grease

No matter how we hire, candidates today research the company before talking/applying. What they find is not too helpful. Many startups have good-looking careers pages, but they don't answers questions like "what engg. problems do you solve at XYZ" [1], "What is the interview process at XYZ" [2] etc. These give a much better window into the team than opaque career pages or job descriptions.

(This is also why engineering blogs are a powerful hiring tool. Unfortunately, most such blogs languish or die slowly.)

Do you think there is value in helping startups create a better picture of themselves?

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-engineering-problems-and-challenges-is-Stripe-solving [2] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-engineering-interview-process-like-at-Stripe

I run a web-app where I would like receive facebook style transactional emails. For example, send an outgoing mail with a dynamic reply-to address of the form reply+2a3b4b2a34@domain.com (2a3b4b2a34 is dynamically generated hash)

This is in order that people can respond to notifications by replying to notifying email itself (rather than coming to the app). Now this poses multiple potential problems

1) Currently, I collect all incoming email to update@domain.com using google-apps. I then pull it to my server using IMAP, and then parse the response. I am a little uncomfortable doing this because I wonder if google really wants to use its email service in this manner. Or if they might have an issue with me receiving thousands of emails on this address.

2) What is a good way to remove quoted text in the incoming email (so that I can only use the actually reply)

Ideally, I would like to use an external service that takes care of such transactional emails, and use my server only for things that directly pertain to my app.

Hi HN,

I've broken my head on this, and haven't found a a reliable way to programmatically convert documents (doc, docx, pdf etc) to HTML. The only option seems open-office as a server - but this keeps crashing (at least once a day). I would like something that can process thousands of docs per day and not crash. Any one here has faced this problem / knows a solution?

[ PS: In case you're wondering why, we run a web app for recruiting ( recruiterbox.com ) which requires converting resumes to html ]

I understand how HN calculates top posts (roughly, points divided by age to the power gravity) - but how is a user's karma calculated? I looked at the points in the threads/comments link on the top of HN, but the sum of the points there do not add up to my karma.

I'm guessing the answer to this is pretty simple and it bugs me no end that I don't know it :(

PS: Are all votes equal (when it comes to deciding the rank of a post), or does it depend on the karma of the voter?

(This is a selfish ask, but I posted it thinking it might help others too)

A few months ago, I started reading Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" and fell in love with it. I went on read the rest of books in the Foundation Series. Sidenote: The books get progressively worse and the last one is a drag. Anyway, the reading was a good break from my startup in 2 ways: (1) I wasn't in front of yet another screen (tv, browsing, movies), and (2) It was, in some way, intellectually stimulating. It made me think.

So, fair HN, can you suggest what should I read next? Preferably fiction (I feel most non-fiction is worth a blog post). Something that fits a short attention span. Something a geek would like (I've already read "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy").