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

We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 653 posts

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#101

Post by Delmania »

Datenstrom wrote: post #98
Delmania wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are advantages to going to college over a boot camp or self learning. In fact, CS and SE degrees are ones that pay for themselves. If you're not willing to put in the work, that tells me you won't last long at Google.

Being self taught I haven't learned a single thing in college. Besides networking I do not see any advantage. > If you're not willing to put in the work Why should anyone who already knows everything for a degree have to waste 4-6 years of their life?

I'm sure you don't know everything. Looking at your profile, I see the words "technician" so I am thinking you were trained at some point.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#102

Post by freddie_mercury »

wolfgke wrote: post #93
jstewartmobile wrote: post #86

It would be nice if the process were a little more transparent. If people just knew that a company rejected them for reason X, that would make a huge difference. If X were stupid, they'd know they missed a bullet. If X were rooted in a misunderstanding, they'd have a chance to clear it up. There is so much side-channel information used in the corporate hiring process, and it gets mixed-up in HR far more often than an…

> If people just knew that a company rejected them for reason X, that would make a huge difference. Give a thanks to the discrimination laws. Companies don't want to give any leads for getting sued.

The practice is exactly the same in countries that aren't the U.S. And countries that don't even have discrimination laws.

The fact that companies behave the same in the presence of dramatically varying legal norms suggests that your belief that discrimination laws are the problem is baseless.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#103

Post by Delmania »

wavefunction wrote: post #97
Delmania wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are advantages to going to college over a boot camp or self learning. In fact, CS and SE degrees are ones that pay for themselves. If you're not willing to put in the work, that tells me you won't last long at Google.

I had to leave college early due to a family thing and start working to contribute. That was eighteen years ago, and I've put in so much work because I run into attitudes like yours. Of course, in the past twenty four hours I've created an app and potential side-business from a technology stack I had absolutely no experience in any of it just to prove to a potential employer I can do 'front-end' stuff for them. The a…

> Of course, in the past twenty four hours I've created an app and potential side-business from a technology stack I had absolutely no experience in any of it just to prove to a potential employer I can do 'front-end' stuff for them.

This tells me you're wasting your time and potential. There are other ways to get a job.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#104

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

hvidgaard wrote: post #44
santialbo wrote: post #14

I´ve recently been in charge of hiring a lot of people and have probably done +100 interviews in the last year. I generally don´t mind the stack/language candidates have been using but I always value very highly that they have used different stacks and languages during their whole carrer. When I interview 5+ years .NET developers who haven't used another language, not even in their spare time, the result is usually a…

I've been at the other end of that scale. I've had a fair few candidates that have used 10 different stacks, but wasn't truly good at any of them. On the other hand, I've had candidates with 10 years of C#, but used it in different settings, web, backend, actor based system, ect, and they blew the socks of most other candidates. What I look for, is that they show versatility and depth. The combination is really impor…

"Then I throw them in the deep end of the pool to see how they cope in the unknown." That's a good sign that the tech interview process is very broken.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#105

Post by outsidetheparty »

grabcocque wrote: post #18

I always forget how much the enlightened community of Hacker News loves to downvote comments drawing attention to the heavily young white privileged male-centric hiring policies of many tech companies. Honestly, you'd think I'd learn, that this community does not like to be reminded quite how regressive our gender, class and racial politics looks to the outside world.

In which Mr. "Grabcocque" takes issue with our regressive gender politics

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#106

Post by outsidetheparty »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #105
grabcocque wrote: post #18

I always forget how much the enlightened community of Hacker News loves to downvote comments drawing attention to the heavily young white privileged male-centric hiring policies of many tech companies. Honestly, you'd think I'd learn, that this community does not like to be reminded quite how regressive our gender, class and racial politics looks to the outside world.

In which Mr. "Grabcocque" takes issue with our regressive gender politics

(I don't actually disagree with your rant, much, at least for a significant subset of the HN community. This particular article is maybe a somewhat tangential prompt for it, though.)

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#107

Post by ptero »

Datenstrom wrote: post #98
Delmania wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are advantages to going to college over a boot camp or self learning. In fact, CS and SE degrees are ones that pay for themselves. If you're not willing to put in the work, that tells me you won't last long at Google.

Being self taught I haven't learned a single thing in college. Besides networking I do not see any advantage. > If you're not willing to put in the work Why should anyone who already knows everything for a degree have to waste 4-6 years of their life?

I assume you are talking about US undergraduate degree (if not, can you clarify). If so, most good colleges give you ample opportunities for additional learning -- go to grad classes, do research -- those avenues are usually very easy to open.

I probably agree that for each student at least one of those 4 years is usually wasted; but this is different than whole program being a waste for a person.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#108

Post by 1812312 »

grabcocque wrote: post #18

I always forget how much the enlightened community of Hacker News loves to downvote comments drawing attention to the heavily young white privileged male-centric hiring policies of many tech companies. Honestly, you'd think I'd learn, that this community does not like to be reminded quite how regressive our gender, class and racial politics looks to the outside world.

Shut up and learn how to program.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#109

Post by Datenstrom »

Delmania wrote: post #101
Datenstrom wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being self taught I haven't learned a single thing in college. Besides networking I do not see any advantage. > If you're not willing to put in the work Why should anyone who already knows everything for a degree have to waste 4-6 years of their life?

I'm sure you don't know everything. Looking at your profile, I see the words "technician" so I am thinking you were trained at some point.

Yes the Navy "trained" me by saying "here are 20,000 pages of documentation on the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft avionics, now go fix it".

That has nothing to do with my CS studies, of which I have learned nothing from college and could have CLEPed a BS degree on day one if it was possible and moved on to a masters where I should have been initially placed.

> I'm sure you don't know everything.

I never claimed I knew everything.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#110

Post by mikebenfield »

consp wrote: post #46
qxzw wrote: post #25

How important is GPA? I will soon get my Master's degree in CS, but it is via the path of least resistence. Therefore GPA is not shiny. I decided that spending my finite time and energy can be better, so I concentrated on coding (my own projects) and socializing, sports and games etc. When I studied for exams, at point where I knew that I was going to pass, I shifted to other projects. Next year when I join the workf…

In my experience there are three types. Note: We don't have GPA, but some companies look at study grades (some only masters, others bachelors grades) and some even go further back to high school/middle school which would be sort of GPA. The types I've met (companies/recruiters alike): 1) Don't care, look at what you think you can do and your motivation for that assessment. They usually also give some form of shorter…

> Look at GPA/High/middle/etc school grades

Really? There is a possibility that this is my lack of industry experience talking, but I find the idea that a company looks at high school grades very difficult to believe. As for middle school... I would seriously wonder about the basic competence (and sanity) of someone who asked me about middle school grades.

Post reply on HN