Hire people who aren’t proven • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#51

Post by wiradikusuma » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #29

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs s…

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

I don't think it's a good analogy.

Good programmers (esp. the ones OP referring to) are usually curious, like to tinker. So it's a valid check whether they like hacking since young age (I'm not saying those who don't are not good, but those who do most likely are).

Maybe a better analogy is an inventor (is this even a job?).

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#52

Post by warmind » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

So, with this in mind, can any more experienced professionals say how you can stand out as an 'unproven' new grad/dev?

I've got work experience that isn't a tech internship (network support at a major uni), and code projects, but without that internship (I did research instead), it seems I and people like me are constantly at a disadvantage.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#53

Post by sammorrowdrums » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #43

snowwrestler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them. (In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliar…

Slightly irrelevant comment, but I studied Jazz at a good conservatoire, and after years as a pro musician, I ended up spending years as a pro software engineer. There is weirdly some cross-over, and that vocational drive is actually pretty handy for start-ups and things. I do think that technology is often vocational. It can be just a job, but from where I sit working in different startups, I think I thrive most off people for whom it is a vocation.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#54

Post by swalsh » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #11

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs s…

After 10 years, most veterans have learned not to care. Or at least, not care too much.

I have about 12 years of experience, occasionally I'll find myself really interested in some tech. But generally speaking, the technical problems don't interest me anymore. I find myself more fascinated with the business problems. But generally speaking, businesses have been structured to exclude the developer from these problems until it is dev time, in which case the problem is presented as "here's an issue, here's what we want you to build to fix it". So in general my passion has been lost. Finding a company where I can be present during the solution finding phase has been difficult with my pay level.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#55

Post by asdkhadsj » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #43

snowwrestler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them. (In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliar…

It may not be terribly unique, at least not in my perspective. Because passionate people tend to enjoy doing what they love, even in off hours. Sane people value their off time, so I'm not saying passionate people must work non-stop.

Take a lot of craft trades. Ie, wood working, painting, music, writing, whatever. Those can often be people who just love doing the area, they love creating with their medium. I feel passionate tech people are similar.

The example of a medical professional was.. unfair. Yes, free time usage as a measuring stick for passion in some fields (like medical) is a terrible measuring stick, but I'm not legally inhibited from wood working in my free time.

Note that I'm not at all speaking about whether you should be binary about hiring (passionate people vs non-passionate). I'm simply talking about how in some crafts, crafting outside of work-time is a decent indicator to passion. Another indicator is, I feel, knowledge outside of their professional experience. I'm not a frontend programmer, but I enjoy learning and following tech trends, so I've used and can speak somewhat comfortably with frontend frameworks, my preferences in them, and etc.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#56

Post by getaclue » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

jarsin wrote: post #45

I think tons of experienced people that love programming moved on because of the "Google Interview". You got all this experience and love making stuff for users, but you don't know the "insert trick of the week" to solve the latest "elite" programming question. Bye Bye. No more jobs for you.

Interesting view point. Haven't thought about it like this before.

Anecdotally, I am finding more of these people in indie development. Making their own thing or working with like minded people.

I used to look to Google/Facebook for experts and people to follow. Now, I look elsewhere.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#57

Post by collyw » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #14

I read " You must have 10 years experience of " as shorthand for " Have you stopped learning new things? Come and work here. "

Just like NoSQL 6 or 7 years ago. Some of us could see that relational databases were a far better fit for the vast majority of problems out there. A couple of years later we got all the Mongo horror stories and "why we switched back to Postgres" articles.

There is way too much tech to learn these days. I'll wait until I have a specific use case, benchmark techs then choose something.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#58

Post by linsomniac » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

I'd add the caution that you should have clear criteria for what represents success in the job, and the timeline. If the candidate doesn't meet those criteria in that timeline, you both should agree that it isn't working.

My previous job was running a small Sys Admin consulting company. We hired 4 people over the years who definitely fit into the "not proven" category, with very mixed results.

Two really struggled: One of them was "ok" but needed a ton of management, the other never really got a basic level of proficiency despite spending most of a year "studying" and working at the elbow of various masters. One worked out really well and was a great worker. I feel like there was another one, but I can't dredge up the specifics.

The proven people on the other hand were mostly rockstars. The one that wasn't was largely due to my mismanagement of them.

So: Yes, absolutely hire the unproven. But have a plan.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#59

Post by joshfraser » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

At Origin, we've hired multiple people without computer science degrees and whose resumes you would never pick out of a stack. One of our key players, for example, was a commercial real estate broker who taught himself how to code. The reason we hired him is that we're a 100% open-source project and he just started contributing. And he turned out to be really great. By the time we gave him a fulltime offer, he'd had several months to demonstrate what he could do. For anyone who is struggling with not having the right background or degree, find an open-source project and start contributing. It's a great way to prove yourself and you'll learn new skills and make awesome new connections along the way.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#60

Post by dieterrams » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #29

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs s…

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

To be fair, GP didn't say they wouldn't hire someone who didn't code for fun in high school, or whatever. Just that hiring was more difficult if you're trying to hire people who actually care about their craft.