webwright

20 or so shops isn't mid-sized, is it?

I just moved to Orcas Island in the PNW after living in cities (Seattle, Anchorage) for most of my adult life. I'm near the one town on the island (which is REALLY quiet outside of the 4 warmest/touristy months). ~4,500 people year round population. Weather is perfect with near zero rain for 4-6 months but a bit gray / drizzly for the rest. It's rarely cold, but decent ski hills are 2h inland.

The population (like a lot of small towns) is pretty old, but I found the small group of newer folks (lots of tech expats) to be really welcoming.

I can walk to the small airport, which has regular $180-$200 flights to Seattle (show up 10min before departure, 45min flight). Ferries are more work but sometimes you want your vehicle on the mainland for a big group of houseguests or whatnot.

I'm 15min away from getting a paddlboard into two mountain lakes-- both are popular swimming destinations for locals. I have friends pulling crabs and prawns out of the water all summer. There are zillions of islands and inlets around-- it's a playground if you're a boater. 4-5 good hikes on the islands with breathtaking views. There's one (never crowded) gym in town with a racquetball court. There's a board game meetup. A few fancy restaurants, one killer cocktail bar, a good locals dive bar. I leave my door unlocked. There's a "village green" with frequent concerts and a Saturday farmer's market. The schools and kids on this island are amazing. Ferries and small planes can get you quickly to Victoria/Vancouver Island, Vancouver (the city), and assorted other cool small/medium towns.

I'm pretty new to this, but am LOVING it. There are downsides-- not a lot of food variety in town, tough to make new friends if you aren't the kind of person who makes the effort. The gray season is long and VERY quiet, so you definitely need to budget time/$ to travel. The schools are pretty understanding about missed days in the winter because of this.

Hit me up if you (or anyone) ever wants to check it out. I'll buy you a drink and talk your ear off about it.

news.ycombinator.com said "not found"?! :-)

Still, pretty darn cool.

This was (originally) exactly why we created RescueTime (YC08 - and still growing!). We'd sold a tiny/new startup that we'd created IN ALASKA to a large/overfunded startup (150ppl) in Seattle. We were convinced we were moving to the big leagues. Everyone would be so smart! We'd move 10x faster will the big league technology/processes!

The reality was pretty terrible-- I felt like the entire company spent all day writing emails, going to meetings, and updating wikis... Which seemed pretty scary for a company that hadn't figured out its own product yet. We wanted a big chart showing the allocation of time spend so we could show it the exec team and say, "Is this on purpose?"

The company ended up raising $50M and selling for less than $1M. The founder went on to create Fab.com, which raised $300M+ and sold for $15M.

One thing I've said to acquirers in the past is: "You're a big company that can afford to dedicate a person full-time to this deal for months with no impact to your company's focus and bottom line. We're not. I'm excited about this opportunity, can we brainstorm how to limit the cost of exploring this? And perhaps how we could share the cost a bit more equally?"

When we get into brainstorming mode, two things I navigate towards are: time-boxing the exercise (setting and sticking to an condensed schedule) and earnest money from them after some amount of diligence or discussion.

If a suitor can't commit to getting to a handshake/LOI after X weeks, I wouldn't pursue it.

Unrelated advice: try to hack your own brain and your team into believing that the default result of this is "no deal, time wasted". Many/most deals fall through, which can feel pretty brutal if you get optimistic about it.

This is a pretty ridiculous series of statements, especially if you count YC as a mid-stage startup when he joined (which it was).

If you add up all of the successful YC companies since he started leading YC, it's a pretty breathtaking number (the count, the valuations, and the value created). YC was having pretty serious scaling problems when he took the reins-- from my understanding, he resolved those pretty effectively. YC's growth since he's been leading it (in a lot of directions) has been impressive-- full-stop.

I've been in the Seattle startup scene for ~12 years and haven't ever heard him blamed for "promoting and perpetuating a toxic culture within Moz", so "widely blamed" doesn't seem accurate. I've also never heard of the other stuff you mention. If he was openly mocking/punishing customers, maybe you can provide a link where he did that?

Moz did spend a bunch of $ on new stuff vs. core stuff-- but I think that was after Rand stepped away from the CEO chair. Certainly the layoffs were after that by several years. Not saying he bears ZERO responsibility, but hanging that on him seems pretty unfair. Here's his post about the strategic zigs/zags and layoffs: https://sparktoro.com/blog/moz-returns-to-seo/

Here's a quote from the post:

"I’m also really thankful that I wasn’t in a managerial position and didn’t have to make what were, I’m sure, insanely tough calls about who stayed at Moz and who didn’t. I feel guilty and awful for all who were in that position, and all those who are seeking jobs now. I remember what it was like when Geraldine and many of her coworkers were laid off and the feelings of doubt and fear, resentment and confusion that washed over us. My empathy and my heart are with everyone on both sides of this heart-wrenching process."

It's not a big deal as described in the article. The effort to apply to YC is nominal, not terribly distracting, and probably a good exercise even if you don't get accepted.

In Anchorage, Alaska there is a moose roadkill call list you can get on. The authorities will call you (day or night) when a moose is struck. If you're willing to come out and harvest it, it's yours. If not, they move down the list to the next person. My brother has gotten a moose or two that way.

Usually the impact point(s) is/are pretty wrecked, but the majority of the meat is good. And, of course, Anchorage is a natural refrigerator (or freezer) most times of the year.

The ultracheap way to do this is just have a 2min gameplay video where you describe how a turn works.

I'd go to LinkedIn (or their About page if they are small enough) and just look at the people. The more diversity you see, the more they are walking the walk. You can also look thru past employees via LinkedIn (might require premium account) and reach out to diverse folks who've left the companies you're considering.

Funny thing about the beer-- we got draft cold brew coffee at work and went out of our way to design and laser-cut a tap handle that says "Coffee" so candidates wouldn't think it was a beer keg.

Other ideas: run their job post through Textio (https://textio.com/ ).

Disclaimer: I am a white dude, but my company of 65 (in Seattle) is about half women on the engineering side of things. It was a lot of work.

I'm not remotely an expert, but this data seems way more compelling than anecdotes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/health/hallucinogenic-mus...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/01/magic-mushro...

http://time.com/4338947/magic-mushrooms-for-depression/

(source: I've twice left my own companies- both companies continued to grow and prosper after I left).

Personally, I'd suck it up and get the sale done, working hard to make the price as front-loaded as possible. Depending on the buyers appetite for you to keep working there you could:

A) Suggest that you're excited to stay with the business, but if they feel there'd be too many chefs in the kitchen and that you should phase out, you'd like to know about that now... i.e. open the door for them to express how critical you are to the deal.

B) If they DO really want you, push hard for a front-loaded deal (i.e. initial payout versus earn out) and then give notice 6 months after the deal closes. You'll leave some (maybe lots) of $ on the table, but who cares. Selling a company isn't indentured servitude. Someone else owning the company might relieve some stress. If it doesn't, punt.

Broadly-- I'm a believer that happiness is generally internal. If you can't find a way to be happy with this job, I suspect you'll have a hard time with a different one. Starting ASAP, I'd make some changes to see if it makes a difference. Get therapy. Try anti-depressants. Shut off your phone at 6pm and don't open your computer. The sky won't fall. Exercise. Meditate. Try psychedelic mushrooms (only half kidding-- there are some studies that one dose positively impacts depression and anxiety). Eat better. Go into work late AM twice a week so you can take a long walk with your wife. Schedule vacations. Go into the woods a lot (exposure to green space helps depression too). I just read that doing tai chi helps with depression. Schedule weekly lunches with friends.

Glowforge (http://www.glowforge.com)

Seattle, WA (onsite) / Full-time / hiring full-stack web software engineers, product managers, program managers, senior electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, UI/UX designers and a lot more...

We're building a desktop laser cutter/engraver that can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, acrylic and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to cloud software. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up. We're building a catalog of designs that can be customized and a materials store. We've got beta units in the field and users are loving them (and making amazing things).

Other Highlights:

* Largest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history ($27.9M). We’ve since pre-sold a total of $50M or so. * Recently closed a $22M Series B from Brad Feld/Foundry and True Ventures, and have ~56 employees. * The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, gone through YC, and built profitable businesses.

Here's the kind of thing it could accomplish:

https://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14490950/travis-kalanick-ube...

If tech workers express collective displeasure about a company, it meaningfully hurts that company's ability to recruit/retain tech workers.

This isn't true.

Google existed and grew (rapidly) for quite a while before they launched Adwords, which they introduced in 2000. Their growth in '99 was pretty meteoric (prompting a $25M investment from KP and Sequoia) before it rolled out PPC monetization. The Adwords model wasn't new at all-- Goto.com was the first search engine to bet on that model.

Google won because it was a massively better search engine... Not just 10% better-- it was "holy crap" better on a mess of fronts (notably: serving up what you were looking for).

Glowforge (http://www.glowforge.com)

Seattle, WA (onsite) / Full-time / hiring full-stack web software engineers, senior electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, UI/UX designers and more...

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver that can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, just closed a $22M Series B from Brad Feld and True Ventures, and have ~36 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, graduated YC, and built profitable businesses. Check out this article about us: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/glowforge-raises-22-millio...

To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Seattle, WA (no remote) / Full-time / hiring full-stack web software engineers, senior electrical engineers, UI/UX designers and more... http://www.glowforge.com

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver that can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, just closed a $22M Series B from Brad Feld and True Ventures, and have ~35 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, graduated YC, and built profitable businesses. Check out this article about us: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/glowforge-raises-22-millio...

Our greatest need right now is web software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

I'd guess more .2 - 1.0 after rounds of dilution, but it depends on when he came on board. The $30B valuation is preferred shares, right? If he sold any before liquidity, it'd be common shares, which is often deeply discounted (~33% of preferred).

"There just doesn't seem to be any practical advantage to using TripleByte over any other recruiter."

Except, of course, that the companies who work with TripleByte probably trust them a LOT to provide great/qualified candidates. Most companies don't trust recruiters very much at all-- some aren't terribly motivated by anything other than closing as many deals as possible, and the vast majority don't know anything about coding. And many/most of Triplebyte's companies probably don't work with recruiters.

Why do you think failing a tech screen with Triplebyte would exclude you from top companies? You could still apply to those top companies easily, no? When those companies get a promising applicant, they don't do pore thru Triplebyte failed-screens data. Even if they wanted to, I presume that information isn't actually available to them.

Cost/benefit-wise seems like it adds credibility and saves time going with Triplebyte unless there isn't 2+ YC companies you are excited to apply to.

Seattle, Onsite (re-location assistance offered) | software engineers / firmware engineers / designers / PMs (full time)

Late last year, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M. We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have ~30 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, gone thru YC, and built profitable businesses... We've got engineers from Google, Uber, Amazon, Apple, and a few from less traditional backgrounds. Our greatest need right now is (web) software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Seattle, Onsite | software engineers / firmware engineers / designers (full time)

A few months ago, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M.

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have 20 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, gone thru YC, and built profitable businesses... We've got engineers from Google, Amazon, Apple, and a few from less traditional backgrounds.

Our greatest need right now is (web) software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Seattle, Onsite | software engineers / firmware engineers / designers (full time)

A few months ago, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M.

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have 20 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, gone thru YC, and built profitable businesses... We've got engineers from Google, Amazon, Apple, and a few from less traditional backgrounds.

Our greatest need right now is (web) software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

"The dreams I had even six months ago, feeling ever more impossible."

Which dreams? Are the people who have achieved dreams like those that much more capable of you? One of my realizations is just how much less important intelligence is to drive. If you want something, oftentimes the difference is doing the work. Make sure it's a meaningful dream (e.g. not "get rich" which impacts happiness surprisingly little).

"I feel like I should find another job. Move to a different city or country. But I don't know how to do these things."

Are you more or less capable than the millions of people who find new jobs or move? You sound smart and educated. "Don't know how" seems like a pretty soft excuse. Everything has an "undo" button. Get a new job and it sucks? Well, you tried and learned some interesting things about yourself and the world-- go find another one. Move to a different city and find out that you don't love it? Well, you got to explore a cool place that wasn't for you, and maybe you met some interesting people. Move back or move to a new city.

"Either more money, fewer hours for the same money, or some balance between the two."

You're probably right that this probably how most people are motivated. I think the OP is talking about high-performing people at technology companies, who aren't mostly motivated by short-term pay rate or leisure time. They tend to be the best people precisely because they have more drive to succeed in the long-term than collect the best near-term paycheck or maximize leisure time. The best people in these companies could make more money for less work right now-- if they wanted to.

I'm not actually saying that's always (or even usually) a good thing-- the most common deathbed regret is working too much.

"This suggests that there are entire cities, even states, lacking in creative people."

It just suggests a migration. Smart/educated/creative people often head to opportunity when they can. Go to any small town and many of the best/brightest have left. Go to Greece and you'll find the same thing. Certainly some folks stay out of necessity (family ties, poverty, and other reasons) or by choice (a love for the place).

Seattle, Onsite | software engineers / firmware engineers / designers (full time)

A month or so ago, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M.

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have 16 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, gone thru YC, and built profitable businesses.

Our greatest need right now is software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Seattle, Onsite | software engineers / firmware engineers / designers (full time)

A month or so ago, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M.

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have 12 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, graduated YC, and built profitable businesses.

Our greatest need right now is web software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Seattle | Software Engineers / Mechanical Engineers / Designers | Full-time | Onsite

A week or so ago, we (www.glowforge.com) finished the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history... Just shy of $28M.

We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.

We're up in Seattle, have $9M in funding from Foundry/True (in additional to ~$28M in crowdfunding), and have 12 employees. The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, graduated YC, and built profitable businesses.

Our greatest need right now is web software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!

PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.