in order of impact
1. market saturation, everyone and their dog is a developer now
2. infiltration and appropriation of hiring process by HR/"Tech Recruiters"
3. cargo culting of interview process
Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
141–150 of 172 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#142What do you think of Hired.com? It may not be perfect but seems to solve a few of these issues.
All of these problems exist because we are human, so I’m not sure how it’s become dehumanized.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#143In 2006 when I got my first dev job, I sat down with the lead developer for about half an hour and we largely just had a very friendly and informal conversation talking about how I would hypothetically build things, what software I enjoy using, etc. I very vividly remember talking about how great I thought it was you could do basic math in the Firefox search bar at the time. He left to talk to the owner, came back wi…
My interviews still tend to be one or two friendly conversations. Of course I'm freelancing (for big projects) rather than employed, so maybe that changes things. And the actual hiring process can still be long because I do a lot of work for banks and other organisations with a serious screening process, but at its core is still the basic interview that's basically a friendly chat.
When I was responsible for hiring at my previous project, that's also what I did: I want to get to know the person. Is this someone I can work with? I was much more interested in what their most interesting project was, than in which checkboxes they checked. If there was one checkbox I had, it was: "can they admit they don't know something?" because some people just started spewing nonsense if they didn't know the answer to a question.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#144Was talking to an Uber driver about this, funnily enough. Apparently it's very common for applicants to just spam their resume out to every employer, since there's no cost to do so. If it were standard practice to implement some kind of hurdle, so that the applicant would have to spend an hour of their time to get a resume in front of a human, then there would be a lot less resumes to sift through and therefore a lot…
> If it were standard practice to implement some kind of hurdle, so that the applicant would have to spend an hour of their time to get a resume in front of a human, then there would be a lot less resumes to sift through and therefore a lot more time that could be given to each one by the employer.
Let me introduce you to my little friend: the leetcode quiz.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#145This problem has been attempted to be solved by software engineers or MBAs -- not people with humanities degrees. Behind every weird convoluted process is a batch of CEOs who don't know what they're doing besides copying their neighbor.
I agree with the commentary about guilds, unions, etc. I'm self-taught and would appreciate the legitimacy that these groups could offer through testing/training/merits etc. By relying on specialist organized groups you're abstracting the non-human issues from the humans themselves.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the problem in 2 is on the applicant side (shotgunning applications to every opening).
As I mentioned in another comment, the problem with 2 is that employers routinely hire people who don't meet the minimum requirements. If you don't apply to those jobs because you don't satisfy that one bullet out of the 6 they listed, you're hurting your chances. They can fix it by actually posting minimum requirements .
I believe that that still won't stop applicants who don't meet the minimum requirements from applying. What's the cost to an applicant to spam their resume to an additional listing? Almost $0. What's the possible reward? Very high, if it's less than a 1 in 10-million shot that the company will decide to hire you.
How many Powerball tickets would you take if they cost $0?
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming that company wants best hires they are glad to give a go to anyone in the possible candidate pool sooner or later, and knowing anyone in same line of work (surely) is a positive bias to viability so they should thank you. What makes you feel like it's about blame?
Blame is maybe a too-strong word in some cases, but if someone gets hired onto my team and is a bit of a dud for whatever reason, and I know someone influential on another team referred them, it starts to feel more like nepotism than simply "using a referral network". Especially at a larger company where the hiring process can be a little obscured from the actual team. Where not every, or even most engineers on a tea…
I think nepotism is a pathological case of something that happens just normally anyway. But then it's not nepotism... until it is...
These systemic problems that are only tangential to actual work rarely occur but the common mitigations seem to put a lot of pressure on everyday man, maybe even more than the problem itself... I wonder what's the "correct" solution here.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#148[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine you keep applying for jobs and you get none because all the existing employees are recommending their friends who are inferior to you in skills, but the company is prioritizing referrals. This is, and has always been, a real problem: That your ability to get good positions is limited not by your skill set but by your ability to network.
Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues. Keep in mind that technical skills are just one component in a good coworker.
> Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues.
Not really. In my experience that is the exception rather than the rule. Especially because most people will have no way to know you have good skills if they don't already know you.
Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine you keep applying for jobs and you get none because all the existing employees are recommending their friends who are inferior to you in skills, but the company is prioritizing referrals. This is, and has always been, a real problem: That your ability to get good positions is limited not by your skill set but by your ability to network.
You only need a laptop to set up a company in this field. If there are separate networks of different ethnities (or whatever you mean by diversity) their companies should be able to win over the ones who are not hiring based on pure skill and abilities. Does this happen?
1. I didn't make any mention of diversity.
2. The notion that companies will win purely due to skill is questionable. I would highly recommend listening to "How I Built This". Skill is a significant factor, but companies that win do not always do so based on skill.