Ultimately, you save a lot of money by not having to hire dedicated recruiters and recruiting coordinators, and you actually get a much better candidate experience and hiring effectiveness by having hiring managers and interviewers more closely involved in the process instead of trying to translate them through a separate recruiting team.

You know far more about your needs and are able to evaluate how well software would solve them, and the salespeople you've talked to haven't been worth the time....and that's not normal.

You'd be shocked how bad most people are at evaluating software, especially when it's highly technical. Most people don't even know what a reasonable budget is, what their biggest problems are, what would fix them, and what software is actually doing -- so they rely on cheap self-service products or just take marketing speak at face-value and hope for the best.

And a good salesperson is worth their weight in gold. If you're one of those buyers, salespeople should be much closer to an interviewer or consultant for them: approaching sales calls like research to uncover needs you didn't know you had, introducing you to best practices, and tailoring advice to your specific situation. Their goal is to find a mutual fit and stand by the quality of their solution (and should recommend competitors' products if you wouldn't be happy with it)

Gotta do the best we can ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The ultimate goal here is not to build a company with perfect representation of the general population, but to build a company which honestly evaluates and rewards the contributions of all its employees (because we believe that those kinds of companies do build better products, businesses, etc.) and you can't do that unless you're inclusive and consistently fair with everyone in the company.

A number like 50-50 gender balance doesn't mean that we've finished building that company (and no company is ever finished). However, an imbalance of gender or any demographic such as age, race, prior work experience (such as government, enterprise, startup), academic background, parental status, etc. at a company usually indicates that there's a blindspot or bug in a company's hiring or culture and it deserves a closer look.

It's an incredibly useful product (and leagues better than the competition) but when they can't even calculate your 401(k) contribution correctly, imagine what's going on behind the scenes...I'm trusting them with a lot of financial and personal information and it erodes a lot of the trust & confidence I would have in them to see such shoddy work.

If anyone else is concerned about this, you should talk with your CEO/legal team about early exercise options which can remove a lot of the risk of massive tax liabilities. From my understanding, some companies offer an early exercise option where you pre-purchase the shares and then instead of being able to buy the shares after they've vested, the company instead gradually loses the right to buy them back at the original strike price.

I'm not a tax lawyer, but Google "section 83(b) election" and you'll find more information.

###

We’re looking for our third full-stack developer to contribute to building the future of test prep.

Our engineering team is small (two developers + you), but we have a huge impact! We already help millions of students around the world study and prepare for their standardized tests with our popular web and mobile apps, and more are signing up every minute.

From day one, you’ll own projects and contribute directly to code running in production and we highly value collaboration, positive feedback, and mentorship.

Our projects usually involve close collaboration with other departments, which means you’ll learn far more than just engineering. The whole company is around 25 people, so you’ll know everyone in the office and have a real say in Magoosh’s goals and business decisions.

If you're an engineer excited about building edTech products, I'd love to talk :)

###

Read more about our position here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/magoosh/jobs/59481

We’re looking for our third full-stack developer to help build the future of test prep.

Magoosh’s Engineering team is small, but we have a huge impact! We already help millions of students around the world study and prepare for their standardized tests with our popular web and mobile apps, and more are signing up every minute.

From day one, you’ll own projects and contribute directly to code running in production and we highly value collaboration, positive feedback, and mentorship.

Read more here: http://magoosh.com/jobs/junior-developer/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9391493

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9261528

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

=-=-=-=-==-=

We’re looking for another full-stack developer to join our team building the future of test prep.

Our product helps tens of thousands of students around the world study for their GRE, GMAT, SAT and TOEFL exams and since we're such a small engineering team (in a company of almost 20), you'll be contributing to production from the first day. We ship early and iterate with feedback. We have fun all the time and meetings only when absolutely necessary.

You’ll work with Zach (https://github.com/zmillman) and Zack (https://github.com/zackm) to release new features and keep everything running smoothly. We use Ruby on Rails, CoffeeScript, AngularJS and PhoneGap, code reviews on GitHub, continuous integration with Semaphore, and deploy several times per day to AWS with Capistrano. There's a healthy mix of front-end and back-end work and we're constantly learning new tools and techniques to make us more productive.

Want to learn more about how we hire at Magoosh? Our CEO wrote a blog post: http://magoosh.com/blog/magoosh-hiring-process/

An interest in education, statistics, web applications and startups will serve you well!

=-=-=-=-==-=

Apply online here: http://magoosh.com/jobs/junior-developer/

In my book at least, you've already contributed a huge amount to open source and I wouldn't worry about needing to do more :)

Magoosh is changing test preparation by building applications that students love. We’re a young startup, but we’re profitable, we’re growing fast, and we have wildly positive feedback from tens of thousands of students who have successfully used our applications to study for the GRE, GMAT, and SAT (more coming soon!)

Our technology includes Ruby on Rails, AWS, native iOS/Android, and AngularJS. You don’t need prior experience with any of these (it’s a plus, of course), just solid coding skills and a desire to build 5-star applications.

http://magoosh.com/jobs/junior-developer/

We’re looking for another programmer to help us to build the future of Magoosh. We make websites and mobile applications that help students around the world study for exams with video lessons, practice questions and flashcards all made in-house by our expert tutors. We've already helped over 20,000 thousand students study for grad school and we're excited to make high quality education available to everyone.

Because we're such a small company you'll have plenty of freedom and responsibility. You'll be able to get your hands wet in the entire product-building process. Our development philosophy is to ship quickly and iterate with feedback. We care about our students and always make sure they are happy. We have fun all the time, and meetings only when absolutely necessary. An interest in educational statistics, web applications, and startups will serve you well :)

We're profitable, based in downtown Berkeley (right by UC Berkeley) and perks include company-paid general education classes (ever want to take a pizza-making class for free?), team events, infinite snacks and flexible hours.

Interested? Read more and apply here: http://magoosh.com/jobs/junior-developer/