[whafro]

On the other hand, at small companies, this can be a big deal. FAANG companies pretty much know how interested you are in working there, based on the fact that you’re the type of person who thinks they want to work at a FAANG company. And since the scope of these companies is so large, there are all sorts of ways to fit your interests into work at such a company over the mid-to-long-term.

But early-stage companies are looking for folks who have an interest and understanding in the task at hand. For many hiring managers at these companies, expertise – or at least interest – in the problem space is noteworthy. On the hard-skill side, it can suggest that you may be able to help see around corners with your product team, identifying and solving issues during planning or on the fly. On the soft-skill side, it can suggest that you’re bringing positive energy and motivation to the still-nascent team.

In the end, it’s still a matter of knowing your audience and reading the room. It may be a waste of time in some places, and may be the difference-maker in others.

[lmeyerov]

Yep.

Folks at 200+ and especially FAANG companies are mostly interchangeable. The interviewer is mostly derisking chance of a dud and comparing a 86%er vs 87%er. A few exceptions like at the rarer million dollar comp level. For everyone else, especially non-insiders... Cookie cutter comparisons it is, and whatever edge.

Startups are very much making a more existential bet. For our openings, I'm equally looking for ownership, interest in our customers/mission/long-term, and other bits that have little to with a whiteboard. On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.

[grogenaut]

Frankly most startups aren't very interesting. The ones who want you to be super interested are often the most boring ideas "were passionate about sox compliance", and if they are interesting they won't tell you shit about the company due to secret sauce or just moving so fast nothing is documented. It's hard as a candidate to get excited about every idea. And many people purposefully don't as they don't want to get shot down later by a job they were excited about. Finally if I'm actively looking I have 10 leads I'm following and I'm practicing for interviews. Signing up for every beta tryout eats into that time. I'll take a look when ivw got an offer.

I took a career pivot from web forms /rails to AAA playstation games. I played the game after they flew me to Seattle and gave me an offer. It involved buying a PlayStation 3 and their previous game. And that's an obviously cool job. Bought it right after I landed home and played it the next morning. Accepted the offer a few hours later.

[noirbot]

Yea, I've had a similar issue happen to me. Was interviewing at a small-mid company that I was increasingly interested in and passionate about, and had really delved into with various interviewers to learn about their business and what made them a good product and good place to work.

Ultimately, they went with someone else. I'm not upset about it, but it stung more than getting another form letter from some large company. It feels almost cruel as an interviewer/hiring manager to expect every viable candidate to get really invested in you and your company when you know you're going to reject some high percentage of them just because you can't hire more than a few people.

[lmeyerov]

Yes, generally I assume each candidate is having serious conversations with 2-5 others, and non-serious with more. We do the same. There are exceptions, like folks not actively interviewing, but that's the typical case.

It is big stakes for all involved, so someone not treating it seriously is a big warning flag. That is fine for later stage companies where individuals mostly need to not screw up and add reliable incremental value, and the resume screens and interview processes people are complaining about here reflect that need. Different job, different interview..

[noirbot]

I certainly understand the stakes for you in making the right hire, but you're fundamentally much less invested in the candidate than you seem to be asking them to be in you. At the end of the day, you can reject them and pick someone else, or wait for someone better, while it seems like you have some expectation that they should be upset and disappointed if they don't make the cut with you.

Ultimately, if I'm really passionate, but don't have all the skills you want, or want more money than you can provide, than you'll pass on me and move on to the next candidate. That's fine, but if we've spent the time making sure I feel like I could really create something good with you and your team, and that I'd be a good part of it, that's just setting up 3-5 of your candidates to have a really strong letdown, even beyond what's already a difficult thing to hear.

[lmeyerov]

I'm not sure where I say we "have some expectation that they [candidates] should be upset and disappointed if they don't make the cut". I would assume they'd be disappointed they didn't get an offer, wasted application time, and didn't get an impactful role... for easily avoidable reasons.

Agreed that people not a match for a job shouldn't get the job offer nor should they take if the offerer have messed up. This is all match making... Which is two-sided.

I'm lucky enough to have reached a point personally & professionally where I can highly value where each hour goes & doesn't go. A lot of time goes into a job, so the idea of applying for a bunch of 2-5yr (or longer) journey candidates, and the possibility to do the best professional work of my life to date.. and not doing my homework on the options just doesn't make sense. For some people it does and for many legit reasons, and for them, a leetcode interview for a FAANG style job probably makes more sense. Just that kind of approach is a harder sell for making a good match at a startup at the more formative years.

[lmeyerov]

Agreed all around.

For us, folks using our tech and then realizing what it's for is the beginning of much more interesting technical & mission conversations than programming language, monetization model, or RSU vs ISO. I rather talk about where data analysis is going for tough problem XYZ, and what we - and their area of ownership - needs to do to help get our users and the tech community there.

Both sides needs to be ready for that conversation though, and those are the candidates that stick out. And yeah, if the company is say streamlining parking, or the candidate just wants a 9-5 -- both of which are fine -- it'll be a different kind of interview.

[grogenaut]

As others have said better, you are essentially asking the candidate to put in more time applying for opportunity than you are for them as a candidate to the filtering process. Eg they've got email exchanges, resume, interviews, and researching your company and doing the free trial. You have filter the resume, do the screen, write up decision.

I think you're missing that there's a power imbalance between you as the comfortable person offering a job (who is employed), and a person who may be currently looking and has mouths to feed and no income. I think you're making some assumptions here that might rule out excellent candidates in many scenarios and filter in for ingenuine yes people.

Also I did look, you seem to be a CEO on a graph visualization 3d acceleration system. I'm not sure that wows me instantly. I did sign up for a free trial, but I don't have an example data set to upload, and you don't seem to have one (I tried no-code visualizations). The main stuff I'd upload is something from work, but I generally don't need graph visualizations there either. I'm not going to upload proprietary info to a trial account. So as a enterprise customer I'm kinda at a crossroads for trying your system out. I'd have to go to Security and Legal and get approval, or I could just use tables or d3js, graphviz, or any of the solutions I'm currently not using. It's also unclear what of my data hits your servers.

As a candidate I imagine I'm at 45 minutes in before I actually get to kick the tires. You're not really making it easy for me to love your pitch.

At a minimum it'd be great if you could just have a notebook or collab or whatever people could just spin up instantly or use via browser. All I see are images, which while pretty seem to show the same issues I have with every other graph visualization program, they're incredibly cluttered.

Again you're not Games and you're not Space... I'm not sure why people would be passionate about your product in under 45 minutes or could afford to spend more than that to do so. I'd ask you to really consider if anyone can be as passionate about your idea as you are.

[dir_balak]

Beware, with such good criticism you may have a job offer by him in the next hours or so.

[lmeyerov]

I appreciate the good faith attempt!

https://github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry

No 3d/vr/etc unfortunately, we never saw commercial demand in our segments, just looking at bigger datasets and increasingly 'wide' / high-dimensional/scattered/heterogeneous data using accelerated viz & AI, and now text2code

And yes, we currently get used by data scientists and devs on problems like supply chain analysis, misinformation, cybersecurity, human trafficking. Seeing 100x+ more data than d3 and having a full env there makes analyst investigations easier. Our original GPU client <> GPU cloud tech helped lead to what is now Apache Arrow (we contributed the JS tier as part of the GPU Open Analytics Initiative) and Nvidia RAPIDS (we wrote the precursor in nodejs/opencl, and worked with Nvidia to restart for pydata), and are now focusing on the Nvidia Morpheus & graph AI sides for end-to-end GPU pipelines with our bigger customers (cyber, ...).

More recently, to make this kind of tech easier for analysts who are traditionally stuck with Splunk/Kibana/etc style UIs for investigations, we have been launching louie.ai (genAI-first notebooks) with various customers

Hopefully now it makes sense why we don't go far with candidates who can't have conversations on these things, such as how they are built, how they get used, and where they are going . It is ok-but-not-great on conv 1, but weird by conv 2. And as a CEO, far from what I look for in someone in a senior/leader role who is supposed to be looking ahead.

[mikebenfield]

> if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.

This is on a completely different planet from my experience as a candidate and as an interviewer.

It looks like you're doing interesting work, and it might be great to work for you. But that's true of a lot of other companies. You're asking for a level of interest and dedication to your company that is completely unwarranted at this stage. For all I know you're about to ghost me. I suspect a major effect of your approach is that you select people who are better BS artists and have fewer employment options.

[lmeyerov]

Yes, we are looking for folks to work with us, not for us. Different mindset & process. We try not to hire ex-FAANG (but occasionally do) in part because of this kind of difference.

It's fascinating to see so much resistance to this kind of thinking for a forum that is nominally about startups. In a sense that's good - some people are well-suited for the needs of scaleups and post-scale, vs startups (0-1, 1-10), and recognizing that is healthy. What you do & learn in a big company or a already-figured-it-out late-stage & highly funded VC co is different from the wild west stage of startups.

[oxfordmale]

I will work for you, not with you, as the loyalty of your company is non existent. I worked for many start ups, and enjoyed working on that type of challenges, but I am always aware loyalty is non existent. It is a red flag if company talks about "we are a family" or "work with us".

[lmeyerov]

I always liked the Netflix reframing of 'professional sports team's vs 'family' because of that reason. At the same time.. I'm sorry you've had a professional career with so many folks lacking loyalty. I've been lucky enough to work with a variety of 'recognized' great people, and with them, loyalty is so common that it has been the folks who lacked loyalty (and often in politicized bigcos that seems to encourage that) who stand out as the exceptions.

Fwiw, I'm using 'work with us' in the sense of taking ownership over a problem and ability & interest to work through many unknowns, vs preferring a weekly jira with big decisions made by the time they reach you.

The analogy of 'mercenary' specialist may align with your world view. Sometimes that type of person can be worth their weight in gold. We like that for short temp consultations for example, and in big enterprise engagements, I often like when a mix of them + lifers are involved..

[oxfordmale]

If you miss revenue targets, you will have to lay off staff. Maybe it is too early yet for your company, but as you go to different funding rounds this will happen. A spreadsheet will decide if you retain me or lay me off.

[molsongolden]

It really doesn't take long to try out a free tier of a product and it's a great way to get a feel for what the company is building, how far along they are, how much you like or dislike the direction they've taken.

I even like to briefly try the free tier of a product (if available) ahead of warm lead sales calls. It always pays off to have a rough understanding of what a product does and how it fits into an overall ecosystem.

[mikebenfield]

It might be a reasonable thing for a candidate to do. But for a company to judge me based on whether or not I've done it is silly.

[chrisdbanks]

Maybe this is why you've been ghosted so much.

[mikebenfield]

I haven't been ghosted "so much." I've worked at a cool startup and two FAANGs. But there's no guarantee the interview process will go your way no matter how good you are; there's a lot of luck and interpretation involved.

[neilv]

> if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us

Now that you've said it on HN... soon, most of the applicants you get using your free tier by second round will be doing so because that'll be added as a standard part of the generic tech jobs interviewing ritual for people who just go through the motions (along with memorizing Leetcode, and practicing good-sounding lies to behavioral questions).

[twic]

A friend told me that Bumble require you sign up to apply for a job. And now my pet theory about why guys get so few swipes back is that they're all swiping away on leagues of job applicants.

[lmeyerov]

Great!

I can't fathom having a serious discussion about a 2-5 year career bet, and hopefully even more impacting, and not having a serious look at the actual work or at least the highly related technologies. Some of our best hires have been from our userbase and the OSS communities we helped start, and some of our misses have been from those who couldn't get on board with those.

(We don't do leetcode etc, though for junior roles we do ask for a Jupyter notebook, and for senior, might do a contracting period if mutually agreeable.)

[pclmulqdq]

Having a contracting period for senior engineers sounds like you must not get many of them. Most people I know at that level are swimming in offers when they go looking for work, so a contract period is just incredibly unattractive.

[lmeyerov]

Yes it varies. Some prefer it before jumping in, eg, super senior who mostly do advisory and light consulting. We are a small team so by definition each person gets more ownership than at your average bigco or megaround VC co.

[caskstrength]

> On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us.

I was about to write a moderately snarky comment and went to your profile to check which Java banking middleware or Rails-based Uber-for-dogs your startup is building for applicants to be excited about... but looking at the description your company seems quite interesting! Sorry to hear that you've got flooded with generic low-effort application from disinterested people. I guess in current job market some people just desperately knocking on all doors hoping to get any job at all.

[ghaff]

A lot of people here would argue it’s just a numbers game. I’ve been lucky over the past 25 years to hit 2 or 3 targeted possibilities with a single email to someone I knew. But I realize that’s probably not typical.

[lmeyerov]

I think that's more true than people, especially pure engineers, would like to think

Ultimately companies are made out of individuals going through their own lives and making decisions as they go. Raising capital, selling software, and getting a job offer are all very much sales processes. That means very real human + numbers components.

Agreed on the numbers side too on the long-view.. join a company, vest + 1yr, and either stay if it's growing or on to the next one. At least a couple times, stay longer - ideally at the growers - so you can go up in learned seniority too vs just in title. An equally important numbers game.

[lmeyerov]

Thank you, and thankfully we are fine

I just feel bad that folks are pretty much disqualifying themselves needlessly. It's a tough job market, and if folks are flubbing it with us that needlessly, I can only imagine what they are going through with their other applications. A bit of effort here can go a long way, hence my advocacy...

[eschneider]

> Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use > our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for > what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.

This makes sense. After a first round, if I'm still interested in a company, I want to dig in and find out everything I can to see if they're a likely fit and signing up for a free tier (if there is one) is absolutely a no brainer. And it's usually is a great way to form some meaningful questions to ask in the next round of interviews if I AM interested.