Hacker News Reader

crsvon Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

Viewing the graphics for this article on mobile was an adventure in digital distortion.

I think if you’re young, don’t have an established family and don’t have any real experience as a founder then YC is something that will be an incredible benefit to you on many levels. Once you’re outside of those demographics, the value falls off dramatically IMO.

crsvon Rejected from an interview because first name is too short for internal IT

Seems fake.

crsvon Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

So they can track you (the product) more effectively. You are worth more money when exposing data accessible to native mobile.

crsvon Hiring Without Whiteboards

Here we go again perpetuating the stereotype of the whiney privileged engineer put in a position of mild discomfort by the villainous abusive white board interview boogeyman. I don’t mind whiteboard interview exercises. They’re not great, but they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance. I think there’s bigger fish to fry in refining fair and objective interview processes, I’ll never understand the perpetual moaning around this aspect of technical interviews.

crsvon Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

Seems like a pretty gross security and privacy risk with extremely limited upside for the employee, all with the friction of supporting a totally separate device for a remote IT org if anyone adopts this Orwellian tool at scale.

crsvon Voice, an invite-only social network where everyone is verified

Pretty expensive domain. Wonder if it was bought using ICO fugazi money, since this looks like the content is oddly interested in fringe crypto content.

crsvon Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around

Similar to https://rally.video

crsvon How Nextdoor courts police and public officials

Information seeking, curiosity, chances to share in experience, people seeking help, people offering help, fellowship.

crsvon How Nextdoor courts police and public officials

Nextdoor is quickly becoming a detestable social network experience. I've noticed that over the last year or so, it's almost exclusively negativity or fear based in its content. Most posts are either people complaining or tattling on something that is a minor nuisance at best or fear mongering for larger issues. I've seen very, very limited positive benefit from the platform. It strikes me as something that had great potential, but is just turning in to a cesspool as it grows.

crsvon McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us

No, it’s not designed for you to think critically. It’s designed to elicit an emotional reaction. Emotions sell. Working as intended.

crsvon Signs that a business idea will probably fail

Anyone worth their salt knows the idea is a necessary condition, but not a satisfactory one. The execution is typically the largest part of finding success, and along the journey the idea often feels like it fades in to the background and starts to seem obvious rather than novel, but of course the idea matters.

crsvon Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

I'd settle for more transparency around the consumers of the ad. I've heard a few folks wonder aloud if huge percentages of their paid search volume is fraudulent. Transparency on the consumer side is good, but there should be more work to prevent bot traffic from eating ad spend.

crsvon How to Kill a Startup Idea with Google Keyword Planner and AdWords: A Case Study

This makes some strong assumptions about the validity of the google and Facebook data that underpins this theory. As the case for the prevalence of ad fraud and questionable practices by these platforms mounts, it’s hard to believe any data around CTR and purported conversion vs actual legit human traffic and cash in hand conversions.

crsvon VC List

Associates do. Routing cold reach to associates is your best bet vs GPs or other managing roles. Literally the associates job to read all those emails. Couple of my buddies are associates at VC firms, they talk about this a lot. They’ve definitely done deals from cold initial outreach.

crsvon Away’s former CEO is returning as its co-chief

I’m sure she’s totally learned her lesson and will change her abhorrent behavior permanently.

crsvon Show HN: I built a website for sharing salary info

Extortion as a service.

crsvon Tell HN: Google should drop Quora from search results

Also there’s the issue of many of Quora’s answers being generated by sales and marketing content purveyors. The platform has been reduced to useless marketing content as is mostly devoid of quality answers. Just like content marketing killed blogs, it’s claimed Quora as a victim as well.

crsvon The Real Reasons I Don’t Hire You

Ego

crsvon The Founder Dating Playbook

I mean it's an interesting idea that someone who hasn't actually founded a successful company with a co-founder has a "playbook" for finding a co-founder.

They've been working together 5 months and now that warrants the proclamation of a playbook?

crsvon Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

The comments in relation to the view of process and management from the general HN audience makes me feel for the challenges of being an effective engineering manager.

crsvon Favorite Interview Questions

Judging from this thread a pretty straightforward approach would be to start by getting their hackernews name, searching for them in this thread, and if they’re found promptly ending the interview. This community is incredibly entitled and insufferable when discussing the hiring process.

crsvon APIs are the next big SaaS wave

Ding ding.

crsvon Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

As someone running a software product team, we've made the decision to get as close to the developer process as possible with our product management tools. We've recently started doing everything in Github using Github projects, which honestly is really usable. It's kind of put me in a mindset where I'm not sure why I would ever pay for a separate product management tool as I can do most of my critical things with Github + Markup + our design stack (Figma, etc).

Obviously there's a market for this as I think people are still chasing potential efficiency gains in making tools that are easy/fast/effective in organizing work, but as a product leader I don't see anything here that compels me to leave Github.

crsvon Anyone else thinks that Whiteboard interview is just covered ageism?

I do not think white boarding is a cover for ageism.

I think a group collaborative exercise where you're sketching, drawing, or otherwise visualizing an abstract concept to explain a point, answer a question, or justify a decision is a skill that talented, effective people can leverage regularly to get great results at work.

I think testing for this skill is a really good idea.

I think that doing this in a way that's equitable and emotionally supportive to the candidate takes thoughtfulness and effort, and not every company/person in this process does this well.

I also think there's a great number of people who turn this concept in to a boogeyman to rationalize their interpersonal or technical ineffectiveness.

I would use a whiteboard interview to evaluate a candidate (and have), I would happily submit to a whiteboard interview (and have), and I think that all things being equal, the noise around them mostly comes from people who perform poorly on them and if I'm a betting man, a team made up of people who performed well on an equitable, well structured whiteboarding exercise would outperform one made of people who did not in the work context of building software as a team.

crsvon Why Aren’t We Talking About LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the worst content experience of all available social networks, and that's the trade-off here. It's stricter social boundaries, but as the context has shifted to "social selling", it's more of a vapid marketeering platform than genuine thoughtful exchanges. But hey, at least it's less toxic?

crsvon The Farm Automation Breakthrough

This was marketing content, all the pull quotes are from investors and senior leadership. This was a marketing piece, nothing more.

crsvon The Farm Automation Breakthrough

Congrats to the marketing team at FarmWise for landing this Forbes piece. There was nothing really interesting or useful in this article at all.

crsvon Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise, and then wrote laws banning and permitting things that they thought would lead to trouble? There is no way somebody back then could predict which situations would lead to trouble decades later.

You mean like everyone who's talking about AI policy right now?

crsvon I was a 10x engineer and I’m sorry

On top of that, in terms of VC's he's an utterly unremarkable one. Poor guy had no idea he was he stepped in with that thread. He was just trying to virtue signal and play thought-leader.