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We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

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Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#71

Post by criddell »

> Using screens to hide the identity of auditioning musicians increased women's probability of advancing from preliminary orchestra auditions by fifty percent.

I thought that the increase was largely attributed to more women being willing to audition anonymously?

> if that describes you, and you have serious Linux, Ruby, and JavaScript chops, perhaps you should email me

I don't know why, but I always thought the Atwood was 100% invested in Microsoft technologies. Not that it matters, it just surprised me.

Speaking of Atwood, has anybody ever used one of his keyboards? Any opinions?

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#72

Post by mooreds »

sgift wrote: post #67
struppi wrote: post #33

Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…

A really good strategy which is unfornately not very common. For one part because of the topic of the article, but for the second part because many companies seem to think that their employees will be hired away by their competitors at the first opportunity, which basically says that they do not trust themselves to be good enough to retain their employees .. but if these companies do not trust themselves how can thei…

I think it isn't common because it is expensive.

People would rather hire someone who has made mistakes on someone else's dime (another word for it is "experience").

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#73

Post by wdmeldon »

bdavisx wrote: post #58
OpenDrapery wrote: post #29

I work in the "boring" old insurance industry, based in the midwest. I love reading articles like these, and as I read them I get excited and say to myself "yea!" and "spot on!". But they seem to center around startups and Silicon Valley. The truth is, when it comes to building, maintaining, and supporting internal, line of business apps, management isn't even pretending to look for high end talent. They want predict…

Yep, me too, midwest huge insurance company. From what I've seen, there are very few people in mid to upper management that think developers are anything more than a cog in the machine (and only 1 who's ever stated that 'publicly') - I'm looking to leave after 11 years - I've given up on it changing.

Wow. 11 years before you gave up on them changing. That's both impressive and depressing. I lasted about 2 and half years last place I worked.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#74

Post by napoleond »

bdavisx wrote: post #58
OpenDrapery wrote: post #29

I work in the "boring" old insurance industry, based in the midwest. I love reading articles like these, and as I read them I get excited and say to myself "yea!" and "spot on!". But they seem to center around startups and Silicon Valley. The truth is, when it comes to building, maintaining, and supporting internal, line of business apps, management isn't even pretending to look for high end talent. They want predict…

Yep, me too, midwest huge insurance company. From what I've seen, there are very few people in mid to upper management that think developers are anything more than a cog in the machine (and only 1 who's ever stated that 'publicly') - I'm looking to leave after 11 years - I've given up on it changing.

Where are you looking to go? Are you interested in working remotely? My company is hiring -- dave.noel@sitedocs.com

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#75

Post by crdoconnor »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #39
humanrebar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who ask for more complicated code than "reverse a string" or "fizzbuzz" in a remote code screen is doing it wrong. People who can't code, compile, and run a fizzbuzz in an hour are probably not fit to be hired. Asking someone to implement a proper Diffie-Hellman over Hackerrank is ludicrous, on the other hand. Interviewers should err on the side of stupidly simple problems. A surprising number of people can't…

>A surprising number of people can't code a loop in the languages on their resumes. I guess you can reach two conclusions from that: 1) A surprising number of applicants are totally misrepresenting their abilities – either through deceit or wild ignorance. 2) Something about your interview process makes a surprising number of people unable to perform at their normal level – from nervousness, unrealistic and artificia…

>Something about your interview process makes a surprising number of people unable to perform at their normal level – from nervousness, unrealistic and artificial constraints, etc.

I've worked with people who crashed and burned during the interview during nervousness and then went on to do okay afterwards.

I'm a believer in trying to make the interview process as close an analog of day to day work as possible and as low key as possible.

That means real, actually encountered problems (no fizzbuzz), and a progressive ramping up of the difficulty so that candidates with confidence problems can have a few easy problems to get over their anxiety with before getting into something meaty.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#76

Post by p4wnc6 »

In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes.

Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype interviews, foolish interactive coding exams, multiple on-sites, etc., you can spend that money on severance.

Use a cheaper and more straightforward hiring process. Talk to people, dig into their background and preferred working style a little. If they appear to be competent, then just hire them. If they are not qualified for the job or they are not a cultural fit later, just fire them.

Because you will have explained to them that their first month on the job is still part of the overall fit assessment, and that you value the risk they are taking by offering them severance to re-engage in a job search if it turns out you made a mistake by hiring them, you are not doing a disservice to the new hire. You're merely letting both parties gather more evidence about goodness of fit.

This is money well spent, and for most companies, 6 months of salary is easily affordable for severance. In fact, an unwillingness to offer at least that much to each new hire would be a huge red flag.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#77

Post by cableshaft »

bdavisx wrote: post #58
OpenDrapery wrote: post #29

I work in the "boring" old insurance industry, based in the midwest. I love reading articles like these, and as I read them I get excited and say to myself "yea!" and "spot on!". But they seem to center around startups and Silicon Valley. The truth is, when it comes to building, maintaining, and supporting internal, line of business apps, management isn't even pretending to look for high end talent. They want predict…

Yep, me too, midwest huge insurance company. From what I've seen, there are very few people in mid to upper management that think developers are anything more than a cog in the machine (and only 1 who's ever stated that 'publicly') - I'm looking to leave after 11 years - I've given up on it changing.

I tried the midwest large insurance company job, and it was not a fun experience. I often had full weeks where I was waiting on something from other slow-moving departments and had literally nothing to do, and my boss knew and didn't really care, although I still had to show up and sit in my desk for eight hours a day.

And I was a developer but had to ask permission and make a case for every single program I wanted to install to help do my job, which isn't necessarily bad (there are understandable security concerns with downloaded software from the internet), except when Net Ops rates it a low priority and takes weeks to give you the permission. I eventually just stopped asking.

The atmosphere was also the most subdued environment I've ever been in. Most people not talking to or acknowledging each other unless their cubes were near, very few jokes, I almost got the feeling I'd get in trouble if I ever showed exuberance.

Not that I ever felt like it anyway. The lighting didn't help with that either, since we were in a room with very little natural light and soft florescent lighting that made it difficult for me to even stay awake there.

I did learn some new things there, and people were polite and friendly, so it wasn't all bad, but I'd never go back.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#78

Post by frandroid »

rockcoder wrote: post #69

When every company hires only "the best" (top 1%), what are the rest of us (99%) suppose to do?

Fortunately, since the best 1% are distributed across thousands of companies, all these companies have to settle for 99% percentile developers as well.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#79

Post by whatever_dude »

sandworm101 wrote: post #17

There is no "the best". There are only people. Some people work wonderfully at one shop, but horribly at another. This can have nothing to do with their skill or even their personality. Each working environment is unique as is each candidate. You simply cannot tell which will work perfectly until long after someone is properly hired. So why bother interviewing? The goal is not "we only hire the best". Hiring is only…

I think there is "the best in context", and that's what people should strive for. The "best in all situations" is what most people like to chase after however.

Someone who has 20 years of knowledge in a dozen different languages doesn't matter as much if you just need someone with 2 years of very deep knowledge in one very specific language. On paper the former is "better" (even if one can learn/adapt), but in context someone who fits the latter is a better fit.

People can also learn. I'll take a junior developer over a senior developer who's an asshole any time. In a team, over time, the junior developer can more easily become an asset than the senior can change his/her ways.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#80

Post by devonkim »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #76

In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes. Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype intervie…

Isn't this not too dissimilar from the Netflix hiring process (minus the readily giving offers part)?
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