saasinator

I'm not so sure that's a bad thing? If you understand and work well enough, what's wrong with understanding through your own idioms, etc?

Of course we read a lot of people's code, but I'm not so sure it's something that needs to be actively practiced rather than done naturally over a career (which makes recommending people to read code pointless if it happens naturally).

I personally find it useful for more than recruiting, such as sales etc. Shaving a few minutes off finding an email compounded over a day can save quite a bit of time allowing you to focus on more important things.

I tested a number of accounts, it's a legit dump. If your email is in there I'd change your password and anywhere else you re-used the password.

Have a clear understanding (and be able to explain) how to design different systems. For instance, you should be able to walk through (and sketch on a whiteboard) how to design a web service like Pastebin, Imgur, Pingdom or other such services.

You should be able to solve many common algorithmic problem patterns. It sucks, but the only way to get a job these days is to do well on coding interviews that are heavy in algorithmic problems, so do a lot of practice. The best way to practice is with a pen and paper, don't type up the solution until you're done and you've walked through it yourself.

Have a basic sense for social skills and learn to tell the company what they want to hear and make them feel special.

If you can do all three of those steps you've got a job.

You can say "no" without saying "no". Try this, "We can do that, but I've got a lot on my plate this week. Shall we log the task for next week or shuffle some tasks around different sprints to make room for it?"

There you go, 9 times out of 10 they will shelve the idea.

"Practically O(1)" == amortized constant time?

You can search for people with a given title, or a company that is in a specific industry, etc. You can do boolean searches and do pretty complex searches depending on your LinkedIn account (free, business, etc.).

For instance, you could find out how many companies are in the day care business in a specific state or in the US as a whole, etc. You could search for professionals with "day care" or "care taker" listed somewhere in their title or profile and do some basic guesses from there.

I'm interested in figuring out statistics as well and I would love if someone could share any resources they use. The best tool I've found is LinkedIn search queries. It's pretty general but it gives you an idea.

Some other sites I use when deciding some technical requirements:

    http://netmarketshare.com 
    http://caniuse.com 
    http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index

I'll add my current three,

    1) "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
    2) "The War of Art" 
    3) "The Pragmatic Programmer"

Create a "fake" Gmail account that is not linked to anything personal.

Use a fake name/alias. Sign up for something like Cloud9 (https://c9.io) or use another synced editor like collabedit or even Google Docs (make sure to use the fake gmail account and not your own).

Sign up for Skype with the fake gmail account and fill out the details like you did on the fake gmail account.

Then sync up with someone online using audio only and using the synced editor of your choice.

You will leak your IP information most likely so they could figure out in what vicinity you live, but you could setup a proxy if you wanted even more security to hide your location.

As long as you're not hiding from any three letter agencies this is probably more than enough.

What exactly do you not want to share? Is this solely a concern you will leak visible information on your desktop, browser, etc? Or do you have deeper concerns about the communication channel and security etc?

I'd suggest using an audio call (phone, Skype, Google Hangout) and a code pad that is synced in realtime (free ones exist like collabedit.com). In other words, don't share your screen, share your voice.

I didn't see any mention on how to secure store the session id, only references to session data. It should be noted that information needs to be securely stored both on the client and server.

Err-- just because someone has a side project and/or wants to make money outside of work does not mean they are underpaid or not happy.

I have always pursued my own endeavors because I want to earn passive income and be independently wealthy. I don't want to work for someone else for the rest of my life.

Is it worth sacrificing productivity to save a few bucks? How many dollars are you wasting? Even if an engineer is 1-5% less productive, compounded over a couple years you can more than pay for every cubicle.

Feels more like, "We couldn't afford to build offices or didn't feel like spending money on that, so we'll give you a big cheap floor with lots of distractions, but hey creativity and all that."