
How One 17-Year-Old Coded a #1 App and Got Hired by Facebook - jl87
http://thehustle.co/how-one-17-year-old-coded-a-number-one-app-and-got-hired-by-facebook
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GFischer
I am impressed by his determination. The Pando article says it best:

"Sayman's experience is one that perhaps could only be entirely appreciated
here in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurship, ingenuity, and building
something out of nothing, or rather, out of lines of code, still holds cult-
like status, for good or ill. Sayman doesn’t even seem to understand the power
of his story.

He got his app where it is today not with millions or even thousands in
venture capital. He didn’t get it where it is with Silicon Valley connections
or hookups to the magic elves who pick what’s featured in the iOS app store.
He didn’t get it with a team of developers or designers or a co-founder or
even an incorporated company. He didn't even get it there with natural
technical talent. Instead, it took sheer force of will and a refusal to back
down to any of the obstacles he faced. That, and an unholy faith in the power
of Google to answer his questions."

"“I watch my son, every night and every single day, staying up until 4 or 5
am, working on the app, doing his homework, sleeping two or three hours, and
then going to school,” Cristina Sayman says. "

I'm sad to say, I don't do this :( , I struggle to find that much willpower,
even though I believe in what I'm building.

~~~
thirdsun
> > “I watch my son, every night and every single day, staying up until 4 or 5
> am, working on the app, doing his homework, sleeping two or three hours, and
> then going to school,” Cristina Sayman says. "

> I'm sad to say, I don't do this :( , I struggle to find that much willpower,
> even though I believe in what I'm building.

It's great to have ambition and follow through with a project but staying up
all night, sleeping 3 hours and going to school completely tired isn't the way
to do it, not healthy at all and it shouldn't be encouraged.

No reason to be sad - save your willpower for reasonable hours.

~~~
badllama
Totally agree, this South Korean style of task management should be
occasional.

I mean, Facebook still does the all-night Hackathon, and that's once a year I
believe.

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bsaul
I hope young people reading that article realize it's talking about someone
winning the lottery. There's statistically zero chance that will happen to
you, so you'd better work on your exams than code through the night and fail
them.

~~~
finyeates
I somewhat disagree. If someone has the passion that they'd rather code than
study: They're most likely doing the wrong thing.

There needs to be more people chasing their dreams rather then being cranked
through the academia process.

~~~
amelius
Being a programmer without good knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, etc. is
going to suck. Even if you don't need it for your current project.

~~~
sotojuan
Serious question: Why?

My school does not require any math for the CS program, aside from very basic
discrete math (very very basic). While I wish we did more math, the people
that graduate get jobs and seem to do just fine without the math background.

I mean, they're not working at Google, Facebook, or the NSA (though a lot go
work for the CIA for some reason), but it doesn't seem like it sucks for them.

~~~
michael_h
Linear algebra is incredibly useful and, when you know how to spot its shape,
is just about _everywhere_.

A (long) while ago, one of my coworkers spent months putting together an
enormous framework for processing some data. It was really well done - simple
API, good error messages, verification at various steps, and reliable results.
It was a little slow though. It was pushing 1 hour to complete a cycle, which
was bumping up against other processes. A senior guy had a look at it, noticed
that we could encode the data as a vector and apply some linear
transformations to it, then decode afterwards. Thanks to lucky cache hits and
BLAS, it took about 25 seconds to run.

~~~
sotojuan
I see. I think you hit an interesting point with that story: You may not need
math to write an application, but it helps a lot when making it efficient and
knowing which abstractions to use.

Personally, I'm going to spend some time after graduation teaching myself
math. I think it can be incredibly helpful, even if it's just to improve my
thinking.

~~~
amelius
I can highly recommend Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra course, available as
video lecture series [1]

[1] [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-
algebra-...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-
spring-2010/video-lectures/)

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detay
"How one 42 year old coded a #1 app and was not hired by facebook because of
age discrimination" would be a better title.

~~~
serge2k
No no, just clearly not up to the hiring bar. because reasons. tree algorithms
or something.

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teh_klev
Original Pando article from 2014:

[https://pando.com/2014/04/30/how-a-florida-kids-stupid-
app-s...](https://pando.com/2014/04/30/how-a-florida-kids-stupid-app-saved-
his-familys-home-and-landed-him-on-the-main-stage-of-facebooks-f8/)

~~~
gaius
Be good to see an article on what he's done in the meantime or is working on
now.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
[https://www.facebook.com/techprepprogram/videos/938666319504...](https://www.facebook.com/techprepprogram/videos/938666319504811/)
\- posted this month, but it's a fluff piece "follow your dreams [in
programming]" type piece rather than a synopsis of his current work efforts.

[https://www.facebook.com/ms](https://www.facebook.com/ms) has links to
Michael Sayman's website which has all his social links, bet all you'd like to
know is in there?

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hashberry
Good move Facebook--get them young and put them to work. "It's like being at
Disneyland!" he says. I'm jealous of his wide-eyed optimism.

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test1235
I wonder if a 30-year old did this, they'd get hired, too?

~~~
pjmlp
No, because they would have a life and learned the abuse corporations put
their employes through.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I think the parent comment was referring to ageism in the hiring process in
Silicon Valley.

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, and a reason why they only hire very young people is that they haven't
yet learned that saying yes to everything or putting employer before the
private life won't help them in the long run.

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aliston
_But there were only 1,500 apps in the iOS store in March 2010, and his rose
into the top ten._

That sounds... off by a factor of 100...

~~~
plonh
The pando article says 150,000

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logingone
Is this a comment on the kid, or on facebook?

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bsimpson
I totally expected this to be about Babel and @sebmck.

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plonh
And of course , the dev didn't port to Android, so someone made a knockoff for
the Play Store.

