oldprogrammer2

From my personal experience, and observations of friends and family, paid time off for the holidays in the US is typically a couple days for Thanksgiving, a couple days for Christmas, and New Years Day. So it's not a complete lack of time off.

Let's not ignore the providers themselves. Excluding the middlemen, my wife had a bill for a lithrotripsy procedure (she was there for approximately 4 hours) of nearly $10,000, and most of that went to the hospital. That was before insurance negotiated their rate.

I completely commiserate with you. It is hard to have a good idea and not be able to get it attention. However, after trying to actually pitch an idea in person, I learned that I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I was. Seeing your product through the eyes of someone who is not emotionally invested in it (or you), and whose job (or money) depends on vetting you and your product, is very enlightening (and a bit heartbreaking).

As for the clarification on your idea, this audience (and investors) would expect to see much more than that. After reading what you wrote, all I can tell is that it's related to online advertising, but I'm not clear on what specific problem you're addressing, how your product will make money, or how your product will compete and gain marketshare in a crowded market of entrenched (and capital-rich) competitors.

I say this with the intention of being helpful, not to tear you down. And I'm just a guy who reads HN, not an insider of anything.

I think baldfat's point might be that "non-profit" doesn't necessarily imply that those organizations are not designed to allow profits to be paid out as compensation. Excessive compensation to non-profit leadership can often be paid based on the same metrics as a corporation (basically, increasing revenue). It's certainly not the norm, but there are more than just a few exceptions where CEOs of non-profits (including universities) are earning in excess of $1 million per year.

As a counterpoint, we have a 2008 R2 instance that cost us about $13K back in 2011. Granted, it's a two processor, standard edition license, so we recently upgraded to SSD's and upgraded to higher core processors. Also, the Windows Server license was about $800, I believe. No CALs required for either Windows or SQL Server in this situation.

I couldn't agree more, and I've shaped our hiring policy around the same ideas. I try to be very respectful of the time of both the interviewers and the interviewees, while still providing enough data to make a good decision. I'm sad to say that we learned the most from bad hires: people who were terrible communicators, people who became hostile after hired and their work was critiqued, and people who were expert at talking shop but couldn't produce functioning code on their own.

We typically do a short phone interview first to assess if there is enough common ground to work with. We're looking for huge red flags at this point, such as an inability to talk through very fundamental programming concepts, difficult to communicate with, or a generally disagreeable personality.

Next we do a take home project, where we share a functioning, boilerplate web app, and ask the applicant to spend a couple hours addressing some portion of "requested" functionality. The barrier we're looking for here is actually not very high. We want to see that the applicant was able to figure out was going on in an existing code base and that that they were capable of making a new, original addition to it (even if very small).

The next stage of the interview is an in-person interview with 3 or 4 us. We usually start off with a 30 minute paper test, where the applicant can pick 5 out of 10 questions to answer. Pseudocode answers are expected, not syntax perfection. This is really another datapoint where we're trying to make sure the applicant truly is technically competent.

We then sit down and talk for about an hour. We ask questions about their resume, the project, and the paper test. A lot of this is making sure that they can talk about the things they chose to list on their resume. If they indicate expertise in TDD then they can expect questions about frameworks used and software patterns utilized to improve testability. If they indicate expertise in a particular database server, they can expect detailed questions in that area. This is also an opportunity for them to ask us questions about our company, culture, methodologies, etc.

The final part is a collaborative exercise in defining the architecture of a proposed system. I recognize whiteboarding a solution is tough in such a stressful situation as an interview with people you have not yet developed a working relationship. So we try our best to reassure the applicant, and to make it as collaborative as possible. Sometimes we'll debate different options amongst ourselves to see how the applicant participates and which direction they choose.

I usually close with a tour of our dev area, as well as a few areas of the company so they can see if it feels like a place they could call home.

Interviewing is hard on both sides.

When we moved our dev team to a new area, I chose this style of layout. Each developer has their own small office, which forms an outer perimeter. Each office also has a 4x4 window next to the door to keep the atmosphere open. In the middle is an open kitchen and a standup area, separated by the bathrooms. We have a conference room in the corner. All of this is behind key-access doors, giving the team a sense of sanctuary.

Each office, as well as the standup area and the conference room, have a whiteboard wall.

I would say that the general idea is that developers come together at standups, and typically plan out the day. If two or more developers determine a discussion is needed, they normally schedule right after the standup. Then the developers depart to their offices, and generally put their heads down and work in quiet. Most leave their doors open throughout the day, and close their doors when they have phone calls or small meetings.

The arrangement works well. Adhoc conversations are not discouraged, and occur throughout the day as needed, but the separate offices keep the trivial conversations and disturbances to a minimum.

From a cost perspective, this layout requires considerably more space than an open layout. And separate offices require separate HVAC ducts, and walls and doors are (obviously) additional expenses, too. I'm grateful that our team's contributions were recognized by the company (a non-tech company), such that the expense was considered worth it. it's certainly a cornerstone of my sales pitch for recruiting developers.

This is very much the perspective I have taken over the years. When I'm hiring a senior developer, I'm looking for someone who will step in and own the project they're given. If I had to pick a single expression, especially one recognizable to this crowd, I would say it is someone who can execute. I also tend to view senior developers almost as internal consultants (good ones) because they should be willing and able to step away from they keyboard and talk to a stakeholder to discern what the business really needs without needing someone else to act as an intermediary.

Where I do disagree just a little bit with mrmekon, is that I tend to look for people who have experience with the necessary stack. I would be hesitant to hire a senior developer for a C#/MVC position if they have (broadly) never used C# or never done web development, for example. Modern stacks have a lot of moving parts, and I would prefer senior developers to understand how to troubleshoot, tune, upgrade, test, and deploy on the needed stack. These are things that a very strong developer could remediate within a few projects, though, which is why I only slightly disagree with mrmekon.

The IRS, according to FS-2008-25, requires the salary to be "reasonable", and they list factors that would be considered by the courts if a dispute arose. The IRS also has the authority to reassign dividends or distributions as compensation.

Not the OP, but we have opportunities at our company for people who can operate in both worlds. We run a settlement/clearing system for payment processing, which is a zOS/UniKix/COBOL/JCL kind of system. I've been frustrated with treating the mainframe system as an island that can only be communicated with through batch jobs and batch reporting. So what we've been looking for are developers with a dual skill set to bridge the divide from the mainframe world to the rest of the company's C#/.Net application infrastructure. We have found some guys that have 20+ years experience with COBOL, who then started working on .Net or Java applications in the last decade. It's humbling to me to work with guys who are, in some sense, well into their second career, and are incredibly productive in both worlds. However, we've also had some who just couldn't make the transition out of the mainframe world. But we would also be interested in millennials, or anyone of any age, who could, say, work with JCL and COBOL and also write microservices in C#. Anyone with those skills and in the Dallas area, please reach out to me.