I'm sorry if this sounds rude but I can't agree that you have high integrity. If you did, you would have never considered a lie (white or not) just simply because you felt you needed to, regardless of any reason.
I much rather have someone be honest with me, tell me they don't know, but that they will do their best to pick things up fast and learn without hindering the team, and work hard at being the best they can be than someone pretending to know something, try to pick up pieces and then still not be great at what they're supposed to know. Honesty goes a long way and I've never turned anyone down because they lack something but I've certainly turn away countless number of people who've lied even the slightest.
BS meters are easier to trigger than you may think. And honestly, there's no integrity if this was ever a passing thought.
Disclaimer: I've hired many people for my own company as well as have a slew of friends who've hired many people for their own companies/startups. This isn't something new.
Since when has the computer science industry been able to claim higher integrity than any other industry — certainly sounds to me like you, being someone in a position to hire others think highly of yourself? I'd be able to bullshit you simply because I'm able to do what I'd be lying about, but not be able to back it up with a real-world example.
You're probably no better than anyone who hires anyone else... probably on a power-hungry ego trip. Sure you can tell yourself that you can sniff a lier in an interview, but then do you hire shit employees? Probably one or two... and they're bullshitters, don't you know.
I'm not after a lecture in morals and integrity, I want to grasp the general opinions of people who've found themselves needing to perhaps lie in order to get themselves in a better position in life/job.
1. I never said anything about the CS industry and I don't see why that matters, regardless of what industry this is part of. I never said CS was of higher integrity than others nor was that ever part of the discussion.
2. I don't think of myself more highly than anybody else. You made a statement, I had a counter point of view, and I gave my opinion.
3. Considering my last company scaled up and was successfully acquired, I think its safe to say in defense of the great team we've had, that they're not shit employees. Say and think what you want but I think its clear you're the person speaking out of anger right now. And don't let your personal anger at me for what I said out of personal opinion be the reason for you to talk smack about the team I've worked with, of which you know nothing about. They don't deserve that. You can think I'm on an ego trip all you want, I'm not.
4. I wasn't trying to give you a lecture. I gave very concise advice on what I personally look for and what I think others (including those I know) look for. Whether you value that opinion or not or believe others look for that or not is up to you. There are many companies out there that will gladly hire the right person base on their personality, culture fit, and skills irregardless of past experience (another advice you can choose to ignore if you like). Seems to me you're bent on this past experience thing base on an assumption rather than trying to see if you'll be able to land the job as a value to the company you'd be applying for.
Whatever the case may be, you can choose to disagree with me all you like. I'm not here to brag or put you down. I merely disagreed with your statement and whether you liked it or not, it's something I stand by.
Ever since I found out about the amazing middle click function, I manage to stack up probably 50-60 tabs by the end of everyday. It's hard to imagine how we managed back when there were no tabs on browsers.
Whatever your estimates, usually double it or reduce it in half against your favor. Clearly that formula doesn't always work for everything but estimates are often off and things happen, you need to pivot, shit comes up and money runs dry, whatevers... So if you think it takes 3 months to launch, assume 6 but strive for 3 or sooner. If you think you got 12 months run way, assume 6 but strive for 12+. It'll help ground you in case shit happens. 6+ ideas is too many (but I think you already know that). Before jumping ship, I'd recommend getting somewhere with iteration, MVP, anything... that gives you indication that this is a good bet to jump ship for (to an extent). Run with it and hope for the best (READ: work your ass off). Good luck
It's great to define organizational culture, but let's keep in mind that it is bound to be very fluid in a new startup.
When you're very small each new person will have a pretty significant effect on the culture of your organization (of course the marginal effect of each new worker would be diminishing).
Over-defining it at the beginning could be a mistake in so creativity-intensive industries like hacking.
I'd actually take an approach of formally defining the culture once it has established itself (and is working well).
But well, there's still too many variables to consider. Personal culture of the founder(s) would be very important in picking the right approach. Although many people would like it to be，I don't see management becoming a hard science anytime soon.
I didn't mean to imply that you had to have the culture baked on day 1. But by the time you've moved beyond cofounders and are making hires, you better be well on your way to having it defined. Or you're doomed to wallow in misfits and repairing poor hires instead of moving rapidly.
And I totally agree that the founders drive and define the culture. It's their responsibility to establish it, manage it, and change it, if need be.
The short answer is no. The only exception I can even think of in extremely rare cases where you program something in a language some company would not want to use and may potentially not acquire you for (which for most web languages it's not an issue), it should not dictate how successful your application is in terms of users, revenues, growth, and/or overall outcome of the company itself. You may run into scaling issues, maintenance problems, ease of training and transitioning new employees to code base or language as need, etc... but for most things, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
On the other hand, if you're asking flow of code, nuances of particular languages, available libraries, ease of hiring people, etc... to help grow what you're building, then it goes back to the age old language war debate.
There are good coders, great coders, and just a bunch of awful ones. There's a difference in being able to code something that works, and something that works brilliantly, and even better at scale. That said, readability and good commenting in coding and documentation should apply in any language.
In Python for example, there's kind of a (mostly) default way of doing it. In other languages, not so much. But that doesn't mean the company culture can't push for something like this (a standard, at least to the extent in which a language permits doing so). Developers performance is more base on how they like working in a language (better to find true language agnostic developers), culture fit, personality, etc...
If you're outsourcing, that's a totally different set of traits and number of things to look for than if you're hiring in house (which I would recommend for the core team and in general anyway; hiring in house that is).
Doesn't the more readable syntax affect the developers' performance?
What does "readable" mean? If "readable" means "I don't like sigils" or "operator overloading confuses me" or "everyone should indent their code the same way", I suspect you won't get any interesting answers.
Have the developers any experience in this language? Have they significant experience in this language? Have they any experience with the other developers? Have they significant experience in the problem domain?
You can find bulk batteries for cheap at Costco, Home Depot, and a ton of other stores. They sell them in 24, 36, 72 packs for almost nothing. And there are deals online that make them even more lucrative at times. Can't remember the last deal I got but I think it was like 72 AA batteries for like $9. While that's not typical, what is typical is spending less than $10 for Energizer or Duracell AA batteries around 24 to 36 packs. These are pretty common and each battery lasts pretty long.
On the flip side, as others have said, rechargeable are only good for the first week or two you have them if you use them a lot. The charge doesn't hold after awhile and they suck. The charger and the batteries are expensive compare to the non-rechargeable alternatives.
Home Depot online listing: 36 pack Energizer Alkaline for 13.97.
That is $0.39 per battery.
Rechargeable: $3.24 per battery.
3.24 divided by 0.39 is 8.31.
At the ninth usage, the rechargeable battery becomes cheaper than the very cheap one use battery.
I have four Energizer NiMH AA's that have to be at least 4-5 years old now and have been recharged at least 50+ times by this point. Are they quite as "strong" as when they were new, no. Are they still doing very well, yes.
A lot of the bad experience from rechargeable comes from using the cheapo chargers that are sold in the stores alongside the batteries themselves. Plunk down the one time cost of $30-40 for a decent charger and the rechargeable batteries will reward you handsomely.
Personally, unless the conversation warrants (i.e. where it matters) to mention I'm a founder or CEO or anything of so-called C-level / executive rank, I try my best to leave it out. Instead, I usually say "I work for...".
Don't really think its silly but I find that most people don't call themselves a CEO unless you specifically ask for a title in those situations. It's more common for me to hear people say they're working on a new startup (as opposed to really saying they're exploring an idea).
Titles are meaningless in most cases in startups. We made it a point not to even include titles in our business cards on my last startup. It just doesn't matter.
I could be wrong but this doesn't seem like you guys trying to validate a couple of ideas. It seems more like validating an idea. Else it'd be any idea revolving around plants. Since the first answer I would have posted would have been no (I'm not your target audience in this survey), everything else became moot so I didn't actually fill it out.
This list can be long and I'm tired from lack of sleep and coming back from another event so I'll just give one answer off the top of my head...
One of the things that turn most people away, but particularly mentors you want to work with, is the inability to learn and adapt. Most people are completely oblivious to this or completely delusional in thought thinking they're not like that if they are in fact displaying this behavior. Mentors, investors, etc... work with people who are trainable, willing to take advice, execute on the advice, and ask questions when they feel the need to clarify or disagree.
Disagreeing isn't the problem. It's the behavior that a person tends to ask a question only to argue against what they hear. There are a SWARM of people out there like this and they don't even realize it. Other times, the wrong impression is given due to a misunderstand on how a person reacts once advice is given possibly due to how they may phrase a follow up question to the advice. Word choices and gestures matter as to not give off the signal that you're a person bent on looking for validation rather than valid advice. It's a fine line between the two and I dare say most of the people I've encounter can't tell the difference.
I much rather have someone be honest with me, tell me they don't know, but that they will do their best to pick things up fast and learn without hindering the team, and work hard at being the best they can be than someone pretending to know something, try to pick up pieces and then still not be great at what they're supposed to know. Honesty goes a long way and I've never turned anyone down because they lack something but I've certainly turn away countless number of people who've lied even the slightest.
BS meters are easier to trigger than you may think. And honestly, there's no integrity if this was ever a passing thought.
Disclaimer: I've hired many people for my own company as well as have a slew of friends who've hired many people for their own companies/startups. This isn't something new.