<story><title>YCommonApp: Apply to 25+ YC-funded startups in under 10 minutes</title><url>http://ycommonapp.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BrandonM</author><text>I feel a bit frustrated with the startup application process. The (very common) question, &quot;List any links that will let us know who you are. For example, projects you&apos;ve worked on or links to your GitHub, StackOverflow, Twitter, blog, website, etc.&quot; always seems to hold a lot of weight while being tangent to the work I would expect to be doing. I don&apos;t have a GitHub, I&apos;m not a StackOverflow member, I&apos;m not on Twitter, I don&apos;t have a blog, and I haven&apos;t had a website since graduating with my CS degree. That does not mean that I am not talented, smart, or motivated.&lt;p&gt;In my case, I like to interact personally with friends as opposed to digitally. I like to work on personal projects to satisfy my curiosity without being worried about later publishing them. And I&apos;m not interesting/vain enough to warrant a blog, website, or Twitter presence. I like to work hard, &quot;learn&quot; hard (I do enjoy Hacker News), and play hard, and keeping up on the latest shiny-new-technology-web-presence-clique seems tangential to that.&lt;p&gt;My goal is to work for a few years in an interesting software development position on a smart team, getting paid a fair wage while providing the company with equal value in return. In those years, I would expect to learn (and contribute!) a lot while also paying off my debts and helping out my parents. After that, I would reëvaluate my goals and my career.&lt;p&gt;What frustrates me is that I feel like I have to jump through hoops just to get into the mix. I feel like I won&apos;t even be seriously considered unless I develop a few simple web tools built on RoR, promote them on a DJango website with a blog, host the source to the whole thing on GitHub, jump into the Twitter craze, and try to make useful contributions to FOSS and StackOverflow communities that are already saturated with great solutions. That seems like a lot of unimportant crap when all I really want to do is good work. If it takes me an extra day to learn RoR because your company uses it, that seems very small in the entire scheme of things.&lt;p&gt;I understand that I don&apos;t have a web-visible track record to point you to. I&apos;m quite willing to work at an under-market rate for a few months until I&apos;m up to speed and it is determined that I am a good fit. Is there anywhere interesting to work that is looking to hire somebody like me?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coffeemug</author><text>We&apos;re one of the companies that will hire people through the 	YCommonApp, and we don&apos;t care if you&apos;re on twitter, github, stackoverflow, have a blog or a website, and whether you&apos;ve played with RoR, Django, Clojure, or some other flavor of the week technology. Being damn good at what you do is more than enough for us.</text></comment>
<story><title>YCommonApp: Apply to 25+ YC-funded startups in under 10 minutes</title><url>http://ycommonapp.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BrandonM</author><text>I feel a bit frustrated with the startup application process. The (very common) question, &quot;List any links that will let us know who you are. For example, projects you&apos;ve worked on or links to your GitHub, StackOverflow, Twitter, blog, website, etc.&quot; always seems to hold a lot of weight while being tangent to the work I would expect to be doing. I don&apos;t have a GitHub, I&apos;m not a StackOverflow member, I&apos;m not on Twitter, I don&apos;t have a blog, and I haven&apos;t had a website since graduating with my CS degree. That does not mean that I am not talented, smart, or motivated.&lt;p&gt;In my case, I like to interact personally with friends as opposed to digitally. I like to work on personal projects to satisfy my curiosity without being worried about later publishing them. And I&apos;m not interesting/vain enough to warrant a blog, website, or Twitter presence. I like to work hard, &quot;learn&quot; hard (I do enjoy Hacker News), and play hard, and keeping up on the latest shiny-new-technology-web-presence-clique seems tangential to that.&lt;p&gt;My goal is to work for a few years in an interesting software development position on a smart team, getting paid a fair wage while providing the company with equal value in return. In those years, I would expect to learn (and contribute!) a lot while also paying off my debts and helping out my parents. After that, I would reëvaluate my goals and my career.&lt;p&gt;What frustrates me is that I feel like I have to jump through hoops just to get into the mix. I feel like I won&apos;t even be seriously considered unless I develop a few simple web tools built on RoR, promote them on a DJango website with a blog, host the source to the whole thing on GitHub, jump into the Twitter craze, and try to make useful contributions to FOSS and StackOverflow communities that are already saturated with great solutions. That seems like a lot of unimportant crap when all I really want to do is good work. If it takes me an extra day to learn RoR because your company uses it, that seems very small in the entire scheme of things.&lt;p&gt;I understand that I don&apos;t have a web-visible track record to point you to. I&apos;m quite willing to work at an under-market rate for a few months until I&apos;m up to speed and it is determined that I am a good fit. Is there anywhere interesting to work that is looking to hire somebody like me?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acgourley</author><text>I feel like younger start-ups in particular have the attitude: &quot;If you don&apos;t have a trail of your own work, you&apos;re not extremely self directed, and we don&apos;t have the structure to manage you&quot;. And I think that&apos;s valid. If you still want to apply to these types of companies you should organize and show off the projects you&apos;ve done on your own on a day to day basis.&lt;p&gt;That said, there are startups that have a more mature process. A necessary but insufficient condition is that they have hired a product manager or two. I know we&apos;d get your application if you use this tool, but you should check out Loopt because it is a more mature startup. You can contact me directly if you have questions (check profile for contact).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://about.loopt.com/jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://about.loopt.com/jobs/&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>