How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?
What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?
I like this heuristic, and have a few which are similar in intent to it:
Here's how I'd measure the health of any tech company:
— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) October 25, 2018
How long, as measured from the inception of idea to the modified software arriving in the user's hands, does it take to roll out a *1 word copy change* in your primary product?
How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?
What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?
* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work
(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)
How long would it take the CEO to acknowledge receipt. (Would it be by their designate?)
* who their manager is
* what their title or role is
* what their primary project as of today is
How long:
* Until the first responder responds
* Until the second responder responds
* Until someone says the local equivalent of "I am in charge of the incident."
How long until someone offers to help?
How long until someone factually helps effectively?
How long until it launches into the hands of customers who perceive it as a generally available offering?
How many minutes from first keystroke to first person seeing it in production?
(I'm being very generous to the software industry here. *sigh*)
These questions don't *really* test for speed. They test for *repeatable competence at scale*, which is another thing entirely.
More from Patrick McKenzie
There are a *lot* of software shops in the world that would far rather have one more technical dependency than they'd like to pay for one of their 20 engineers to become the company's SPOF expert on the joys of e.g. HTTP file uploads, CSV parsing bugs, PDF generation, etc.
Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.
"Who is the prototypical client here?"
A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.
(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)
"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"
I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
On a serious note, it's interesting to observe that you can build a decent business charging $20 - $50 per month for something that any good developer can set up. This is one of those micro-saas sweet spots between "easy for me to build" and "tedious for others to build"
— Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) September 5, 2019
Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.
"Who is the prototypical client here?"
A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.
(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)
"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"
I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
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On the occasion of youtube 20k and Twitter 70k members
A small tribute/gift to members
Screeners
technical screeners - intraday and positional both
before proceeding - i have helped you , can i ask you so that it can help someone else too
thank you
positional one
run - find #stock - draw chart - find levels
1- Stocks closing daily 2% up from 5 days
https://t.co/gTZrYY3Nht
2- Weekly breakout
https://t.co/1f4ahEolYB
3- Breakouts in short term
https://t.co/BI4h0CdgO2
4- Bullish from last 5
intraday screeners
5- 15 minute Stock Breakouts
https://t.co/9eAo82iuNv
6- Intraday Buying seen in the past 15 minutes
https://t.co/XqAJKhLB5G
7- Stocks trading near day's high on 5 min chart with volume BO intraday
https://t.co/flHmm6QXmo
Thank you
A small tribute/gift to members
Screeners
technical screeners - intraday and positional both
before proceeding - i have helped you , can i ask you so that it can help someone else too
thank you
positional one
run - find #stock - draw chart - find levels
1- Stocks closing daily 2% up from 5 days
https://t.co/gTZrYY3Nht
2- Weekly breakout
https://t.co/1f4ahEolYB
3- Breakouts in short term
https://t.co/BI4h0CdgO2
4- Bullish from last 5
intraday screeners
5- 15 minute Stock Breakouts
https://t.co/9eAo82iuNv
6- Intraday Buying seen in the past 15 minutes
https://t.co/XqAJKhLB5G
7- Stocks trading near day's high on 5 min chart with volume BO intraday
https://t.co/flHmm6QXmo
Thank you
I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
Ironies of Luck https://t.co/5BPWGbAxFi
— Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) March 14, 2018
"Luck is the flip side of risk. They are mirrored cousins, driven by the same thing: You are one person in a 7 billion player game, and the accidental impact of other people\u2019s actions can be more consequential than your own."
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
1/ 👋 Excited to share what we’ve been building at https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t + we are going to tweetstorm our progress every week!
Week 1 highlights: getting shortlisted for YC W2019🤞, acquiring a premium domain💰, meeting Substack's @hamishmckenzie and Stripe CEO @patrickc 🤩
2/ So what is Brew?
brew / bru : / to make (beer, coffee etc.) / verb: begin to develop 🌱
A place for you to enjoy premium content while supporting your favorite creators. Sort of like a ‘Consumer-facing Patreon’ cc @jackconte
(we’re still working on the pitch)
3/ So, why be so transparent? Two words: launch strategy.
jk 😅 a) I loooove doing something consistently for a long period of time b) limited downside and infinite upside (feedback, accountability, reach).
cc @altimor, @pmarca
4/ https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t domain 🍻
It started with a cold email. Guess what? He was using BuyMeACoffee on his blog, and was excited to hear about what we're building next. Within 2w, we signed the deal at @Escrowcom's SF office. You’re a pleasure to work with @MichaelCyger!
5/ @ycombinator's invite for the in-person interview arrived that evening. Quite a day!
Thanks @patio11 for the thoughtful feedback on our YC application, and @gabhubert for your directions on positioning the product — set the tone for our pitch!
Week 1 highlights: getting shortlisted for YC W2019🤞, acquiring a premium domain💰, meeting Substack's @hamishmckenzie and Stripe CEO @patrickc 🤩
2/ So what is Brew?
brew / bru : / to make (beer, coffee etc.) / verb: begin to develop 🌱
A place for you to enjoy premium content while supporting your favorite creators. Sort of like a ‘Consumer-facing Patreon’ cc @jackconte
(we’re still working on the pitch)
3/ So, why be so transparent? Two words: launch strategy.
jk 😅 a) I loooove doing something consistently for a long period of time b) limited downside and infinite upside (feedback, accountability, reach).
cc @altimor, @pmarca
4/ https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t domain 🍻
It started with a cold email. Guess what? He was using BuyMeACoffee on his blog, and was excited to hear about what we're building next. Within 2w, we signed the deal at @Escrowcom's SF office. You’re a pleasure to work with @MichaelCyger!
5/ @ycombinator's invite for the in-person interview arrived that evening. Quite a day!
Thanks @patio11 for the thoughtful feedback on our YC application, and @gabhubert for your directions on positioning the product — set the tone for our pitch!