AdoptAHacker invites you to visit NYC | Hacker News Reader

AdoptAHacker invites you to visit NYC

adoptahacker.com

54 pointsMediaSquirrel35 comments

Fine, I'll say it. Also why NYC rocks: tons of amazing women.

Seconded. NYC women > SF women any day of the week. There is an absolute dominance in the ratio of available women to men. Scientific statistical data gathering aside, I can personally attest to the fact that there are entirely too many women to go around. I also know quite a few smart, beautiful women who are afflicted by this lopsided ratio and are looking for functional guys.

I sent an e-mail to the address listed, and it failed.

-------------

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    nyc@adoptahacker.com

Technical details of permanent failure: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 "Unknown User" (state 14).

Hey Andrew, sorry, we were experiencing strange mailserver issues--adoptahacker@gmail.com works in the meantime.

Ben

I hear so much about the desperate shortage of hackers in NYC yet I send my resume to a few startups, full of relevant experience at top-tier companies, and get not a peep back. What gives?

the startups in need of hackers are often the ones you haven't heard of just yet.

Miles, what kind of projects are you looking to get involved in? I know plenty of people in the city looking for hackers. hit me up at brett AT appfund.com

@brett1211

Wow. The website is basically just images.

There is no text int he source. Every word is part of an image. Each option in the menu at the top is an image of text. The whole "Dear Hackers" pretty thing is an image. Then the "Get Started!" button is another image. Then the "Ambassadors From" section is one big image that includes both the heading and the logos. Then the "Success Stories" section is also one image, including the heading and all of that text.

Huh. Blind hackers need not apply?

They built the site in a day. Cut the dudes some slack.

Are you saying that they couldn't add text to the page (outside of images) in a day?

I was part of the team that put this together at Startup Weekend in NY. We were all about getting this up and out into the world before the end of the weekend. Putting up mostly static images allowed us to not worry about any CSS bullshit and focus all our efforts on the copy, design, and minimum viable functionality for the site.

Clever way to emphasize the need for hackers

they're donating their apartments to random strangers... i think we can give them a pass on lazy web design.

This is a great idea. I love the NYC tech scene and deliberately chose to move to NYC over Silicon Valley a few months ago. I like the fact the scene is still developing, small and community driven. There are so many events to check out and people are very friendly. People are building interesting products in NYC.

If anyone comes to NYC check out these events...

New York Tech Meetup, NY Resistor, Hacks Hackers, Next NY

Anyone in NYC looking for someone low-level? I'm primarily a reverse-engineer, but kernel and compiler dev is all good as well. I've been considering a move over that way, but haven't seen much outside of web and finance stuff.

Where are you located? I am currently in Boston. My tech is going to require low level linux hackery to get performance to the next level.

I'm currently located in a little town in PA, but location really doesn't much matter to me. My email's in my profile if you want to talk about it.

tptacek always posts about Matasano, when there's a "who's hiring" thread. http://www.matasano.com/careers/

So aside from the slightly graphics-heavy website, I'm kinda impressed by the offer (and I live in San Francisco).

What it has me thinking is that we should really do this for San Francisco - and not just 'come couch surf' but a consorted effort perhaps around a one day conference or bar-camp style event to showcase and talent match.

The idea would be to attract the developer living in the rest of America (ie not CA, NY or WA/Seattle) who is intrigued about moving here to join a startup. You see folks asking about moving in "Ask HN" threads all the time, so why not organize a specific event?

The economy in SF is fairly hit because of the financial sector and economic downturn - but tech companies of all sizes, from startup to BigCo, are hiring developers and related people to the extent that we can't find enough people. This is a GREAT time to move to San Francisco if you are a dev.

What do others think about running such an event? BarCampOutOfTowner, perhaps?

As someone who wants to move to the Bay Area next year, I would love this. I have zero idea as to where I would fit, but this would be awesome.

I love this. I'm thinking about NYC for the future, and this will be awesome for it.

But...

Right now I'm focused on a startup in SF, so I can't apply.

I'd love for this to turn into some sort of community site - first and foremost so that I can follow/join and keep track of events and gatherings that will inevitably occur under its umbrella. But also because I think it'd be very cool to let hackers sign up, without a timetable, to indicate "hey, I'm interested in being a hacker in NYC [any city] if I find a cool project and like minded people."

It could be a city-centric talent-pool. When companies exhaust their local options for new blood, they can turn to AdoptAHacker and try to attract people who want to go to the city but aren't ready to go without something lined up in advance.

I would love to see this happen in Boston. I'll be the first one to offer up my couch.

Good job on Hackers and Founders last night. Kind of fun to be in the middle of college football fans discussing social media.

The problem in NYC isn't that we don't have hackers, it's that we don't have the entrepreneurial minded hackers.

I'm a designer working on my startup and most of my friends are developers. But what I've noticed is that all my friends look to work at the big companies. It's strange, but I'm not surprised - they don't know the options available to them.

Entrepreneurship isn't a course in their CS curriculum. They don't realize the potential they can have to change the world.

To solve the problem, why not have startups recruit students at career fairs?

Let's not overanalyze or criticize. What is there to lose in visiting NYC in the first place, not to mention the opportunity to socialize with similar-minded tech people?

I was part of a similar program this summer called HackNY (hackny.org). I was supplied housing and a paid internship with a NY based startup. If you're a student looking to gain some startup experience, I strongly encourage you to attend one of their upcoming hackathons and register for the summer program .

Great idea and I while I would love to head to NYC (from Australia) I would probably want to get a more permanent gig there instead of just a few days.

Also what is it with websites and having text as images? I thought we got past that design phase a few years ago.

I've been torn between going to SF or staying in Boston. Interesting to see NYC might become a contender.

This is a fantastic idea! Chicago HNers, can we do one?

why not make this site it for all cities? So you could visit any city you want to

cool idea, but sending you resume (or some facsimile of it) to find a place to crash is a little strange.

How else are they going to verify you're a "talented hacker"? When most resumes are available publicly on any personal website (I'm making an assumption), it doesn't seem like too much to send.

this is basically my point. The things you look for in great programmers are not the same things you look for in finding great people to spend a weekend with. In order to make this a truly great experience they should put some time into finding a way to make good matches both in start-up-employee-potential and enjoyable-person-potential.

Hell yeah. Adopt a hacker. whut whut.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com