mrchess

I'd wipe away the cons list at this point, and just look at the pros, and just pick which pros make you can more envision yourself waking up to every day. Don't worry about corporate street cred -- it will stay with you through your MS/Google internships.

I still have bias towards choosing corporate as I personally wanted a nest egg so that when I did go to startups I would be financially worry free, and it worked out for me. I was able to save almost 50-60% of my salary every year (lived at my folks house).

EDIT: Just found the link on the graph. Tough find :P

To me Microsoft seems like the clear bet. Higher pay, and smarter people. Spend your first 2-3 years gathering industry knowledge, learning from the smart people, and building yourself a nice nest egg. If you end up enjoying it, you can climb the corporate ladder. If not, you should find it much easier to interview for a new startup with Microsoft on your resume as it holds more street cred. It is also easier to return to corporate (in the event your startup fails) with prior corporate experience.

The only danger of going corporate first is that you get too comfortable and don't want to leave your paycheck. You get used to having money unlike in college when you had none. If you make $100K/yr at corporate and need to downgrade to $70K for a startup, you really feel the bump. Just be ready for that.

I speak from experience. I graduated, took the corporate job and saved up a ton of money over 2.5 years and I never regret my decision. I saved up, built some corporate connections, and recently quit. In fact, people expected me to quit (I was always hacking on side projects and keeping my knowledge up to date), and they said to me "Good luck. If things don't work out look us back up.", no bridge burned.

EDIT: I just realized a con was "hard time socially connecting at Microsoft". This is actually a red flag in my book. Can you elaborate? Why would they offer you a job if you didn't get along socially?

^ I completely agree with this. I've been asked many times "How big will this get?", and being the modest person I am I would reply "I don't know.", because I am a realist and I know things can be hit and miss -- I really didn't know... but I've since learned that modesty doesn't sell. At all. Be ready to answer this question.

  (1..100) do |i|
    if i * 2 == 8 and i + 1 == 5
      puts "foo"
    elsif i + 3 == 9
      puts "bar"
    else 
      puts i
    end
  end

I think the problem is every startup is making up their own hiring formula/process, and until it is internally figured out, anyone who tries to interview will get delayed. Product is being developed PLUS they have to figure out their perfect hiring process... That being said, luck with timing is also important in interviewing for a startup IMO.

You should have it subdomain off launchrock itself, ie. myapp.launchrock.com, and allow Step 5 to take place afterwards.

No. If you join a young team, you guys had better be the best of friends or you're just asking for trouble.

The only thing I can parallel this too is Googling your date before the first date. Going in knowing too much can often ruin the fun or the mystery of discovery.

Sure it might save you from "bad experiences", but we need bad experiences in life to really value the good ones!

I am a believer that startups don't have to be hard or life consuming, and that organization and understanding of common pitfalls in the development cycle can really reduce stress. Kayak is an example of such success, a startups with strict 9-5 philosophy.

I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about developing software or working on any sort of projects.

What it comes down to is they are both trying to display the same data (picture, username, message, etc), and honestly, there are only a few ways to logically present this information. Eventually the web will migrate to a standard for displaying this kind of information.

It's like saying The New York Times looks like The Boston Globe (which looks like The Washington Post (which looks like The Wall Street Journal)).

EDIT: Correction. It seems some of the shorter lectures are simply incomplete. =/

I only know about MySnaps as I once got a freelance e-mail about a two years ago from someone asking me to recreate MySnaps for them but I shrugged it off. Makes me wonder if it was the Pinterest guys ;)

It's really interesting how marketing, and presentation can make a product more popular than your competitors. Other companies with success like this include Quizlet, and Facebook.

EDIT: But now thinking about it, isn't this essentially Delicious all over again as a different mutation?

To each his own, but I bought the new Kindle for this reason. I own a Kindle Keyboard, but it was just too much -- I just wanted a barebones reader. Even the touch, IMO, is overkill -- who really needs to "touch" what is supposed to be a book? So I picked up the $79 Kindle and was very happy. It's really thin, great aesthetics, and has all the barebone features I need to do one job really well.

I've extensivley used Spine in production environments and it handled quite well. Only recently have I begun using Backbone and I will be sure to post my comparison once it finishes. However at this point, they both feel VERY similar. Will post more as I myself understand Backbone better...