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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

#91

Post by humanrebar »

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…

I think it's mostly (1). The question is mostly "prove to me you've written code before". I typically let them pick their own language. I'm guessing some are fake-it-until-they-make-it and some are genuine Dunning-Krugers. The phone screen is to filter out category (1).

People that suspect they're in category (2) could come to an interview with some code samples. Personally, I'd even be OK if a (2) contacted me after the phone screen with some code samples and an explanation about what happened. Maybe we could set up another phone call and find another way to assess technical abilities.

Good development requires good communication and someone with the maturity to overcome that sort of problem will fit in well somewhere, maybe even on my team.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#92

Post by phamilton »

We used to ask "What makes this candidate weird?" during the decision meeting.

It wasn't always a deal breaker, but it was very important that the team would be different after hiring someone. We hired quite a few non-CS grads, whether they came via a boot camp or were just self taught.

We ended up with a ragged team of misfits and it was awesome. I've never worked on a team that was so effective at challenging assumptions and biases and shipping features faster than anyone else. I'm convinced it wasn't through Herculean efforts by individuals, rather the product of clear communication and trust within the team.

Ive tried to explain why this worked. One observation: Very rarely did someone make implicit assumptions. Such assumptions are often wrong, but they happen because individuals are similar enough that extrapolation a partial understanding into a full one implicitly happens. We assume that since we got from A to B on the same path that the path from B to C is likely the same. On a team of misfits, you have to clearly communicate the entire sequence of events because everyone is on an entirely different page to start with. The result is that the final product is 100% on target, whereas normally there are a few deviations as the result of implicit assumptions.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#93

Post by p4wnc6 »

giulianob wrote: post #84
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…

Will talented people be willing to give up their full time job for a job they may very likely get fired from? Automattic does something interesting from what I've read. They have you work there as a trial for 1-2 months while keeping your full time job. This is probably pretty stressful but you get the ability to work with the candidate while not asking them to sacrifice their livelihood if things don't work out. Nee…

> Will talented people be willing to give up their full time job for a job they may very likely get fired from?

Maybe, maybe not. If they are already on the job market, then they probably don't mind looking for a job. If they feel that taking your job and getting fired still leaves them financially covered for an additional 6 months of searching, then they may not care too much.

If that company becomes known for this, then being "fired" from them won't really be a bad signal on your resume (if you even want to list it on your resume at all, depending on how long of a stint it is).

I don't think my idea is perfect. No hiring method is perfect. But I think that businesses should take a perspective that's fundamentally more about investing in getting to know and support someone as they are on-boarded, instead of Spanish Inquisitioning them and if they don't run away screaming then rationalizing that you've hired the best possible person (who, surprise, leaves after 18 months anyway because you didn't assess their fit or how their aptitudes really match up with job needs, you just whiteboard hazed them).

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#94

Post by mratzloff »

elcapitan wrote: post #7

tldr: "The most significant shift we’ve made is requiring every final candidate to work with us for three to eight weeks on a contract basis. Candidates do real tasks alongside the people they would actually be working with if they had the job. They can work at night or on weekends, so they don’t have to leave their current jobs; most spend 10 to 20 hours a week working with Automattic, although that’s flexible. (Som…

Or they can just walk down the street and get a job anywhere else with similar compensation with less contortion.

The people who will go through this either a) really want to work at your particular company (in which case, great, but unlikely), or b) are desperate for a job because they've been turned down several times.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#95

Post by timothep »

I love the first graph on Jeff's article. It shows how versatile the "best"-word can be in such a context: - If you have the best programmers in the world but they failed to help you identify when/where to pivot, you fail. - If you have the best programmers in the world but let them run too fast and burn, you fail. - If you have the best programmers in the world but let their ego/drive ignore customer feedback, you fail. - ...

There is no definition for "the best" beside a "well balanced human being"...

I have been researching this exact space for the past few months (www.developersjourney.info) and am now more and more convinced that once you reach a technical-threshold, in order to close onto "better-developers", you need to hunt for the 3-C-values: create, care and criticize. A balanced team should be a patchwork of cultures, backgrounds, desires and skills. But I think the drive toward those 3-Cs isn't optional...

Plug: This is very much an ongoing thoughts-process for me. If you have further input for my DevJourney Project and/or want to appear on my podcast on this subject, please contact me!

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#96

Post by pdevr »

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…

>Talk to people, dig into their background and preferred working style a little. If they appear to be competent, then just hire them.

If I am very good at this assessment, then this may work. However, if I trust my skills to assess someone accurately, I am unlikely to have a complicated hiring process.

If I am a company owner (or manager!) who is not good at assessing people this way, then wouldn't substituting my process with this proposal make me spend a lot of money twice?

1) Paying salary to more people than open positions (Because I don't spend money on a hiring process and rely on my assessment skills, I may end up with many not-so-best-fits)

2) Severance package to let them go

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#97

Post by mikeash »

webjprgm wrote: post #43
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…

The one time I tried a fizzbuzz in a series of interviews, one candidate was surprised and almost insulted. At the end of the day, I learned almost nothing about any of the candidates from this question. Only one candidate (in fact, the one female candidate) implemented it substantially different than any other. All the candidates could do it. They were all CS students at a university, so what was the chance they wer…

When I've seen people advocate Fizzbuzz, it's always in a context of how 90% of their candidates can't even do it. It's intended as a quick screener that immediately eliminates a ton of obviously bad candidates.

You're clearly getting a better caliber of candidate than those people are. That's great! And clearly, if that's the case, you should adjust accordingly. I think the lesson there is to tailor your process to the people you get.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#98

Post by bitshepherd »

ryandrake wrote: post #61

This fear of not hiring the very best explains why everyone in the Valley seems to be interviewing candidates like crazy but nobody is hiring. When I interview I try to tease out potential, and look for signals that show the candidate will work hard and learn fast. Then someone comes in and says, "Well I hazed him and he couldn't implement a red-black tree on a whiteboard. No hire." This mad pickiness causes the myth…

This might explain the string of interviews I've taken place in where it's typically down to one person that shuts everything down because they want to play stump the chump. You know, instead of looking for qualities in candidates that would bring value to the company.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#99

Post by bryanlarsen »

rockcoder wrote: post #69

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

When they say top 1% they generally mean the top 1% of applications. A very large portion of the applications you get for an opening are sent by those who need to send out hundreds of applications to get a job.
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