Multi-level mentoring
Show Notes:
Justin's at grandma's house this weekend, enjoying a spacious backyard with a barbecue grill, but despite his hopes, it's not nearly big enough to grow enough maple trees for a steady syrup supply. Nonetheless summer is here and the yard is a nice change from LA lock-down.
Mark's been doing a little bit of algorithm study for interview prep. Justin's not a fan of that kind of interview since it's so far away from what kinds of work people do on the job. Mark agrees, but seen it useful at one old job which was flooded with applicants who couldn't fizzbuzz. Not by modulo, not by nested loops and not by a big while loop with multiple counters!
How much has YC changed? One former founder on twitter feels they've lost their soul. He loved the tight network and personal attention from people like PG and Jessica Livingston. Now, the batches are huge and attracting a different sort of person (see link below). We know nothing about YC internally, but it reminds Mark of what he saw happen at his old coding school. When he was a student, the founders were putting everything they had into making sure he and his classmates succeeded. Later batches were larger, students were more risk adverse and more credentialed.
Justin's come up with a name for his Roblox game and is now putting together sound effects and music for it. He's got an outline for the game map done and is now starting to work on getting the polish on the center part of it up to a release-quality level.
Mark's been thinking about different kinds of content he can make for Alchemist Camp to help the top of the funnel. The full-on screencasts are what people pay for. However he could write four technical tutorials in the time it takes to make a single screencast. Non-technical writing is even faster and more easily shared, but also less valued. What's the idea balance?
Mentioned
- Fizzbuzz
- The Only Reason My App Worked Was Due to a Slow Database
- We can't send email more than 500 miles
- Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective
- Questing Log
- Nugget Academy
- Alchemist Camp
Justin's goals for next time
- Focus on the Roblox game
- Work on Nugget login pathways
Mark's goals for next time
- 2 screencasts
- Algo prep
- Five UI components for Phoenix Igniter
Video version at https://youtu.be/3Y6YfZFV_Qw
On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358
Recorded on 2020-07-22
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