HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

lzecon

64 karma · joined September 20, 2013

@liaeconomix lia.economos@gmail.com
submissionscomments
lzecon··on Towards a bra-free Instagram experience
How are you supposed to install an ad blocker on an app?
lzecon··on Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator
I did a backup and complete restore. It went from completely unusable to annoyingly usable. Still considering downgrading to 10.3
lzecon··on A textbook case in workplace discrimination
It's the sense of belonging... employees didn't get jackets because they were cold and asked the company to buy one for them...
lzecon··on Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture
Uber not doing anything about it is that "discriminatory, anti-women culture" you're looking for.
lzecon··on Ask HN: Should I be concerned about this job offer?
Even if you have a weak academic and employment background you can ABSOLUTELY get a dev job that won't be designed to fuck you over, like this one is.

You might have to move, you might have to get a (paying) internship (they definitely exist), and you might have to send out some cold emails to people you don't know to ask. But there's no reason you should be waiting tables.

lzecon··on BYOT: Bring your own team
It would be awesome if they could interview as a team instead of individually.
lzecon··on BYOT: Bring your own team
This is cool, but to really make this game changing they'd revamp their interview process to interview all members together (or in pairs of 2-3) some people just perform better with their partner and the interview process itself should account for it (if they're assuming that's true).
lzecon··on BYOT: Bring your own team
I think (know) many companies actually do this informally all the time. It's fairly common to hire designers in particular this way. Stripe is smart to formally and publically announce a streamlined process. Obviously the whole point here is either everyone or no one gets an offer - honestly if I had to guess the amount of people they actually hire this way will be really small, but making it formal will increase the number of talented people they see total.
lzecon··on Renting a Friend in Tokyo
Besides the influx of tech people moving to San Francisco in the last 5-10 years (many of whom disappear in a downswing, ask anyone living in SF for 99-05), I haven't heard or seen anything that suggests the mass adoption of countercultural criticisms have at all influenced social awkwardness or atomization in CA. It's a BIG state.
lzecon··on The World Has a Problem: Too Many Young People
There's no historic surplus of men. It's entirely created by selective abortions.
lzecon··on What I Learned From Blowing An Interview
Great post. I've seen feedback from hundreds and hundreds of interviews, both technical and non, and by far the most common reason for rejecting someone is they did not answer the interviewer's question directly.

Speaking in specifics is important, but more broadly, you didn't do well because you didn't actually answer the question asked. People often get tripped up in their explaination of the answer, or their theory or thinking behind it and just forget to say what they actually did.

lzecon··on How Airbnb Rewrote Its Recruiting Playbook
Your experience (and others like it) is the reason Airbnb decided to redo recruiting from the ground up. Almost the entire recruiting team has been hired in the last 2.5 years. Clearly it needed to happen.
lzecon··on Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well
Searching for Blast Theory it looks like it may be already available but called Chat To Me?
lzecon··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)
Airbnb - San Francisco

We love you.

https://www.airbnb.com/careers/departments/engineering http://nerds.airbnb.com/

lzecon··on New Search Strategy for Firefox
Yup, they didn't renew the google contract
lzecon··on Diversity and Startups
HR for startups wouldn't and shouldn't be like HR for big companies. It doesn't have to slow a company down at all, and it's definitely a function that can enhance a company culture in really positive ways without dampening it.

However, if you think sexual harassment doesn't happen in small startups, you're not paying attention. At the end of the day, HR is a mediator for the company to protect it from lawsuits. HR can stop a little issue from turning into a big, expensive issue, which is positive for both the company and employees.

lzecon··on New Venture Capital Fund Gives Entrepreneurs a Cut of the Profit
That's a good point and honestly, that kind of sucks for early employees, but it's not going to affect whether or not a founder decides to take money from this fund or if it's successful.

Early employees at many successful startups have a long, accomplished history of getting royally screwed over on their equity to work ratio. In my experience, I've seen how that can build into real resentment over time, but of course they can't leave until they've vested, so they're just stuck doing all the work and getting compensated well, but no where close to they might deserve or what the founders end up with.

Employees, early or not, have absolutely zero input into what investments founders decide to take. It's also possible that employees may join before a start-up gets an investment from this fund, making the (potential) screwed-overness even worse. Employees can get as mad about this as they want, but they'll have pretty much zero recourse in any situation.

lzecon··on Startup advice: cold recruiting
Totally agree. Reputation is the most important factor in response rates. Not to say this isn't a good approach to cold emails, but expecting anyone but the CEO of Stripe to get a 90% response rate using this template is kidding themselves. It's frustrating for recruiters because this is obviously something they have little control over, but pretty much the most important factor in their job success.
lzecon··on Startup advice: cold recruiting
It's totally company's fault in that case, although not the recruiter's. If you get contacted by a company who previously gave you an offer, that means the company isn't investing their recruiting function by taking the simple step of buying a decent applicant tracking system. There's poor communication between the executives and the people they hire or contract, and they have zero HR.
lzecon··on I Sold My Startup for $25.5 Million
I want to know what you actually posted on Facebook now!
lzecon··on Hire from your user base
Um, no one has enough contacts to ping and hire the amount of candidates a start-up or any other company needs. This isn't lazy recruiting, this is just recruiting.
lzecon··on How we validated our SaaS product without building it
If you're relying heavily on your personal network I'd be worried that those 803 people were not true customers. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea, but I'm wondering how you know that a 803 person sample size is big enough.

Also - could/would people click on more than one button once they found out they were non-functional? It could be that some features would be best developed in tandem with others.

lzecon··on Help me distribute $100,000 to new entrepreneurs in Africa
Have you thought about establishing a minimum interest rate lenders can set to avoid indirectly contributing to the traditional trap of foreign aid?
lzecon··on Why I Dropped Out Of YC
Excellent point - I think working at a regular job is important to appreciate what you might be getting out of a startup and what kind of expectations you should be having going in.
lzecon··on Why Your Startup Can’t Find Developers
Hiring people that come from a similar background as founders is the biggest problem on that list. It's part of the reason there's a serious lack of diversity in tech and startups today. Truly recognizing that people unsimilar to you are capable, smart, and successful is a learned view. One that founders may not have had time to develop because they have to be so focused on themselves to start a company.

Once you develop bad hiring habits they become part of a start-up's culture, making a lot of people very resistant to doing something differently. For instance, if all you're doing is interviewing and not looking at the bigger picture, you may not even realize you're doing something wrong.