AmberShah

As a hiring manager, most of the time my mind is made up 30 minutes into the interview (though it's not considered polite to cut it short or notify them at that time). However, in the very rare case of a tie, a follow up email (or handwritten letter) will definitely swing it in your favor.

Actually, despite it being the common advice, they are quite rare to receive. So I tend to take notice and remember that person much later even if they are not selected. I would be likely to give the person another shot if they re-applied for another position, or pass their resume along to another position where I think they'd fit better. I'd never do that for someone who didn't follow up.

My husband and I both have IRAs (don't quality for ROTH) with ShareBuilder, into which we put very little money monthly. I recently started working at a company with 401K matching and do the full match on that.

Communism much?

For one, it's our male role models who are using computers while our female role models aren't. Children are affected by such gender differences very early. They notice who drives the car when everyone goes out, who cooks dinner, and who works late.

Secondly, there are expectations about it. For example, if a boy takes apart a computer, everyone goes "such a boy", but if a girl does it, people say "hmm, that's odd." (even if it's good surprise, it's still surprise). I know when I was a child I was pushed to do things like ballet and cheerleading and orchestra when what I wanted to do was martial arts and read and become a scientist.

Interesting... although this requires that I install something before I start commenting, when it should be able to be automatic, since I use the same name/URL everywhere.

That's it! Huh... they've changed it so it doesn't really do that anymore, does it?

Thanks, though :)

Signing bonuses are basically non-existant in Houston. Annual bonuses are common but that depends highly on the industry. Both the financial and energy industries have taken a big hit in the past few years and they are the lifeblood of the Houston economy, so while layoffs are not that common, bonuses are way down. Not painting a gloom and doom scenario, just saying if you're here, expect all your payment to be in salary/benefits.

I'm in Houston and know about the pay here (as both a programmer and a hiring manager). I'd say you're comfortably paid but on the low end. It depends on what industry you are in as well. For example, in the medical industry that would be about right, but finances and energy can do better. Walk in and ask for a 15K raise. If they don't give it to you, you can get at least 10K more on the market right now.

If you are interested in this, you should try this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Computing-Jane-Mar...

They did a survey of CS students to find out their first experiences. They provide specific quotes in the book, but the gist of it was that men usually were given a computer (or everyone felt that the family computer was "theirs") and they began to tinker around immediately, whether that be with programming or taking it apart. The women's first experiences tended to involve watching a male family member work on the computer.

byoung2's comments follows the typical male answer and mine follows the typical female answer. I watched my 2 uncles and uncle-in-law in the computer since they had jobs in tech. Then my grandfather gave my mom and me a computer and showed us how to use it. I mostly just played on it and used programs until high school were I was "formally introduced" to programming.

I went to Toastmasters a few years back, but before I got into Toastmasters. It's really the best thing to do if you want to get comfortable speaking in front of a group and do it well.

I am one of those "90k-salaried .NET developer" and am currently working on my startup, because:

1. Working on something you are passionate about it is food for the soul, and

2. Working for a good salary has a cap, a startup that I own doesn't.

Additionally, since I am doing my startup on the side and building it to be profitable, then I don't have to give up my salary that pays my bills until my startup exceeds it.

This is a neat service, but it will be much more useful to me if I can exclude ones from my own domain AND ones from my support forums (not on my domain) AND ones that I create by commenting on blogs. While they may or may not be relevant from an SEO ranking standpoint, they are not really of interest to me since I already know about them. I'd much rather be notified about someone mentioning Code Anthem in a blog or forum that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Basically a Google Alerts, but since Google alerts often gives me unrelated results, this would be more accurate.

Me too. You may want to consider integrating Code Antgem badges too as part of a user's profile. Email me amber@codeanthem.com to discuss.

I don't see a benefit to using this site over Google. So, there are a lot of restaurant review sites. But if I am actually looking for a specific restaurant on a specific site, it might have nothing. So it makes more sense for me to search in Google and let it pull up the site with the most or most relevant reviews. Sometimes it pulls up citysearch, sometimes yelp, sometimes b4-u-eat, etc.

For me to ever actually come to this site specifically (and risk missing out on good info from another site), I would need a strong reason to do so. An example would be, a blog where you guys go "undercover" and review restaurants. Or where you have a funny twist of some sort, or maybe take a strong POV.

Or maybe something like: I'm a vegetarian, so maybe every reviewer enters their dietary constraints or preferences, so I can search for people "like me" and see where they are eating and what they like.

Lastly, until I read the reviews her, I wasn't even clear that this was providing searchable menus, it looks like another review site. The primary point to use Google still applies. If the restaurant has a main website, I'd rather go there. If they host their menu with you, Google should fine it.

Actually worked with would be http://benrady.com/, http://grack.com/blog/, and a few other people who don't have online presences.

Seen in person but not worked with would be http://twitter.com/venkat_s and http://www.nealford.com/.

I consider people spontaneously tweeting or blogging about it to be huge. I know it may seem trite, and as everyone loves to point out, it's not revenue, BUT it does mean they are putting their own reputation on the line that their friends will like it.

I also have metrics within my app itself. Like out of the people who want to signed up, how many completed useful chunk in the application. Out of those, how many took the next step. So far I haven't spent too much time looking at bounce rate and repeat visitor rate, but those are valuable metrics too.

I also use UserVoice and it's been really great. A lot of people have taken the time to post something (and that in itself tells me a lot about how people feel about it) and their comments feed me energy to keep going and making improvements.

I also put my email address right on the account page (at least during the beta period) and invite people to email me feedback. A lot of them do that too and I always respond and get some sort of useful feedback (beyond just a bug report).

"Nobody"? That's not likely...

It's sad that I first heard this was true when the whole high school shootings were happening. The shooters were "trained" via video games to shoot for the head, one shot, and then move on to the next target, whereas a novice would keep shooting all over multiple times to make sure they got it right. So, it backs up the claim above, and yet, still doesn't make me want to let me kids play video games.

As it turns, my kid likes to eat. So, in my oh-so-unique case of having, uh, responsibilities, it would be better for me to have a paying job (even at Goldman Sachs) than to found a startup with zero revenue.

Of course, that's assuming they are XOR, which they are not.

I agree that the design and interface is really nice.

I hooked it up to my startup Google Apps account. Basically if things are in my inbox, then I need to act on it, and if not I archive it. But when I logged into the HobsonFiles dashboard, I was unclear of what to do. Even though I had maybe 10 things in my inbox, I only had a couple of things show up on the first page. The people in the "contacts" list weren't people who were particularly important. Maybe it would be useful to someone who started using it religiously, but it would be really helpful if you spent some time looking at it at for the "first time" and seeing if it's intuitive what to do next.

All that support and knowledge is tempting, but I won't be applying. I'm currently in private beta and making very good progress with my product on my own by bootstrapping. It would also be incredibly difficult for me to move to another city and work there full time for a few months when

I have a full time job that pays my bills (which are MORE than what YN would give me as an investment AND I'd be giving up equity for it).

Plus, I have a 2-year old who still nurses (not open for debate, sorry). Basically he'd HAVE to come with me and assuming they'd even allow that, I'd also have to move my childcare with me (my dad) and he'd have to be away from his family too.

Plus, I have no immediate desire to find a co-founder and no plans to exit. All of these things may change and I'm open to that, but that's how it is right now.

>Spoken like someone who has never had a real customer.

I've had real customers and you do what you can to keep the loyal ones and make them happy, even if that means cutting your profits temporarily. It's not just being nice, it's smart business. If he finds another hosting company and starts recommending them, that's way more money lost than the $200 they could have knocked off the $1300 bill.

Life would go on.

I'd spend more time with my son. Pretty sad, but true.

To be fair, PostgreSQL is clunky no matter what.

I did this, primarily to do work that was interesting and more fulfilling, and it didn't end up working out after a trial period. But I did want to share my experience about the payout question.

So I was making $85K a year as a project manager/developer. I went to work in a contract period for a startup who, if I had gone full time, would have offered around $65K to me as well as much worse benefits.

That would have included a certain number of shares. The founder gave me his expectation as to what would be a low, medium or high exit. Based on that I would have made between a couple thousand dollars and, at most, $100K. Now, I would have to work at the startup for 4 years to fully vest, meaning I would have lost $20K per year in salary. This means even if had a large exit and I made $100K, it would still just be a little over what I had lost in salary.

After a couple of months there, I went to work at another "regular job" and made $100K per year, which means it would have been a loss no matter what. Now I still work making good money and am working on my startup on the side. Since the startup-people were expected to put in significantly more than 40 hours a week anyways, I'm probably just working about the same amount of time and making way more money AND controlling my own destiny with a startup I am personally passionate about.

Most of this is good except for the: don't use rockstar and other terminology. I don't behave like a rockstar but I often look for that as an indicator to apply since at least I know that I would be valued there. It's not so important to use it, but if you are truly looking for a guru (and most other people have failed the technical requirements so far) then it doesn't hurt to post it.

1. Talk about what you'll actually be doing, both in terms of both technology and the projects. Most of the time this has to be guessed from vague technical "requirements" rather than offered up freely. If you can show genuine enthusiasm for your work that is fantastic, but don't fake it because that is also obvious.

2. Be up-front about the upsides and downsides. If programmers get full control of their workstations and get to pick what environments to use, then say so. If they are expected to work 50 hours every week, say that too. That's how you'll attract the right people to come interview.

3. Putting your answers to the "Joel Test", if you score well, is a good way to attract the right people.

I also have to self-promote a second and point out this: http://www.codeanthem.com/blog/2010/04/how-to-hire-crappy-pr... which is the anti to what you're asking for - but probably worth a read and make sure you're not doing any of the ones listed in the post or the comments.

Since women overall make less, then women with families must make a lot less than their male counterparts.

I second that it's a good useful post, but misses the point of why women aren't female Y-Combinator founders. If you aren't ready for a life of rejection, then it doesn't have anything to do with Y-Combinator, but don't be an entrepreneur!