What I really like about this is what the "hashtag" #DeleteFacebook says about us and our time right now.
Firstly, it speaks of how ignorant we all are, as a public mass, of how the world actually works, even the reality of an "obvious" situation we aspire to be commenting about. Because you cannot actually "delete facebook". Neither can you "delete" the entire service as if it is some "app" on your phone, or old-skool word document on your laptop, nor can you delete the data it knows about you. Even if FB actually deleted the data they had about you, you can't make their AI's "unlearn" everything they got from you, and you can't make their 3rd-parties delete your data as well ( no matter what you well-intentioned t&cs-ninnies might say to counter this, I just don't believe you that there's anyway to make these things happen ). So you can't Delete Facebook. The first rule of Facebook is: Facebook is eternal.
Secondly, even if you go ahead and delete your account, your protest is impotent. Your victory is symbolic. Your effort at self determination will be undone. Because it's sort of like people saying they were going to leave California ( or the US ) if Trump got elected. So you can do it, but it won't change anything. It will probably end up severely disrupting / hurting your life. And in the end, you most likely won't do it. What this reveals about our ignorance is how powerless we actually are, and how ignorant we are of what Facebook has become. It has become a utility. It is ( mostly ) essential. Even if you do not use it, other services assume you do, and your access to those is gatekept by your ( non-existant ) FB account. And if you do use it, or use Messenger, or Whatsapp, then it is a good way to stay in touch with people you know. And if you really use it then of course you know why you need it. Second rule of Facebook is: Facebook is necessary.
So the third thing I like about this is, how ignorant this hash tag reveals us to be with regard to the way to deal with Facebook. It's not about individual actions. It's about the collective. FB has begun to impinge upon the collective. It has become a utility. And it exists forever, despite the actions of individuals. When it goes rabid / stray, what is needed is collective actions to bring it back under control of the commons. Within the bounds of the common good. Only regulation can subdue Facebook to the useful and the good. Not protest. The third rule of Facebook is: It's a utility, stupid. Regulate it.
Facebook is not a utility by it self, it is a web site, if you start regulating it what stops the government to regulate pretty much anything on the internet?
That's true. Once we start regulating FB we will never be able to stop regulating everything. Soon, tentacles of regulation will be everywhere. Even our thoughts will be regulated. Ok, let's not regulate it then. Good point.
But also, can't we say, if you start allowing FB to grow and operated un regulated what's to stop pretty much anything on the internet to do the same?
TL;DR — I got hire pwned and made a site to let others share.
I was on Hacker News and complained (later regretting it, I don't like complaining, especially not like this) of a bad experience I had while hiring with a YC company.
I didn't think much of this comment, it was just a good way to vent, even if as I said, I felt bad about doing it a day or so later.
But the comment garnered a lot of attention, more than 30 votes and 10 sub comments. I started thinking I had hit some nerve, which surprised me.
I was also surprised how most of the comments were supportive of me. I expected the usual HN contrarian, "yes, but,it's probably the exact opposite of how you see it, here's why," but there wasn't really any of that, at least not strongly stated. A few of the comments even started calling for me, or people in general, to "name and shame" the company the anecdote related to.
I still have not decided, and right now don't feel as if I can say I agree with, the notion of complaining about these things in public forums as being something that works, either for the person complaining, or just in general. But I think other people want that sort of thing ( one comment even called for a database of these experiences ), and I realized I had just the sort of simple code lying around from another ( failed ) side project so I thought I could reuse it ( finally implement that Redis search ) and let people vent their experiences in a database where you can search by company name.
That's it. That's the experience that led to creating this. Let's see what happens. I don't think anything will come of it, but let's see. It will certainly be interesting to read other people's experiences, and maybe it will be useful for people to do so.
For any given "random" ( "high entropy" ) string of length X, there's some non-negligible chance it's already been sent.
But it's far less likely that a ( partially degraded ) non random string is sent. Why ?
Consider this:
"the cat sat on the hat" ( probably sent )
"the cut sat on the hat" ( still probably sent )
"thx cut set19n the mkt" ( waaaay less likely to be sent )
"thKxc8t suts n x4e m-t" ( probably never sent ... until now :) )
My reasoning is like, all random strings are ( happy / random ) in the same way. They all look alike.
High entropy, but low organization / structure. Because of compression and encryption, any random
string probably has as good a chance to be sent as any other, so looking at random strings doesn't really get us anywhere ( but I do make a very very rough calculation at the end that says probably all 7 byte strings have been sent ).
It's going to be far easier in my opinion to find an "almost-language" string ( partially degraded, like the above examples ) that's never been sent.
Remember, Google whacks? 1 search result. One tactic was putting together uncommon words. Another was misspellings.
Basically the intuition / intuitive idea I'm trying to convey is : pick any random high entropy string of given short length, and pick any language string of given short length, and they are both, in my opinion, more likely to have been sent than an "almost language" string of same length. The more degraded you make it ( up to a point, heh ) the less likely it was ever sent.
Very rough calculation about random strings
So, assuming the question is for what X is p > 0.5, and assume that 1 zettabyte has been sent through the net through it's entire history, so 10^18*8 bits, or roughly 2^(63.8), so roughly every 58 bit string has been sent.
So roughly every 7 byte string ever possible has been sent on the internet. Probably.
I don't want to name names but one YC company I interviewed at left me with the distinct impression that they talked a big game, just to get me to work on one of their (apparently) "strictly-hiring-related toy projects" as homework. Homework, "sure", except it: 1) integrated with a real system, 2) mirrored something they actually did, and 3) they would only agree to proceed if I signed an IP/work contract and accepted their (sorry, too small) payment of USD450 for the (not insignificant) project.
I pushed back at the contract, and asked them to ask their lawyer if that was really necessary. When they insisted on a contract for the homework project I pulled out of the process. It just felt so wrong.
The worst part, is not that they would seek some way to freelance a small part of their system, nor that they would actually use ideas from hiring interviews in their product -- but that (it seems) they would so blatantly lie to someone they professed to want to hire that this was homework, when in fact it was not. Even worse was the feeling of disrespect that they wanted to freelance part of their system for USD450, trying to abuse the hiring process/ talking a big game about offers, to unfairly lowball the price. Like they are a well funded, established, largish YC alum, at least they can afford to pay market. Anyway, everytime I see "XXXX is hiring a YYYY in ZZZZ" on here from them, I'm reminded. Feels good to vent.
Just sad. Anyway, I'm not going to name names because this is unwise to do that in a public forum.
Anyway, I only added the above anecdote after writing the following comment.
This is why Triplebyte is so good. You do a single technical interview ( after a quick online quiz ), then get fast tracked to final interviews at various YC / silicon valley startups.
Sure, maybe not everyone wants to work for a smallish startup. But some of their clients are 200+ people. So...it's not all the same.
I don't want to pass judgement on your coding exercise, and it certainly seems fishy with the contract, however...
I would point out that on the hiring side, evaluating a submitted project in a way that can differentiate between good and great candidates, and that the reviewers can understand well enough to get the signal they need, is very difficult.
Because of this, I know several times we have asked candidates to build a simplified version of something that we have already built internally, where we understand the problem space deeply. We only ever do something we have already built, as that's the whole point, and we typically simplify it, although that might not be obvious from the outside. We also cap the time at 1-3 hours depending on the task as we care about evaluating the candidate, not getting a complete/usable/production ready solution, and so that it's not dependent on how much time a particular candidate can spend on the problem, which would introduce biases.
This isn't perfect, and we try not to do this, and to use problems that are obviously toy problems, but sometimes it's necessary.
That is fine, just be upfront about it. Still require a contract for it is reeking of trying to get work for "free". If you have it running in production, and use it because you understand it thoroughly, it shouldn't matter what the candidate comes up with. Any new insight he might bring you can always incorporate with your own code. In any case none of the code is expected to be used in production, and if it turns out you want to, it's probably the candidate you want to hire anyway.
Just a minor bit of friendly feedback on your comment, I hope you don't mind...
You said "Any new insight he might bring". To refer to a hypothetical developer as "he" contributes to the stereotype of developers being male, and that can make those who don't conform to that feel less welcome in the community.
I'm sure this wasn't a conscious decision, and I know it's something I slip up with frequently, but I'm trying not to do it, and I think writing that is more inclusive is more persuasive to more people and generally better.
If you want to use the candidates code, then you have to have a signed contract. Nothing prevents you from looking at the code, and write your own version of it.
this, just have them do a small subset of something you already do. It tells you so much. I also tell the candidate that if they complete it and it works they are guaranteed to be hired at some level. At the end of the day if you can't show me your work on a open source project, or demo me something you made, there is no way for me to know you can actually build something until you do! Especially true for junior level positions!
I have noticed a trend of not naming companies here. Is it against the rules? I fell that we should name and shame companies that are disrespectful of peoples time.
I've had multiple comments detached (as you can see by my comment history) for calling out companies that suck to apply for in the monthly hiring threads. Either the people who posted must have complained so they removed it, or HN doesn't want people to know some companies suck to deal with when it comes to hiring process.
Would Reddit be more open to something like this as in could you create a subreddit and remind HN readers to check?
I see a few people seem interested in the idea of naming such companies. I have wasted a few weekends worth of my time (which at freelance rates is a decent amount of money) and have been ignored when I asked for feedback (sometimes just ignored completely). Its disrespectful and companies should be called out for it. I could name at least one one company that regularly posts in the hiring threads here.
I made a place that is not moderated by HN, where you can share your experiences of applying. It's called hirepwned.xyz and that's the domain name. Just wanted to let you know because you were passionate about this.
I'm still undecided about the best option for these situations, but I made this ( simple ) site as an experimental database of people's hiring experiences, and posted to HN. I'm letting you know because you cared about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16895043
It’s a chilling effect caused by overzealous moderation.
When Coinbase first launched, someone was having issues getting funds out of there. That person made a thread on HN, and the response has always been “HN is not a support forum for YC companies” by the moderation team.
If not here, where? There's no other forum where it will be easier to hear both sides of the story, naming a name on HN is probably the best place to name names because it's pretty likely to actually get hashed out in the comments.
There perhaps now is another forum because I made it ( actually reused some old code ), after reading these comments. But it's not a forum. More like a very simple database with elastic search. I'm replying you because you seemed interested in this. Hope this is useful somehow, the HN post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16895043
> Anyway, I'm not going to name names because this is unwise to do that in a public forum.
Why not? create a throwaway if its a matter of coming back to you. Otherwise we really need to name and shame these companies if we have any hope of getting the practices to improve. Sunlight is a great disinfectant!
- attach the text file to the email and send it no problemo
- use the same link to convert the text file back to the archive
- congratulations you just used GMail to send a file GMail ( in its infinite wisdom ) did not want you to send
I'm not making this as a hack and I hope no one uses it to do bad stuff obviously, this is just to get over the poorly implemented "threat scan" GMail currently uses, which blocks plenty of useful and harmless files, and which disingenuously forces the "workaround" of uploading to GDrive.
Commenting on style since you were concerned about that.
> Please excuse the tone I'm using. I'm just working out my style, and so on. Not an excuse. Just asking for kindness while I work out a writing voice.
I enjoyed the style. Lots of people aren't able to pull it off but I thought it worked well. It was fun enough to read that I made it through to the end:) It did end on a bit of a sour note - clashing with all the above:
> if you really have some major issue and couldn't be bothered to fix it yourself but believe I could be bothered to fix it
You went from very approachable (fun read, open source, caring about the work you do) to the opposite of that (and not caring about the product once it was completed).
Also, great solution to a gmail annoyance. I had one concern which was answered on the page itself: "any files for download here will not persist beyond page reload"
Great copywriting. It seems in part this is a user interface issue in that the limitations of the system are not clearly enough surfaced so people’s expectations are off-base.
I find it humorous that this is being done with good intentions, "to benefit creators".
In one sense it appears tone deaf to how much CC-licensed sharing can be argued to enable an economy of content creators, by lowering certain transaction costs.
But in light of recent revelations and the public mood, it seems more prescient: perhaps pointing the way to a future where everybody pays for every little bit of content they consume, rather than being the product themselves, in a "free" offering. That old idea of micropayments for content, here we come, eh? And the EU being the first (for once) to lawify it. Is it too early to pat them on the back?
If you can encourage reuse, that's good. If you can encourage payment, that's good. Different strokes, for different folks, works. As I understand it, the proposal forces payment. That's not good. Creators choices should not be constrained in this way.
Instead of constraining options, I feel EU legco, should see if there is an opportunity to legislate to ease the way for implementing and executing micropayments / content transactions ( a real problem ), if there is, do that. Law that engages with and enables technological realities, rather than trying to constrain something already useful, would seem to work better here.
Firstly, it speaks of how ignorant we all are, as a public mass, of how the world actually works, even the reality of an "obvious" situation we aspire to be commenting about. Because you cannot actually "delete facebook". Neither can you "delete" the entire service as if it is some "app" on your phone, or old-skool word document on your laptop, nor can you delete the data it knows about you. Even if FB actually deleted the data they had about you, you can't make their AI's "unlearn" everything they got from you, and you can't make their 3rd-parties delete your data as well ( no matter what you well-intentioned t&cs-ninnies might say to counter this, I just don't believe you that there's anyway to make these things happen ). So you can't Delete Facebook. The first rule of Facebook is: Facebook is eternal.
Secondly, even if you go ahead and delete your account, your protest is impotent. Your victory is symbolic. Your effort at self determination will be undone. Because it's sort of like people saying they were going to leave California ( or the US ) if Trump got elected. So you can do it, but it won't change anything. It will probably end up severely disrupting / hurting your life. And in the end, you most likely won't do it. What this reveals about our ignorance is how powerless we actually are, and how ignorant we are of what Facebook has become. It has become a utility. It is ( mostly ) essential. Even if you do not use it, other services assume you do, and your access to those is gatekept by your ( non-existant ) FB account. And if you do use it, or use Messenger, or Whatsapp, then it is a good way to stay in touch with people you know. And if you really use it then of course you know why you need it. Second rule of Facebook is: Facebook is necessary.
So the third thing I like about this is, how ignorant this hash tag reveals us to be with regard to the way to deal with Facebook. It's not about individual actions. It's about the collective. FB has begun to impinge upon the collective. It has become a utility. And it exists forever, despite the actions of individuals. When it goes rabid / stray, what is needed is collective actions to bring it back under control of the commons. Within the bounds of the common good. Only regulation can subdue Facebook to the useful and the good. Not protest. The third rule of Facebook is: It's a utility, stupid. Regulate it.