takrupp

We do some SEO work ourselves, but we run three businesses here, all of them make decent amounts of money. Its not worth us to pull a partner out, have him learn SEO, implement it, etc. We'd rather pay someone that knows what they are doing and let the partners do what they're good at.

The money is nice, and it is a "Sales" job, but their is some creativity to it. You are trying to marry a candidate to a client. They are both moving targets. Its a skill game, more than a "bang the phones" game that a normal sales job is.

There are a number of quants and C++ developers who made the move to recruiting, sometimes after talking to a recruiter and realizing that there is money to be made (usually more than they are making). I related to this: I did a lot of IT and web development work in my youth, and that always entailed being someone's bitch and not getting recognized for the work I did (Only the mess ups get noticed: Like being a goalie in soccer). In recruiting, you see the angles, work your relationships and make money. Its a one person job (mostly) and there is a lot of enjoyment in that aspect. At the end of the day you say "I did X placements, billed Y amount. Thats what I did", which isn't about the money as much as its about having a quantitative score that demonstrates your productivity.

Top recruiters work in the highest paying industries, which rarely includes technology (except in the upper echelons). Most of these recruiters are from large firms, filling contract or lower level hires that net the firm maybe $10-20k and gets them personally a few hundred extra bones in their pockets. Its the McDonalds end of recruiting.

On the other hand, there is a small (as mentioned above) 1-2% of recruiters who work in really high paying sectors that really know their industries. They're like the Outback Steakhouse of their profession. They still need to work with a lot of candidates, but it pays for them to go to conferences, read industry material and even (gasp) learn programming themselves (Thanks Zed!).

I think they should take that money and see if they can get a real development team to use it as seed funds, and then keep a below market slice of equity.

Some people forget that, like Gates, Zuckerberg was actually a pretty good programmer. Its unlikely that Facebook would have gone anywhere had he not been. These Diaspora guys probably aren't as passionate about programming as Zuckerberg was, and thats what you need for a complex project like this. Talent and passion for knocking out tons of high quality code.

Give the money to someone who will use it wisely. There is a clear market opportunity here.

Maybe there should be a tag and thread on HN for startups that are launching or looking for alpha/beta users (like the ASK tag).

I really depends on the technologies. I work in mostly the quant finance industry, which usually uses object oriented languages like C++ and Java. The bigger companies (mostly hedge funds) do want to see candidates with at least a BS in Computer Science. The smaller companies really don't care as long as you have a good proven track record and know your material.

In my industry, making $110k for 10 years of experience is low. Probably someone like you would be making at least $130k total, maybe more like $160-170k.

This is a well paying industry though. Firms in the Valley usually are a little lower, more in the $120-140k range for 10 years of relevant experience.

If you are a programmer in web technologies, though, I think you are pretty inline. There might be some upward mobility, but not much unless you start managing people and moving more hands off, which will increase your top line but may limit where you can move (its easier to find a hands on job than a management job).

You seem well paid and established enough where applying to NYU or Columbia to get a BS may make lot of sense. These are expensive programs, but I think getting a brand name degree in the NYC market helps a lot. The BS that you would get from these programs versus a CUNY program would be worth it.

With all of this said: The tech startup industry in NY is growing. You might need to take a hit on comp, but if you join something you think is promising, you can really grow your compensation and standing with a small firm. Check out the NY Hatchery events to start getting a feel for startups. Many of them are looking for good people.

Thanks, this is interesting. What I think would be the best solution would be a pop-up (either in the front page or an actual popup) that if a user is from a certain country's IP address it just says: Are you in Canada and looking to buy our products? Please go to XXXXX.ca to place your order.

Is there a boilerplate app like that out there that we can just embed in the front page? Also, our products are physical products, not software, so if you are in Canada and even if you are American, you will need to place your order through the .ca domain.

Near the grove st path station.

If anyone is in Jersey City, NJ we could do something similar. We have two apartments in which we operate 3 businesses and occasionally have borders staying here who also work in startups. Fast internet, multiple phone lines, lots of sun light and a sweet, huge, custom desk space. Drop me a line if you are in the neighborhood or living in JC and want a sweet place to work on your passion.

- We used PayPal for two years running a hookah ecommerce site. We did about $3000-6000 in revenue per month. We chose paypal because no other payment processor we knew of would work with a "tobacco" related website. We had no problems with PayPal. It was easy to implement, 95% reliable, and no problems getting the money out.

- With that said here are some tips: Don't ramp up with paypal right away. Start running a small business out of it, somethings doing a few hundred dollars a month and ramp it up. If you are going to do an odd amount of business (like a product launch) than call them up and give them a heads up. They will make a note in the system.

- Alternatives: We found another payment processor through a drop shipping company we use. Because they have a much larger account, they we're able to get a cheaper payment processor to look the other way in regards to tobacco sales.

Got another one here: Hadoop/Java Developer - San Francisco, USA (Contract to perm, no telecommute, but work out a 4 day onsite work situation)

Top Silicon Valley tech firm (think old world internet, but still a relevant business model) is looking to completely revamp their back-end search and storage infrastructure with a massive Hadoop cluster (will rival Yahoo's and Facebook's when completed). They are hiring a team of core Java developers with experience building out Hadoop clusters.

Drop me a line: trent.krupp@constitutionllp.com

Trading Operations: Perl - London, UK Working on a systematic trading desk building analytics for quants. Must have strong Linux admin experience, great perl programming, and some decent math background. Position is on a small team, in a large firm.

trent.krupp@constitutionllp.com

Depends on the recruiter and industry. Its pretty easy to figure out the jokers from the professionals (simply by asking "Who is the hiring manager?" will a lot of times show you who is who). No doubt the big firms are typically loaded with jokers.

It depends on whether you are going through a recruiter or not. A recruiter can broach that topic a little more gently than speaking with your prospective employer. If that's not a possibility, leave the GPA off there and put a bullet with "medical leave: XXXX - XXXX". Your employer will ask, talk about it frankly at that time.

Agreed. You maybe work a bit more hours (but honestly, if you want to compete at a 9-5 you are really working more like 8-7pm anyways.), but the hours happen when and where you want them to happen, which can maximize time with loved ones.

Case in point, sometimes my girlfriend works at my office. How is that possible at a normal job? Or taking a week off just to go work at your parents cabin? That kind of out-of-office working is just not possible or a great idea in the normal work force.

One thing I will say: Doing a startup by yourself would be almost impossible with a serious relationship. You need at least one partner to watch your back when you can't be on duty (which happens twice as often in a serious relationship, I've found).

I spoke with a guy a vocalocity (that I think someone on HN referred them to me), and they seem like a pretty good fit (unlimited us/canada, good web PBX, reasonably priced hardware). Does anyone have any experience working with them?

This looks interesting. Do you need any pbx or if i got 5 IP phones, set them up, they would just work?

Need to crunch some numbers on per minute vs flat rate. One of the businesses is phone intensive, probably use 120-240 minutes per day.

I too used your book to get started in Python. It was a great introductory lesson, and definitely my learning style. Thank you!

Going to try Python for Fun this month (http://openbookproject.net/py4fun/index.html) to get a bit more advanced and pick up Learning Python (http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Python-Powerful-Object-Orient...), unless anyone else has any other better suggestions?

Thanks for sharing. We've had a couple of additional web app ideas, and I think figuring out your user funnel is the most important part of deciding to move forward.

After a bit of discussion, we've decided to identify a few key pain areas and then brainstorm apps around those pain areas rather than taking the first idea that comes to mind. With the app market the way it is, a good idea isn't good enough. You need something that fits a market (that's preferably under-served or mis-served), has a good viral component and is novel. Engineering what app to approach is almost as hard, and less straight forward, as developing the app itself.

The article is only looking at a few of the shops. The good ones pay their developers based on performance with some tied directly in to their group's PnL (top firms like Getco, Goldman [on their HFT platform only], Jump, etc) pay their experienced guys over $500k, with some of those guys on over $1MM. The Sergey A. case, where a guy makes over $1MM guaranteed, is not that uncommon. Of course, right out of school they pay low 6-figures, but after 4-5 years of proven track record, if the firm doesn't want to pay $300k+ in compensation, their competitors will. Then its the developer's fault for not making sure they are in the market and getting compensated market rate.

I am a recruiter in the Quant Trading space, we have a few clients hiring: C++ NYC/Bay Area - Should be very good in OOP with a couple years of experience in finance or large software projects.

C++/Quant Chicago - Should have solid statistics or computer science background (MS or Ph.D.) with very strong C++/STL.

Python Chicago - Support traders developing analytics. Fast paced, must be great at Python and very comfortable in Linux administration.

Linux Admin NY/LA - Preferably coming from a trading systems (finance) background. Strong shell, Perl or Python, and guru level linux admin experience in a distributed environment.

Interviews for these positions are brutal, but if you feel your the best guy at your current house, I'd love to talk to you. trent.krupp@constitutionllp.com

This was my thoughts.

I don't think Microsoft is going to have a renaissance and overtake Google or Apple in the future, but I think the stock is under-priced relative to Google or Apple (or GOOG/AAPL are overpriced in comparison).

Apple, more than Google, is being purchased like its gold. Like its the safest asset on the equity exchanges. There are good reasons for this, but it has over inflated the value of the stock.

MS doesn't do the cloud right yet, which is a something they are working to rectify. With that said: I dont think the future is 100% cloud based, and Windows products are going to be on the majority of non-cloud hardware implementations. Who knows how big the slice will be when the cloud goes mature, but it will be there, and MS will dominate it.

I'm signing up for this. Its time we get a 1-800 number for my online retail business.

I also agree with the article: I personally receive all of our customer calls (which happen like 3-5 times per week). Its a great source of information and it helps our branding that we are a small, customer oriented online retailer.

Where's the "learn to live cheaply"?

An interesting piece of advice I got from my finance professor way back when: Put your money into either index funds (or the more liquid, cheap to get out of Index Future) or treasuries. If you are risk adverse, do more treasuries, if you are more risk taking do more funds (or if you really want to take on risk, lever up). But always stick with these assets, as they are much more reliable than mutual funds or the ilk.

Not sure what he'd say now. US treasuries arent the sure bet they were 5 years ago and who wants to put any money into the movement of the S&P? There is something attractive to me in having a few gold bars in a Swiss lock box, though.

That's a pretty good addition, maybe added to the point of being able to sell 1000 units at $10 point. That point is the most abstract, Im not saying that your business model needs to fit those criteria specifically, just that 10k somehow per month needs to be quite possible, relatively quickly in order for it to be a positive thing for the business idea.

My first business went against both of your points (it was a premium product and we needed to change behavior of the users). I can vouch for the fact that this is tough, and things are slow, but that business also developed the most ardent followers of anything I have done since. It takes time (which is usually a bad thing if you dont have other revenue streams keeping you afloat), but once you do it, you have a serious asset in your customers. If you want to check it out, its HoboHookah.com, we actually patented the product and recently got our claims approved (I wrote the patent myself, which isn't experience you get in an MBA program!).

This article is pretty touchy feely to really make serious business decisions on. Here is my list (not just for tech startups): Is your business or product in a under-served niche (ie not a sexy industry that everyone is trying to get a piece of)? Do you have deep understanding of the industry or do you have a close relationship to someone that does? Is the idea easy to execute on (ie can you see clearly how to serve the market and all existing technology exists and is proven)? Is the market big enough so that you think you can easily sell 1000 units per month at $10 per unit, 10 units per month at $1000 or equivalent in billed hours of service? Can the business be revenue positive in 6-months? Can the business be automated or are profits recurring (ie could the business be successful with minimal human resourced or still be successful with minimal oversight by the founders)? Are there any barriers to entry for your market or possible intellectual property opportunities? Can you start the business without substantial upfront capital outlays (ie no inventory, etc)? Can the business stand on its own (ie doesn't need a huge existing customer base, mailing list, big advertising outlays, or additional features to make it an full product)? Do you have any other secret sauce not covered in the above?

No need to answer yes to all of them, but having 5 to 6 of these things in spades would be my criteria for doing more exploration.

In what way? So you can be lazier while maintaining a larger social network? I think Facebook depersonalizes relationships even more so than the email/twitter/IM communication methods.

I dont miss it. There are a few email addresses on there that I wish I had written down, so I guess there is some value, but is that value worth the wasted time getting sucked up in a live status stream (or worse: Your data in such stream)? Looking and commenting on peoples wall? Gossiping? Its a trashy medium, just like the tabloid medium before it, only with different recognizable people and with your life on display as well.

I remember Alex Nagel from Honors Calc I at UW. Tough class. Its sad to hear about his colleague, but Rudin lived an amazing life.