
Youtube Instant creator gets instant job offer - ajg1977
http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/10/youtube-instant-job/
======
djacobs
Congrats!

Worst part of the article:

"Aboukhadijeh announced the launch of YouTube Instant on Y Combinator’s Hacker
News feed, a news aggregation site similar to Digg and Reddit."

~~~
spoiledtechie
Which means that the YouTube CEO is scouring Hacker News.

~~~
code_duck
Just like being a rock star, successful CEOs continue to be normal people,
which is for some reason surprising to the public, and their former peers.

------
tchae
I know Feross Aboukhadijeh personally. He graduated from my high school a year
before me. For those who are talking about the "lengthy hiring processes", he
just completed an internship at Google this summer. He also founded
<http://www.freetheflash.com/> and <http://www.studynotes.com/>.

Check out his impressive resume at
<http://www.feross.org/Resume_Feross_Aboukhadijeh.pdf>

He's definitely more than capable of producing at his new YouTube gig
(assuming he will take it).

~~~
endtime
He also, most importantly, runs the ACM LAN parties at Stanford. ;)

------
charlesju
I'm sure this guy has no problem finding a job at any company he wants
probably doing anything he wants. I don't understand why this is such a big
deal.

~~~
sfard
Most sensible comment here. Working at a big name as some low level software
developer is not a big deal. By virtue of being at Stanford alone he had a
good chance at the job.

------
newobj
"want a job?" means "want to interview for a job?"

~~~
scorpion032
Yes, when a recruiter is saying that. It's different when it is the CEO saying
it.

------
minalecs
Congrats to the creator of Youtube Instant.

"Everytime Google or Facebook hires someone another startup dies" - may have
not quoted right, but you get the idea.

~~~
PedroCandeias
Not sure I agree with you there, mate. Plenty of startups have been founded by
people who cut their teeth at these companies. I know 19yr-old founders are
all the rage, but there's a lot to be said about getting some experience
before doing the whole startup thing.

------
feross
Hi everyone, I'm the creator of YouTube Instant. Thanks for all the nice
comments. This discussion has been quite interesting to read. Great feedback.

------
gojomo
Is YouTube exempt from Google's lengthy indirect hiring processes?

~~~
zackattack
someone from youtube recently reached out to me about some stuff and as an
aside commented that i'd also probably make a good google employee. but my
college GPA (2.8 or so) pretty much rules out that possibility. too bad.

~~~
btilly
Who told you that your GPA rules you out?

If you have actual experience, nobody should care about your GPA. Or even
whether you have a college degree. Lots of people at Google don't. If you're
still in college it might be an issue, but if you have something to point to
you still have a shot at getting into the interview process.

The interview process is hard. I won't lie to you about it. Even if you belong
at Google, there is a good chance of not making it through on the first try.
But your odds are infinitely worse if you don't even try.

Speaking personally, I didn't apply to Google for years because the core
Google languages are Python, Java and C++, while my professional experience
was all in Perl. Eventually I did apply, and discovered that it never would
have been a problem. And in fact I'm doing most of my work in internal
languages that nobody comes here knowing.

~~~
oomkiller
Internal languages? Why would Google make new languages when there are already
many great ones already available? It sounds counterintuitive and inefficient.
Please answer if you can.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
<http://golang.org/>

~~~
_delirium
That one actually seems more supply-driven than demand-driven. Google hires
huge piles of accomplished people, and the senior ones then continue to work
on whatever it is that they do, because they're well-known and independent
enough that it's hard to assign them to projects they don't want to work on.
So they hire Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, and the result is a programming
language inspired by C and Limbo, because that's what they do. =]

------
sliverstorm
Must have been one of the most exciting days of his life. Not just the job,
but the recognition for something cool he made!

~~~
feross
I'm the author of YouTube Instant. You're right - the last two days have been
the most exciting of my life! I'm still high on adrenaline from the whole
ordeal. I never expected my little hack to make it this big, and for that I'm
grateful.

I just finished recounting my last two days running YouTube Instant here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1683100>

------
Mazy
Regardless of whether or not YouTube could build this with the team they have,
it makes perfect sense to me that they'd want to hire a smart, self-motivated
person who's passionate about their product.

------
jacquesm
So, did he accept ?

------
RomanAClef
Very cool. Didn't think it be such as big deal, since others have already
played around with the official Youtube player and API. For example:
<http://www.yvoschaap.com/youtube/>, <http://www.flatvid.com>.

------
SandB0x
Yes, we know, we know - the existing discussion is at #5 on the front page.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1679845>

~~~
palish
Actually, I didn't know.

------
genystartup
what's next? twitter instant?? suggests a tweet for you. I will actually like
to see/indulge in a stab at that.

------
rakkhi
Big congrats man

------
spinchange
Kudos to Feross! An inspiring story.

------
zerosandones
Good for him and all, even though the search results were:

1) Painfully slow compared to Instant's realtime. 2) Only one at at time. 3)
Text. (People respond to visual cues, and for a vid site, better to have
thumbnails display in the results with captions.)

~~~
KeithMajhor
He made it in a day.

~~~
zerosandones
And I’m sure they'll give him time to work it out further, but is this the
innovation YouTube is looking for? Hard to believe their UX people and dev
teams haven’t already toyed with something like this.

~~~
KeithMajhor
He threw something together that people could get a feel for. I'll concede
that it was hardly usable given the performance. But it was only a demo,
enough of one to show just how usable the real thing could be.

