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Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#51

Post by austincheney »

nitwit005 wrote: post #15
austincheney wrote: post #2

What would you recommend as an objective qualitative measure of competency? The rest of the world, in just about every profession, has certifications or licenses. Unfortunately, this makes software developers cry. It could be that there are many people working as developers who aren't qualified to be there.

Certifications and licenses certainly exist, but proof of their effectiveness often does not. You, after all, do need to hire the people who failed to find out if it works, which tends to be unpopular. If you can produce a demonstratably effective test for filtering out incompetent or low productivity employees, people will bury you in cash at you without hesitation.

That is so far outside of reality. Nobody hires a law student who fails the state bar exam to qualify its effectiveness.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#52

Post by austincheney »

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #42
eric-hu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with people who were eventually fired, I believe there's ample material behind "culture fit". It's stressful working with someone who rubs others the wrong way. Maybe they're borderline sexist, but not enough where you can pin anything on them. Some people in the office will avoid that team or part of the office. Maybe they're borderline reverse-sexist, where you disagreeing with them means you're obvio…

Those rare situations stink. I agree. But from my own experience with blind auditions and from the actual data on how they allow, for example, the percentage of women in symphony orchestras to jump from around 5% to more than 50% in the case of the New York Phil in particular and above at least 35% across the whole industry of orchestral music, I'd say they were resoundingly effective in diversifying professional mus…

A more common situation are junior developers who are embarrassed by mentoring, and so vocally push back with anger that you would dare violate their ego. This is a bad cultural fit that needs to figure out their place in the universe or get the hell out.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#53

Post by warrenm »

muzani wrote: post #46
PurpleRamen wrote: post #45

While the experienced worker might be useless for a company, with the unexperienced worker we know that he will be useless. The experience companys need is the kind of knowledge you can't learn at school, not even from hobby-projects. You need to learn it under the specific pressure of a workplace inside the general conditions of a company. Because the most important part for a company is not how good the worker is,…

The bar for 'experienced' variees a lot though. Someone with 0 months of experience is useless. But I've seen plenty of people with 3 months experience do better than people with 3 years experience. Some also have dealt with logic or projects at a much younger age or in college (like college is supposed to do)

>I've seen plenty of people with 3 months experience do better than people with 3 years experience. Some also have dealt with logic or projects at a much younger age or in college

That's the undefined - and, most often, unencompassable - aspect of informal experience.

Personal example: I was doing pretty intense C++ programming starting when I was about 13 as first an apprentice, and then a "real" developer on a finite element analysis program. I wrote the 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D mesh generators. I learned a couple DOS graphics packages for visualizing the mesh, the analysis, and the results.

None of that was especially documentable: it took going through school and blowing most of my programming courses out of the water to get the formal experience.

And, because I was doing this as a hobby/side-project with a friend, I was also missing a lot of what most people would think are core aspects of programming (didn't learn recursion, for example, until my second year in college - a solid 5+ years after it would have made our project far more manageable and expandable).

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#54

Post by warrenm »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #48
muzani wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bar for 'experienced' variees a lot though. Someone with 0 months of experience is useless. But I've seen plenty of people with 3 months experience do better than people with 3 years experience. Some also have dealt with logic or projects at a much younger age or in college (like college is supposed to do)

Yes, there is no way to measure personality and general experience. So it's of course not a perfect solution. But it's sane defensive solution. It filters out the exceptions in both directions and gives a good baseline of ability you can except from the people. If this doesn't work, you can also go lower. It should be also noted that "x years epxerience" is not always a hard rule, but just a guidance. It should speci…

>It should be also noted that "x years epxerience" is not always a hard rule, but just a guidance.

Absolutely: if a place is looking for 10 years of experience in software development, and you have 6-7 but apply, you have a chance of being considered. If you never apply, you have no chance of being considered.

In some ways it's like the truism that lottery vendors bandy about, "you can't win if you don't play".

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#55

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

austincheney wrote: post #52
brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rare situations stink. I agree. But from my own experience with blind auditions and from the actual data on how they allow, for example, the percentage of women in symphony orchestras to jump from around 5% to more than 50% in the case of the New York Phil in particular and above at least 35% across the whole industry of orchestral music, I'd say they were resoundingly effective in diversifying professional mus…

A more common situation are junior developers who are embarrassed by mentoring, and so vocally push back with anger that you would dare violate their ego. This is a bad cultural fit that needs to figure out their place in the universe or get the hell out.

Perhaps a blind audition would to for tech what it did for music: there aren't any "junior" orchestral musicians. If a musician makes it through to win the job (no matter their age or time spent as a professional) they don't need any mentoring. Winning a blind audition against 200 highly qualified players who are desperate for paid work and who went to Juilliard too (or the comparable) affords the winner instant respect on the job. It's only the "Michael Phelps" who make it through in orchestral music and everyone knows this. No intelligent musician already employed by that orchestra would ever think they could count on winning another audition in that orchestra or any other. With every passing year, employed players fear having to win their gig again against those who have spent months doing 7 hours of orchestral rep practice and nothing but. It is similar to whiteboarding but allows for no errors in a winning candidate. It is just too competitive. I suspect those who fear a blind audition in tech fear that their main/only real qualification is culture fit. Perhaps they fear they would not win in a skill-based audition. Every player does need to adjust to a new band though. It doesn't take long for a musician at that level. This isn't remotely the same as mentoring. Musicians don't get paid when they need mentoring like swes do. That happens in the practice room and at school and in apprentice programs which the musician pays for.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#57

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

warrenm wrote: post #50
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #7

If there were a better way, we would be doing it. Recruiting is half science, half art. There is no formulaic way to guarantee you'll find the perfect hire. There likely never will be. People are fickle -- you could find the perfect person for a position who could have the ulterior motive of "resting and vesting", and not being the leader in your organization that you'd hope they would have been. So we take proxies -…

>Most employees are at will, so we can quickly get rid of them if they aren't a fit. While this is technically true, it's ridiculous to think most employers think this way. Onboarding costs (from placing ads to interviewing to extending offers to actually hiring to getting equipment issued to getting people signed up for all the crap they need to get signed up for to training etc) is MASSIVELY expensive. A day of int…

Let's say you get brought on, and it's clear that you aren't a fit in the first two weeks. They still have the rolodex of other candidates they picked -- they could easily extend an offer to #2.

Flight + hotel should not be a deal breaker for a well-funded business or one with access to a lot of capital. If you're bootstrapping, it could be an issue, but I don't think those startups tend to hire people out of town.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#58

Post by warrenm »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #57
warrenm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most employees are at will, so we can quickly get rid of them if they aren't a fit. While this is technically true, it's ridiculous to think most employers think this way. Onboarding costs (from placing ads to interviewing to extending offers to actually hiring to getting equipment issued to getting people signed up for all the crap they need to get signed up for to training etc) is MASSIVELY expensive. A day of int…

Let's say you get brought on, and it's clear that you aren't a fit in the first two weeks. They still have the rolodex of other candidates they picked -- they could easily extend an offer to #2. Flight + hotel should not be a deal breaker for a well-funded business or one with access to a lot of capital. If you're bootstrapping, it could be an issue, but I don't think those startups tend to hire people out of town.

>they could easily extend an offer to #2

And #2 could easily have already accepted elsewhere. Or otherwise no longer be interested.

Hiring is HARD. And doing it not poorly is often the biggest hope: hiring well is exceptionally difficult - a couple hours of forced interaction in a manner that will never happen again is a pisspoor way of doing it.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#59

Post by eric-hu »

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #42
eric-hu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with people who were eventually fired, I believe there's ample material behind "culture fit". It's stressful working with someone who rubs others the wrong way. Maybe they're borderline sexist, but not enough where you can pin anything on them. Some people in the office will avoid that team or part of the office. Maybe they're borderline reverse-sexist, where you disagreeing with them means you're obvio…

Those rare situations stink. I agree. But from my own experience with blind auditions and from the actual data on how they allow, for example, the percentage of women in symphony orchestras to jump from around 5% to more than 50% in the case of the New York Phil in particular and above at least 35% across the whole industry of orchestral music, I'd say they were resoundingly effective in diversifying professional mus…

My last comment wasn't about genders of people you hire. One person was male and one female.

My point is about team and company dynamics. If someone seems off enough to their potential teawhy take that chance? There are plenty of good candidates out there and the cost of getting rid of a bad employee far exceeds the cost of deleting finding a good one.

I don't care about a candidate's gender, race or whatever else. I care how they'd get along with who they work with, which plays a large part in how we'll be productive together, or get in each other's way.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we still using years of experience to measure work aptitude?

#60

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

eric-hu wrote: post #59
brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rare situations stink. I agree. But from my own experience with blind auditions and from the actual data on how they allow, for example, the percentage of women in symphony orchestras to jump from around 5% to more than 50% in the case of the New York Phil in particular and above at least 35% across the whole industry of orchestral music, I'd say they were resoundingly effective in diversifying professional mus…

My last comment wasn't about genders of people you hire. One person was male and one female. My point is about team and company dynamics. If someone seems off enough to their potential teawhy take that chance? There are plenty of good candidates out there and the cost of getting rid of a bad employee far exceeds the cost of deleting finding a good one. I don't care about a candidate's gender, race or whatever else. I…

Well, there's this data: http://som.yale.edu/news/2017/04/in-new-york-times-prof-jaso... but it doesn't seem to be reaching the right ears. The thing is that a staggering lack of every kind of diversity persists within the tech sector. It is a much bigger problem than the occasional "wrong hire". There will always be some error... some bad hire that slips through any process as we perfect our hiring systems. The data from this study and the positive and highly effective blind orchstral auditions clearly show that we can still improve our strategies in finding the most skilled professional for the job. Perhaps we also need to work on expanding our notions of culture on the job and working toward becoming better engineers who can work with all types of people who want to produce great work. Perhaps you aren't aware of the closeness with wich orchestral musicians must work with stand partners, section members and the whole team and just how detrimental it can be for one person to have a problem so small as "plays great but moves around too much when playing" or "plays great but is an arrogant jerk during rehearsal creating bad morale"... and the thing is, we know there is probation review. It is an integral part of the hiring process. It isn't considered an error. We accept it as a phase. So why must software teams at companies with lots more wealth than a symphony orchestra expect to get it exactly right with a few wonky culture fit interviews and a relatively small whiteboarding section with the occasional take home project? They can and should find the funds to get serious about diversity in their industry. And frankly, with at-will contracts being the norm, every candidate is always "on probation".
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