
Ask YC: Where do you work? - trekker7
For those of you that aren't working on your own startups yet, where do you work right now?
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e1ven
I'm working at 1-800-Free-411, a company that's moving through it's post-
startup, not yet a midsized company phase.

The company is actually a lot of fun to work at. The product is useful to a
lot of people (Advertisement supported 411 Directory Assistance), and it's a
great place to work, learn, and play.

What I like best about the company is that it has a very high engineer to
manager ratio ;) That's always one of my metrics when looking at new
companies.

Before that, I worked at Irrational Games (now 2k Games), as the IT manager of
the US and AUS offices, working on Bioshock and other games.

~~~
pchristensen
How is your company doing now that 1-800-GOOG-411 is out? A lot of Google's
side businesses are just for the data but some are out to compete for real.
It'd be interesting to hear from the inside.

~~~
e1ven
It's great to see Google coming in and validating the market that we're in.
The company's doing well financially, and continue to grow callers. It's an
exciting place to work, and I'm glad to be here.

When Goog-411 first came out, I was impressed: They do Call-Completion (auto-
dialing the number you called), which we don't, and I'll admit it's a nice
feature.. It's just expensive to do. (They eat those minutes)

On the other hand, we have live operators, and were Google prefers automation,
so there are always tradeoffs. .Our Automation is pretty great, but we know
that some people won't get recognized, so we give a Liveop backup, and Google
doesn't.

I'm afraid I can't really go into details more than that without breaking
agreements.

~~~
pchristensen
That's enough for me, I'm glad to hear things are going well. While it's hard
to compete with Google's pocketbook funding the minutes, I think for a lot of
Google services, they have a hard time competing with any competitor that has
a human available in loop. People really, really value that and I'm sure you
guys are reaping rewards from doing it.

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NoBSWebDesign
I'm a full-time student, a free-lance web developer and designer and marketing
consultant, working on my own startup (ratemystudentrental.com), lead guitar
for Flint-based rock band, Moment of Inertia, and work at a tier one
automotive supplier as an engineering co-op.

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SethBrown
I work as the IT manager in a distribution company in Trinidad in the West
Indies. I've built the company LAN from scratch, with Windows/Red
Hat/Slackware/VMware virtual servers/thin clients and the company intranet
with Apache/PHP/FreeTDS. We program reports directly in PostScript just for
the hell of it. I fall asleep every day in my office and deal of escaping to
an all-UNIX environment, just me and a room full of servers. Lord, I hate
Windows!

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wallflower
I work in a cube every day and strategize/dream of getting out of my cube,
sometimes hourly

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Zak
I alternate between being a freelance programmer and a lighting designer for a
band. A project I'm working on fuses the two; I'm writing better lighting
control software.

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jgrahamc
I work for me, but I do have a little company: <http://www.extravalent.com/>
which is really just me.

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modoc
I work from home as an ATG (www.atg.com) Architect. At the moment there is a
ton of demand, which lets me do things like work from home. I work on side
projects and startups as much as time permits.

I love working from home. My stress level has dropped immeasurably since I
left the office buildings of AT&T. No commute, no politics, no spending 5
hours/day trapped in a small conference room. My happiness, health, and
waistline have all benefited from the change. Granted some folks can't work
effectively from home, but I've found that since I generally really love what
I do, it's easy for me to be productive without oversight.

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bgutierrez
Trulia. Someone else's startup. It's amazing, and I highly recommend it.

~~~
nextmoveone
Can we get in touch?

~~~
bgutierrez
Yeah. I'll send you an email.

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kingnothing
I'm a full time student and working on my startup.

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kobs
Unemployed undergrad looking for an internship

~~~
kobs
I forgot to add that my e-mail can be found in my profile =). Looking for a
software engineering summer internship located in NYC or Silicon Valley.

(Hopefully this isn't a faux pas =)

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agotterer
Web Developer for CollegeHumor / BustedTees also run priceadvance.com on the
side.

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vikas5678
I am a grad student at the san jose state university and a freelance
programmer.

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maxwell
I'm a full-time student at the University of Maine, working on my world
shattering thesis. I also work for the Department of Sustainable Agriculture
and a software development house run by my academic adviser.

~~~
jkush
Cool, I live in Harpswell, work in Portland.

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hollywoodcole
Developer for FedEx Services

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crystalarchives
I'm a college student working at my university's tech support desk while doing
freelance web design jobs on the side while simultaneously working on my
startups. www.playforcleanwater.com

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Readmore
I'm working for a startup wireless carrier in Oklahoma. We're working to bring
wireless phone service and wireless broadband to rural areas in connection
with another major carrier.

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olifante
Nokia Siemens Networks, in Portugal

~~~
zemariamm
ClusterMedia Labs, Aveiro :D Are you fom ist or feup ?

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cellis
Junior dev at an ecommerce co. I too am plotting my escape.

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dawnerd
I'm a freelance web developer.

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davidw
At my desk:-)

Home office, Innsbruck, Austria. My company is DedaSys LLC (always looking for
partners), and I do a mix of consulting and working on my own stuff.

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jonp
R&D unit of a actuarial consulting firm. Problem-solving and hacking in areas
where pensions, investment, finance and technology meet.

~~~
supahfly_remix
what kind of background do you have? I'm an EE doing chip design but am
looking to get into something more business-oriented.

~~~
jonp
Grew up with computers (started with a ZX-80) but for some reason lost
interest as a teenager. Maths degree at university; mainly pure maths, group
theory, number theory, topology etc.

Didn't want to do research so sought a mathsy job and joined an actuarial
consultancy, advising pension schemes through calculations and mathematical
models. Found out that it was less technical than I'd expected and consulting
was quite repetitive. Unofficially carved out an hour or so each day to get
better at broader finance theory (derivative pricing, corporate finance etc)
and programming, and re-discovered why I liked computers so much as a
youngster. Not a well-defined career path, but more a case of doing things I
found interesting, earning trust, and pushing myself and the firm in different
directions.

Then quit and did an MSc in artificial life for a year - unrelated but
challenging and great fun.

Then back to the same company, doing similar things. I'm reminded of an
article posted here a few months back saying that it's tough to be the best in
a narrow field, but being in the top decile in lots of areas is easier and
makes you valuable. I'm not the world's best programmer, mathematician,
finance theorist, researcher or communicator; but I'm not too shabby at any of
them and the combination seems to work well, particularly when coupled with a
good knowledge of a particular domain (pensions in my case).

Some parallels to the startup world, even though I work for a big firm. In
particular pg's The Power of the Marginal
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html>) resonates and translates to my own
experience.

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nextmoveone
i work at this place called expedited travel, we expedite u.s. passports in 24
hrs and get visas in less than 1 week. (web developer)

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omnipath
I work for a small medicial anaylsis and storage company, primary making sure
that the client's data is government compliant.

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nkohari
Software architect at a small consulting firm.

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apgwoz
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

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neilc
I'm working for Truviso, a startup in the Valley. We're building a data stream
management system on top of PostgreSQL -- essentially taking PostgreSQL, and
giving it the ability to evaluate SQL over live streams of data in addition to
static tables.

(BTW, we're always looking to hire good hackers -- send me mail if
interested.)

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mechanical_fish
Freelance web developer.

Previous jobs: research physicist, biophysics postdoc, semiconductor product
engineer, and... web developer.

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BKmke
I work for Brady Corp in the world of RFID & coach basketball at Cardinal
Strich University, Milwaukee, WI

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wlievens
ARM Ltd, Leuven office

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mpfefferle
Exceptional Innovation (www.life-ware.com). We design hardware and software
for smart homes.

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abstractwater
I work for Logitech

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krschultz
Bug Labs

<http://www.buglabs.net/team?page=3>

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tjr
I am doing business on my own, but am also employed by avionics company
Rockwell Collins.

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scw
I'm a developer for NCEAS, an ecological research center, attached to UC Santa
Barbara.

~~~
nose
Very cool! Are you also a graduate student there?

~~~
scw
I have a degree in physical geography, but now work full-time on some sweet
research projects.

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nostrademons
I'm on my own startup now, but previously was at a small financial software
startup.

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pistoriusp
I have a home office.

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simianstyle
I work at <http://auctionpal.com> \- a startup in Waltham, MA.

(I'll admit, i only do it for the rails experience)

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redorb
I work at DentcraftTools.com as all around web guy.

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mikelikespie
Unemployed/Graduating this spring/Looking for work

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jalammar
Government organization (social insurance) in Saudi Arabia and developing a
startup part time. Hope to make the jump some time soon.

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manvsmachine
Full time undergrad student. Over breaks I do network support for a non-profit
medical group in the NYC / Mid-Hudson area.

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rin
At a financial start-up... and I'm looking into a tech startup. Neither is
mine, though I am considering that route too.

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mov
Full-time developer and researcher working on a data mining project for a
refrigeration compressor industry, at Brazil.

~~~
neilc
Interesting. Can you talk a bit more about the nature of the data mining
project?

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migpwr
I am a sys admin at an online bank.

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tirrellp
I work at Yahoo! in Orlando, FL

~~~
nose
I too work for yahoo (just an intern)

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wumi
Natural Gas software company

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dgabriel
Harvard Business School

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bluishgreen
programmer in a gaming company

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dag
tech support at (aka Hell)

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rokhayakebe
nobody works at starbucks?

~~~
bgutierrez
Not lately.

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JohnN
startup kid

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ajkirwin
Freelance web developer, designer, programmer, all around technical
handyperson.

Hoping to become a startup :]

