Hacker News: a_small_island

New comment by a_small_island in "Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad"

a_small_island — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:28:34 +0000

With all due respect to your freedom of speech, but who cares? I want to read responses about the article, not anecdotal weight loss data and about your daily habits.

New comment by a_small_island in "Marc Andreessen suddenly deletes all his tweets, goes on Twitter break"

a_small_island — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 03:34:12 +0000

This is nonsense.

New comment by a_small_island in "Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat"

a_small_island — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 23:15:20 +0000

Fat is good for you. Cut the carbs if you need to lose weight. Meaningless source of food.

New comment by a_small_island in "Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup"

a_small_island — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 04:35:37 +0000

I feel bad for the employees. This song will repeat itself many times over. Selfish deluded egomaniac taking advantage of people and their livelihood. Good luck to the rank and file.

New comment by a_small_island in "How Fuhu went bankrupt"

a_small_island — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 06:37:51 +0000

>See, eg, healthtap.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/HealthTap-Reviews-E453567....

Wish there was something more that could be done than just saying "I'll never work for or do business with this company and their executives" when I see these clearly fake reviews.

New comment by a_small_island in "Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 1"

a_small_island — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 06:21:45 +0000

Not a snark, but why do you address him as Mr. Buchheit and not Paul?

New comment by a_small_island in "How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost It All"

a_small_island — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 21:17:05 +0000

I can't believe how many typos there were in this article, do editors exist anymore?

New comment by a_small_island in "Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash"

a_small_island — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 14:16:03 +0000

What's the likely scenarios for an employee whose been there for 2 years, an employee whose been there for 1 year, and an employee whose been there for 6 months? If we assume 1 year cliff on options.

New comment by a_small_island in "Ask HN: Do employers care how long it took you to finish a degree?"

a_small_island — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 22:45:19 +0000

>Beyond that, when I'm interviewing someone, I know I can't or shouldn't ask certain things, and I don't want to make people uncomfortable or break any laws. So I will often casually mention that I'm married or have a kid if the opportunity arises while we make small talk. I never tie it to a follow up question either, because that's too close to the line for me. But I'm not trying to figure out your situation there either. I'm just putting it out there that I have a life outside of here, that I'm probably going to sneak out (very) early every so often, work from home sometimes to get some other non-work stuff done too, etc. and that I won't hold it against you for being a normal person either.

This is a strange thought process. It's illegal to ask about kids/relationship status and you apparently know that. You just attempt to fish for that information because you want them to know that _you_ personally WFH and have non-work stuff in your life? Why not just describe that work culture? Seems like you are trying to find out if they have kids or a wife, otherwise I don't understand the reasoning.

New comment by a_small_island in "Hello from Orkut"

a_small_island — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 22:22:29 +0000

A _social_ network built by "ex-Google" engineers.

New comment by a_small_island in "Amazon launches Prime Air, its own dedicated cargo planes to speed delivery"

a_small_island — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 06:33:21 +0000

Yeah but why ruin a good headline?

New comment by a_small_island in "Stop hazing your potential hires: Hiring at Spreedly"

a_small_island — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 01:19:21 +0000

Fair enough. I respect your point of view. I hope you engrain this mentality in your team for future hires and/or when they start their own companies. It's a solid perspective, sorry for being critical.

How do you deal with feedback for the candidate? Are there legal concerns for disclosing too much?

New comment by a_small_island in "Stop hazing your potential hires: Hiring at Spreedly"

a_small_island — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 18:16:35 +0000

Not sure what's so revolutionary here.

Seems the process is this:

1) Call with "CTO", who answers any questions about the company. Sounds like a standard phone screen.

2) Work sample, the company now wants you to prove you are worthy of talking to them again.

3) Another phone call, this time with "hiring manager" to discuss "compensation" - which I will presume means they will ask you how much you're currently making or expect to make. Do they divulge their salary bands first?

4) Onsite.

My assumption: once their team becomes bigger, the CTO call will be replaced by someone in HR and they will further standardize their process to the current market dynamics. And I still didn't read what was so revolutionary, maybe because they don't do "puzzles" and instead make you spend hours on "work samples"?

New comment by a_small_island in "A Guide to Employee Equity"

a_small_island — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 22:43:04 +0000

Your mindset is very scary to me because a lot of others think like you. If someone earns options over one, two, two and a half year period and then is deemed "toxic" to the company, why should they not receive similar compensation to someone who lasts 3 years in this system? 3 month exercise windows are strictly for investor class and thus founder class.

Employees aren't facing dilution problems from their fellow employees who get to exercise their options while exiting, they face dilution from the investor class trying to own as much of the company as they can.

New comment by a_small_island in "Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B"

a_small_island — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:55:59 +0000

$500M invested, previous valuation ~$1B, so a "3x" exit.

New comment by a_small_island in "Uber to Sell China Business to Rival Didi After Losing Billions"

a_small_island — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 07:13:44 +0000

Uber does not own all 20%, from the article:

"Investors in Uber China, an entity owned by San Francisco-based Uber, Baidu Inc. and others, will receive a 20 percent stake in Didi, the people said. "

New comment by a_small_island in "Uber to Sell China Business to Rival Didi After Losing Billions"

a_small_island — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 06:46:37 +0000

I think mbesto's list was supposed to highlight the fact that a large number of China's top companies are state owned.

New comment by a_small_island in "The Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a hard-nosed negotiation (2013)"

a_small_island — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 03:54:29 +0000

Good story, but not exactly hard-nosed in my opinion. Either be left on the sidelines while your competitors all jump on the newest distribution platform, or follow suit. I'm just surprised these details happen over email instead of over the phone/dinner.

New comment by a_small_island in "Microsoft sued over Windows 10 update campaign"

a_small_island — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 17:11:00 +0000

Yeah, but the executives already got their bonuses for many years. If the campaign is a monetary failure for the company, they will just clean house and hire a new batch of execs who will blame all the problems on the prior group so that they get their bonuses. Everyone wins, except the user.

New comment by a_small_island in "“Should this even be released?” Deep learning tool that may be used for doxxing"

a_small_island — Sat, 30 Jul 2016 19:28:02 +0000

>"2. Being able to identify troublemakers in a community (such as a forum or a social networking site). I'm sure a lot of administrators would love to know if that suspicious looking new guy is the alias of a banned troll from a few weeks back (posting through a proxy server)."

Orwellian.