[kami8845]

Wow, some really big mistakes... Explains why it took 5 months to get the final interview.

>but I will put in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until I get there.

>Vidyard being one of them, even if I work for free.

>I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time.

Never, ever, ever do this stuff

- Free

If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off.

- I will work 24/7

You're coming off as desperate if you put it like that. I've similarly been on the job hunt for my first job recently and out of all the phone screens I had, every single one led to an on-site interview (21 on-site interviews in the next 3 weeks). I attribute my success in part to a similar snipped that I would make sure to drop into every interview:

"I'm not a 100% subscriber of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, but I do believe that in order to become good at something you have to spend a lot of time and focus on it. I want to become the best software developer I can be.

I'm not looking for just a 9 to 5, and especially interested in startups because I want to join a great team that I can intensely work with and learn from"

That was roughly part of my pitch. I also researched _every_ person who I'd be talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.

Respect to the guy's persistence. I'm similarly in a position where I can't immigrate to the US (but at least I'm a EU citizen so I can move to London) so I can see why OP really wanted to join a famous startup when there's already so few available to him.

[pnathan]

So you're coming off as someone who will say anything to get the job. Not my preferred candidate....

On the other hand, these threads provide me with signals to watch out for. :-)

[kami8845]

No. I will never lie or say something that I do not believe myself. The research above just tells me WHAT to say, if someone has a viewpoint on a certain topic that is 100% opposite from mine, I will simply not bring it up and look for other commonalities.

>Not my preferred candidate....

Well the good thing is if I do my job right, you'll never know :)

[pnathan]

If I do my job right in an interview, I corner you into something we disagree on, and you tell me why you think I'm wrong. We get to learn how we handle conflict, and if we can have a reasonable disagreement. ;)

[kami8845]

OK. Now I'm curious. What would be the sort of things you would try to corner me into?

[pnathan]

I am fond of design questions, both on the receiving and asking end. I drill down until you take a branch that I would distinctly choose not to. Then I press you for reasons. E.g., why would you write your web app in C++?

edit: Note that someone who is genuinely very close to me in opinions won't challenge me in ways that really produce a useful diversity of opinion. They would, however, likely agree with my sense of strategy and tactics; this might lead to a collective blindspot where a deeper problem is overlooked. Being able to professionally disagree and then work together to form a final result is very important.

[kami8845]

>this might lead to a collective blindspot where a deeper problem is overlooked. Being able to professionally disagree and then work together to form a final result is very important.

I agree with you. I just don't think phone screens are a good place for these discussions. I used the tactic above just to get through the initial phone conversation where I had a high degree of uncertainty of who I'm talking to. :)

[mvc]

Haha! I had a great interview recently where we sketched out a design for an online game on the whiteboard. Got to explore lots of interesting questions like API versioning, REST vs sessions, and basic security problems. The good natured discussion of the various options was a big part of why I decided to join the company.

[troels]

I also researched _every_ person who I'd be talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.

That doesn't sound very sincere.

[kami8845]

I'm already pretty handicapped by being an introvert and not having English as my first language, so I'll try and make up for the difficulty of holding a conversation by other means. I'd love to not have to rely on these things, but right now I'm not confident enough in my conversation skills to forego these "conversation hacks". At least during the initial conversation.

[jacalata]

Wow, some really big mistakes... I've similarly been on the job hunt for my first job recently You sound a little over confident of 'the right way to look for a job' for someone who's only just getting your first job now.

[kami8845]

Thank you. I've been researching job search related stuff for the past ~4 months (still stuck in a limbo during that time) and so I would say I know more about the job search than most people :) Especially those that have been able to just get a job out of university (I don't have a degree) or who are already so wanted that they don't really have to worry about these things.

What I pointed out are mistakes whether you know job search best practices or not (as most people will agree).

Finally I would like to submit that your post is a form of DH1 (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

[jacalata]

Let's take this sentence: If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off.

As someone who has never even held a job, apparently, let alone hired another person, why would anyone believe that what you would think in this situation is in any way similar to what an actual employer would think? (Have you ever done or used any open source work? If so, how does that reconcile with your apparent theory that work done for free is valueless?)

Yes, my post is saying 'you do not have enough experience to make the statements you just made'. Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy because theoretically, 100 monkeys typing could have come up with the world's greatest business plan. However in practice, that does not make it worth people's time to read everything typed by monkeys.

I see from your other replies that you are using HN to practice sounding confident. Consider this as feedback that while it is sometimes valuable to sound confident even when you are ignorant, it is more often valuable to be able to understand when you actually don't know and what the limits of your understanding are, and on many occasions it is even more valuable to be able to communicate your own knowledge of these limits. Learning to use simple qualifiers like 'in my experience' will help you avoid sounding like an idiot and being easily tripped up by someone who hears your foolish generalization and says 'actually if you want to work in x, you pretty much always have to start by working for free'. Then you will say 'obviously I meant this advice only for y' and they will ask why you didn't say that?', and you will think 'because I made a bunch of stupid assumptions!' but feel too ashamed to say that and start blustering. You might as well say 'database x is always the best choice'. Of course, that is only my experience (from both sides) of how those conversations often turn out, you might go through something different ;)

PS: I am a 'she'.

[kami8845]

>PS: I am a 'she'.

Oo, soory about that.

>why would anyone believe

I'm not asking anyone to believe. I'm asking to have a discussion on the points I bring forward.

>how does that reconcile with your apparent theory that work done for free is valueless

Work done for free has value. I was discussing the psychology & relationship between employer and employee when all employees at the company are already salaried and "new person" comes in and offers to work for free.

>you are using HN to practice sounding confident

That's not the way I would put it. I think (similarly to pg) that points are best expressed tersely, and so I try to keep my writings very brief and to the point.

>sounding like an idiot

Why, thank you.

>Learning to use simple qualifiers like 'in my experience'

Not necessary. This follows from the context.

>being easily tripped up

I don't see where I've been easily tripped up. Though I do enjoy that so many people jumped to respond. Even though almost no one managed or even really tried to refute my points and rather took issue with other things (boohoo you don't have enough experience to be talking about this kind of stuff, etc.)

>Then you will say 'obviously I meant this advice only for y'

This is Hacker News. We're talking tech startups here. Yeah I won't add another paragraph to talk about other industries because it's _obvious_ to everyone what I'm talking about and "Don't work for free" is an oft repeated advice on here anyways.

>'because I made a bunch of stupid assumptions!' but feel too ashamed to say that and start blustering.

I think that none of the assumptions I made are stupid. Though I am starting to notice that if I don't carefully package my opinions I will get a bunch of people in the comments who APPEAR to talk about the points I made, when really they're just annoyed at my attitude. This leads to the kind of circulatory arguing we see here, when my advice is sound but people still feel I should be less confident about my position.

>You might as well say 'database x is always the best choice'.

I would only say something like that if the purpose of the database was very clear from the context. I would never randomly drop such a statement onto HN, because everyone here uses all kinds of different databases. Your analogy is invalid.

>100 monkeys typing could have come up with the world's greatest business plan. However in practice, that does not make it worth people's time to read everything typed by monkeys.

Again an analogy that does not work. However much time however many monkeys spend on trying to understand human psychology they will not make much headway. Though if _I_ as a fellow human, take some time to try and understand human psychology, I do think it is worth the time to hear my points and argue on their merits, no matter if I had 0 or 100 jobs before. If I'm indeed talking gibberish, you're free to try and argue against my points, but since I see you talking about everything BUT my points, I'm assuming that you don't really take issue with them, but rather with me.

[jacalata]

If I leave some of the thorns on, I tend to get more replies

I take issue with both your points and with you. I had written up a fairly thorough response, but I'm not interested in talking to someone who is basically trolling for attention. If you don't think your points are interesting enough to discuss on their merits, I guess it's a valid strategy to inject a bunch of extraneous flamebait, but you can hardly expect to be taken seriously for complaining that people address your flamebait presentation instead of your weak argument.

[kami8845]

I think what you're trying to say to me has merit, but you keep overreaching in your choice of words to a point that makes it extremely difficult for me to respond positively. If you say that I

- sound like an idiot

- am blustering because I'm ashamed I'm in the wrong

- think open source is valueless

- am ignorant

These are only some of the excerpts but I keep noticing that you read what I say and then concoct some grand scheme in your head instead of taking the precise wording I used to closer heart. Disagree? Then please point me to the "extraneous flamebait" I injected into my very terse OP. Maybe it's extraneous flamebait to you that I don't preface my thoughts with "In my experience ..." ?

>I had written up a fairly thorough response

I appreciate hearing your thoughts - after all that's the reason I'm on here writing these replies. Though I do feel that you take the gist of what I'm saying, creating another standpoint adding some of your own summaries of what what you believe I'm talking about to that and then arguing against that.

Again. In my OP I told OP not to say he wants to work for free and not to say out right that he's willing to work 12/7 if he wants to maximize his chances of landing a job. Do you disagree with that? If you do, I would be happy to hear your thoughts.

[freshhawk]

4 whole months? You definitely just doubled down on overconfidence. It's only one job search, you have no idea which lessons apply generally and which are only true for the current ecosystem. Read about the Dunning-Kruger effect and avoid coming off as overconfident at all costs, when interviewing young developers/technical people that is a giant red flag in my experience. It's almost a deal breaker for me.

Also: No, that's not an Ad Hominem (which is the term you want to use rather than DH1 if you want to sound like you know what you are talking about by the way, it's a classic logical fallacy)

[kami8845]

> 4 whole months?

I didn't state 4 full months. It was however something that I spent my free time researching over the course of 4 months. I also did a lot of other things though :)

>Read about the Dunning-Kruger effect and avoid coming off as overconfident at all costs, when interviewing young developers/technical people that is a giant red flag in my experience.

Don't worry, when doing interviews a bigger risk for me is coming off as too unsure of myself. I like to state my opinion as directly and confidently as I can on HN. Mainly because it's good writing practice and because there's nothing at stake (I care very little if some of the readers on HN get a bad opinion of me because they don't agree with what I'm saying).

> No, that's not an Ad Hominem

It very clearly is an Ad Hominem. He's trying to refute my point by arguing against my person (You don't have the right kind of experience to be talking about this) instead of refuting my arguments on their own merit. This happens often as I'm not shy about what I've done in the past and enjoy saying things that I believe in but that I feel many others don't like to hear (makes for good discussions ... well at least if they try to refute my points)

[freshhawk]

This is clearly in the fuzzy definition area since your argument is that you have gained enough experience in this area to give subjective life advice, the argument against simply has to involve a judgment of your level of experience.

In the same way that I can't meaningfully ask "am I attractive enough to professionally model?" and respond to every "No" with "ad hominem!", when you bring your person into the argument as support, either implicitly or explicitly, the scope of things classed as ad hominem fallacy is constrained. Ad Hominem's are also in the class of fallacies that can still inform a decision even if, like all logical fallacies, they cannot prove anything.

To exit the pedantic logic argument for a second: That confidence and directness is a good practice, and writing practice and avoiding seeming unsure are great reasons to do it. In my experience if you also use that confidence and directness to preemptively address potential weaknesses in your argument (as in "I know I'm new at this but here is exactly why, in this case, I am right anyway") you are even more convincing.

[kami8845]

>your argument is that you have gained enough experience in this area to give subjective life advice

Nowhere do I use my "authority" to try and support any of my statements. I give a list of what I thought are his mistakes and then I go off into giving some advice (the snippet) based on my own (successful) experience doing phone screens.

> In my experience if you also use that confidence and directness to preemptively address potential weaknesses in your argument

I think that is very sound advice. But one my motivating factors is to stir up a conversation. If I leave some of the thorns on, I tend to get more replies as people inevitably find themselves caught up in them and feeling the need to reply :)

[jacquesm]

>I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time.

I've done that. For a week, after that I pretty much could dictate terms. It's a lot harder to argue someone isn't worth what they're asking for as long as you haven't seen them work or worked with them. And one of my terms was that if they kept me on after the week they had to pay for the week as well.

Giving free samples works very well for drugs, it works just as well if you're good at what you do but are not so good in communicating that as you are in showing it.

There is nothing desperate about it, just limit your exposure by limiting the time you'll do that and if you're as good as you think you are you even get the risk paid off.

[kami8845]

>And one of my terms was that if they kept me on after the week they had to pay for the week as well.

There are different ways of negotiating here. I think what you did is sensible. Sending in a cover letter where you immediately proclaim that you'll work for free when the position and every other employee at the company is salaried, though I feel is not. (Note he added the temporary status to his working for free in a later email)

>There is nothing desperate about it, just limit your exposure by limiting the time you'll do that and if you're as good as you think you are you even get the risk paid off.

I didn't say it WAS desperate, but that indeed I believe it COMES OFF as desperate. And mainly because mentally you'll get thrown into the pool with all the other losers who can't get hired on their own merit and thus try to get an in another way. Yeah, I guess there are a few edge cases out there where really they have all the skills but they just need some time to show them off. As the employer is busy with wading through the sea of applicants he is (imo) doing nothing more than pattern matching - if you're too strongly deviating from the norm that sets off some red flags in the employer's head.

[jakejake]

I definitely agree that working for free is a bad idea. But in the software industry we're currently enjoying a shortage of talent (well, that's either positive or negative depending on whether you're employee or employer) I kinda have one foot in the video/film production industry and it is so radically different to see people begging to work for free, having a food service job on the side, etc. While other graduates come out of the same 4-year education with a software degree and they're able to demand high salaries, signing bonuses, stock options, etc.

[hnriot]

Working for free does not mean the work is worthless. This is just an insane idea. Let's say I volunteer building houses for people in the 3rd world, or I give free talks at my daughter's school, or I help some friends get their startup off the ground, none of these means they are worthless. This must be a cultural difference thing, but giving freely of your time for endeavors you believe in should not make you think my work is worthless to you. Compensation comes in many forms. Money is just one of them.

[kami8845]

Yeah I agree. But they were trying to hire somebody for a salaried position and in an age where 100k salaries for newgrads are a commodity offering to do that job for 0k really does say a lot about you. I'm not saying OP shouldn't work for free, just that he should try to sound less desperate. The job search is like dating. If I tell my partner on the first or second date that I love them and would do everything for them, that sends the worst signals.

[danso]

> Let's say I volunteer building houses for people in the 3rd world, or I give free talks at my daughter's school, or I help some friends get their startup off the ground, none of these means they are worthless.

You're right, but the difference is perspective. In those situations, the "employers" expect the work to be free, because they are "paying" you in non-monetary ways (such as, continued or closer friendship). So someone offering to do work for free is meeting their expectations.

In the case of a stranger approaching a company...An employer is expecting such work to cost money...and if someone unknown offers to do that work for free...then there are multiple ways to interpret that offer, many of them detrimental to the candidate:

1) The candidate is actually not very good or is inexperienced, or else he would know that he could be getting paid good money to do what he is offering to do.

2) The candidate sees the proposed work as trivial. See 1)

3) The candidate is desperate, leading the employer to wonder if either #1 or #2 have something to do with that.

4) The candidate sees the employer as desperate.

5) The candidate is actually very good and is fully confident that his work will knock the employers' socks off.

Sure, #5 is possible. But likely?...

[lubujackson]

He was clearly #1, inexperienced. Which the job application said was OK as long as you were willing and able to learn as you go, so there is a clear narrative he's following: "let me prove that I can work myself into this role."

The side benefit is that even if he fails or works for free for a month or two he will have gained valuable experience that could get him a job elsewhere.

[philsnow]

> I also researched _every_ person who I'd be talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.

So, you play the pandering sycophant ? I _can't tell_ from here because you don't include any examples where you disagree with the interviewer's worldview.

If one of your examples had been e.g. "I've used Go quite a bit and it's bitten me in a number of ways, here's a couple: ...", it might look less like you're just researching exactly what you think people will want to hear.

[kami8845]

I have no problems disagreeing with someone, but the phone chat has exactly one and only one purpose: Get the on-site. Then once I have the full spectrum of communication available to me (mostly worried about body language and facial expressions), I will gauge how open-minded they are and adjust. I've told people before that I think their $FAVORITELANG is bullshit, but I won't risk a job interview just to score an A+ on the "utmost honesty" scale. I'm happy with a preliminary B- while I'm temporarily unable get a solid grasp of what they're like.

[Xcelerate]

> If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off.

That's not how I read it. Supposedly a work sample is the best predictor of making a good hire (I think maybe tokenadult posted something on that once?). The fact that he's willing to do it for free (assuming he actually does it) shows that he's very committed to the company. In my opinion, it's a positive -- not a negative.