A VC - Latest Comments in A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

karen_e — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:47:50 -0000

Daniel, I have a funny feeling you might be a little sleep-deprived yourself. Have fun while it's still fun.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

fredwilson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:09:02 -0000

A job and a contribution to the english language. Actually I heard freemium used in a foriegn language convo I overheard yesterday at seedcamp

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

fredwilson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:50:09 -0000

You don't know how true that is!

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

fredwilson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:39:03 -0000

Thanks

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

jarid — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:36:38 -0000

I can vouch that at least 1 job was filled this way. Hard to believe this first job post was 4.5 years ago:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/200...

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

obscurelyfamous — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:38:47 -0000

No need for the quotes... there really is a Marco! I've met him in person to confirm this. :-)

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Dave Pinsen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:35:29 -0000

OK, thanks. Interesting.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

daryn — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:08:49 -0000

Thanks! The kayak pic was out on hood canal, an hour and a half drive from Seattle, a world away... :)

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

karen_e — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:41:44 -0000

And then one day, "Marco," like so many others before him, was no longer 22, or 24, and he decided it was time to have some sleep as part of his daily routine.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

fredwilson — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:01:25 -0000

for a long time, marco did it all, now he has help, but not much. i'd bet it is multiple millions per engineer.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

fredwilson — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:59:56 -0000

i've been posting job openings in our portfolio here for years and this blog always delivers high quality candidates and while i don't have stats, i believe it may have been the channel that delivered the hired candidate in about half the cases

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Ivan Kirigin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:25:17 -0000

Wow, those stats, for their size, are amazing. Facebook is an amazingly leveraged environment. It's more than 1M users per engineer, which you can rarely find. But Tumblr must be higher with 2-3M per engineer, right?

Facebook is a bit different because it doesn't have the writer / reader split userbase. I doubt Tumblr does even 0.5M writers per engineer, right? Also, you can work on something that greatly impacts the whole userbase at any company...

But these stats alone should give people an idea of how good a job will be. Feeling utilized is pretty much the primary metric good engineers use to judge a job, perhaps second to having interesting technical challenges.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

David Noël — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:48:47 -0000

Ha! No, his name is Christopher Price. But christopher.com seemed taken so he went with topherchris.com. Like Sackenhack.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Dave Pinsen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:39:06 -0000

"Topherchris" -- is that what his parents named him?

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

David Noël — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:12:43 -0000

Dave - the Tumblr staff mentioned a nice fact in their announcement yesterday, let me just copy and paste this one here (that also enforces Daryn's point):

"Most of our team has come from the Tumblr community, including Marc, Jacob, Peter, Topherchris, and Meaghan." - that's 50% of the team which is awesome.

I reblogged that part on my own Tumblr by adding:
"What you saying now, headhunters?"

Looking at the original post, about 60 Tumblr users have reblogged the post out of 200 so called "notes", thereby acting perhaps as "headcrowders".

For reference:
Here's the original post from Tumblr Staff blog:
http://staff.tumblr.com/post/193593437/were-hiring

And here's my comment:
http://echolot.tumblr.com/post/193595528/most-o...

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Dave Pinsen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:55:39 -0000

Thanks for those thoughts, Daryn. Nice pics on your Tumblog, btw. Where were you on the kayak? Up by the San Juans?

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

marshal sandler — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:45:11 -0000

As a Fan of Tumblr I hope this helps to spread the word. http://marshalsandler.com/2...

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

daryn — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:33:50 -0000

Dave - I know that Eric got his foot in the door at USV via a blog post / comment, and I've definitely seen a handful of these types of posts from both Fred and Albert, so my bet is on yes (would be good to hear for certain).

To me, recruiting is where you go when you've exhausted your network. For tumblr, which has a great userbase (probably full of qualified candidates), and well as great social connections both internally as well as through their investors, I'd be surprised to see them use a headhunter, especially for these dev/engineering roles.

If I had any interest in being an SE, I'd be all over this. I'm a huge fan of tumblr, and very excited for what the future holds for them. Good luck filling these roles, hope you find people on par with the rest of the rock star team.

Re: A Great Systems Engineer Job/Challenge In NYC

Dave Pinsen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:50:18 -0000

Fred,

Have you ever filled a job at a portfolio company this way?

More generally, what are your thoughts about the impact of technology on recruiting? Specifically, do you think that there will still be a niche to be filled for high-level jobs by old school headhunter firms? Up until the current recession hit, some publicly traded firms such as Heidrick & Struggles were posting some big profits. My assumption is that these firms provide a CYA factor to corporate executives and board members, and that's the main reason they're used, but they charge a bundle for that service.