jsun

It would be reasonable to assume that instead of having some inexplicable prejudice against our Brazilian brethren, they are simply tired of getting a thousand emails from shitty off-shore chop shops. It's a very real problem when you post any "low-tech" position.

I think a lot of companies use brain teasers or math problems to test general mental aptitude, whether it works or not is under serious debate, but in my opinion that's the right thing to test for (if it's even possible).

The reason is smart people can figure out git, or databases, or objective-c, or whatever, in a fairly short amount of time.

For example, my co-founder learned objective C off free online video tutorials and built an iOS app (talking an app with serious firepower and back-end transaction logic) from start to end by himself in less than 3 weeks.

That's why we're not as concerned about what you know right now as what it's possible for you to learn in 3 more week.

I always thought it was mathematicians recognize the absurdity of life

Then go find a tech co-founder:) it's a good exercise in one of the many thing you'll have to be good at later on

I'd recommend you spend your time strengthening all the areas which you identified as weaknesses right now. The YC application takes time to do right, and is in and of itself a learning exercise in really understanding what your business is and conveying it concisely. Until you cover all your bases there's much better places to spend your time.

I think the author was more talking about the difference between consuming information or consuming narrative even though he didn't quite phrase it that way. Learning about a new piece of regulation that just passed on immigration reform is information. Learning about what the sheriff of Arizona thinks about illegal immigration is narrative. Someone somewhere crafted that piece for you to consume and is spoon-feeding it to you. It's like the junk food of information.

We like narrative, because its fun and exciting and designed to appeal to us, but at the end of the day has very little information value.

People are talking about this because previously the problem didn't directly affect them. When you make $120k/year and all of a sudden the guys making $60k/year are priced out of the market you feel bad but you can't directly relate. When in turn you get priced out of the market (as is happening in many SF neighborhoods), all of a sudden you feel treated unfairly, and start complaining about how you were once part of the fabric of the neighborhood:)

I can actually see it both ways, but you have to accept or reject the argument in it's entirety instead of setting some artificial cap for how much you have to earn to be able to live in SF, which is essentially what's happening today.

And by the way this is a poor free-market argument. If this was a free-market, regulatory actors would act rationally from an economic perspective and allow construction of as many new units as the market can bare.

this is HN, you can't get downvoted:)

Highly unlikely. Not sure you'd want to work for a company that wouldn't hire you over a speeding ticket anyways. Send me your resume if they end up rescinding your job offer.

I didn't even know there were developer jobs anywhere in the country that pays $12/hr.... but hey, free market right? whatever you are willing to take:)

> I think my co-founders are idiots, that they fouled up their side of the deal

If you are a startup founder, which it sounds like you are, and not an early employee at a startup, then this is unfortunately the wrong attitude to have. There is no "their side of the deal", you are all committed to making the business work and you should be prepared to do whatever it takes to make it work including pushing all your own personal boundaries in order to get shit done.

In my experience the startups that have performed the best are ones where all the founders are prepared to roll up their sleeves and do things they have no experience with if necessary. The ones that fail are the ones that squabble over who's messing up at "their part of the deal".

Too many times I've seen founders (especially tech founders) sit doe-eyed, waiting for someone else to set the direction, or raise money, or figure out the "business model". If this is you then you should look into joining another startup as an early employee rather than being a founder yourself.

If you objectively believe that your team does not have the skills necessary to succeed or even move on to the next step then you need to leave. Plain and simple.

But leave or stay, lose the attitude that certain things are above or beneath your ability to do, or even worse: "not your job".

remember when the story first broke everyone immediately jumped to the conclusion that "big brother" was out to get bitcoin?

Awesome guide. Mad props for putting this together, and very accurate/useful from my experiences.

EDIT: and FREE apparently...

What a gorgeous looking site. Keep up the good work guys!

Oops, apologies for that, it looks like one of the reps picked up your account before seeing your email to support. Your account has been deleted.

We don't see a call schedule for you or any calls from us in the past. The email was likely just an automated email from the system before we processed your email to support. Don't worry, we won't actually call you:)

ohhh yeaah haha I remember the post on page 2 asking if anyone would be interested in a subreddit like this

I definitely agree. There will always be a place in the market for face to face consultations. After all, credit "counseling" is an act of counseling, not just hard financials. To us the four pillars of financial stability (for customer already in financial distress) are Education, Budgeting, Counseling, and Community. We can obviously provide some of these but not others. The idea here is to leave the counseling to the experts, but be able to offer something to the vast majority of Americans who go through credit counseling today but only really need a little extra push to get them on the right track again.

No, it's not haha. that has been fixed.

Thanks for the advice, we'll definitely fix a lot of this stuff in the coming releases over the next couple of weeks, keep your eye out! and thanks for giving us a shot.

The identity verification is the Name + Address + SSN match, which is all that's required for presentation of the data that we showed you. If you wanted to see your score or more detailed repayment history information there would be a short identity verification quiz

djm - This service is not limited to setting up payment plans, and will include education, budgeting, and community. We definitely don't try to push any one method over the other, and will in fact suggest that the customer reaches out for legal aid in certain situations.

thanks dude:)

thanks!

On the contrary, a lot of what we try to do is longer-term behavior modification - "gamification" of the "get out of debt" process if you will. Once you sign up you'll get monthly and weekly "goals" that we encourage you to complete, simple things which take no more than 10-20 minutes each, but will effect longer-term change in the way you use and view credit. Alot of this isn't visible from the front-end yet, but we'll be adding more material as times goes on.

We target a slightly different market than ReadyForZero, RFZ targets customers who are trying to set up a structured approach to paying off debts on their own, whereas we help guide those customers who may not have the finance resources to be able to pay off on their own.

Thanks for the advice! we'll definitely add more guidance here. Basically when you reach that step we don't do anything with your information until we've reached out to you and confirmed the plan details and walked you through what the product is. Very valid points about lack of education throughout the registration process.

I would agree with you here, and I hope you will judge us on our product rather than the "state of the industry" One HUGE difference between ourselves and credit counselors is that we don't get any sort of pay out from creditors, our clients are the only ones we have a responsibility to, whereas credit counselors, even non-profits, take what's called a "fair-share" fee from creditors, which is basically a % "donation" based on how much the credit counselor collects. We believe this aligns our incentives a lot closer to our customers!

That's exactly right! in fact credit counseling as it exists today is essentially "client-side" collections. We're essentially trying to change that by 1. recommending behavior modification techniques focused around budgeting and responsible spending, 2. finding current avenues to find savings from creditors and reduce your monthly burden and so you see an immediate benefit and 3. reduce your long-term dependence on credit, at all. In a sense we are compiling the best advice out on the market today and packaging it into an easy to use software and guides you through the process step by step.