regions. So they are highly reliable (especially after the EC2 outage in 2010).
Cost: In my experience, heroku has saved me a lot of time and my clients a lot of money. Yes, I can setup and manage my own servers and it can be for as little at $10/month. heroku on the other hand costs up to $100/month for my production servers. Why am I willing to pay this much? Because I put a higher price on my time than $100/month. I don't have to worry about infrastructure or redundancy issues. Furthermore, my clients can afford these hosting costs as I explain to them that $100/month is cheaper than my hourly rate if I have to troubleshoot network/server issues and also perform server maintenance... which none of these I have to do on heroku.
Limitations & hiccups: I've found that I've needed to employ alternative ways of doing things due to some minor heroku limitations. Overall, everything is achievable with some resourcefulness and some extra money.
Overall, heroku is easy to get started with, especially if you've got sys admin experience! Hope this helps and good luck with your job interview!
Ignore what the critics say about this book because I think this book's strengths is in their case studies on the company cultures and qualities that made them successful decades ago. This is more about how to treat people and direct a company, while providing examples of how these companies had dedicated passionate micro teams who were their "lean startup" champions that drove their innovation and success.
Friend should also give VC's more credit than to play them against each other or use them as bait. VC's are in their business because they know their stuff and can smell a good/bad idea a mile a way... when they don't understand an idea, it's because we as entrepreneurs have failed to help them understand.
I would suggest trying to narrow down your choices based on your strengths and weaknesses (and those of your co-founders if applicable) and which ones you believe in the most; which would you buy/use/subscribe to as a consumer? This should give you a short-list where you could then perform a SWOT analysis^^ on each to help you trim the short-list of ideas down further. Get it down to one idea you are passionate about! Bring that to HN for feedback and you'll definitely have a great start!
^^ You mentioned you have done countless hours of research for an idea... Sometimes 'searching' isn't enough. Put your energy into 'doing' instead. If you're technical, create a prototype and unleash it to some people in the industry you are targeting. If you aren't technical, go find your pilot customers you want to target this to and present them with some wireframes and your elevator pitch for the product. Both of these methods will ensure you only spend a few days max but you'll be able to receive invaluable feedback to determine if you need to adjust your idea or try another one completely.