"And another, 'He’s the greatest programmer to ever draw breath!'"
"4. Work with the best – and be the best."
"Why You Shouldn’t: 1. You’re not the best."
I like DHH and 37Signals, but this blog post is hyperbole. DHH is great, but he's not Carmack, and I don't know any serious programmers who would say "He's the greatest programmer to ever draw breath" or that the 37Signals team is "the best" and nobody who works there is "not the best".
In the spirit of having something nice to say, it is good to aspire to work at jobs where you are surrounded by talented people, and 37Signals certainly does attract people who want to work with accomplished peers.
Every time i read about these great places to work it makes me sad. To know i will probably never enter the realm of being good enough for these companies.
I dont know if this is true, but they are giving everyone this expression: We just take the best of the bests.
At the end of the day though, we make our own opportunities. I've spoken to a few product managers at Google. Being a PM at Google, Apple, etc. would be a dream job of mine. I'm not quite prepared for such a role, but I will be one day.
I'll basically get a run down of the things they've accomplished up until they got that job. From there I'll seek out similar opportunities and turn down others that don't align with what they did. It takes a LONG time but, it's worth going for.
And, if it doesn't work out, at least I come away with a list of great experiences and interesting projects. Most of these things are outside of work mind you, as my work is not closely aligned with product management.
There's so many opportunities to learn and "prepare" for these types of roles. You just have to know where to look, and who to ask. :)
I am a student, and I can completely empathize with how you feel. I can tell you that a lot of what I've seen is that it's one-hundred percent completely worth the stress and fear of rejection if even one long-shot (in your mind) pays off. I've had that happen to me firsthand, and I've seen it in other people. The more experience you have dealing with tough problems, the better you'll be thinking about them, and tough interview problems by extension. Just make your interview count as best you can, and step back and wait. I promise it's worth it.
Yeah. I've had several interviews, and am currently working as an intern at a startup, but I've never experienced any difficult algorithm-heavy/trick problems in interviews. One of the things that deters me from applying is just the fear as you've said but I'll definitely be trying for jobs that I feel are a little out of my comfort zone next semester, and I know it will be worth it.
Doing your own thing is really addicting if you can make it work. I'd take running my own company over working at 37signals or Google any day. I don't know if I could have someone dictating my pay ever again.
It would still be awesome to work for them though, and the thought of not having to worry about anything but making awesome software is really tempting when you're having one of those days doing everything but.
It's worth nothing in this context that the OP and many of the commenters here might have trouble landing a job at 37signals because they are misspelling the name of the company:
The OP spells it wrong in the title and uses both 37Signals (wrong) and 37signals (right) in the text. (To be fair, he mostly spells it right. Mostly.)
By the way, when Jason Fried made the post linked above, lots of people criticized him for nitpicking, but spelling the name of the company correctly is probably a good filter for the kind of gets-the-details-right employee they're looking for.
This is a bit sycophantic and too personalized, but the general points hold true. This is an excellent opportunity for people who want to optimise for learning, less so for people who want to optimise for innovation.
I'm actually rather shocked that 37 signals only has 9 engineers on board (presumably DHH isn't included in this number). I remember reading that the company has 30-40 employees [1]. I'd really love to know what the other 20-30 do, and what the other (relatively) heavily staffed groups are (I'd imagine technical support would be one of them).
"4. Work with the best – and be the best."
"Why You Shouldn’t: 1. You’re not the best."
I like DHH and 37Signals, but this blog post is hyperbole. DHH is great, but he's not Carmack, and I don't know any serious programmers who would say "He's the greatest programmer to ever draw breath" or that the 37Signals team is "the best" and nobody who works there is "not the best".
In the spirit of having something nice to say, it is good to aspire to work at jobs where you are surrounded by talented people, and 37Signals certainly does attract people who want to work with accomplished peers.