skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is definitely not going well:

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. 'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'"
They complain, "We’ve received applications from people spelling 37signals as '37 Signals'"

I find this pedantic in the extreme. It’s not the applicant’s fault that the company struggles with standard English. They can choose their employees as they like, but this doesn't seem to be in their own best interest. Harshly judging and then publicly chastising applicants who might be trying to make their cover letter grammatically correct might provide a temporary ego boost, but it does little to help the business.
Indeed. And even if he were some new user who wasn't pg, his point would still be valid, and shouldn't just be dismissed offhand.
I do swear in code occasionally. If the cheap laugh is enough to make me realize that I need to step away from the computer and think about what is making me want to swear at it (stopping me from writing desperation code that breaks stuff and will get deleted later), then it is worthwhile, I think.
i agree in this day and age where you are supposed to take a second look at people without college degrees and more experience etc.... i bet this eliminates some great people with literally no good reason
I think one flaw here, that certainly applies to programming languages is the equation of concision and fitness. There are a lot of things that I would tend to factor in -- for me expressiveness would be chief.

As a native English speaker that spends most of his time speaking German, there certainly is an element of precision that permeates both German culture and language. I've wondered at times if the link is more than coincidence.
Since http://www.sproutcore.com isn't too happy right now, folks may want to go straight to http://code.google.com/p/sproutcore instead.
In the last job I applied for they dismissed a candidate because he showed up in tshirt and jeans.

In a previous job I applied for (electricians helper) they wouldn't hire you if you applied in a suit.

I believe in both jobs business casual was fine. It really depends on the interviewers though.

If I were interviewing you and you weren't wearing business casual I might ask why, but that's me. The reason I would ask why is it will give me insight to your personality, and circumstances. You might be having a tough break, you might enjoy wearing suits, or you might think appearances don't matter.
Is MSN Messenger Down?
Adium isn't connecting to MSN, nor is Meebo. login.live.com is getting Service Unavailable errors.

Edit: looks like it's back up... ish.
Back in the day, by father worked in recruitment for a rather large place that got many many more applicants per jobs (like most places I guess, but this one would employ several 100 new people per year with thousands of applications per recruitment round).

He told me they used spelling mistakes to filter applicants - more than X (cannot remember what X was) typos in the form and you were cut - harsh, but somewhat fair at the same time. Yes they probably lost some good people, but probably many more bad ones - all recruitment is like that, there is always someone who should have gotten in that doesn't unfortunately.

He was not recruiting IT or even degree level folk either ...
> More importantly we're in London, England - not the West Coast :-)

That explains everything.

I had a friend who actually got turned down for a management position for wearing a suit to an interview (they thought he was "too formal" for the job). PayPal, I believe.

I rock the Silicon Valley Casual for interviews-- jeans and an untucked button-down shirt for consulting gigs (and employee-jobs that I already know I want).

If it's a really creamy consulting gig for a large company, I might even make it slacks, semi-dress shoes, and untucked button down. Regrettably I don't have the complexion for khakis, since blue button-down, brown semi-dress shoes and khaki slacks [with cell phone on a belt clip] appears to be the uniform of choice around here large boring companies that think they're casual.

For startup interviews, I will wear a funny t-shirt, often involving pirates.

You will note that I never overdress beyond these levels (for an interview), as the casual dress is part of my filter against stupid, boring companies.
For the sake of argument, maybe it's not a "mission-critical government utility" because it's working 90% of the time instead of 100%.
I had to re-read it just to make sure I understood that they're really so anal as to care if people say 37signals vs 37 Signals. Pretty damn pretentious.
gcc + gnustep is available for many non-Mac machines
The problem I see is this: when people disobey this rule, lately they don't get modded down. The rudeness level seems to be rising significantly.

How do you mod a comment down, anyway?
Yeah...maybe Microsoft shut down finally.
get ~25 karma, then you can
Your cover letter is your introductory email. (You're not attaching a PDF or anything, are you?) It should be conversational, well-edited, and concise, but should give the reader some reason to continue on to the resume.

As for when to start culling old info from your resume: I think you have the right idea in thinking that you should stick to those points that are directly relevant to the position. Padding your experiences and skills with high school activities may help when you're fresh out of school and have little or no professional background to reference, but if you've had even one full-time job in the industry, drop the kid stuff.

I haven't been on the interviewee side in a while, but from the interviewer POV, I personally like to see that applicants have made an effort to anticipate the office culture and dress appropriately. Seeing someone in a suit + tie when interviewing in a room full of people wearing T-shirts suggests to me that perhaps they aren't great at prediction based on incomplete information, and instead chose to "play it safe." That can be a desirable attribute in some positions, but it doesn't speak well of their ability to empathize.

If you want to find out whether you're going to get dinged for not going formal with your interview attire, do some research. Check the 'About Us' or 'Staff' page on the company website, or check out staff members' blogs and Flickr photos. Maybe on of the senior staff have presented at a conference recently, or podcasts from their office?
> If clothes don't matter, why am I being judged because I value aesthetics, not excluding the clothes I wear?

Because they do matter. The function of any level or style of dress at an interview is to mark you as part of the Right Group. This holds true even when the interviewers don't realize that they're unconsciously doing it.

Overdressing for an interview at some companies can put you in the Wrong Group just as surely as underdressing will at others.
Granted that many of news.yc's readers are in their early twenties, it would put them at an age where they probably wouldn't have been reading j.o.s. 8 years ago. Plus this is still relevant to readers' interests and would have made just as much sense as if it was written twenty minutes ago.
If you're hiring a designer, don't you want one that pays an insane amount of attention to detail?
i generally don't swear in code that the rest of the company will use.

more than anything else, i swear at the code.
If you put everything important into the custID object, what is left for the customer object? Just a reference to its custID?

And how does a custID object help you to avoid breaking old contracts? Adding stuff directly to the customer object wouldn't break your old contracts either.

What could break your contracts however, is omitting getters and setters and just making variables public. What if you have to add some "processing" of an input later? If you have had a setter from the beginning, it can be done transparently without changing any classes that use the setter.
these guys are great:

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/
slightly pompous. Most hackers probably don't use word or have spell check handy. (I use VI or Textpad). When I send a resume, it is usually a simple.txt file, and I noticed I had a misspelling.

I went and did a spellcheck online, and noticed two errors, or recent edits. I fixed them, but I already sent it somewhere. If the company doesn't want to consider me b/c of these two minor errors, then it is their loss.
I'll summarize it further: Let's pick on obscure errors to get this blog posted on as many websites as possible to generate traffic.
Exactly. My bad, will fix that tomorrow. (it's late over here)
HN example, My Pond Theory on Why Social Networks Must 'Fail'
These days I read YC with Opera on OSX. My build scripts have

open -a Opera http://news.ycombinator.com

at the top and

open -a Opera build.out

at the end.
Could someone explain me what's wrong with my previous comment?
Thanks for all the comments. I will respond to more of them tomorrow. For now, I'm calling it a day.
I have nothing against it, but I don't do it. The source code is not my blog; if I want to rant about something, I write an article about it.

Comments are for quick explanations of things that aren't obvious. Documentation is for explanation of the obvious. Blogs are for ranting.
> Most hackers probably don't use word or have spell check handy. (I use VI or Textpad).

$ man ispell
Ask YC: Multiple business cards - a good idea?
I'm involved with three different businesses at the moment, and I'm trying to decide what to do about business cards.

If I get multiple business cards, I have the advantage of being able to direct people to different email addresses. On the other hand, having to sort through 3 different business cards is a real hassle, and you have to discretely make sure you're giving out the right one.

One business card removes that problem, but if three companies are listed on one card it might make people question your commitment to the business they're after.

Thoughts?
For the reason you pointed out, I would say multiple cards are best. It's a hassle, but gives a better impression IMHO.
For me, the ability to quickly search all my tagged stuff from all the services I use is the most compelling part.

Consider just focusing on that. Have a short video that shows exactly how it works on the left. And on the right have a box that allow users to input their credentials, rss feeds, whatever you need, for all their web service and then begin searching all those services with a searchbox that auto-completes as they type. Allow them to do all that WITHOUT having to register. Store a cookie that connects that user to all the info they just inputted which is in your DB. Then tell them to register to save that info. Why require them to register first? If they like your service, and put all that time into adding their info, they will register.
I much prefer the actual aggression that results in people seeming rude when they forcefully present their views to this sort of passive aggression.
Don’t follow our advice
It sounds like they have their attitude wrong. When I apply for a job, it's "why would I want to work for you", not "why should we hire you". They are acting like 37signals is the only place a person would ever want to work, and that they are doing you a favor for hiring you.

Getting hired is not a favor. It's a mutually beneficial business relationship.
You are right, I was wrong. I was overly rhetorical.

If you like to wear suits, by all means. Sometimes a really nice button down shirt and nice pants feels good.

What really gets me is mandatory dress codes that don't have anything to do with the work getting done, and the outdated thinking that wearing nice clothes means anything. If that's how you are comfortable, please.
This mentality is frequently at odds with how companies find the best candidates.

It presumes that you, the company, have this great and wonderful thing to offer some lucky individual, the candidate. The candidate, gracious for even the opportunity to apply for such a choice offer, spends hours proofreading and otherwise perfect his or her resume and cover letter.

What this ignores is reality. Often the people you want to hire couldn't care less about sending you a resume to prove to you why you are worth their time. They have got better things to do -- and probably a good job that already pays them quite well, thank you very much.

I'm nitpicking a bit here -- obviously it pays to be professional in your communications, no matter what the circumstances. But it's an exceedingly dangerous mentality, particularly for companies operating in our space, where good talent is quite scarce. 37 Signals (oops! I mean "37Signals") can get away with it probably, because they are so well known. Doubtful whether your startup can...

Judge candidates by what they will be doing for you, not by arbitrary weed out criteria like getting your company's product names right.
No.

(PS If they wanted to do that, they would just track your interests using the bazillion sites that have Google AdSense, a Google search box, Google Analytics, use Google Charts API, etc., etc..)

(PPS We are to believe the MSN toolbar is more or less evil than Google's?)
<obligatory_apple_fanboy_comment>It's because they're all too busy porting their apps to the iPhone.</obligatory_apple_fanboy_comment>
either do three cards, or create one business card and gateway/portfolio webpage for all of your projects so a visitor can filter themselves.
We're currently developing in Android as it seemed the easiest path to getting a prototype of our idea up and running. We kinda figure that getting to play with something and refine the idea based on the experience is more important at this early stage as the platforms are settling down. We can always rewrite it later. Do you guys think am I being ridiculously naive in underestimating the importance of picking the winning platform early on?
From the comments:

Your book is actually copyright “37 Signals, LLC ”. Seems
a bit harsh to dock people on how to type the name if you
guys aren’t 100% consistent with it yourselves.
Although I don't want to jump the gun with accusations like TC, I'm still happy the issue is now being discussed more at the forefront - I was wondering how long it would be before an accurate perception of privacy reached the mainstream.

I tried to do my economics seminar on the web 2.0 monetization strategies. I wanted to liken the labor-leisure trade-off to a trade off between rent on privacy and monetary rent. http://joeter.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/a-basic-economic-mode... My teachers shrugged off the idea as impractical.
I feel three different cards will be a much better choice. Better impression and doesn't undersell the efforts you're involved with that aren't relevant to the receiver's interests. I'm also sure that after a short while, handling three sets of cards and giving out the right one will become second nature and be hassle-free.
11 Search Trends That May Disrupt Google
paypal is garbage, avoid them like the plague.
Yes, here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180391
Since searching for tags is what the site is all about make the search box much bigger and put in in the blue section. The size and contrast will attract the eye much better that it does now. Keep the size of the search button consistent with the textbox.

Also get rid of the buoy. I get...help, but for the amount of help it gives me it is annoying. Just type the help text in a smaller size above or below the search box.

Other than that (and the free icon, but that was already brought up) it looks pretty good on the first page at least. The search page really needs some better filtering of data.

Best of luck.
At a startup I worked for they almost dismissed a candidate because he showed up in a suit for an interview. It apparently showed that he didn't understand the kind of company he was interviewing for. So it really depends on the culture of the company.
"It presumes that you, the company, have this great and wonderful thing to offer some lucky individual, the candidate."

No it doesn't.

We're just asking you to spell or name, our product names, and everything else right. That's not a tall order, it's basic writing etiquette. This is your job application. It's your first impression. Spelling is important.

If you can't get that right, or don't notice that it's wrong, then I don't think you are paying attention to the kind of details that we think are important. Spelling, writing, paying attention to spaces, characters, letters -- those things are important to us.

It's not pretentious of an employer to expect someone to check their spelling -- especially the spelling of the company name. That's a basic writing skill. If you are applying for a job you better believe it matters to the employer. Ignore that advice at your own risk.
http://searchyc.com/payments
M-x flyspell-mode

Get yourself a real editor, kid.
Something going wrong recently: People posting off-topic links, especially political stuff.
quality does not come solely from development

quality comes from 1000s of little things you and your team do, when creating software.

some times that involves development.
testing plays a role (albeit a very small one)

but quality, quality assurance, whatever you want to call it , is much much more than just code and test
+1 for PayPal and IPN, it's relatively easy to setup - no waiting around to get a merchant account etc. However we do have some reservations about abandonment rate through PayPal - a lot of users are put off by having to signup for an account with them if they are new to the service.
Yeah, but that's not an impossible hiring model. 37signals has built their public face on a "rock star" image among the hacker class. So this is really just part of the schtick.

Certainly, yes, they need to be good to their employees. But part of that means being good to their existing employees, who no doubt have bought into the rock star thing. Whoever gets this position gets to sit in that chair thinking how much better they are than all those idiots mentioned in the blog.
I agree. What we have with energy is a supply side problem. Yet all the thought energy of the public is directed toward the demand side (either reducing/conserving things, or changing the sourse). Yet if we were to solve the supply side in a sustainable manner, we would solve a whole lot of other things very very quickly.
First off, definitely use a cover letter. Don't use your template, write something specifically about why you want this job at this company. Be sincere.

With regards to a suit; here's what I've always done. I suppose it's a little risky, but it's always been fantastic for me.

Call the company you're interviewing, at whatever public number you find. Hopefully you get a receptionist, or at least someone gabby. Tell them that you're coming in for an interview, and you'd really like to dress appropriately - so instead of asking for advice, ask what their boss is wearing that day. If the answer is slacks and a button-up shirt (short-sleeved or not), then you're going to wear a coat and tie for the interview. If the answer is jeans, then you're going to wear slacks, polished shoes and a button up shirt.

You don't have to be shy about this, companies really like to know that you give a shit about what they think. It definitely shows when I'm interviewing with someone who knows why they want to work with us versus someone who just wants a paycheck.
Better, do not show the most irrelevant tags (those in the smallest font size) at all - no one will look through three screens of small text anyway.

P.S. I realized there are actually some search results below only after adding a third tag to the query...
I once inherited the maintenance of a PL/I program whose acronym was CSALDE.

The first line of source read

/* CSALDE - Custodio Sum At Lois' Defecatio Est

Is it OK if your s bombs are in Latin?
Pew: Americans make a huge online shift for the 2008 campaigns
Nope, doesn't work. Use this instead:

:set spell spelllang=en_us
Yeah to be honest I sort of feel sorry for whoever gets the job.
They care about attention to detail. They obviously want their job applicants to care too.

I always make a point of checking the preferred spelling of a company or product name when I write about them - probably because I worked at Yahoo! for a year and you really get the importance of that ! hammered in to you (I also have an easily mis-spelled surname).
Not useless details like if there's a space in a companies name or not.

I think a designer can be taught to remember how a company likes it's name and product names spelt.
Don't you mean 32_Signals?
Uh... it was an emacs vs. vi joke. I know (or rather, am completely unsurprised) that vim can do dynamic spell checking too. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if textpad could do it too.
PG posted it last month, in my opinion it didn't get enough points so I wanted to give it another try.
Baggage and bits: Overage fees have unintended consequences
The last time I wore a tie at work was my job interview.

You should always dress nicer for the interview than you expect to for the job. It has nothing to do with impressing the interviewer. I wore a tie to my interview because it made me feel important, which made me feel more confident, which made me come across as a more compelling candidate.

Use whatever tools you have to manipulate yourself into being the person (at least temporarily) who easily gets the job you want.
I thought you claimed (incorrectly) that vim and textmate don't have spellchecking. Why else would it be relevant that emacs has spellchecking?
When you're considering somebody for a position you want to make sure they fit in well. And if everybody at the company has an eye for detail, and habitually spellchecks all internal and external communication then you wouldn't fit in. After all, if people don't spellcheck their resumé they're definitely not going to spellcheck casual emails.

Also you have to give the impression that you really want the job. Hiring costs a lot of money, so if they think you might jump ship after 6 months, you're no hire. Sloppy writing and no personalized letter indicate that you don't care for the job or don't really need it.

Add the risk of the false positive (money and hassle) to the equitation and you become a clear no-hire.
...And an expiry time for unregistered users.

Also, think about reducing the size of the save game file! Many PS2 game saves fitted into 32K.

Good game though :)
It is a favor in the sense that the company is taking the bigger risk. If you turn out to be a bad employee, it is costly to get rid of you, and the costs of finding a replacement are significant. Add to that the lost opportunity cost of being short-staffed and the costs add up.

I'm guessing that 37signals has 10 or so employees. At that stage they can't afford any bad hires.

Considering it's their money and their company that's at stake, I can't blame them for being careful. They're not acting like they're the only place any person would ever want to work, they're acting like they can't make any mistakes. So they have to be extremely careful, and reject everybody who isn't perfect.
Disrespectful to?...
At any startup I would want to work for wearing a suit would at best be neutral.
How Long Will Google Dominate Search?
Better code than you will ever write was written by people who swear a ton. Strange how that is.
I use a business card for me personally. I am involved in two small companies, one for software development and the other for music production. My business card lists neither business name, but rather lists my name, what I do, and how to contact me. The card remains true and valid regardless of what companies I am involved with.

Works in my situation anyway. :-)