blog.mattgoyer.com

Glenn, our CEO, is a great blogger (and no, I’m not sucking up, I don’t think he reads my blog). Check out his latest entry on attending what reads like a humbling time recruiting at UW today, Fear and Loathing on the College Recruiting Trail:

The University of Washington had a big computer science job fair today. Microsoft was there. Google was there. Eight Zillovians were there, all wearing Zillow t-shirts. And Redfin was there too, wearing a T-shirt that said, “NO, we don’t compete with Zillow.” Standing in front of our bare table, I found myself wishing I had something to show, like a mobile of the planets, or a papier-mache volcano that erupted with baking soda on cue.

I often read his blog posts asking myself, ‘no, really!?’. For instance his other recent post, Surowiecki Strikes Again: Why Median Home Prices Don’t Tell The Whole Story, did he really try and talk his way in?

I’ve spent the past few years concocting schemes to meet Surowiecki so we could pitch a few STUPENDOUS ideas for his column.

The most recent effort was on a blustery evening last winter when I walked into the lobby of the Conde Nast building, claiming I had an appointment. The security guards had already noticed me trundling around Times Square for half an hour with a wheelie and briefcase in tow, trying to get the guts to lie to their faces.

(I just overheard a co-worker say ‘no, we were downstairs doing crack!’ And no, I don’t think we really do crack, it’s just that we’re in Pioneer Square.)

I somehow hope that by being in Glenn’s vicinity I can channel his amazing blog goodness and improve my own lame blog. If I were to adopt two of his practices I think they’d be, always include a photo, and be shockingly honest. I think I also need to just blog more because in the blog world more is almost always better (though the Stranger’s blog posts way too often and I can’t keep up at all).

(It sounds like somewhere else in the office someone is singing. And in any minute I’m sure Kelly’s dog will run by.)

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J24 boathandling CDROM

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Scoble recently posted his thoughts on Zune. I recently got a chance to play with a Zune too and my chief complaint is that the device feels too thick as compared to my 30GB iPod. Other than that the device seems pretty slick.

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Wow what a weekend! We raced around from Seattle to Redmond (costumes and make-up) to Fremont (getting dressed) to West Seattle. Once in West Seattle some kids from work partied at Ang’s place and then headed to Hive Mind’s Grease Frightening held in an old elementary school. Needless to say it was a blast! There was many dance rooms, a detention room, liquid refreshments, a nurses station and on and on. Beats the string of bad house parties I ended up at last year. The first question now is, can we all rally around SeaCompression?

Since I know these photos are already out in the wild on the web might as well pre-empt the embarrassment now:

Halloween Hosted on Zooomr

Though I must say that I’m a little said I missed my housemate’s costume. He dressed as Tobias from Arrested Development during his blue man phase:

I guess the second question is, what do we do tomorrow night?

The night before I saw Short Bus ‘that sex movie’. Ugh, it was interesting :).

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Nice.

Available at DormGear.

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Natalie pointed me to this WSJ article, Google Adjusts
Hiring Process As Needs Grow:

Google Inc.’s recruiting process is legendary in Silicon Valley. Tales abound of job candidates who suffered through a dozen or more in-person interviews, and applicants with years of work experience who were spurned after disclosing they had so-so college grades.

I suspect she sent this to me because I interviewed with Google back in 2004 and quickly grew tired of the chaos and disorganization of their interview practices and it was not long before I dropped out of their interview process. Which after watching their stock IPO and then climb indefinitely may have been a mistake but whatever.

I also find it strange that 2 years later they’re still suffering from some of the same problems especially when their competitors, Microsoft/Amazon/etc, have what is in comparison, velvet glove treatment, with quick turnaround times, clear use of CRM on their backend, and bending over backwards to accomodate new college hires.

Another issue Google is going to face is maintaining their high bar for incoming talent. I definitely saw Microsoft struggle with the problem of requiring more headcount and having to lower the quality bar in order to fill spots. I suspect this will change the nature of the Google organization.

On a related note, Joel has just published verion 3.0 of his interview guide.

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I like the idea of Outside.in (aggregate local blog posts) but as someone who has a site full of local content their instructions for contributing content is so vague that I don’t understand how I’m supposed to geotag my posts and then get them crawled by their site. I tried using the submit a link tool but that will take hours for all my posts.

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For my mom’s house, popcorn ceiling removal (see the comments).

I hate those types of ceilings! Thank god I grew up in a house with clear cedar ceilings instead :).

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• LED Light Bulbs: # Long life – up to 10 years, Low power consumption (about 1/30th of a standard bulb)
• P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
• Personal Kyoto

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Last week we released a bunch of new Features on Redfin:

• Find ‘distressed properties’ (ones that have been on the market longer than normal)
• Find fixer-uppers
• Search by address
• See Zillow information on Redfin listing pages

You can find out more on my first corporate Redfin blog post, our press release, coverage in the Seattle PI.

Unfortunately I think this release totally burned me out and so I spent the weekend at home sick and really should probably be in bed now.

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