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

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

#121

Post by santialbo »

itronitron wrote: post #75
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…

Well, if you are applying that filter at the resume scan then you could be missing 'the best' as I would expect people to edit their resume for length (to one page) and to focus more on skills related to the position.

That's something I know and it's a decision I make due to not being able to interview everyone. If I can interview 5 people I won't pick 5 random cvs. I'll pick those that, in my opinion, are more likely to be a good fit.

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

#122

Post by Datenstrom »

ptero wrote: post #107
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 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.

Yes the US undergraduate degree. I have gotten into some research and got picked up for an exceptional internship which have been good. It doesn't change that I could have passed out of all the actual curriculum on day one though.

I guess "community taught" would be better than "self taught" since I learned from so many people online. But I had been programming for 10 years before school, and while I was in the military (over 6 years) I took advantage of many MOOCs from MIT, Stanford, UNSW, etc. and many books from Knuth to most of the No Starch Press library which I understand is not the case for traditional students. It is frustrating though, especially not being just out of high school.

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

#123

Post by Klockan »

test1235 wrote: post #120
YokoZar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people I know who never got a CS education yet ended up programming got their break interviewing at Google. Google seems more comparatively willing to hire those without degrees since there's so much confidence in the interview process.

That doesn't sound like any Google interview I've ever read about. I thought their questions were really mathematical and algorithm heavy?

That is the point, a person who is good at mathematics and algorithms will get hired at Google even if she doesn't have a cs degree.

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

#124

Post by twoquestions »

Damn, this paints a picture where only the shiniest candidates matter, and the rest of us mere mortals should apologize for breathing their air.

How do you know if you're "the best", and if not, how do you become "the best" (or at least employable), or is this industry a "ya got it or ya don't" kind of place like music or art, where only the top 10% deserve to make a living?

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

#125

Post by wolfgke »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #102
wolfgke wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

At least I know that in Germany before the "Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG)" (general equality law) was passed, companies were more open about reasons. Since this law was passed, any openness can easily lead to a lawsuite against the company where the company has to prove that they did not discriminate against the candidate. Indeed when the law was passed there were lots of lawsuits of really untuitable candidates, where the company could nevertheless not prove up to "valid in court" that it did not discriminate against the candidate for reasons specified in this law and thus had to pay the unsuitable candidate some months of salary as compensation.

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

#126

Post by brightball »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #119
brightball wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but it does show exploration and curiosity to at least try another language or two. If you’ve been doing .NET or PHP for 5+ years without even trying something else I’d treat it as a red flag too. Level of interest is the #1 quality in the great programmers I’ve been around. If you aren’t exploring even a little that’s a concern.

>If you’ve been doing .NET or PHP for 5+ years without even trying something else I’d treat it as a red flag too. But if I put other languages on my resume outside of .NET, I might look unfocused or "not specialized". Plus, some people treat resume skills as an expert matter, so if I'm only doing hobby stuff, the conversation might not be that interesting (hobby projects usually never pay technical debt so I can just…

I’ve never even heard of an interviewer knocking someone for having more than one language on their resume.

I’m not saying you need 10 or all the trendiest things. You need at least 2.

Programming is a job of constant problem solving. If you’ve done the job close to 10 years and never seen a problem with the language that you are using...that actually tells me more about you than any other question I can answer. It tells me that you are married to one stack, you’re invested in it, you’re probably going to be highly resistant to solutions that don’t fit in that box. And it tells me that because languages are all about trade offs because there isn’t a perfect language out there. It tells me that you have your hammer.

People are strongly confusing my comment with “know all the cool tech trends and program in your spare time constantly”.

I did not say that. I said use ONE additional language if you’ve been working for more than 5 years. ONE. It’s a very low bar and if that is shocking, silly or offensive it is probably worth it to take a hard look at why. You could meet that criteria in a single weekend if you wanted to.

This isn’t directed at you but the comments I’ve seen so far.

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

#127

Post by barry-cotter »

Datenstrom wrote: post #109
Delmania wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It was in fact possible to go straight to a Master’s in Software Engineering.

Oxford’s distance Master’s will take experience in place of a degree.

https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/

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

#128

Post by bambataa »

What strikes me about this is how little weight recruiters put on referrals from current employees. I would have thought that being recommended by an internal employee would get you an initial interview at the very least. Surely a trusted employee’s recommendation is more reliable than whatever random sift the recruiters have.

Does anyone with experience of recruitment have any stats on how successful referred applicants tend to be?

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

#129

Post by CydeWeys »

deepGem wrote: post #64
CydeWeys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most SWE interviews at Google take place in either Java or C#. These aren't sexy, trendy languages. They're boring line-of-business languages that just work. And the frameworks you already know matters very little.

I think you have the option of taking the test in Java, C++ or Python. I hadn't heard of the C# option. Thank you for mentioning the same.

JacaScript is another frequently used language. It along with Python are typically what I see new grads using. More experienced interviewees tend to use Java/C#/C++. I interviewed in C# despite most of ,y interviewers not knowing it (though any dev can figure C# out well enough to evaluate algorithm correctness). I've also interviewed one person in Go ... despite me not really knowing Go. That's when it's really helpful to have written down every character during the interview for writing up the evaluation afterwards.

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

#130

Post by wtetzner »

chirau wrote: post #9

I disagree with this article, to some extent at least. Perhaps it's specific for trendy companies and startups. Most of which are just looking for the next shiny object, true. However, when you look at companies that move the needle in different industries, companies that have repute, market share and profitability, they couldn't care less what is trending these days. They look for domain expertise and excellence. I…

> The most robust, relevant and profitable companies out there basically say, 'F* trends, show us your worth in salt'.

It took me few tries to understand this, after reading about F*: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15582969

I think you're mostly right, though. I think the article is probably right that companies who _say_ "we only hire the best" don't necessarily even hire good programmers. I don't think the companies you mentioned really care if they have the best, especially since that's pretty hard to measure anyway. They want people that are going to do great job in the area they were hired to work in.

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