
Dropbox is hiring a Web Engineer - dhouston
http://www.dropbox.com/webengineer
======
johnnybgoode
The first thing listed under "Requirements" is "Bachelor's degree in Computer
Science", which you would certainly not need to perform this job.

~~~
dhouston
thought i'd weigh in on this

obviously if you are an amazing engineer without a degree, of course come talk
to us. arash, my cofounder and the slacker that he is, does not have his
bachelor's degree :)

so hope you can give us the benefit of the doubt that we didn't intend to
exclude qualified people

~~~
dotBen
why ask for it then - esp if your co-founder doesn't have one yet you trust
his skills enough to found a company together?

 _asks someone who barely has the UK equivalent of a high school graduation
(because he was programming for his first startup at 16), no degree, and had a
very successful engineering-orientated career so far_

------
icey
Now I understand why most YC job postings don't allow comments.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Could you elaborate on that? What's the harm of getting comments (even if they
are negative)?

~~~
icey
There is almost no discussion about _the actual job_ , instead it's almost all
talk about completely unrelated minutae.

~~~
dennisgorelik
1) If comments are turned off then there is no discussion about the actual job
AT ALL. 2) Different people have different opinion about what relates to
actual job discussion and what's not. 3) Do you have any tool that can
successfully replace comments and facilitate discussion about actual job? 4)
Sorry, it wasn't me who downvoted your comment. I disagree with you, but
because I value opposing opinions I actually upvoted your comment to encourage
to elaborate further.

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sr71
Interesting, Zed Shaw is no longer listed on their about page. I wonder if he
quit or was fired.

~~~
gaiusparx
Anyone can enlighten me why I keep seeing Zed Shaw being mentioned on HN
compare to other star programmers? He appears to be the superstar among all
star programmers. But I checked his wiki, and I thought not many are using
mongrels nowadays.

~~~
petercooper
He did a good job of promoting himself through controversy. There are a lot of
women out there who are smarter and more attractive than Paris Hilton, but she
knows how to play the game and stay in the spotlight.

~~~
zedshaw
No, I promoted myself by writing insightful pieces and voicing my opinion in
an interesting way which got lots of people talking while also creating either
interesting or useful projects at a faster rate than most people.

People like you however seem to like to only focus on my humrous rants as if
that's all I've done, but whatever, I'm having fun and making awesome shit
while getting to play guitar so if it pisses of a whiner like you then rock
on.

<devil horns>

~~~
petercooper
This is getting weird, so I'll lay my cards on the table.

 _People like you however seem to like to only focus on my humrous rants as if
that's all I've done, but whatever, I'm having fun and making awesome shit
while getting to play guitar so if it pisses of a whiner like you then rock
on._

That's a bilious response to _"He did a good job of promoting himself through
controversy."_ People like me? I made a neutral statement (even if it's
incorrect), not anything malicious like "Zed's a loser because of X." This
reminds me of the last time you thought I was attacking your character after a
similarly neutral comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1292335>

Several months ago, you had a similar response on Twitter that involved a
"quit talking smack or let's meet up and 'sort it out' in person" response
after I made a casual quip in response to your then-latest rant. I e-mailed
you an apology as a gesture of good will, to which I got no response.

You appear to interpret neutral comments as attacks or passive aggression.
They aren't - at least from me. Or perhaps you're having the same back and
forth with 1001 other people, I don't know :-)

Are these reactions because a page on my site ranks #4 for your name on Google
and is packed with negative _third-party_ comments about you?
[http://www.rubyinside.com/zed-shaw-goes-nuclear-on-our-
commu...](http://www.rubyinside.com/zed-shaw-goes-nuclear-on-our-
community-683.html) .. You've mentioned online comments affecting your job
prospects before, so it's just a wild guess. If it is, I'll delete the
negative comments and change the headline or something, because these
responses are worrying and sure, I'd rather focus on the cool things you're up
to than have this old "stuff" bubble up every few months.

~~~
natrius
It's easy to misinterpret being compared to Paris Hilton as an insult. It's
also easy to see how it wasn't intended as an insult, but it could've gone
either way.

------
magic5227
Just FYI, the older Box is hiring 9+ engineers

<https://www.box.net/jobs>

~~~
zww
older, bigger company, and less successful?

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/box.net+dropbox.com/>

no thanks.

~~~
axod
compete is _CRAZY_.

Check their quantcast figures and you see a drastically different picture,
with box.net way ahead. But in any event, page views probably are a very bad
measure of these sorts of companies.

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hab
They call this a challenge? Closures and a nested unordered list CSS menu.
Wow!

What's with the CS degree _requirement_ too? You don't really need 4 years of
algorithms, data structures, operating systems, etc. to do what they want.

Meh, do not want.

~~~
9oliYQjP
The challenge questions are to filter out completely inappropriate candidates.
They aren't meant to determine if you're a genius or not.

As for the CS degree requirement, not having one myself I run up against this
all the time. A good company will be able to test for equivalent capabilities.
A CS degree from DeVry in 1995 is probably not the same as one from Stanford
in 2006. But by setting it out as a requirement, you're sending a message to
candidates. They don't want a programmer that stumbles about their job. They
want one with certain analytical skills and a calculated approach to their
job. No, you don't need a CS degree necessarily. But you probably want to be
familiar with the material that having a CS degree would suggest you are
familiar with.

No hiring manager worth their salt would turn away an exceptional candidate
because of a lack of formal education unless there were some very specific
professional requirements (e.g., you're hiring a professional engineer in
countries that recognize them and you need somebody with a B.Eng. degree).

~~~
hab
They shouldn't call it a "challenge" then, it should be called a CAPTCHA or
something to that effect.

As for the CS degree requirement, no candidate worth their salt would send
their resume to a place knowing that they lack the first item on the
requirements list. You need to make it clear that you read and understood the
post before applying (a.k.a. following simple directions).

They didn't put it under "nice-to-have", they didn't tuck "or equivalent
experience" at the end. It's the first bullet on their "minimum-requirements"
list.

I do not have a CS degree either, but I believe I can code with the best of
them and I can rock their front-end world (I do not want this job though).

Had I been seriously looking for another job, I would have simply ignored
their post and moved on regardless of compatibility because of that one liner.

~~~
9oliYQjP
You don't just send a resume, you send a covering letter too. In the covering
letter you can write "I understand that the position calls for XYZ as a
requirement..." and go on to explain why you think you are qualified none-the-
less. That means you have basic comprehension skills and an ability to think
outside of the box too.

~~~
axod
I disagree. If any job asks for degree etc I just ignore it. I don't think I'd
enjoy working at a place where they value that sort of thing.

~~~
nostrademons
By doing this, you're probably filtering out many good employers. Just like
the places that ask for degrees are probably filtering out many good
candidates.

I just ignore the requirements - mostly - and if the job sounds interesting,
I'll send them a note saying why it sounds interesting and why I believe I'm
qualified. Let 'em reject me later, once they've got a bit more information,
or vice versa.

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sliverstorm
The proliferation of web design jobs is beginning to make me wonder if I
should, on the side, finally learn advanced page design.

My aesthetic skills are weak, and I am pursuing other goals long-term (much
closer to the hardware), but do people think it would be a worthwhile tool to
help prop myself up in the short-term?

------
lleger
By engineer, they mean programmer or developer, of course.

------
jonathanmarcus
<http://jobs.hiidef.com/>

So is HiiDef, creators and operators of Flavors.me, Goodsie, Dashboard.me and
more!

Django, JQuery and/or *NIX administration.

We are distributed around the east coast of the United States, Canada and
Australia. Everyone works on multiple sites simultaneously, making for a
uniquely challenging and constantly changing work environment.

Email: jonathan@hiidef.com

------
chacha102
So, I've worked out the Javascript problem several times in my head. Could it
be because num is in a difference context when it is being called by
setTimeout()?

I just can't figure it out, and it is bugging me. (Guess I won't get the
job...)

~~~
spez

      function countdown (num) {
          for (var i = 0; i <= num; i += 1) {
              var make_cb = function (n) {
                  return function () {alert(num - n)};
              }
              setTimeout(make_cb(i), i * 1000);
          }
      }

~~~
sgk284
I understand the scoping issue here, but the recursive solution is just all
around better:

    
    
      function countdown(num) {
          if(num < 0) {
              return;
          }
          setTimeout(function() {
              alert(num);
              countdown(num - 1);
          }, 1000);
      }
    

Note: I'm aware that the dropbox version shows the first alert without any
delay, whereas this waits a second before showing anything. This is slightly
different behavior, but arguably acceptable.

~~~
abstractbill
You can make the recursive solution work without any delay:

    
    
      function countdown(n) {
          if(n >= 0) {
              alert(n);
              setTimeout(function() {countdown(n-1);}, 1000);
          }
      }

------
allend
This is news?

~~~
daleharvey
this is a message board created by the ycombinator founder, its audience is
pretty much made entirely of people who would like this job.

there is an entire section dedicated to jobs at yc companies, it is not off
topic

~~~
logic
Funny, I'd actually have expected it to be an audience full of people who'd
like to _create_ this job. :)

~~~
c1sc0
Or rather, postpone creating this job as long as they can ;-)

