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Comment by btipling | Hacker News Reader

I guess when tiny unknown Yahoo Answer clone based startups with nothing to offer except a lot of worthless stock options that will probably never be worth anything put up an interesting programming puzzle, talented engineers will magically fall out of the sky and beg on their hands and knees to get a chance to work there.

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They appear to have a solid team, but this is bad idea that keeps being re-tried and re-failed again and again. It occasionally works in University Recruiting, but otherwise companies eventually realize that top, highly skilled people have jobs and are generally busy and have the right to be a little picky, and are not about to spend an hour solving puzzles for a job they know very little about. Who does have lots of time to jump through these kinds of hoops are people who dont have jobs or spend a lot of time in their jobs notworking.

Ouch. These sorts of job puzzles actually serve double duty as great quality filters for both employer and employee. Employer gets to find out which candidates know their stuff and enjoy solving interesting and challenging problems (and most of the rest don't bother applying). Employee gets to learn that this employer has a smart and passionate engineering culture (as opposed to a corporate drone "engineers just serve a clerical function" culture).

And what do you mean "failed"? Like these guys? http://itasoftware.com/careers/hiringpuzzles.html I wouldn't mind "failing" like them.

ITA and Quora are on two different planes to put it mildly.

Oh yes, that's right, because engineers don't care about compensation or their future, and probably don't have a family to feed! You know I think all engineers must be 22 year old graduates interested in technical challenges. I think when they go into the middle ages they just vanish, kind of like in Logan's Run. poof

I heard you can feed a family of four on a technical challenge for a year!

Where did I say that technical challenges are the only thing to care about and that salary/compensation should be neglected? I would expect a company that is courting experts to offer compensation appropriate for experts.

I can tell you what I know from experience having had the luxury of working on teams with some Damn good people (from PowerSet, Google, Microsoft, OneRiot), and a few less than good people. You recruit good people. YOu find them at the top of their field at whatever level they are at, evaluate them by how well they have performed in teh past and what they have accomplished, check for culture, and sell yourself. Good people are not lining up to post applicaitons, submitting resume's into web forms or taking quizzes.

You go find 100 people in 100 companies with rockstar performance, excluding those that are still in university (graduate or undergrad), and you wont find 2 of the 100 that will stop and fill out a test.

You want good people? Hit your networks or find someone with a netowrk, and find someone who is busy and well respected in whatever he or she does. Good people are working right now, not trolling job boards with time to take tests.

There is a time for tests and puzzles: in the interview process. At this point her or she understands the role and the team, and now you want to know how (s)he thinks, and if the culture is right. Throw the toughest you got at that point, but on a web form? Thats a great way to attract B & C talent, in my opinion.

Have you used Quora? And/or seen who is using Quora? :) They have built what is simply the most addictive Q&A site. It remains to be seen if the usefulness persists once users start coming en masse. However, the potential is definitely there.

Also the team is very well-respected (previously at Facebook) and I think A LOT of people would love to work and learn from them. Maybe even for free for a limited time.

Just started using it, and it is among the snappiest (latency-wise) web applications I've tried.

It appears to be running on Amazon EC2 with Cloudfront for a CDN.

Well, time will tell. When I see something like this on a site I've never heard of before regardless of who the founders are, I guess they're aiming for young kids who are into this kind of "lord of the rings" shit at their job to go join them. Not people who actually expect real value from their employers for the work they provide.

http://www.quora.com/about/team

I guess that totally refutes my argument! It's like Quroa, because of where the founders previously worked, suddenly got all this prestige and glamor that will turn into real fame and fortune someday because they're entitled to it.

pg recently said that one of the biggest changes in his thinking since starting yc is that he no longer believes that coming from a good school is an indicator of success in a startup and that this was an unquestioned assumption of his when he started out. at the same time, it helps to have smart people around and quora definitely seems to have a few.

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