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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

I didn't end up working for Reddit. I wanted the head of search position that was open, but they thought I didn't have enough experience. We talked about an IC role, but I would have had to move to the SF area (I live in DC) as they didn't allow remote employees. I couldn't justify uprooting my family (wife and 3 little kids) to move to a more expensive part of the country for less money than I can make in DC, even with the promising stock options. It was a hard decision. Still don't know if it was right one.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I was never extended an offer, we decided to break talks prior to that stage based on the salary/location discussions)

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How many years have you been at this? How do/did you learn the more architectural problem solving skills? I ask because I am pretty skilled technically, but only down in the weeds. Reading your blog post about the two techniques and how to combine them, I can understand, but I would not come up with this myself.

Nearly 20 years. I learned by attempting to do things that were kind of ridiculous. Like building a large scale general web search engine with hundreds of millions of pages (that was a lot in 2004) using 30+ servers in my townhouse. Go build something ambitious and you will learn how to put it all together!

I'm curious then, do you know on what basis they made the decision that you did not have enough experience?

They wanted someone that had been head of search at a large company.

Sounds like they should be headhunting rather than advertising generally with unwritten, very specific requirements.

Ok, I have 6 years, so that makes me feel better.

Well you got their attention, anyway. And short-circuited what is, at most companies, a pretty soul-crushing process!

What is an IC role?

individual contributor ie non management

Individual contributor can still be management, but in this case the position often means others matrix and not directly report ib to you. Influence, threat, or use magic wands to get things done.

I didn’t understand a single thing you just said.

Basically it involves promoting synergy and a lot of blue sky thinking.

Individual Contributor.

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