We only hire the trendiest • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#341

Post by callahad » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #335

steego wrote: post #270

Daniel Kahneman talks about an idea called substitution in his book Thinking Fast and Slow that I think really applies here. Here's the jist: When your brain is faced with doing a task that's going to require a lot of glucose it will look for shortcuts to save you energy. One of those shortcuts is your mind will look for an available heuristic, swap out the energy hungry analysis for the heuristic, and then signal yo…

>When your brain is faced with doing a task that's going to require a lot of glucose it will look for shortcuts to save you energy. One of those shortcuts is your mind will look for an available heuristic, swap out the energy hungry analysis for the heuristic, and then signal your conscious mind that you did all the analytical hard work. Sorry I didn't read the book but I am curious if there is any scientific evidenc…

Thinking Fast and Slow isn't a textbook, but Kahneman is a Nobel laureate and most of the book reports experimental findings with 30+ pages of citations in the endnotes. It's a good read.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#342

Post by cp9 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #266

minikites wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the compensation like for 10+ hours of work?

I get the sentiment behind this, but bear in mind that interviewing is a two way street - and the company is often spending a lot more on it than you are (of course, they can better afford it). That's worth possibly negotiating the amount of time or staging earlier parts with less impact. I wouldn't say no to an interview that is going to burn a day, but I also wouldn't go to one without a pretty good feeling that I…

you're asking me to feel bad for a company that probably has millions in seed funding for investing a day in a new hire? hah, no, not going to happen. I (and probably most people here) already have a job that pays me for the work I do, this company can either do the same or they can walk. The one thing that's not going to happen is for me to pity them for the money they are investing.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#343

Post by beachstartup » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:05 PM UTC

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #325

Bahamut wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I interview candidates, the make or break question for me is does the person possess critical thinking skills? Various things may point one way or another for this, but it is a mistake to assume [insert working at a particular company] is an indication that someone has to have the skills, as well as to assume someone not having [insert pet qualification] is an indication that someone does not have these skills.…

I would be interested to know how you're assessing for "critical thinking skills".

instead of asking them stupid, verbatim-recall questions, i give them a problem and ask them how they would solve it.

i.e., "a customer reports his website is running too slow. describe how you would identify and solve the problem."

it's a good sign when they start asking you follow-up questions, like "is it load balanced? is there a database?". it's a bad sign when they say, "just restart the server".

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#344

Post by cp9 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #96

dunkelheit wrote: post #78

I see wonderful symmetry here. There are TrendyCos (hot startup unicorns), BigCos (established companies like google or amazon or microsoft) and UnknownCos (not in the limelight so there is not much information about them). Likewise there are TrendyDevs (hotshots who produce one heavily github-starred framework after another), BigCoDevs (multiple years of experience at one of the BigCos, probably were responsible for…

There's no magic to it at all. Have every candidate work on programming problems related to the work you do at your company. Have every candidate work on the same problems, and let them do it from home. Build and iterate on a rubric for grading those challenges. It is amazing to me that almost nobody does this, but: almost nobody does this. They have programmers write code on a whiteboard, or on some whiteboard-codin…

cause I have a job that pays me. I'm not working on stuff for your company for free

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#345

Post by grandalf » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process:

- adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool.

- openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting.

- resourcefulness -- has this person found ways to keep learning after college and has he/she continued to up his/her game.

- desire to ship -- does this person have a deep desire to produce work that will be used by others.

- desire to grow -- does this person have clear career growth goals. Ideally these are not tied to titles or bossing others around, which are negatives.

- rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully.

- territoriality -- does this person seem territorial or speak about issues of proudly defending turf in previous positions? Doing so is a negative.

- poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness? This is a big warning sign and an instant do not hire.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#346

Post by dipnuggetron » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #290

LoSboccacc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing drives that point home as having people come visit the open space as if the techies are the local office zoo.

"Look at that one, honey! He's wearing a Ramones t-shirt while head-banging and playing air guitar. Oh, and look over there! That whole section of the room appears to have fallen out of a Warby Parker catalog..."

I can think of one San Mateo company that as you walk in to reception there are open windows looking upon 20 some odd developers, replete with projectors showing sales graph nonsense. It's like they were caged animals.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#347

Post by bjt » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

steego wrote: post #270

Daniel Kahneman talks about an idea called substitution in his book Thinking Fast and Slow that I think really applies here. Here's the jist: When your brain is faced with doing a task that's going to require a lot of glucose it will look for shortcuts to save you energy. One of those shortcuts is your mind will look for an available heuristic, swap out the energy hungry analysis for the heuristic, and then signal yo…

I think you're right about the mental shortcuts, but the main effect I see at play in the article is about misaligned incentives.

It's in the organization's interest to hire the underrated, but it's not in the HR recruiter's interest to do that. If the recruiter refers a candidate who looks good on paper but turns out to be a bad hire, no one's going to blame the recruiter. But every time recruiters have the engineers interview a candidate that's not from a top school or a top company, recruiters risk losing credibility with the engineers if the candidate is rejected or ends up being a bad hire. So recruiters focus on the candidates who are the most defensible, not necessarily those who would make the company the most successful.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#348

Post by djb_hackernews » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #260

djb_hackernews wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but 2 things: 1) HR (presumably taking direction from in house counsel) takes the position that it will be difficult to distinguish between a work sample test and an IQ test 2) We are a large organization with very broad roles. The Performance Team hiring for a Senior Software Engineer will probably want a different work sample than the Analytics Team...

Are you looking for a job? :)

I'm looking for a leadership role. Whether that happens at my current company (I'm an IC with a lot of technical leadership and mentorship responsibilities) or elsewhere only time will tell.

If you or anyone you know is interested I'm a software developer and spend a lot of my time on cloud architectures/containers/multi tenancy optimizations but just generally enjoy solving business problems with technology. In a past life I cofounded a startup that didn't turn out to be viable after going through an incubator (not YC). I have a resume, LinkedIn, Github etc.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#349

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #343

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested to know how you're assessing for "critical thinking skills".

instead of asking them stupid, verbatim-recall questions, i give them a problem and ask them how they would solve it. i.e., "a customer reports his website is running too slow. describe how you would identify and solve the problem." it's a good sign when they start asking you follow-up questions, like "is it load balanced? is there a database?". it's a bad sign when they say, "just restart the server".

I got asked "what happens when you hit return in the browser?" After I had traced from the keyboard driver through libraries and runtimes to the browser event system, then back down thru the network layers to sockets, then thru IP events to land a packet on the remote router, they called a halt. Apparently nobody had actually answered the question before.

IMO Its a good exercise for problem-solving, and plumbs experience and terminology. I'm not so sure you learn anything about the subject's actual programming skills?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#350

Post by cp9 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

ScottAS wrote: post #165

You can replace "trendy" with "good cultural fit" in many places. Cultural fit is arguably the most important factor in hiring someone. From my network, I see a hugely different culture at Microsoft and Google. Just saying.

except "culture fit" is usually a code word for a 25 year old white guy who walks and talks like me.