"Location—you can’t get the true RG cult effect working remotely, so only apply if you live in NYC or are willing to relocate."
I wish companies would stop saying this shit. The honest translation is usually "We have no idea what it would mean to run a remote team and there's so much on our plates right now that we're not putting any energy into considering it"
Which is fine! I'd much rather people say that than this "It's impossible to be as awesome as we are without sitting next to each-other" bullshit. It has the downside of sending the message to others that you might know what you're talking about, via actual experience.
It's perfectly possible that they know exactly what it would take to run a remote team, and have decided that the additional overhead isn't worth it for their current stage.
It's also possible that they are completely clueless about what it would take. It appears they live and work out of the same space. This doesn't strike me as a particularly mature company.
Possible? Sure. Likely? Not remotely. Additional overhead? Not in my experience. Sounds like more speculation. At this point I'm comfortable with the bet I made in calling it out.
Hate the game, not the player. I am constantly frustrated with misdirected criticism of the companies locked into nash equilibrium.
Hiring is extremely competitive and if they dont maintain hype(if thats your preferred term) levels they will be overtaken by hundreds of other startups and consequently RapGenius may lose valuable talent.
So the company should lose their competitive advantage in a important business process to accomodate your arbitrary raging? Not going to happen unless everyone does so.
Want to change something for the better? Change incentives and punishments for players and steer them in the right direction. Using "shit" as an argument makes HN quality of discussions worse.
Working remotely gets boring. I love relocating. New environment, culture, people, and having drinks with your team after a long day of work is probably one of the primary things I live for haha.
I feel like I'm the only one who would absolutely LOVE to work at Rapgenius, and I think this $1000 incentive is really frigging awesome.
Relocating sucks for people with homes, families, childhood friends, etc. I live where I live (Portland, ME) because I LOVE it here. The market for tech is not here (yet, it's growing), so I work remotely for a NYC company.
Wow and here I thought that passing a "Tech Interview" just got you a job offer. Now I learn that this company, unlike every other company full of geniuses, is impossible to join. Makes me want to join them even more!
Reminds me of this other company that called me up out of the blue and said "We're only looking for Rockstars. Are you a Rockstar?" That also made me want to join that company in a heart beat. So many choices...
It gets you a job offer and $1000. You get the money even if you don't accept the job.
I think it's a good idea. I wouldn't have considered applying, because I'm not looking for work. But if they were local, I'd apply just for the $1000, and then they'd have a chance to sell me.
What a nice bunch of kids... I hope they find a business model someday.
All snark aside -- If I were a NYC Ruby guy, my main reservation is that it feels like a road to nowhere. If you want me to join a cult, give me something more than "trust us because A15Z gave us $15M".
This whole post, the whole idea, just oozes arrogance and immaturity. I have no interest in working for a company that is so proud of how impossible it is to get through their interview process. I respect companies that make the effort to try to understand the individual strengths and weaknesses of their prospective hires and work to slowly build up a diverse team of people that are smart and thoughtful. Rap Genius isn't doing anything that requires every single person working there to be "brilliant" and certainly not as measured by some BS interview process.
> Rap Genius isn't doing anything that requires every single person working there to be "brilliant" and certainly not as measured by some BS interview process.
Well said. "Are you AWESOME enough to annotate text? Only the BEST OF THE BEST text annotators need apply!"
The funny thing is I always thought this site was about Rap lyrics. From this video I learned that it's now more than that, which I can see value in. Everything makes more sense now. Time for a re-branding though.
Is it just me or are all those annotated links super confusing? I tried clicking on their jobs page link, but it just gave me this slow loading pop up thing with zero helpful or related info. Cool idea on the $1k though.
If part of interview involves figuring out how to follow that link, I failed. I thought the you might be exaggerating, but I spent 2 minutes clicking it in every conceivable way. It's pretty clunky.
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Got it. There's another link in the popup (if it comes up.) Hey RG, why doesn't the popup/content load reliably? One of those hard computing problems?
I actually like the lyrics site, but this is a funny kind of ego stroking.
I could be wrong but after spending 2 minutes finding out about them, I think that sort of thing is their actual business, not just a small flaw in a blog post?
I guess their reasoning is that since they create one UI "idea" on their main product, it should therefore be used absolutely everywhere. Clearly people want to open popups and click one thing on the popup again when they actually just want to click the link.
I guess so. I revisited it and realized that bubble had a link in it. That's ridiculous, of course. I thought it was user content and ignored it entirely.
That's a little different. In that case they aren't trying to lure you in with the monetary value of Apple gear, what they are really saying is you won't have to worry about working with crappy hardware. It's assumed that you think the latest Apple gear is the best tool for the job. That May or may not be correct, but that's for you to decide.
It's just a form of hiring bonus. While it's not so important in and of itself compared to the salary being offered it's something extra to consider when looking at the whole package being offered especially if you're considering multiple offers.
Hell, a thousand dollars is pretty tiny compared to my total comp, but it's still enough to treat myself to a new suit or watch so I can look extra sharp on my first day!
Weird thing. I am not even a developer and I felt the urge to try it. My point is: doesn't this give incentive to not-that-good developers who might "just in case" pass it and get $1,000? Therefore increasing noise, which is one of the worst things to deal with in hiring?
If I had to plan a bogus hiring strategy that a spy would implement on a competitor and f*ck it up, this is what I would have thought!
Probably not "automatically", someone will losing a lot of time screening out this "lottery seekers". And stressing also, which could mess up his ability to find the really good ones.
Is this page an example of what Rap Genius does? Because I see two links in the post: one of them pops up a dialog that appears to contain no information; the other link pops up a dialog containing a miniature version of the photo in the post I am looking at. Color me unimpressed.
The body of the post says: "anyone we offer an engineering job gets $1,000 cash".
Just because someone passes your technical interviews doesn't mean you'll extend them a job offer. There's a ton of other factors (cultural fit, attitude, references, experience, etc.).
So yes, this is gimmicky - that said, it may work for them anyways. It certainly gets their name out there - it got them to the front page of HN, and it got me to read their jobs page (and be tempted by their perks) - which I probably would've never done under other circumstances.
Anecdote - my significant other found his current job when he heard a startup was raffling off a netbook at their info session. He had no interest in the company - he just showed up to try and win the netbook (which, as it happens, he did) - next thing he knew, they sold him on their pitch, he became engineer #4, and four years later, he's still there.
I wish companies would stop saying this shit. The honest translation is usually "We have no idea what it would mean to run a remote team and there's so much on our plates right now that we're not putting any energy into considering it"
Which is fine! I'd much rather people say that than this "It's impossible to be as awesome as we are without sitting next to each-other" bullshit. It has the downside of sending the message to others that you might know what you're talking about, via actual experience.