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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

#121

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

If they are in the a-job-every-2-years treadmill, it may not make any difference.

It probably depends on lots of factors, but I do like the consulting idea better.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#122

Post by kohito »

phamilton wrote: post #92

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 assum…

Sounds like your team kind of backed into an insight psychological research has identified and Google has attempted to apply. Something called "psychological safety".

"Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?" - from re:work

There's a great NYTimes article about it that looks at your hunch about the weirdness of the team members being the key to awesomeness. But Google ultimately realized that it wasn't so much about how different the backgrounds of the team members were, but was instead that that internal diversity could produce psychological safety.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learn...

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#123

Post by dorfsmay »

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…

There's an often quoted saying out there:

"Can you imagine if we train our employees and they leave?

Well, can you imagine if we don't train them and they stay?"

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#124

Post by p4wnc6 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #121
giulianob wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they are in the a-job-every-2-years treadmill, it may not make any difference. It probably depends on lots of factors, but I do like the consulting idea better.

> a-job-every-2-years treadmill

This is already caused as much by companies as it is by candidates who are job hoppers. When I see a resume with short stints, it basically has no effect on me any more. If the person is good and I do my job to make them happy to stay, that's the best I can hope for. Pretending like either I can predict who the job hoppers are in advance, or that I should only hire people who magically have some intrinsic desire to work for me no matter how I treat them are both fantasies.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#125

Post by artursapek »

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…

> Or do what most startups do. Pay next to nothing. Treat everyone like widgets in a great machine. Fire only those whose admit having a life outside of work. And hire only those who share similar opinions on ultimate frisbee because culture!

What happened that makes you this bitter?

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#126

Post by logfromblammo »

draw_down wrote: post #13

My team does take-home project, a small problem to solve that should take at most a couple hours. It's the same problem for every candidate so we're judging them on common work. It's not real work, it's made up. In interviewing discussions in places like HN, there is enough pushback against this idea, which is a bit surprising to me. I thought a few hours work was reasonable when I was interviewing. But my point is t…

Generally speaking, this is a turn off for me, because I want to see proportional investment by the employer in the hiring process.

If I have to spend two hours doing made-up homework for you before you will even talk to me, I expect that you will then spend an equivalent amount of effort proving to me that your company is somewhere that I would like to work. If you are not willing to invest that amount of time, the whole point of the interview is to reach an arrangement wherein I give you time and you give me money, so you could pay me for those 2 hours instead.

While I don't necessarily walk away from interviews that turn me off, every warning flag does add to the minimum offer amount I would be willing to accept from the employer. If you don't treat me with professional courtesy and respect during the interview, I am silently adding numbers in my head. If you act like I am the one wasting your time, I am probably adding $20000/year to my salary expectations.

I would much rather moonlight for a few hours every week, while getting paid to do actual work, than spend even one hour doing a stupid toy homework problem that ends up being a great signal for the employer and a very poor one for me. It isn't a matter of whether the pay is significant for me, but whether the employer is making and demonstrating an effort to make the process an exchange between equals rather than a superior-inferior relationship.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#127

Post by maxaf »

> 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.

Are you fucking kidding me? What am I going to tell my current employer while I "audition" for the mere possibility of a next job?

Most working adults in the US don't even get three to eight weeks of discretionary vacation that they aren't already using to spend time with family or, you know, recharge after working the salt mines for meager scraps.

This is the wrong approach for anyone except - maybe - very junior candidates. Fresh out of college, zero responsibility, wide open prospects. Those people could actually use 3-8 weeks of paid auditioning. Those of us who have families simply can not afford to do this.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#128

Post by marcosdumay »

ryandrake wrote: post #54
Gyonka wrote: post #4

I really agree with the sentiment of audition projects. The interviews I have enjoyed the most all involved some sort of take-home project, although I have never been paid for one. On that note, how expensive does it become for a startup to dole out many interview projects across a wide range of candidates? I think a better strategy would be to conduct preliminary interviews and then based on some granularity, assign…

When you're looking for someone to install hardwood floors for you, do you ask them do the doghouse for you first, before you decide to hire him?

Hum, this is more like hiring the person to do the doghouse, and only hiring for the house after they make a good job there.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#130

Post by criddell »

emodendroket wrote: post #115
criddell wrote: post #71

> 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 Atwo…

Why would professional musicians be unwilling to audition in a non-anonymous situation? That sounds quite dubious to me.

I had to Google for it and I don't have the story right.

Claudia Goldin was one of the authors of this study: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.90.4.715

She was able to attribute 25% of the increase in hiring of women by orchestras was due to the blind auditions. She also found that there was an explosion of auditions when orchestras adopted the blind format.

So it had an effect, just not as large as I thought.

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