Probably referring to this comment from pg, linked to elsewhere here in the comments:
1,757 karma · joined March 4, 2007
'the company has set aside $2.7 million of equity retention grants to Perfect Audience employees who stay on.'
Given how few people are in the photo, there's probably reason for that to make them smile as well.
In major cities like SF and NY, the number of drivers is almost certainly actually increasing, as Uber has basically rendered the medallion (and the protection it provides) somewhere near useless for many classes of fares. Some jobs are certainly being moved from black car and taxi companies who can't compete with Uber on overhead, but the taxi market has been highly regulated to the point of limiting job creation for many years.
In some states that's not even legal, even if you willingly agree to it, because it's considered an abusive employee relationship and tax evasion (for instance, Massachusetts.)
That said, this was spring of 2012. I'm sure Hacker School has changed a lot since then! Suffice it to say he's a fabulous programmer now. :)
From their FAQ:
>>I don't know how to program. Can I do Hacker School? No, sorry. Hacker School is currently only for people who already know how to code. Think of it like a writers workshop. We're here to help people become great novelists, but you have to already know English and be comfortable writing essays.
I know intermediate and advanced level coders can do Hacker School as well, but I ask because I worked with a Hacker School graduate who fits your definition (never coded before, only spent 2+ months ramping up at Hacker School before landing his first coding job with us.)
One group of 500 rejected applicants is sent a sentence or two of feedback by a random YC alum (ideally whoever read the application initially, to account for each reader's biases) 1 month after their interview. Another group of 500 is set aside as the control, and is treated as normal. Is the group of 500 applicants with feedback more likely to reapply? Are they more likely to get an interview or get in the second time around?
I actually disagree with this statement - but agree with your point. There's a reason why mediocre colleges can successfully charge exorbitant amounts of money to rich international students, and it's not just the student:teacher ratio. The student visa and OPT in the US are extremely powerful tools which universities have both used and abused for many years.
Take that, and SF's 14% hotel tax, and I think they're reaping what they've sowed.
This sort of shenanigans went on 100 years ago, but we couldn't study the consequences so tightly back then...it seems that Glassdoor's data, H1B data, etc provides a unique opportunity to study the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of such federal intervention.
I hate to be so negative, but this actually works...if you ever see a project that makes you say "Gee, it looks like an industrial designer's concept might have gotten mistaken for a real product here", you should then ask yourself, "Is Yanko Design somehow associated with this piece?" 9 out of 10 times the answer will be yes.
It's entirely possible many of the component parts needed for this were developed as "black box" (i.e., they were told not to ask questions as to why this was being developed, and the developers just assumed it would be used on a foreign network.) This is done commonly for graduate students working on weapons research in government labs who do not have the appropriate clearance, for instance. They need to know an explosive force is acting a certain way to model their calculations, but never is the student told exactly who or why that explosive force might ever occur. In fact, they may be told it's a completely theoretical exercise.
A surprisingly small number of people are actually needed to "deploy" something like this in the wild, if you're willing to pay for enough testing to ensure your black boxes work exactly as promised...
Insinuating something both totally unrelated and highly conspiratorial is not how good investigative journalism works, and unfortunately that sort of slant takes away from my ability to fairly judge the facts of the piece.
That said, to be clear, I do appreciate the research you put in, and thanks for being thoughtful in your upvotes - just thought I'd offer that part of the article as a counterpoint.