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Fixing the recruiter industry | yangtheman: Folks at Hacker Dojo have been discussing holding a reverse job fair, where hackers who are in the job market come in with their craft (live demo, code samples and whatnot) and interact with other engineers or hiring managers who can recognize their mad skills and refer internally, decide who to bring in for further interview or hire someone on the spot!It's not scalable, but as I see more and more co-working spaces sprout up in many places, this could be ONE way of solving the hiring/recruiting problem for hackers. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | antipimp: Hey fellas/ladies - one of my developer cronies sent this post my way and I'd LOVE to chat with some of y'all. I AM a recruiter and have been for the last 12+ years..in addition I share the exact sentiment that you have written on the pages below. Any of you wanna chat off line? If so, I'd welcome it and would enjoy your contribution on my blog TheAntiPimp.com. Might also help to check out this post I did about the things I hate about recruiters...rock on.http://theantipimp.com/?p=1082Scott
scott@theantipimp.com |
Fixing the recruiter industry | jbooth: Funny thing about recruiters, is going through a recruiter I've generally wound up with higher pay than doing things the other way around. They'll be their typical aggressive recruiter selves, sell me, bid me up and insist that I can't possibly work for less than X without making me seem like the prima donna.. I still get to be the mild mannered guy who's primarily motivated by the quality of work. They've also gotten me into places faster.. last couple of times I was looking for work, the companies with a recruiter had me into final interview stage before other companies (some of whom I was actually interested enough in to seek out and contact) even got back to me from my first "here's my resume" email.So.. they actually do work. You'd think that if the company wasn't forking over 25% of my salary to a recruiter, they'd be more enthusiastic to speak to me and would be willing to pay me more, but it hasn't worked out that way in practice. YMMV. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | shmichael: Be original. If you want something unconventional, you'll have to make it happen. Here is some inspiration:
http://www.socialmediajobs.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/20... |
Fixing the recruiter industry | adnam: I think that programmers often encounter a culture clash with recruiters. A recruiter has a client (and it's not you) and has to fill a large number of positions. I have had some awful experiences. Once, the recruiter sent a modified version of my CV to a company and exaggerated my experience in certain areas. I guess she thought she was doing me a favour, but I ended up looking like an idiot in the interview. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | lmedinburgh: Guys & Dolls,Recruitment is sales. 95% of your time is wasted calling clients and candidates for the one time you get a match. This is unless you manage a number of clients where you are fed requirements, and then it's just the candidate part.There is no way to escape it; the best thing to do is to shield yourself from the continuous onslaught.• Insist all communication is sent to a "jobs" email and have GMail filter it or poll it
• Delete your phone number off CV's when sending them in or posting on the web.
• Make your most recent employer anonymous
• You can also use an initial instead of your first name incase they have your details already, it may fool them ;-)
• Make sure your CV is well written and updated
• Insist on seeing a job spec before giving them your number, if you’re the perfect match they will take the time.
• Do tell them your current status and salaryDO NOT tell them info on current company, manager until you trust them.Remember they want to close candidates, clients, deals – it’s a sales jobEvery call is a sales call; they will try to strip you for information, about colleagues, workplace, inside info, references for managers’ namesWe would often misplace the truth or withhold information to close deals; this is common practice in the UK/Europe. The most common one telling people we had sent their CV to an employer when we hadn’t just to ensure they wouldn’t let other recruiters send it to the client and increasing the likeliness that our current candidates had a better chance.I think Recruiters have a place in society, some are upstanding and honest, other aren’t. As I mentioned, it’s about distancing yourself from them until they have the ideal job for you.P.S.
Sorry for the ramblings, trying to watch TV and take care of my 4 day old daughter.I’m a mature student studying CS but worked as an IT recruiter before deciding I wanted to turn to the other side. |
Reasonably priced video cameras for startups? | DanielBMarkham: I love my FlipCam. I've been keeping a video diary of my startup on it, and I also used several to record my vacation to Australia and New Zealand in October.I don't think you need super-high quality, even though the FlipCams are HD. Content counts more than style or featureset. What I like about the FlipCam is ease of use, portability, and connectivity to various video-sharing services.The vacation was a bit of a testbed. Everybody in the family had a FlipCam, and we posted to the net a lot. After a few days, however, we realized that some sort of post-production really helped make the video much better. So I started using Camtasia Studio for basic titling, popups, splices, and transitions. It also allowed me to tweak the codec settings when I rendered the file, which was nice.Another interesting lesson: the more you film, the better you get. At first everybody was stiff as a board the second you turned the cam on. Must be some kind of hangover from the still camera days. But after a dozen or so shots with us all watching the results, we realized that relaxing was the only way to go. The videos got a lot better at the end.Here's a sample of the more relaxed video we got at the end of the trip instead of the start: http://www.vimeo.com/7121046EDIT: I'm a bit of a movie buff, so this is a pet topic for me. I know that you're receiving conflicting advice, and I really can't emphasize enough how content trumps style. We found the the emotional context of a piece -- setting, reactions, flow, body language, vocal inflections, narrative -- win out so solidly over technical attributes that you can shoot a great video on the crappiest equipment imaginable and it will still be great video.I could point to major motion pictures going the handy-cam way, like Cloverfield, or I could point to the popularity of amateur internet video, or even America's Funniest Home Videos.But I won't. |
What should I learn next? Python or Ruby/Rails? | gr366: Each language is relatively easy to get started with, and there are numerous free tutorials available on the web. Why not take two weeks and try each one out for a week? See how far you get building something and decide which is the best fit for you right now.If you've written a PHP app, maybe it's a good candidate for rewriting in these languages. Having a problem space that you're intimately familiar with can reduce the variables to just the languages or frameworks themselves. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | allenbrunson: don't have much to add here except: yeah, who hasn't had bad recruiter experiences? i wish i was l33t enough that i could ignore them altogether, but i'm not.i have had a few good experiences, but even then, i've never met even one who had a good grasp of the technical skills that they are trying to sell to potential employers. that's always struck me as kind of odd. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | clistctrl: I had a women ask me once if I was interested in a position writing C Pound. |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | lanstein: Dell's 24" 2408WFP can usually be found either new on eBay or refurbished through the Dell outlet for < $400. It's got a great VA panel, I have two at work and bought my own for home. It also has a million different inputs (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.) and support for SDHC, which the predecessor (2407WFP) did not. |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | ethank: Samsung 2343BWX |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | joshu: I like using a 30" plus a rotated 22" screen.http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/12/quad-monitors-117-millio... |
Fixing the recruiter industry | adammichaelc: Dude, that's a pretty sweet problem to have. "Shoot!! all these people keep calling me about how awesome I am and how many job offers they can get me. The nerve..."Not the kind of problem to be upset about IMHO. If I were you I'd send them all Christmas cards and be glad that you're so sought after.:-) cheers! |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | amandle: I recommend the Asus VW266H 25.5" 1920x1200 and about 300 dollars. Plenty of space for code. |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | noonespecial: In case my other comment gets buried, there are many panel types. I'd suggest an IPS type panel from the following list for coding or graphics work.http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/s-ips-lcd-list.php |
good accountants in the Bay Area? | dnsworks: I've been using Maria Ku for years. She saved my backside when I first started consulting and didn't consider the tax implications of my actions. Her rates are fair, and she's easy to work with. I've never actually met her as she's in Oakland and I try not to bridge & tunnel it.Maria Ku (510) 531-6614 maria.ku@sbcglobal.net |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | dnsworks: I'm pretty in love with my Gateway FHD2401 24" laptop. It's 1920x1200, and so bright I don't bother with the screen on my MBP anymore. It's specs came in comparable with >$500 monitors, and it had quite a number of good marks in the various sites that reviewed it. I think I paid $360 with shipping. |
newmogul no more? | allenbrunson: it has been gone for some time now. looks like that community is reforming here: http://www.markenomics.com/ |
Extracting the Twitter Social Graph | collint: Hmmm. I don't have it. If you don't find it, get whatever sample of the graph you can now. If you can get people excited about the idea you can make it happen. |
Please Review My Project (JS Game Engine) | itsmin: Hi everyone, We've updated our policies http://bit.ly/4NKGHm so please give them a read, and check here http://bit.ly/7b4yF2 for a comment about an upcoming feature that addresses an additional concern. And thanks again for all the great comments! |
Are there any information or assumptions about iTunes.com architecture? | mahmud: Which part of "itunes" specifically? The network/distribution architecture? the security model? the social aspects? the business processes? |
Authorize.net for non-US company | known: You may check http://www.ccavenue.com/content/comparative.jsp |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | mgrouchy: I don't think its unethical at all.I think you did more than most would in trying to contact the buildItWith me guys and that is certainly commendable.I also don't think there is any confusion between the two products(From a look and feel perspective) so no harm no foul. The internet is filled with people taking "inspiration" from other sites and products. This can be evidenced simply by the number of websites that look like http://www.campaignmonitor.com . |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | tortilla: Honestly, I think your (original) site looks better.It (updated site) has a similar layout, but that's about it. You didn't copy their look, maybe their layout. But if you asked someone on the street, I doubt there would be any confusion.edited: in parentheses to clarify |
Extracting the Twitter Social Graph | jdrock: Check out Infochimps - they have a big Twitter data dump. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | overgard: From a philosophical standpoint, I don't think you were wrong to borrow interface ideas.(I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds to say though, that while copying some of their better ideas, I think you may have also copied some of their worse ideas. The way scrolling works on both sites is very confusing -- your original site was better in that regard. ) |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | maxdemarzi: When other people call you a "Hacker", then you are a "Hacker".... until then you are a "Software Developer". |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | oneplusone: It's fine to steal interface ideas. However, I think you took a step backwards in doing so. Yes, what you had wasn't very good. However, what you have now is even worse. Your original implementation was on the right track and just needed some refinement. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | notaddicted: I call myself a computer programmer because I program computers. Administration, Theory, Hardware, Engineering, those I consider supporting skills, not the main attraction. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | transmit101: Disqus seems to be pretty much becoming the accepted comments system.It works well, there's a ton of options to allow users to sign in (Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, Yahoo and others, and I recommend it. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | mattmaroon: It's not only ethical, it's dumb not to. It's what businesses have been doing since time immemorial. To watch your competitor improve and not do anything to compete is stupid. Ask Yahoo or KMart.From the legal angle you're probably alright. We recently built a game largely based on another game (sort of the way omgpop built blockles, which is really just Tetris) and I've spoken to attorneys about this extensively. Other than crossing certain lines (trade dress, trademark infringement, etc.) you're probably safe. If you're using their art, or their branding, you may have trouble, but they certainly can't claim to have invented AJAX and a better UI.You should seek legal counsel of course if it ever becomes a problem. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | seven: I do sometimes tell people that I am a hacker.
But I make sure that the people do know or understand that I am refering to the original meaning of the word; and that I am a good guy. For me, boiling an egg in a coffee machine is hacking. I do a lot of security work, but I tell the people that even if I would have nothing to do with security, I still could be a hacker.About self-applying, imo this is ok if you can tell me about your last hack when I ask you about it...."Obviously you’re not a golfer." |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | carbocation: We have had people inform us that they were going to mimic the core idea of our site (and now they have, with venture backing). I wouldn't be worried about borrowing an interface. |
What sub-$400 2nd monitor should I get for coding? | jff: For $400 you could get about 8 of these 19-inch Sun CRTs I'm using. I know LCD is all the rage but if you have the desk space, these Trinitron screens are really sharp and have excellent picture quality. Max resolution is 1600x1200, so it's not a 200:5 aspect ratio or whatever the kewl kidz are using these days. I wish I had a second one instead of the crappy Viewsonic LCD I have as my secondary monitor. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | jlgosse: I just tell people I'm a software developer, because all I do is develop software. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | felideon: Obligatory quote? "Good artists copy, great artists steal." - Attributed to Picasso |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | gte910h: Yes, it's called competing. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | bmickler: I'm using Disqus and it's working out well. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | c_allison: I would say it depends on the person your talking to. To most people, a "hacker" is a "cracker". A geek, loves card games and anime. A nerd loves thick books. But a programmer? They do magical things to computers, something people acceptedly don't understand, and theres no hard stereotypes regarding.You certainly don't want to have to describe yourself too much. The more you try to describe, the less credibility you'll have. In my opinion, programmer is wonderfully enchanting to people who are not versed in... hacker lingo. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | blister: I use Disqus for everything. I can't say enough great things about them. Totally easy integration and all the sexy features that you'd want in a comment system.The only thing I would be concerned with is how they plan on making money in the future. Would suck to pick them and have them go out of business. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | hxa7241: Yes, copying is fundamentally moral/ethical. (Although where it conflicts with a law, like copyright, it is another question -- does the law have precedence?)(As I have written in other places:) To evaluate something morally, we can follow Kant (in 'Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals'), whose fundamental moral rule is: Act only if the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law. That is, we ask: would we want an action to become a general law? If a digital object is good, then copying it duplicates and spreads that good. And the incidental cost of copying is practically nothing. We can certainly wish this were a general law: if everyone copied freely and widely, we would all benefit – we would all receive very much more good, and at negligable cost.You might say there is a loss to the originator, in losing an exclusive advantage. But that really has a hidden presupposition of some social or legal construction like copyright: there is nothing intrinsic in the actions or materials that suggests or requires exclusivity. Abstracts are naturally copyable. Everyone knows and expects that. And ultimately everyone benefits from it.The copyability of things is like a free natural resource. It should be exploited and used as much as possible. That is the message of the ethical argument. The sad thing is that the copyright/patent/IP attitude has become so inculcated that many people no longer see the underlying truth. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | jporta: +1 Disqus |
Anyone is using a comment system? | cout: If you're worried about disqus going away, then export your comments periodically so you have a backup of them somewhere. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | mtinkerhess: The problem with calling yourself a hacker is that inevitably non-hackers don't understand what you mean. Then you have to explain yourself, and you end up seeming more interested in how you are labeled than what you do.That or you end up sounding like Lex from Jurassic Park who "prefer(s) to be called a hacker". |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | mattmaroon: I don't think I'd ever use that term. To someone who doesn't know what it is, it sounds shady. To someone who does know, it's overly vague. It's like saying "I'm a businessman." |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | jamie_ca: Seriously, that's a step backwards. I get no overview, can't just browse, and with my browser window at 1024x768 your non-scrolling sidebar sometimes doesn't have a more info button at the bottom. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | Tawheed: Blatantly copying is a bad idea. Understanding why they're different, and figuring out the motivations behind their (different) choices and then reflecting on the choices you've made for your product is a good idea.Jason F at 37Signals wrote about this a while back: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us... |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | edw519: Fair: Answer with a noun, "I am a computer programmer."Good: Answer with a verb, "I program computers."Better: Answer with a verb for myself and a noun for the result, "I program web applications."Even Better: Answer with a verb for myself, a noun for the result, and another noun for my customer, "I program web applications for doctors."Best: Answer with a verb for myself, a noun for the result, another noun for my customer, and another noun to describe my customers' benefits, "I program web applications that help doctors give better care to their patients." |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | showerst: My title is "User Interface Engineer". I tell people "I'm a Professional Nerd for (X)".It shows that I have a sense of humor about my job (a job that to many people is inscrutable).Many people in our own field don't know the difference between a web designer/developer/programmer/UI/UX/DBA, and I figure that I'll take a crack at whatever needs to get done, so why be limited to a label?I feel like hacker has too many negative connotations outside our tiny community that 'gets it', especially since I live in DC, which is more traditional about this stuff. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | Aegean: Now that this subject is open, let me say it: I don't think the term hacker really reflects the concept of Hacker News. Startups are focused on entrepreneurship and revenue, there is a hacker side to it but the hacker aspect is not the central point. If there would be a real hacker news, building exceptional or interesting technology would be more of a central point than entrepreneurship. E.g. Grand Challenge, or some new technology that would change the way internet works. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | ErrantX: I custom coded. When I built my latest project I always intended to have comments (but they are not a key feature) and for the most part assumed I would drop disqus in.Ultimately I couldnt figure out a nice way to integrate disqus tightly into the site - so the custom code added more value. It took about 100 lines. :)http://bitbucket.org/errant/startupwiki/changeset/e36c46169c...http://bitbucket.org/errant/startupwiki/changeset/287adfec70... |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | icey: I used to spend a lot of time figuring out which way I would describe what I did to people who weren't in the industry.Now I just say that I'm in software, and it turns out that's enough 95% of the time. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | bitwize: I tell people I program robot submarines.And wait for the awesome to hit them. |
Have you ever had a founder quit or had to fire one? | Saavedro: Unless the code is difficult to understand because of what it actually -does-, rewrite it and move on. You'll be better for it in the long run with people who write understandable code.At least you didn't have one founder quit, then wind up having to fire the other (woo, Apple). |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | dmlorenzetti: How many regular HN readers think of themselves foremost as computer programmers (by whatever name)?The responses posted here so far make it sound like the solid majority. Yet there must be more people on here who, like me, just happen to do a lot of programming in the course of pursuing other goals.In short, I tend to tell people "I do xxx, which involves writing a lot of code" (rather than saying "I'm a programmer"). For this reason, I often find the self-representation here a bit strange. I tend to think of programming as just a tool to get work done, rather than the work in of itself. A lot of HN comments read to me as if a carpenter described his job as "swinging a hammer." |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | igorgue: My friends and family say I "type in colors" |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | CrLf: The real meaning of the word "hacker" has been lost forever (even in technical circles) so, no, I don't call myself an "hacker".If I know the audience will understand it properly, I'll call myself a "geek". Otherwise, I'll just call myself a "computer systems administrator". |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | ax0n: I usually just tell normal people that I work with computers or that I keep bad guys out of bank accounts. It's a word that one can use in self-reference, but only once you've been accepted by other hackers as being one.It doesn't apply only to the word "hacker", though. Many labels don't mean much until you've really earned it and been validated by peers. |
Fixing the recruiter industry | pmichaud: Recruiters exists because of two problems:1) Programmers can't find all the jobs that are available
2) Companies aren't generally able to evaluate programmersBut #1 is less and less true, and the recruitment industry doesn't do a good job of addressing #2. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | statictype: Depending on the person asking and whether or not I'm in a conversing mood, I'd use either 'programmer' or "I do computer stuff" while making that vague and silly typing-on-keyboard gesture with my hand. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | moron4hire: I tell people I'm a mad scientist. |
Anyone is using a comment system? | hikari17: Just thought I'd add +1 for Intense Debate. We've used it on our site's blog for a little over a year and we're quite satisfied. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | apsurd: Aren't you supposed to be developing your users?In other words, what does it matter what their site does? Your users are on your site are they not? This builditwithme "looks nice"; it has 129 people; what are you worried about?Get some feedback from the people on your site. Talk to them, find out what, how, why, where they are looking for and (not finding) help with their project. It makes the farthest sense, at least in my opinion, to try to answer those questions by looking at some other guys site design. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | imp: IMHO I hate their interface. That flashy Ajax is too overwhelming. Your plain list is easier for me to read. Have you tried doing user testing with your two pages and then also test how users interact with your competitor? |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | iterationx: Calling yourself a hacker makes you look like an egomaniac. |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | makeee: What are you copying from builditwithme? I don't see much of a similarity. Anyway, I think your original site is much better than the new one. |
Suggestions for simple, cheap Workers Comp for CA office staff? | coopr: Intuit's URL: http://payroll.intuit.com/workerscomp/ |
is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? | TrevorJ: I find that it is important to not just blindly copy something, but to truly unpack the principles behind it and attempt to improve upon it. This allows you to be inspired by great work but to (hopefully) take it even further and polish it even more.If you can't change or tweak anything about the original inpiration then it's a good bet you don't fully understand why it works or how, so you aren't going to grow in the process. |
Ask HN:How to promote a Linux live cd? | BigPapa: Ah ah they call me Big Papa.Just call me Big Papa.Just get on the floor with your hos and my knob.Ah ah Big Papa. |
Am confused. Please suggest | jmonegro: You might find very useful answers over at StackOverflow, or ServerFault, most likely from people who are already successful network programmers. |
Extracting the Twitter Social Graph | kellyjoseph: We'd love to talk with you about what you're building, our scrape is the most complete outside of Twitter that we know of.http://blog.infochimps.org/2008/12/29/massive-scrape-of-twit...
It has since grown to 40M users.joe@infochimps.org |
Sales Resources | callmeed: I'm having a little trouble parsing your first sentence, but ... if you have a truly specialized/niche product, my best advice is to find high-profile people inside the industry, partner with them in one way or another, and let them sell for you. We did this initially and it was instrumental in our growth.For most niches, there are trade organizations, annual conventions, and "connectors" (as Gladwell would call them) who have been around for years, teach workshops, run regional groups, etc. This is where I'd start looking. Hit an annual convention or two–you don't have to exhibit just yet (but it would help), but at least walk the floor and introduce yourself. Look at the speakers and get in touch with them. Many trade organizations allow you to advertise directly to their members.Hope that helps. |
Sales Resources | 3pt14159: Hey Kyro - Bring someone on. It takes about 1 year to really learn sales, 6 months if you have a bit of a marketing background. If you really can't bring someone on, then here are some pointers based off of the sales guys I work with.First, treat everything like a funnel. First time visitors to repeat visitors to trial accounts to paid accounts to referring accounts. Test around about a bit to determine where you are best able to impact the conversion from one part of the funnel to the next. Make sure your tests are not biased. Randomly assign yourself to a certain number of leads vs a control group. In some companies, the best way to spread the word and impact final sales is through contacting your already paying accounts and getting them to spread the word to their contacts. This works especially well if they have a ingrained interest in seeing you do this (ie, they get value by bringing people on). But usually your best performance is reached by calling, emailing, sending real life snail mail to people that have created free accounts. Also, always CARE about your users, especially your first ones. Care, care, care, care, care. Your first users are typically cutting edge folk that others look to for advice. Even if it looks like a negative ROI to service these users it's not, because they spread the word. You should be emailing these guys back within the hour.Once you reach enough visitor volume, split test EVERYTHING. Pricing pages, home pages, sales tactics, etc. Send me an email if you want some tips on how to do this successfully, it is part of what I do for a living :) p.engineer@gmail.comAll the best going forward! |
Am confused. Please suggest | mbrubeck: It's absolutely not true that C is necessary to be a network programmer. There are some cases where it will absolutely be the best tool (especially for embedded or proprietary hardware), but just look at all the useful network software being written in Erlang, Java, Python/Twisted, Ruby/EventMachine, and now Node.js (just to name a few).Memcached, for example, was first written in Python, then ported to C. Dustin Sallings (one of the maintainers of memcached) has also written a Java client, a server port in Erlang, another server in Google's Go language, and yet another in Python with Twisted:http://dustin.github.com/2009/10/11/ememcached.htmlhttp://dustin.github.com/2009/11/12/gomemcached.htmlhttp://github.com/dustin/twisted-memcachedI hope that inspires you to continue to learn new tools based on what you want to work with, and not think that you "need" to learn one specific tool. On the other hand, I agree that learning C is a worthwhile goal, will teach you a lot, and will help you contribute to many existing companies/projects. |
Sales Resources | nico: This was posted a while ago on HN and I found it really useful: http://saleseverything.ning.com/profiles/blogs/8-sales-quest... |
Sales Resources | mahmud: If it's B2B software shoot me a product description and screenshots, and let's discuss the terms. It would be easier if you have a CJ account.Affiliate marketing is what you want, offer a top commission and give more freedom to publishers. |
Am confused. Please suggest | gills: You can learn the ins and outs of network programming in pretty much any language. When you find yourself needing the level of control or speed which C offers, or compatibility with some platform, then go there. |
Am confused. Please suggest | mahmud: You can get-by with just read-only C skills. Invest your time learning the ins and outs of python and its performance characteristics.It's also inevitable that you will have to learn systems programming; POSIX or Win32 API most likely, for Unix and Windows respectively. But not for another year or so.Have fun. |
Sales Resources | bcx: Just for fun, you might want to drop Olark (http://olark.com) on your website, so when you do get useful traffic you'll have an opportunity to help sell to them -- it's worked out pretty well for us. (shameless plug) |
Have you ever had a founder quit or had to fire one? | johnl: Ask the others if you can contact him to document the code. |
How do you manage your codebase once it gets large? | jimfl: This tends to be the job of the IDE. I am working on a largish .NET codebase, and Visual Studio, combined with a plugin called Resharper is the thing that keeps that sane, giving us context menus that allow us to quickly find usages of a method, or implementations of an interface.For Java code, Eclipse performs similar functions. |
Is it right to call yourself a Hacker? | hc: dude just say this: "i am a programmer and i write business apps, but i've also played with assembly and know what O-notation is. I also know a lot about computer networks, and i've modded my computer on multiple occasions (I used a soldering iron)." |
Sales Resources | kleine2: Books by Brian Tracy |
Review Visual Website Optimizer - hassle-free A/B testing tool | paraschopra: Here is the clickable link: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/Invite code: "hacker-news" (without quotes) |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | chaosmachine: A friend of mine had some success scraping Yahoo Finance.http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=GOOGThere's a CSV download option. |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | SingAlong: Google has a Finance API here http://code.google.com/apis/finance/also if you choose Yahoo http://code.google.com/p/yahoo-finance-stock-data/ |
Generally speaking, Do Indians Startups Suck at Marketing | aditya: I dunno. What's the most well known Indian startup out there?I can't tell. Slideshare comes to mind, but it was founded in CA with offices in Delhi. So maybe they do suck at marketing. |
Are marketing problems like technical/design problems? | cschwarm: I assume you meant promotion; the term marketing usually includes product (design), price, placement (ie. distribution) and promotion.Making marketing decisions is basically the same thing as making any decision: You need to determine your goal, identify barriers you need to overcome in order to reach that goal, and then execute.The difference to technical decision is identifying the barriers. With technical problems, the relevant cause of the barrier, namely the object or software, is under your control and easy to alter. It's also easy to measure the effects of any change. Thus, identifying barriers is rather easy.With promotional decisions, the cause of the barrier is basically the market, that is: some group of people. They are not under your control, altering their behavior is usually very hard, and measurement is an art form since you often don't know who they are. Therefore, identifying the relevant barriers is often a mix of experience, intuition, and guesswork.Of course, there are lists of common barriers (ie. causes why people don't buy or buy elsewhere) and for each of them, there are common methods to overcome (or answer) these.For example, a game is a typical experience good: you can only judge the value after having played (and payed for) the game. Thus, mistrust is a likely barrier to overcome. Typical answers are offering a trial, a demo or a guarantee, setting the price to zero, etc. -- the "low commitment" route. A different route could be using "high-reward" signals: promoting the (high) production costs, setting a rather high price, producing high-quality in-game videos, buying TV time for ads, offering trials to only selected journalists, etc.As you can see from the example, money may be a necessary ingredient, sometimes lots of it. Thus, promotion is also a function of the price (or rather, the revenue model).However, since you seem to go the "low commitment" route, already, your central problem will be "selection": Why play your game instead of one of the million others?A common answer is "relating" or "bounding" -- appeal to something a target audience wants to be (or thinks it is). For example, Listerine's 'Always a bridesmaid, never a bride' appealed to what the audience wanted to be (namely someone's wife). Marlboro's 'Come to Marlboro country' appealed to freedom and independence. So, another ingredient is creativity, so to say.If you have that, your promotion only needs to communicate this particular trait. The rest is finding out what people do, view or read who should be interested in this particular trait and go for it.Then, you really just need time and effort to promote your product successfully.Hope this helps. |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | bioweek: Also is there anywhere to get free historical options prices? |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | steveplace: I'm assuming you want to backtest the data for some automated trading system.You can have a system that works very well with Yahoo data but not in the real world due to two reasons:-data integrity-survivorship biasSo to get good data you need to pay. It's imperative you have good data.A couple sites:
Futures Data (free): http://www.tradingblox.com/tradingblox/free-historical-data....Futures Data (paid): http://www.pinnacledata.com/Stock Data (paid, highly recommended): http://www.premiumdata.net/Stock Data (paid): http://www.csidata.com/You can get forex data from oanda, fxcm, metatrader, ninjatrader.You can also backtest on tradestation.Also, tick data and OHLC data can affect your style-- if you're swing trading you need OHLC but if you're doing more short term, you need tick data. |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | rstonge: I use DTN's NxCore for US Level I real-time data (last sale + bid/ask updates). The feed is excellent, but costs $500 per month. Here is the link: http://www.dtnmarketaccess.com/ |
Generally speaking, Do Indians Startups Suck at Marketing | kordless: I would say yes, based on my personal experience with a fairly successful Indian startup stealing my logo and 3/4 of my name: http://img.skitch.com/20091014-b93ddncw2197542p9triy9397x.jp...I might be biased though! :) |
Generally speaking, Do Indians Startups Suck at Marketing | mahmud: Indians are the backbone of the corporate software industry. They make the products and others do the branding and sales.This happens with all the mass producing countries where labor is cheap; China has weak brands in every industry, and all their most successful products are sold under foreign brands. Japan, Korea and Taiwan used to be the same way. I say give China and India time, and pretty soon their works will develop their own cachet. |
Question about MySQL "create if not exists" performance. | duskwuff: This really shouldn't be necessary at all. In a well-designed application, the table schema should be completely known to the application at all times -- the existence of a table should never be in doubt. If for some reason this isn't the case, you'll be much better served by catching "table doesn't exist" errors when they occur rather than preemptively trying to create tables which already exist. |
Generally speaking, Do Indians Startups Suck at Marketing | oldgregg: Probably. But you also have to consider the cross-cultural communication gap. You have to spend quite a bit of time in a culture before you can market effectively. No doubt most Americans are pretty lousy at marketing in India. |
How do I get a lot of voters for my video contest entry? | zaidf: You may be able to use Amazon Mechanical Turk. Pay a penny a vote. Though I'm not sure how many rules that may be breaking;) |
I have an idea for a startup... now what? | apsurd: 1. Get in line.2. Start testing.i.e. Minimum viable product. Customer feedback. Iterate.Are you a programmer? |
Where can I get/buy stock market data? | steveitis: If you want real time streaming, you can sign up for tdameritrade, and then request API access.It's free, and decent quality.The interface is RESTful, but the data is a funky binary format that's hard to parse without the documentation they make you sign an NDA to get.http://www.tdameritrade.com/tradingtools/partnertools/api_de... |
I have an idea for a startup... now what? | chipsy: This is what I do at the moment(for a personal project, but it could easily adapt to an early-stage startup): Maintain a task list for the product/business - "action items" that can be taken care of each day. Pull a grab bag out each day and resolve to complete them. So when you want to work on the product itself, you come up with technical tasks, research tasks, maintenance tasks, etc. Or when you want to seek funding, advice, or partners, you create tasks for those. Create scheduling milestones as well. You want to keep moving forward, making decisions, while retaining a balance. Having the schedule helps you to say with confidence, "this is good enough for now," "I can wait on this until later," or "this is critical and has to be done to hit my goals."It's the decision-making that moves the business forward - as you get used to that, the process of doing the work itself, meeting people, research, etc. will quickly become background elements of what actually happened that day. If you can't make a decision yet, then you need to gather more information. You're either doing one or the other.An example list of tasks from your starting position would be:-Research implementation strategies(self-built, outsourced, with co-founder)-Evaluate early customer needs(example: are you selling a bells-and-whistles "experience," or will no-frills functionality be sufficient to solve customer problems?) and pick a core focus for product development.-Plan style of external communications - which audiences will be addressed, how to maintain the best relationships over time-Plan internal organizational structure over some time frame(how big, how quickly, what kind of culture, when do you exit)-Establish motivations of all potential co-founders vs. self, and identify possible conflict points so they can be addressed early. |
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