People Definitions
Equity Whore
A startup founder that micro manages company equity to maximize his own ownership but loses sight of more important things.
David: Did you hear? I managed to negotiate that lead engineer down to 0.3%. Now I will have an extra 1%.
Sarah: Stop being such an equity whore, having a smaller piece of something is better than having a large piece of nothing.
zazpowered over 9 years agoTechnical Founder
A 5.0 student from MIT, the technical founder is a lone wolf who thinks business people are completely useless. You're a social media manager? Get the fuck out of here. His code is perfectly architected, clean and commented in all the right places. His startups fail because he doesn't think writing CSS is worth his time and his sites look like shit as a result.
Technical founder: I was almost about to team up with a non-technical cofounder but then he told me he wanted a user interface to manage our sites content.
zazpowered over 9 years agoBallgrammer
A programmer who is obsessed with basketball and doesn't fully identify as a brogrammer. To ballgramers, ball (outside the office) is life.
Jalen is such a ballgrammer, he dunked during pickup yesterday and skipped work today to go to the Warriors parade.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoIE Troll
A person who purposely uses Internet Explorer in front of others and claims that it is the superior browser on the market, to either mock another person or make it seem like they are completely incompetent.
Jack is an IE troll who gets girls to help him install chrome because he is "so bad" at using computers.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoNon-technical Cofounder
A Wharton MBA who will overestimate the value of his idea and underestimate the value of the person who will implement it. Often wonders why his technical cofounders leave him and the apps they build look like shit and get hacked all the time.
Non-technical Cofounder: Why do all these technical cofounders leave me? Did they not see the MBA from Wharton in my email? I'm telling you right now, I know how to write a business plan. I even offered the last guy 10% of my company.
zazpowered over 9 years agoWorked with a guy just like this before. We had tons of competition doing the exact same thing but dude refused to change his ideas or strategy at all. Happy it was contract work.
Also known as "Ideas Guy"
As opposed to a technical cofounder that shaves yaks because they have no clue about business?
Popular phrase: "Looking for a technical co-founder"
Uber Driver Engineer
A label that describes a lot of Uber drivers. When you talk to one they will tell you they are trying to learn how to code, build an app and start a company. Uber is only now, startup is future. The passenger will encourage the driver but deep down inside they don't think its happening.
Because of the success of Uber there has been an influx of Uber Driver Engineers trying to start their own companies.
zazpowered over 9 years agoCode Masochist
A person pursuing a CS degree from a university who finds everything way to easy for his own good, so to challenge himself (or herself) he or she purposely does the projects on the last day so they can feel a comparable amount of pressure to the other students who've sometimes had up to a month to finish. (Can also apply to software engineering employees who do their work irrationally close to the deadline).
Hai was such a code masochist that he decided to do his upper div cs projects 12 hours before it was due. The professor assigned it 4 weeks ago.
yungsnuggie over 9 years ago10x Engineer
A developer who incurs technical debt so fast he appears more productive than the ten developers tasked with cleaning his mess up.
Founder: "We are only looking for 10x Engineers."
employeeNumbaOne over 9 years agoEarly Employee
A founder who will take 1% of the company instead of 25%. This is a polite way of saying "sucker."
CEO: "We couldn't have done it without a few great early employees."
employeeNumbaOne over 9 years agoI still wouldn't minded having been an early employee at Facebook or Uber.
@silconobserver Zach Holman.
This is total and utter bullshit. The founder risks his entire savings, family/friend relationships and pours his life into his startup. When things finally begin to work he goes out and hires the first few employees. In return the "early employees" get paid market rate or slightly below market rate and get equity and the founder gets painted as a greedy bastard? Who is the real sucker here
Thiel Fellow
A student under the age of 20 handpicked by Peter Thiel to drop out of college and start a company.
I dropped out of MIT because Peter Thiel just gave me a $100,000 to realize my dream of creating a social network for dogs.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoCode Ninja
A euphemism that is used by Bay Area recruiters who don't actually know what in specific they want in a Software Engineer, just someone who can pretty much do everything and anything that's handed to them.
We're looking to recruit the best Code Ninjas possible for our startup of 4 currently employed non-technical founders. Free pizza will be provided on Wednesdays.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoAlso used oddly and inappropriately by non-Asians as term of endearment to their Asian-American friends.
Self made entrepreneur
A label meaning that an entrepreneur has come from nothing, has not inherited their wealth or startup. A lot of entrepreneurs have found a loophole because while inheriting a lot of money disqualifies one from being self made, receiving a shit ton of money and connections from your parents while they are alive doesn't.
John: How did you possibly hire 50 people without any VC funding. You told me you were self made?
Lyman: My dad gave me a ton of money and connections. Does that count?
zazpowered over 9 years agoEngineer Unicorn
An engineer that is competent, good looking, dresses well and is not socially awkward.
John: How come no other engineers are like David?
Mary: He's an engineer unicorn. They are rare.
pygmyknight over 9 years agoThe legend says some of them can be found here http://www.engineerunicorns.com
"Unicorn" is a common term for an engineer (usually front-end) who also has good taste in design and is able to contribute to UX early on. But "unicorn" is also used for startups that turn out to be breakout successes, like Uber and Airbnb. Silicon Valley really likes unicorns.
10x Engineer
A concept sometimes used in Silicon Valley to describe an engineer that is 10x more productive than an average engineer although the 10x metric is figurative. Sometimes referred to as "Ninjas", these engineers are highly sought after by all tech companies.
Jim: You gave me 100 resumes but none of these guys are 10x engineers. Why hire a few of these guys to slow us down when a 10x engineer is so much more productive?
zazpowered over 9 years agoThey can be found here: http://10x.engineer
Silicon Valley Billionaire
Silicon Valley Billionaires tend to be younger, poorer dressed and generally less douchey than billionaires from other areas. Some are so poorly dressed that it is often hard to distinguish one from a hobo. In New York, a 23 year old scrawny male with t-shirt and jeans might be told to fuck off at a Lambourhini dealership but the same thing would never happen in Silicon Valley.
Sales person: Do you think I should even talk to that guy over there. It doesn't look like he can afford a car.
2nd sales person: That's Mark Zuckerberg
zazpowered over 9 years agoBrogrammer
When you mix your typical engineer with your typical frat boy. The official heuristic to identify a brogrammer in your organization is when you can't tell whether the suspect is part of your engineering team or your sales team.
David: I originally thought Kilim was a programmer but he's been popping his collar and talking a lot. Is he a brogrammer?
zazpowered over 9 years ago
Game Developer
A software engineer in the game industry, generally bigger, earns less and is nerdier than their startup counterparts.
Kilim: I wanna work for Blizzard so I can help build WoW and Diablo
Matthew: Do you really want to be a game developer?
zazpowered over 9 years agoThought Leader
How somebody without any real skills describes themselves. The phrase itself is self explanatory.
Matthew: tell us why we should hire you
Kilim: I am a thought leader in the area of SAAS
Matthew: what does that even mean
Kilim: I am a thought leader
zazpowered over 9 years agoStanford engineer
Smart and entrepreneurial. Usually from a privileged background.
John: Hey you can you look for an office? We will need one soon
Bob: My dad has a house he can lend us. Is that fine?
John: That works.
zazpowered over 9 years agoSLO Engineer
Engineer that graduated from CalPoly SLO. Good chance of being bro-ey, surprisingly good what they are doing.
Interviewer: So you said you came from SLO..? Cal Poly?
Interviewee: Yeah bro
Interviewer: Bro, I came from there too, you're hired!
mwang over 9 years ago
@blog Congrats, you're an http://svdictionary.com/words/innovator