Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 172 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#71

Post by atmosx »

web3-is-a-scam wrote: post #8
p1esk wrote: post #2

In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date. In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k. The first example was more successful from what I remem…

Am I the only one that isn't incentivized by referral bonuses? The last thing I want is the blame for a bad hire because I somehow referred someone ended up not being a good fit for whatever reason.

The idea is to refer ppl you want to work with based on prior experience. I don't think they want you to on a wild goose chase on Github, StackOverflow or LinkedIn.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#72

Post by stuckinhell »

btwillard wrote: post #16
stuckinhell wrote: post #9

Part of my job responsibilities is hiring, retention, and unfortunately layoffs. Hiring is only going to get worse in technology related fields. The competition has increased 10x in the last couple months compared to the last year for a single jr - mid developer position at my company. That's going from 1000 applications to 10,000 applications. I even created a jupyterhub notebook to do some analysis on the unfiltere…

It sounds like you're saying you want to hire people who weren't laid off? If so, what's the reasoning behind this?

Many of the people laid off in the last couple months are generally considered to be dead weight by executives and various tech teams.

(I do not believe this, but many do)

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#74

Post by stuckinhell »

yamtaddle wrote: post #20
stuckinhell wrote: post #9

Part of my job responsibilities is hiring, retention, and unfortunately layoffs. Hiring is only going to get worse in technology related fields. The competition has increased 10x in the last couple months compared to the last year for a single jr - mid developer position at my company. That's going from 1000 applications to 10,000 applications. I even created a jupyterhub notebook to do some analysis on the unfiltere…

Just require applications to be sent by mail. Explain why you're doing it up-front. The tiny hassle and tens-of-cents cost should cut volume down tremendously. [EDIT] Incidentally, in the age of ChatGPT, I suspect I'm going to be recommending this more and more often for a lot more use-cases....

It's a nice idea, but no way it'll pass HR. Every process is now digital and audited.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#75

Post by thesuitonym »

systemvoltage wrote: post #14

Hard take which is pretty much unpalatable to HN crowd: If I had a small dev shop, I would put out an hiring ad that says you must drop off your resume in person and we will only hire people from 50 mile radius. Like they used to do in 1970's. Not a fan of: 1) Global pool of candidates 2) Leet code bullshit 3) Remote work Fan of 1) Permanent hiree after 3 months of time with us. 2) You will be part of our family, we'…

Even though I'd never go back to an office, I think this is a completely reasonable way to hire. It sets the expectation right off the bat that this is not a remote position, so candidates will self-select. Off to a good start.

Requiring someone to drop off a resume reduces friction and frustration--I can give you my resume that tells you everything, and I don't have to write it again into your weird HR software that requires me to set up an account for a job I probably won't get.

It gives you a chance to do a short prescreen as soon as the applicant drops off their resume, giving instant feedback to them.

Honestly, although that culture isn't what I'm looking for now, when I was starting out, I would have loved to see somewhere like this near me.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#76

Post by lbrito »

IMO none of OP's points are the one thing really wrong with (dev/tech) hiring.

The absolutely grueling, pointless, insane interviews processes are the lion's share of problems in this field. To the point that its an industry of its own, with Leetcode and the likes. Its pathetic, inefficient and just in terrible taste.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#77

Post by ghaff »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #38

Was 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…

This applies to other things as well.

I was involved in one phase of picking submittals for a conference recently and there were no small number of submittals where basically one person sent in a half-dozen or more generic submissions, possibly with a sentence tacked on to make it relevant to this specific conference.

I'm a big fan of conferences limiting the number of submittals or at least throwing enough hoops in the way of shotgunning a bunch of generic proposals to discourage the practice.

(Basically, more submittals mean that the conference committee is going to end up being more random evaluating submittals against each other.)

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#78

Post by BeetleB »

atmosx wrote: post #73
BeetleB wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you would. That is exactly the problem.

Why is that a problem?

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#79

Post by BeetleB »

lapcat wrote: post #66
BeetleB wrote: post #42

A lot of this is game theory at play. > 1. Applicants must wade through large volumes of job postings, which are often poorly written, and frequently lacking key information which is important to the applicant. This is nothing new - it's been this way for over 20 years. Job postings are not more poorly written than in the past. > 2. Employers are overwhelmed with large numbers of applicants, most of whom don't meet t…

[deleted because my reply misunderstood the original comment]

Google does it (or at least did). If I applied to some number (3 or 5, I forget), it will not let me apply to any more.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#80

Post by ghaff »

lolsal wrote: post #65
systemvoltage wrote: post #14

Hard take which is pretty much unpalatable to HN crowd: If I had a small dev shop, I would put out an hiring ad that says you must drop off your resume in person and we will only hire people from 50 mile radius. Like they used to do in 1970's. Not a fan of: 1) Global pool of candidates 2) Leet code bullshit 3) Remote work Fan of 1) Permanent hiree after 3 months of time with us. 2) You will be part of our family, we'…

Interesting take. I have some questions: > 1) Global pool of candidates Why not? global pool could potentially get you a lot more bang for your buck. I've employed folks from outside the US and it was a joy to get really talented folks and pay them stupidly well for their location. They were super excited to work with us for that and we were super excited to pay them a lower rate than hiring in the US. Win-win. > 3)…

It's one thing to have a probationary period with the assumption being that, if things don't go utterly sideways, there's nothing to worry about. It's another thing to do a provisional hire thing where the implication is that if you wow us as much after three months as you did in the interview we'll fully hire you.

I'm fine with the former. Mostly wouldn't be with the latter.

Post reply on HN