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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)

#211

Post by mbrameld »

dirktheman wrote: post #26
bertil wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the UK, and I would definitely not be surprised to see candidates show up with suits at places where that’s obviously not required. No one cares. “Pedigree” that’s another question. I did show up in a tailored three-piece suit with a tie and pocket for my interview at Deliveroo (a notorious streetwear influencer now). There was an eyebrow justifiably raised (by a guy in a t-shirt who, I learned afterwards, wa…

We had an interviewee showing up in shorts and t-shirt. Turns out he wanted to combine the interview with a tee off time in the afternoon. While not customary (even though we don't wear suits/business attire at our company) he totally got away with it and it didn't affect the interview.

I don't think I'd want to hire somebody who couldn't see the obvious solution: bring golf clothes and change after the interview.

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

#212

Post by drewlander »

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 have no college degree, or college classes at all, and have been doing systems engineering/software engineering for about 13 years now. All self taught/learning on the job. While it is nice not to have had college loan debt, I know there are things I may have a better grasp on if I spent months learning a particular topic. In fact, I am jealous of people who actually got to spend time being taught computer science and learning interesting things. I am sure there are topics/approaches/patterns that would be very helpful. Not that I am complaining, things certainly have worked out for me very well, it is just something else that I know would "boost" what I already know. On the flip side, I know of one job that was a very short interview, as they said they could only offer X (which was laughably less than what I was making currently) because I had no degree. What I knew meant very little (to the place, not the interviewers), having the piece of paper meant more. You could say "their loss" but on the flip side, I have no idea what opportunities I have missed because of it.

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

#213

Post by Datenstrom »

cableshaft wrote: post #164
Datenstrom wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How many classes did you take in college? Because my first few CS classes I didn't learn a whole lot from either. It wasn't really until the 200 and 300 level classes that I started learning anything substantial that I hadn't picked up on my own beforehand.

I only have a couple classes left. I had already studied it all before starting, materials up to graduate level are mostly available openly online now. I did expect more from the 300-400 level classes and lost a lot of motivation when I realized they were not as advanced as I expected.

I did take some 400 level electives completely outside what I am interested in and had not studied which were great though. One professor for those asked in the beginning what each person expected from and I mentioned what I am actually specializing in and he consistently gave examples of applying it to what I do which was excellent.

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

#214

Post by wolco »

dustingetz wrote: post #145
arkadiytehgraet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is truly funny how first people want 4k monitors but when an application actually uses the given size at full, they cry about "oh, it is too wide", and we end up with disgusting design of web pages with ultra-narrow column of content and wide empty (or ads-filled) columns by both sides.

Do you run your IDE with one file 4k fullscreen?

One file full screen is the best. SublimeText searching allows you to remove the file nav bar. Complete freedom and less junk.

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

#215

Post by astura »

brightball wrote: post #198
astura wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you’ve done the job close to 10 years and never seen a problem with the language that you are using Only having professional experience with %LANGUAGE% does not mean you've never seen a problem with %LANGUAGE%. Why on Earth would you assume that? If you're doing paid work you get minimal input on what technology stacks the projects you are working on use and 99.9% of the time that decision has already been made b…

> Why on Earth would you assume that? Because you've been in the field for 10 years and never once looked for a solution to that problem. It's a giant red flag. > Absolute nonsense. Explain why please. That's basic human behavior.

If you are doing paid work you work with the tools you are told to work with. You don't get to go off on your own and do what you want.

That, however, doesn't preclude you from understanding the flaws of your tools. In fact, I'd expect someone to be an expert in knowing the limitations of a language they have worked with for so long. That doesn't even mean you like your tools or you'd prefer to use them over other tools if given the choice.

Your jumping to completely unwarranted conclusions and it makes it sound like you have very little real world professional experience interviewing and hiring.

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

#216

Post by hvidgaard »

brango wrote: post #204
hvidgaard wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that stage we're past a verbal phone screening, 1. interview, and they've been selected for the last round of interviews and they know before hand what the nature of the interview will be, including the "deep end of the pool" question. It is far and away the best way I've found to see how well they can adapt to new things, which is important to us. But of course, you assume it's not relevant, and that I'm asking t…

In the UK (IIRC IANAL, etc) the interview must be about assessing a candidate's suitability for a job and unsuitability for performing the work is the only justifiable reason for not offering someone a job, as opposed to, e.g. gender, disability, age, attractiveness, etc. So I'm wondering how you'd justify not taking someone on by assessing them on a task that: 1) you know they can't do and, 2) if you've already vett…

My developers frequently need to jump into a completely unknown stack. And even if they didn't, I still expect the senior developers to reason and make decisions about things out of their comfort zone. I'm not asking them to rewrite WordPress in Elixir, or implement vEB trees in C - I'm giving them simple tasks where they are given a codebase to work with, and the task assumes zero knowledge about it, and they have time to prepare.

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

#217

Post by arethuza »

stefantheard wrote: post #202
koolba wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have never worked with someone from Oracle. They do not try to hire remotely the best, they hire cheap. Anyone that can churn out barely functional code, use their customers to functional test it, and take often half a fiscal year to provide a bug fix for you. They have a huge services division and that's the same formula used by all the big players. It's a numbers game for billing and they shoot to make it wor…

I noticed you said "nearly nothing", what are some exceptions? I'm curious why anyone would start using Oracle now. The only reason I would see to use it is because you are reasonably dependent on it already and cannot migrate easily.

Possibly because you have Oracle apps (e.g. Hyperion FM) and don't really care about what database it requires?

Edit: From what I saw Hyperion FM got relatively better after the Oracle acquisition.

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

#218

Post by ProAm »

mbrameld wrote: post #206
ProAm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have never worked with someone from Oracle. They do not try to hire remotely the best, they hire cheap. Anyone that can churn out barely functional code, use their customers to functional test it, and take often half a fiscal year to provide a bug fix for you. Oracle is now more of a technical holding company than a software company, aside from their db, they merely pickup/purchase new companies and wring them ou…

Is a fiscal year longer or shorter than a calendar year?

It depends on what you care about. Do you have a bug that is affecting revenue? Do you pay an annual support/maintenance contract?

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

#219

Post by 52-6F-62 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny you use Renaissance as an example. They won’t give me the time of day because they “don’t hire people from finance”. Which is just as much of a bullshit reason as the ones from the start of the article.

> They won’t give me the time of day because they “don’t hire people from finance” RenTech is a weird firm. The following is a fictional account. Out of school (I was a finance/engineering double major), I interviewed at RenTech. They told me this was my last chance, that if I worked a day on Wall Street they wouldn't want me because they didn't want that culture (I think it's more about ensuring you have no industry…

Mercer and his family seem to seep the hunger for power and control. I'm not surprised the business conducts itself similarly.
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