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)

#441

Post by austincheney » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:05 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 don't like resumes as 98% of each is probably bullshit unless the candidate is a truly amazing rockstar with 10+ years of valid experience. As a result any heuristic applied to resumes is just as worthless as most candidates.

When I have interviewed in the past I literally stopped reading once I see contact information and save reading it for during the interview. If the contact information is not the first thing on the resume it goes in the trash.

For valid heuristics I start by telling candidates something they don't want to hear. If that means they drop out then good riddance as I have 30 other people who are more interested in the position.

Examples:

* When I did this years ago I would email JavaScript candidates to set up an interview time and I would tell them jQuery isn't available in this job. Half would immediately drop out. Good.

* For modern JavaScript candidates tell them the DOM will feature heavily in the interview and there will be no MVC framework. Half will drop out.

* A rough equivalent for Java is Spring MVC or forcing architecture considerations.

You can filter people pretty fast just by focusing on foundational simple vanilla code questions. It is astonishing how many unqualified people apply for jobs whose resumes are a complete waste of paper.

The current employer would only take contractors for new hires (let agencies find the people) and would give out some interview questions to the contract agencies so that candidates knew what to study for before showing up for the interview. Even still only 9 out of 73 interviewed candidates were selected (who knows how many resumes were filtered out).

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

#442

Post by SilasX » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:06 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #253

nanodano wrote: post #207

When I hear "we only hire the best" it just sounds like generic crap an HR person added, not a big red flag that they are snobs. I don't think it really means anything. By definition, anyone hiring anyone wants to only hire the best. Nobody wants to hire only the mediocre. If I hear things like that I generally just ignore it. Anyway, the author makes all kinds of unfounded assumptions. Someone with .NET and Windows…

>By definition, anyone hiring anyone wants to only hire the best I agree with your overall sentiment, but this isn't true at all. The best cost money, and the best don't want to work on boring stuff. Most software is boring. A team of mediocre devs is more often than not just fine to do the job and it keeps cost down (and turnover likely lower).

In a way, "we only hire the best" is an admission that one doesn't understand the tradeoff you just described.[1]

(I call it "failing the Scylla-Charybdis Heuristic" when your model doesn't contain the downsides of opting for more of something: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-charybd... )

[1] Edit: Though in some cases, one could say that, while legitimately accepting the tradeoffs it entails. Say, an environment where extremely competent people make a huge difference in terms of dollars and you have the budget to draw such people away from their alternatives. Perhaps asteroid mining, where all kinds of things could go wrong but you can't always provide remote assistance to the miner. Needless to say, "your scrappy startup with a CRUD app" is not that environment!

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

#443

Post by gknoy » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #281

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 overheard this in an elevator, "our HR department tosses the bottom half of resumes in the pile into the trash because we refuse to hire unlucky people"

You joke, but this is very similar to the Secretary Problem's optimal solution [0] [1]:

> The optimal cutoff tends to n/e as n increases, and the best applicant is selected with probability 1/e.

So, you deliberately reject a first cohort of applicants, and then pick the first person you encounter that's better than the best one you rejected. Obviously, in the joke that's not possible as they are neglecting to interview them, so I think the sibling comments are correct about it being a skewering of the hiring process, but it's neat that there's such a close parallel.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567307

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

#444

Post by beat » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #327

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…

Yes, but: Being hand-delivered a resume from a trusted colleague is a filtering mechanism. It won't guarantee a phone call, but it's a better recommendation than a recruiter trying to gain a commission on this week's "really awesome superstar."

A hand-delivered resume from someone I trust is almost guaranteed an interview, regardless of typos!

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

#445

Post by monocasa » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #269

Klockan wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, am very math heavy, created a number of algos for my work over the last 25+ years (in physics sim, bioinformatics, systems management/orchestration, etc.), run sessions at an ACM conference, yadda yadda yadda. > Two google interviews, and nothing. From what I hear from other people I consider way smarter than I, they also got nothing. Then you and your friends weren't fluent…

they care about your fluency with maths and algorithms "Maths" is a red herring -- a physics PhD who's still active in academia will definitely be very fluent in maths. It's all about "algorithms", but I think a lot of software people have tunnel vision about that. There's a lot of fancy terminology you pick up in a CS degree; requiring people to know that filters out a lot of potentially good candidates, unless they…

> That's fine if the special CS terminology is absolutely essential for all programmers. But is it really?

I'd argue that it matters more for Google more than most employers. The combo of their scale, combined with their large amount of custom infrastructure, combined with their desire to be able to retask engineers on a whim, means that individual engineers will have pretty good chance of touching code where the choice of Big O could make or break a product.

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

#446

Post by mementomori » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

>By going after people with the most sought after qualifications, TrendCo has narrowed their options down to either paying out the nose for employees, or offering non-competitive compensation packages. TrendCo has chosen the latter option, which partially explains why they have, proportionally, so few senior devs – the compensation delta increases as you get more senior, and you have to make a really compelling pitch to someone to get them to choose TrendCo when you’re offering $150k/yr less than the competition.

What is the "compensation delta"? Is that part of a formula for calculating expected compensation? For that matter, what is a good formula for calculating compensation when weighing job offers?

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

#447

Post by austincheney » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

afpx wrote: post #301

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…

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’,…

The shortage is an imaginary bi-product of two actual problems. One problem is bias and the second is talent gaps.

Bias is a factor in that many interviewers have no idea what they want from a technical perspective, or simply lack confidence themselves. When in doubt hire somebody exactly like yourself. This isn't objective or a valid representation of competence, but it is common.

Talent gaps apply when there are a surplus, plethora is a better term, of new developers and senior developers are purple unicorns. It takes time and lots of practice to transform a newb into a rockstar. Throwing money at the problem isn't a magic formula for providing extra time and practice. Years of employment experience isn't an indicator of quality either as that doesn't necessarily mean practice solving hard problems.

When you solve for bias suddenly there are a lot more competent candidates available. If you realize a single senior paired with several newbs accounts for the talent gap more quickly suddenly you can hire functional teams without false expectations.

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

#448

Post by mathattack » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

My engineering friends thought Mike’s resume was fine

If they thought it was fine, they could easily tell HR, "Interview this person" and just like that, they're past the screen. (I don't know why it too me so long to learn this.)

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

#449

Post by js2 » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

smcl wrote: post #419

js2 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the time, the default font, that there were a few common LaTeX résumé templates, and the superior formatting compared to alternatives. If I wasn't sure, I'd just ask.

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

#450

Post by jroseattle » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

"We only hire the best" is a statement made by those who subconsciously don't believe they project outward quality and excellence in their everyday execution. It's as if those on the selling side believe that others see them as just-another-job, and they need to refute it. It's not a red-flag, but quite literally ignore the remark -- it's pointless white noise.

As for uninformed biases about tech stack and experience and what-not -- yep, that's going to happen. It's fairly well-known that hiring is basically a broken experience, even at the very best of companies. Don't expect everyone to get it.

In terms of MS stack vs non-MS stack, the reality is it's a hit and miss proposition. The OP's story about his colleague being competent in general comp-sci can be matched with plenty of others where the individual's competency seems to stop at Win32. My advice -- if your resume points only to MS-stack systems, get something non-MS on there.

I'm in Seattle, we run non-MS systems and I see quite a few MSFT-based resumes. I'm ex-MSFT and feel I can gauge competency across these lines fairly effectively. Many companies are willing to give some a chance, but learning Linux on their dime-and-time? That's a lot to ask.

With all of this, take it with a grain of salt. The common basis most people are told to follow is "hire slow, fire fast". In reality, this just means be super-conservative in your hiring decisions. Super-conservative leads to people "checking off all the boxes" in case something doesn't pan out -- that way they won't be criticized later.