We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by ksenzee » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

markshead wrote: post #375

alskdfji wrote: post #232

This was the most depressing part to me: "Another person I know is in a similar situation because his group won’t talk to people who aren’t already employed." It's a long story, but both my wife and I have most recently been at places, in a small-medium city, that have had huge turnover in the last several years due to mismanagement (her entire unit, except for her, left twice while she was working with them; we've l…

Typically if you have an organization that only talks to people with current jobs, that rule is for people sending in cold resumes. On the other hand, if they know who you are, you probably won't have the same filters applied. Let's say you go ahead and move and take time off to watch your child. Two years down the road you want to start looking for work. What you've done with those two years is going to really matte…

> What you've done with those two years is going to really matter.

Caring for their child is what he'll have done with those two years. It's an exhausting full-time job. These suggestions are great for someone who's unemployed, but unrealistic for a full-time caregiver.

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

#412

Post by zentiggr » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

alexasmyths wrote: post #140

driverdan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except all of those companies put an unreasonable amount of weight on degrees. Good luck getting Google to talk to you if you didn't graduate a top collage, let alone not having a degree.

"Except all of those companies put an unreasonable amount of weight on degrees" I don't think it's 'unreasonable' at all to put strong emphasis on education. Surely, at the end of the day it's possible to be great without it, but having a good education is pretty strongly correlating factor with so many things. 'Being cool', I don't think is correlated with much at all. Unless it's super consumer facing and inner cul…

Touched my first computer almost exactly 40 years ago. I can troubleshoot most hw/os issues with one ear and eyeball tied behind my back. Can program decently in many general domains. Never went past my associate's because the work was more compelling. Knowing how many PhD's never work in their field, and how many Master's get earned and laid aside, I can't agree with you at all. I think you might be imagining that correlation.

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

#413

Post by watwut » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #403

markshead wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically if you have an organization that only talks to people with current jobs, that rule is for people sending in cold resumes. On the other hand, if they know who you are, you probably won't have the same filters applied. Let's say you go ahead and move and take time off to watch your child. Two years down the road you want to start looking for work. What you've done with those two years is going to really matte…

God, what a terribly insensitive comment. Leaving the workforce to care for family is not "check[ing] out for 24 months."

No. But he is right that if you do some activities in the meantime, you will be in very very different position then if you don't. Maybe the biggest difference is level of confidence, bit it such a huge difference that it is worth mentioning.

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

#414

Post by gscott » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #369

pasquinelli wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so mediocre is better than best sometimes?

Definitely. Like any other decision, there's a cost/benefit assessment to be made. Why am I trying to hire super-ninja-ex-google-guy to code up my DB interface for the marketing folk? Doesn't make any sense, the value just isn't there, and super-ninja-ex-google-guy isn't going to take that job anyway. Hell, I'm in this boat currently. I'm looking for a junior dev to help with certain menial tasks here and there. I'll…

Those trying to hire super-ninja-ex-google-guy want to raise more funding and need to brag to VC's to get more money.

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

#415

Post by oldandtired » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

wooter wrote: post #389

oldandtired wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be too critical, but you have a number of grammatical errors in your comment. I believe this shows how easy it can be to get at least 2 typographical errors in even a short piece of communication. I am sure that this comment will infringe on someone's standard.

really? you don't think its evidence that we invest varying levels of effort into things we care about? thusly, a candidate with typographical errors is closer internet-comment-level interested effort-wise in the position.

Claiming something is easy to do and then making the same errors simply diminished the strength of the argument presented. The comment comes across as "do as I say, not do as I do."

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

#416

Post by pellucide » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

I deliberately put 3-4 typos on my resume to weeed ouut the carelesss screeners.

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

#417

Post by monocasa » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

sbuttgereit wrote: post #387

afpx wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, there may not be a tech shortage if teams are “weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles....” But, if there is, I’m assuming that candidates are just applying randomly to any positions that are available. The ‘Tinder’ strategy is probably a good one if the goal is to maximize earnings. However, if one is a ‘5’ it makes sense to spam all of the positions. But, if one is a ‘10’,…

I think there probably is a tech shortage in terms of strong candidates. I've worked with some companies where there are people that are employed as "developers", but they can't tell you the simplest of basics; I don't consider myself a developer, yet my meager knowledge and understanding far exceeds the skills of some of these people. I see more of these types than you'd think could survive for long (much of my work…

And adding on to this, these people are understandably most of the people looking for work.

I've literally seen engineers with 20 years of experience grind for 45 minutes on FizzBuzz, not able to make any progress.

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

#418

Post by monocasa » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

HeavyStorm wrote: post #358

static_noise wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People learn about and optimize for those heuristics. Those resumes will on average get better and better over time until half of them are almost perfect. Those people all spent considerable time and energy on optimizing their resume. You get people who look good on paper. They will continue to excel in your company (on paper). If your job is to look good on paper. Yes, go on.

You should at least look good on paper. I'll not hire you because you have a wonderful resume, but I'll interview you. And I'll not interview you if your resume looks bad. (truth be said, I'm not the one selecting resumes right now, and sometimes I get garbage that I wouldn't even interview)

I think it's fair to keep in mind that the developers you want don't have a lot of experience interviewing (they tend to get snatched up as soon as they're on the market, if not before), and the ones you definitely don't want might have more experience interviewing than doing their actual job.

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

#419

Post by smcl » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #410

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

About that heuristic, when hiring for sysadmins in the early 2000s, I found there to be an inverse relationship between résumé quality and candidate quality (with one notable exception — résumés written in LaTeX were usually of high quality and almost always indicated a quality candidate). Originally I had a similar conception about résumés — they should be one or two pages max, should look nice, and should contain n…

How do you determine that? I wrote mine in LaTeX but submit a PDF. Usually that default LaTeX font is a dead giveaway, but I find it to be pretty ugly so I switched it out.

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

#420

Post by ballenf » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

nmcfarl wrote: post #402

ballenf wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have close family members with dyslexia. If they asked whether they'd make good programmers, I'd honestly tell them that their disability would make it very challenging and frustrating. They could still do it, but their passion would have to be enough to drive them to work much harder than their colleagues to achieve the same results. I'd also recommend that they go to whatever lengths necessary to eliminate ty…

So I'm really really biased here. But as a programer with (mild) dyslexia, I have to say I think it's one of the best professional fields for this. We have linters, syntax highlighting editors, pretty printers, compilers and a whole suite of tools to make sure typos never go live. No other other field has these tools, and high paying professional work does in fact require "typo free work" to make it anywhere, in almo…

Wow, I never thought about it that way. You have single-handedly changed the advice I'd give to my family on the issue. (Except for the resume advice above, which I think still holds.)