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petesoder

500 karma · joined June 22, 2011

hacker, geek, entrepreneur. founder of hakkalabs.co. living the bi-coastal life in the US, and traveling abroad whenever possible.
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petesoder··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2018)
DataEngConf | Remote | Head of Content & Community | Full-time | https://www.dataengconf.com/no-bullshit-nyc

Hakka Labs is building the top community of deeply technical data professionals worldwide. Our flagship event, DataEngConf, is attended and sponsored by companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, Buzzfeed, Spotify, Lyft, Heroku and many more. Our network is comprised of data engineers, scientists, analysts and product managers - we connect them to share knowledge & career opportunities across their various disciplines of data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision and other cutting edge data-driven technologies.

I'm an engineer and the founder of the company. Come and help us grow our data community around the world. I'm happy to chat with any of the HN community about your interest.

https://angel.co/hakka-labs/jobs/466940-head-of-content-comm...

petesoder··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2018)
Hakka Labs (AI Conference) | Dir of Marketing | REMOTE | Full time | http://dataengconf.com

Hakka Labs is looking for a Director of Marketing to be responsible for all marketing efforts across the Hakka Labs network internationally. Our flagship event is DataEngConf, a deeply technical 2-day, multi-track conference at the intersection of data engineering, data science and AI.

You must have a background in marketing of a technical product geared towards software engineers. Help us grow our existing conferences globally - we're launched in SF and NYC, and adding Barcelona/Europe and China next.

Please apply via AngelList: https://angel.co/hakka-labs/jobs/372539-director-of-marketin...

petesoder··on How the end-to-end back-pressure mechanism inside Wallaroo works
I hope we hear something about this in your talk at DataEngConf SF!
petesoder··on Automating Founder Dating
Yes, it's true - we have a community built around our product, and oftentimes communities want to help/support each other. So I let our users know that we were on HN since it's an opportunity for them to make the platform stronger by adding many more awesome engineers to get matched to.
petesoder··on Keybase raises $10.8M
"We have a new goal: to bring public key crypto to everyone in the world, even people who don't understand it."

Love the vision, guys. Huge congrats! Looking forward to seeing this one unfold.

petesoder··on The State of Go
If you're interested in the full talk, we'll have the vid posted at https://www.hakkalabs.co/meetups/gosf within a few days or so.
petesoder··on Go in Go
We'll have vids of both up on https://www.hakkalabs.co/meetups/gosf within a few days or so.
petesoder··on David Carr Dies at 58
Believe me, you don't need to read his book to simply participate in commerce. Without a doubt, this book was one of the most moving memoirs I've ever read. Very highly recommended. The bonus is that he's an incredible writer.
petesoder··on Why engineers hate your shitty job specs
I'd actually like to see some examples of over-describing problems to engineers in a salesy way. That could be a fun follow on post.
petesoder··on NoSQL in SQL
Hi Andrew, I'm the founder of Hakka Labs. We had permission from the SFRails meetup orgs to record/post the talk, but I honestly apologize if this was unknown to you. We don't consider this 'our' content in any way, and we're happy to make it freely available for the benefit of engineers everywhere.
petesoder··on The one statistic you never hear about drugs
Appreciate all the data packed into this post. There are some amazing stats here. Agree that we definitely need this type of clarity to increase awareness and generate dialogue.
petesoder··on RethinkDB raises an $8M Series A
Very cool. Congrats, guys! This was a great talk - http://www.hakkalabs.co/articles/how-rethinkdb-works/
petesoder··on How RethinkDB Works – 7pm tonight at SF Data Engineering
Alas! Incidentally, the vid of the talk will be posted later on g33ktalk.com if you're interested.
petesoder··on How RethinkDB Works – 7pm tonight at SF Data Engineering
to keep out recruiters
petesoder··on The Psychology of Engineers: a talk on Introversion/Extroversion and Flow
The format of this vid is interesting to me. We've played different media formats for our engineering talks at g33ktalk (audio, video, slides and sometimes screencaps/demos) and it's been somewhat challenging to find the best format. Of course, ultimately it depends heavily on an individual user's prefs. meaning there's no perfect answer.

I find this format compelling since it's relatively short (19 mins) has high quality audio, and the only visuals are the main points represented as motion graphics.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
Curious, why misleading?
petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
It's very true. Many times orgs write generic, catch-all engineering job specs. Or they say they're looking for any 'good' engineer.

They think this is a good idea since it seems to apply to the broadest number of candidates. But it totally backfires - no one gets excited about the role since it's not targeted at anyone.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
yep - this is totally designed to be a more scalable lead-gen strategy (top of funnel).

Next post will be on effective interviewing by/of engineers. I find many companies don't tend to do that in a scalable way, either.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
Good comment, thanks. And appreciate the connection with professional networking.

As a young engineer, it was very hard for me to come to understand the value of building my network. I guess when there's so many horrible 'networking' events out there (just like 'bad' marketing), it takes some time for one to overcome an adverse knee-jerk reaction and really apprehend the value.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
I couldn't agree more. Engineers are loathe to enter into a traditional recruiting process (i.e. go in through the front door) when they have so many options out there.

It's far more attractive if they can 'window shop' and get a true sense for your team/culture/challenges without kicking off a gauntlet of interviews for them to learn the same stuff.

Obviously, interviews are still important for the hiring team, but it's time to make the overall process better (and more front-loaded with the company's engineering project info) for the engineer candidates.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
If you can't explain in 60 seconds why an engineer should want to come and work at your company, you're dead.
petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
Good feedback, thank you.

Although I'm not sure it's about creating meaningful connections between engineers and "recruiters," Although I guess it depends who the recruiter is in the company. Sometimes it's the CTO or engineering manager - but sometimes the initial story-telling (aka company pitch) is delegated to a traditional recruiter (which normally isn't as effective with engineers).

I'd prefer to see traditional recruiters go the way of the Tyrannosaurus.

If you want to hire the best team as an engineering manager it's typically best not to delegate the job to someone else.

petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
Thanks. It's been a ton of fun learning to teach story-telling to engineers/CTOs. Every good developer cares about an interesting engineering challenge, but nailing the quick story around it can be slightly challenging sometimes.
petesoder··on Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk
Yeah - great point. Recruiting is so hard these days that most people don't get enough leads in the top of the funnel in order to really see enough quality candidates get through the screening process.

Establishing an engineering story (and telling it well) allows you to add more interested engineers to the top of the funnel. It's a longer term strategy, but I think it's required based on present market dynamics.

petesoder··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2013)
g33ktalk, NYC - Community Manager/Growth Hacker

g33ktalk is building an international community of software engineers passionate about open-source technologies and interested in the real-world architectures in use at top startups.

We're a seed stage biz, but are already well past the chicken/egg problem of an early two-sided marketplace. Founded by repeat entrepreneurs, we've previously raised money from top angels and have experience in the startup worlds of SF & NYC.

http://g33ktalk.com/content-growth-hacker/

petesoder··on Why Silicon Valley Tech Wunderkinds Overestimate Their Own Smarts and Abilities
Great point. Wonder if there's an analog here with the building of technical platforms. Hind-sight is 20/20 and explaining how one feels he/she made tech decisions could come out similarly subjective. But asking about the story behind the platform might tease out more color.
petesoder··on Why Silicon Valley Tech Wunderkinds Overestimate Their Own Smarts and Abilities
Curious to hear thoughts on the '4 takeaways' ...

For instance, do you think investors are 'at least as likely to succeed by investing in “failed” entrepreneurs as “successful” ones'?

petesoder··on What the F*** N-Gage?
+1 thought that was the best quote, too
petesoder··on Netflix never used its $1 million algorithm due to engineering costs
Exactly. A $1M investment by a company like Netflix to stay in our faces for - how long - '06 to 09 (and beyond!), was well worth it to them in terms of branding and new subscribers.
petesoder··on How SV Startup Ifeelgoods Prevents Fraud Using Social Data
As always, any/all feedback much appreciated by the HN community.
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