

How to attract a top hacker... (NOT) - reinhardt
http://www.djangohire.com/a/jbb/job-details/570785

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flyosity
Reminds me of the quote The Joker had in The Dark Knight:

"If you're good at something, never do it for free."

I love programming. I do it during the day, at night, on the weekends, all the
time. I do some things for money, some things for free, and some things that
no one will ever see just because it's fun.

I realize that this job is actually paid, but I don't like the thought that
people who require payment for programming someone else's idea are just "doing
it for the money".

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kunley
On the contrary, anyone who still believes in a bs that staying wake an insane
amount of time is a way of getting things done, should educate himself on how
his body & brain actually works, or at least go through "Hammock-Driven
Development".

~~~
aangjie
> still believes in a bs that staying wake an insane amount of time is a way
> of getting things done. You missed the part where he says getting things
> done at high quality. I agree with you, but think things can be get done in
> a half-assed way, by staying awake. But ultimately will need to be reworked
> multiple times the hours you stayed up.

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freddealmeida
I'd love to see the caliber of people joining this. I'm sure some people have
applied. Some with some deception in their heart. None the less, interesting.

I have my own 112,347 projects to finish.

I would have hoped he would have been clear about the
idea/business/challenge/work and more transparent about the
ownership/revenue/raised funds.

And coders that accept no salary for coding, except for close friends or
family seem dubious.

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hello_moto
You will less likely get someone who cares your dream as much as you do.

What I realized/found these days is that the most passionate people that love
to work on startup ideas tend to have their own strong opinions on how things
should be done.

This creates a little bit of a management issue. Discussions tend to be filled
with using esoteric technology or the "would it be cool if" or the "that's
sucks, I could do better in 1 day" as opposed to focus on delivering the
stable, high quality, 85% UI polished, version 1.0 of the product.

~~~
jsavimbi
85% UI polished?!?

It's a miracle if some people can get it to look 50% complete. For some
reason, and by magic, the UI incrementally degrades given the number of days
in the hands of certain engineers. I'm not saying that everyone is like that,
but I'm pretty certain that if some engineers approached following driving
directions the same way they follow the UI, they'd be permanently lost with no
hope of return. 85%. Sheesh.

~~~
hello_moto
Hey, calm down :P. I just grab that number out of nowhere.

Anyhow, theoretically, version 1.0 should be simple isn't it? So would it be
far-stretch to ask for 85% polished UI? (might be some bugs in the UI
interaction code, but the look should not be superbad. At least not an eyesore
:).

But that's in theory...

~~~
jsavimbi
It's a fair assessment. In my view version 1.0 should be a MVP that addresses
the basic needs of the user as they pertain to the underlying system.
Decoupling the UI and applying it to the system via API is the ideal solution,
but rarely do I see that happen in a 1.0 product when the product itself is in
constant flux throughout development.

But I would still like to see how the magic degradation happens from when an
engineer receives the static UI and absolutely f*cks it up so that their
version of "good enough" barely resembles the end product.

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wccrawford
By filtering out the people who 'only do it for money', he has also
inadvertently filtered out all the people who know that the way business show
they value their employees is to pay them appropriately.

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crdoconnor
>I'm not a engineer, I'm an entrepreneur.

This is what turned me off the most, actually.

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zobzu
We are looking for a slave. Please apply.

~~~
dfxm12
They are looking for someone who reads the whole job description and not just
the headline.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
The job description is just as bad as the headline deception. "Eating and
breathing code" and "forgetting to pay taxes" for _their_ project isn't my
idea of a good time.

Here's my response to the posting: "Give me 50% of the company based on your
complete, non-NDA bound idea breakdown _with_ promise of both salary and full
bennies and I'll pretend to be just as insane a lunatic as you claim to be
about taking on Google and Facebook with your likely dumb as dirt, drunken
post-frat party backnapkin half-idea."

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DallaRosa
I honestly think he screwed up by hedging his play in the end. If he decides
to go down that path he should say something like "dont worry, you'll get
paid" on a first contact email or even during an interview only. He started
with something that could have been bold but in the end looked like windows 8:
look we have this super cool new interface totally redogned from ground up
(but dont worry we still have all the bloatware somewhere in there)

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euroclydon
The intersection of stimulating-to-develop-projects with those that people
will pay money for is quite large. However, the intersection of liberating-
and-enjoyable-life-opportunities with i-don't-have-any-money are not that
large.

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motters
I wonder if this "entrepreneur" also isn't getting paid. This is the classic
bad business proposition - i.e. I won't pay you now but I might at some
unspecified point in future.

~~~
nuxi
Last line says:

    
    
      p.s. You will get paid. I just needed to filter out people who only do this for money.

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idiot
Hope his product is actually worth so much pathos

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democracy
It sounds so very desperate and sad...

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jsavimbi
> Me? I've got that illness. I'm not a engineer, I'm an entrepreneur.

There are plenty of business opportunities that require little if any code to
be written that could be addressed by anyone who has the entrepreneur bug.
It's hard work, rarely generating sexy IPO-level returns or media exposure,
dealing with cutthroat competitors, regulators, clients and employees and an
apathetic market. But like I said, it's hard work.

Why someone would still believe today that they can magically make a business
succeed in a space where they ignore even the most fundamental concepts is
beyond me. More often than not these projects tend to be very simplistic and
rely not on the technology but on the social dynamic of the concept (see:
Kickstarter) and if the hiring non-technical founder is unable to hire from
within their social circle then it's quite possible that either any developer
they know would pass on this or they don't actually know any developers.

And why is this person choosing development languages/stacks, or did they
cross post to every language job site?

