Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired • Hacker News Board

Re: Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired

#21

Post by yxhuvud » Sat, Aug 28, 2010, 8:48 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #9

Tech startups are at least partly to blame for this as well. I've seen so many job postings requiring years of experience in exactly the same combination of technologies the company itself is using. I know it's harder to hire people for their innate abilities than it is for the number of years they've done rails or django or rspec but if you're going to be that inflexible you've got nobody but yourself to blame for t…

I think you are adressing job postings in the wrong way. See it more as a wishlist and not as something with hard limits.

Sure, you still have to be able to fit the role they want or replace someone else that can fit the role, but don't overestimate the importance of the requirements.

There might be a case to take them really serious if the job posting really differentiate between what the candidate have to know and what they wish for. Other than that, don't take them too hard.

Re: Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired

#22

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sat, Aug 28, 2010, 9:55 PM UTC

yxhuvud wrote: post #21

cageface wrote: post #9

Tech startups are at least partly to blame for this as well. I've seen so many job postings requiring years of experience in exactly the same combination of technologies the company itself is using. I know it's harder to hire people for their innate abilities than it is for the number of years they've done rails or django or rspec but if you're going to be that inflexible you've got nobody but yourself to blame for t…

I think you are adressing job postings in the wrong way. See it more as a wishlist and not as something with hard limits. Sure, you still have to be able to fit the role they want or replace someone else that can fit the role, but don't overestimate the importance of the requirements. There might be a case to take them really serious if the job posting really differentiate between what the candidate have to know and…

> There might be a case to take them really serious if the job posting really differentiate between what the candidate have to know and what they wish for.

That is the problem. Very many of them say things like "flash in the pan technology X a must" or "latest silver bullet Y mandatory". They are basically advertising that their start-up only hire liars and people who actually believe management consultants. And then they are surprised that all the good people run away screaming.

RethinkDB says "For that matter, you think SQL is a terribly designed language." Oh, dear. Refined by the hardest of the hard-core engineers for half a century, foundation of the world economy, and they only want people who have an ironclad, dogmatic belief that it is unconditionally terrible. Good luck recruiting actual information retrieval experts, guys.

Re: Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired

#23

Post by skybrian » Sat, Aug 28, 2010, 10:10 PM UTC

HilbertSpace wrote: post #13

Aegean wrote: post #3

It's exactly the same problem we are facing. When the job requires very high technical skills its a dead end. I am looking for talented kernel engineers. If I go for employing someone high caliber, the costs would be in the 100K >= range. Not a smooth option for a startup. Also it's still hard to attract them even if you pay well. If I go for contractors, there is the problem of IP disclosure. Contractors are probabl…

"When the job requires very high technical skills its a dead end." That's a very highly 'mixed' situation: I hold a Ph.D. from a top research university in some very technical material, with a lot of connection with computing, and have published peer reviewed original research in some topics where, thus, I am a 'world-class' expert in those topics, and I can absolutely, positively guarantee you that (1) in a 'job int…

Of course I don't know you, but my impression based solely on this post is that your missing skill might be getting knowledge across without making the person you're talking to feel bad. That is, coming across as a patient, friendly teacher without being condescending. People like that are worth a lot.

The "I'm more technical than you" game is commonly played in hacker circles but encourages us to behave badly.

Re: Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired

#24

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sat, Aug 28, 2010, 10:15 PM UTC

HilbertSpace wrote: post #10

Aegean wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are laying out certain facts well; if you are doing rare work on an expert subject its unlikely that anyone with the expertise will risk their time and career with your work. But I have not anywhere suggested that I am not willing to do the hard work. In fact it's exactly the opposite. I am doing all the hard technical work that is sometimes too much. So what do you do? You look to transfer some of it to someone…

Now you are getting a little closer to reality: You paid a guy a year to learn. For your "A very good C programmer in general will do well enough.", that sounds wrong: C is just Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie; sorry 'bout that; for "C", it's just that one, thin, 'idiosyncratic' book where I still can't make sense, parse the syntax, out of an arbitrary 'declare' (I borrow from PL/I since C likely has no good…

C is just a thin wrapper around raw machine code, so naturally most of the details depend on the implementation. When a good C programmer wants to understand the stack, he leaps straight for the system documentation and source code for the target architecture. (A file named something like "crt0.s" or "fork.c" is a good place to learn how the stack works and where it comes from.) K&R is just background reading.

Re: Out of necessity, tech startups are changing the way workers are hired

#25

Post by dean » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:50 PM UTC

This article is a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand, it says: "Unemployment is chronic in much of the country, but in Silicon Valley, employees have their pick of jobs."

Then on the other hand it says: "And in four months, the hundreds of resumes, dozens of phone screens, and numerous four-hour meetings with viable candidates yielded no one who fit their criteria."

This tells me that the easy job market is there if you are a star. No so much if you're just 'competent'. But the 'stars' have an easy job market in any industry.

This company has the same problem as the New York Yankees. The Yankees have an opening for .350 hitter and it's very difficult for them to find qualified talent.

Similar problem, but it's worse in Silicon Valley. At least the Yankees will pay what you're worth if you 'fit their criteria'.