[vegashacker]

I think I agree with your main point, but I object to your reasoning. Did you really spend only 20 minutes on your app? I'm skeptical that it's possible to literally spend that little time on it and still get accepted to the program. The app even says, "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo."

Spread out over a few weeks, we probably spent 24 hours on the app (this estimate includes tasks like market research, for example, to answer the "who are your competitors" question). Maybe this seems like a long time, but I think it takes a long time to come up with well-written, concise prose.

Now, we didn't get accepted, but we did make it to the interview.

[nmeyer]

He didn't literally mean 20 minutes. Even if he did, that's not the point he was trying to make.

[SwellJoe]

Actually, in my case I did literally mean 20 minutes. Apologies to folks who spent significantly longer (and I'm not disparaging you for doing so). It was merely lack of knowledge on my part that led to me filling it out so quickly.

I didn't even know about the program until the afternoon on which applications were due--I had seen the Boston one come and go, but would have never considered a move from Austin to Boston...by the time I realized there was one in CA, it was close to too late. I submitted it within hours of the deadline, and had dozens of other things going on at the same time. I looked back over it later (before going for the interview in Boston), and it was pretty bad, except in a few spots where deep knowledge of our field and code overwhelmed the slapdash nature of the thing as a whole.

If it makes you feel better, we just scraped by, on the obvious difficulty of the problems that we had already solved when we arrived for the interview (and even then pg was not on board with what we were doing...I'm pretty certain we owe our acceptance entirely to Trevor and rtm, who have done system administration and recognized the pain that our product takes away, while pg seemingly couldn't figure out why we would even want to address those problems).

But, you're absolutely right: It's not the point I was trying to make.

s/20 minutes/2 fortnights/g and the intent is the same.

[vegashacker]

Congrats on wasting no time, then. That's a great story, btw. Thanks for sharing.

[vegashacker]

Fair enough. I guess I was objecting to the fact that his under-exaggeration was something like 2 orders of magnitude off, by my estimates.