Hire people who aren’t proven • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#331

Post by jimmy1 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #211

jimmy1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The passion/craftsman culture changed when we started selling our souls for the next ad-click or personal information collection system. I am really passionate about the information collection system I work on. I do my best to ensure data isn't leaked, everything is secure and encrypted. If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country now expect software to be free…

> do my best to ensure Good to hear. The next dev, manager, owner on the team is not likely to be as conscientious however. Once information is collected it is rarely deleted, so trust in random third parties is still not wise.

I trust that we all have a general vested interest in avoiding data breaches for sake of profits and public image. I do believe that we need a tad bit of regulation around data collection not because we are all shitheads that throw your data around, but for those couple of bad actors that ruin it for everyone to bring their businesses up to par with what the rest of us are doing -- but nothing as extreme as GDPR. This is America after all, and liberty is hard, but I still believe it's the most important principle. At the end of the day you are still entering an agreement to exchange your information for the use of the services, and you are at liberty to not enter into that agreement. It's obvious to me that people are not concerned with that enough that they are willing to shell out money for their email, content, recipes, craft ideas, photo storage, social platforms, payment platforms, and until the people change the business incentives will be focused on data collection. To not sound like I am on that high horse, I too utilize many of these services. The problem however for me is not unwillingness to pay, but as it stands right now there isn't a paid product that can compete with some of the services I get for free.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#332

Post by UncleMeat » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #293

hinkley wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking people questions that only come up in college and not in the field is ageism plain and simple. They’re selecting for recent graduates. Could be lots of reasons for that. They’re hungry, they don’t know what’s impossible (occasionally an asset, often a source of aggravation), or that they don’t know when to say no.

Google loved asking questions relating to the square-cube law. Like "you're shrunken down to the size of a dime and placed in a blender that's going to start in thirty seconds, what do you do?" From what I gather, this is covered in required curriculum in schools like Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. I've never heard of it in my life, and I was one of the top two in my CS graduating class. IMO, this boils down to cultur…

Google doesn't ask these anymore.

Having gone through one of the mentioned schools, this material also never came up even once.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#333

Post by ghaff » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #238

rpedela wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you tell the difference?

How can you tell the difference between products/services made by someone who makes said things out of the sheer love of making them vs. someone who only makes said things when compensated properly? -- one word: QUALITY

I assure you that there are many things myself and others do well, some of which we like doing more than others, that we're absolutely not going to do if someone isn't paying me for it. Frankly it's one of the things that defines a professional--getting tasks done even when it becomes a slog or you're just not that into it.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#334

Post by blizzard8 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

zschuessler wrote: post #155

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…

My team has had this issue in hiring. Much of it is due to bootcamps telling students they will make massive salaries after a 6-month course. That has attracted a different crowd of applicants. We are always open to junior engineers, but lately it has been rough interviewing them. It's common to see applicants with no real world experience asking for $100/hour. About half didn't have a portfolio anywhere, but said th…

Same in our company, where I am tasked with phone screening and it's been horrible to interview junior candidates because most of them are looking for good salary rather than passion for computer science or solving the problems not seen before. Ironically, most of them have completed Master's in computer science as well.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#335

Post by invalidOrTaken » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

mirko22 wrote: post #127

Lately what I have been trying out is telling people: if you want to come for an interview can you prepare a small presentation of one of the data structures that you know about or like, or ideally hash tables (as they cover wide range of topics). If a person than comes in for the interview in about a week from when he is told this and can’t present that DS to some depth I don’t bother to go on with much longer inter…

As someone who hates most interview processes as a candidate, I like this one quite a bit.

- it doesn't waste the candidate's time. If the candidate knows all about it: great! If they don't---it's never a bad time to learn/re-learn the fundamentals.

- it avoids the "gotcha" approach that tests for whether you know a specific thing, right now.

- it tests the candidate over time. Speaking as someone who used to rock interviews but did not perform as well over the long haul, I think this is an important distinction.

I will read the other comments with interest, but initially I say: bravo.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#336

Post by 01100011 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #328

>Don't hire like FAANG companies, don't use their best practices, don't use their super oiled processes, don't play their same games with the same rules. I'm back on the job market for the first time in 4 years and it seems like things have changed a lot. I'm now stuck in this weird twilight zone where every single company I talk to has the exact same process that they run through the motions as if it were dictated f…

I understand the blank mind feeling. I was on a phone interview with Oculus 2 weeks ago and had a simple circular buffer question. I was expecting something a lot harder, frankly, and hadn't practiced writing a circular buffer in a while. I was doing fine until I got half-way through and wanted to refactor my code. Since we're under time constraints I tried to push through and use my existing design choice but it started the anxiety train rolling. In a couple minutes my mind fogged over and I literally couldn't comprehend the code I had written a few minutes ago. The interview ended poorly and I didn't get the job. I finished the code after the interview, along with some test cases, and the whole thing worked great. It wasn't that I didn't understand the problem, I just couldn't implement it with someone breathing down my neck.

I interviewed with Nvidia a week later and almost had a similar issue but in that case the interviewer sensed my reaction and managed to talk me through things. I managed to recover and now I'm scheduled for an on-site.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#337

Post by apeace » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

I get the sentiment but I have two problems with this.

1) Different stages of companies require different hires. When you're starting out, find the hungry ones. They'll get better at programming if they care, and they'll build a lot of stuff. Once you have real customers and are growing like crazy, hire experienced people to help you scale.

2) There is a difference between the "interview process" and the screening process. I agree that thinking about "Can this candidate do the job?" and "Will this candidate be motivated?" is the best way to go. But I don't have time to sit down with the ~200 junior engineers who sent me their resume on Indeed in order to figure that out. Hence, I filter by 5+ years of experience, and track record of working in multiple programming languages (don't screen specific languages though). Are the metrics perfect? No. But in my experience they weed out the people who are too junior to be successful on my team.

Interestingly, I think that if my company were bigger we might go back the other direction. Once we're on a stable path, and we have a few senior engineers who want to go into management and/or do some mentorship, we can afford to bring on more junior people and help them grow into great engineers.

There are many stages of companies, startups especially, and in some situations it makes perfect sense to use some plain old metrics.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#338

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #254

EnderMB wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in hard data too, mostly because it seems absolutely true across multiple stacks. In my own experience, junior development salaries have dropped in the last decade and the number of people that apply for roles has increased significantly, to the point where at my last employer we had hundreds of people apply for a .NET role, and not just local people either - people were willing to move for what was…

This might indeed be true in your slice of the market, but in top firms in USA I think new grad compensation has never been higher. Top students with good summer internship experience can easily bag 150k in their first year, even more for those who manage to time competing offers.

The situation of top students in top firms isn't necessarily representative of the market. You'd want to look at the compensation of the median student, or if you're including the top students, then look at the weak students, say, 20th percentile as well.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#339

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:39 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…

>>But in most high-end professional fields, that's not true. Imagine asking a prospective medical resident "did you treat any diseases in high school?" or "how much surgery do you do in your spare time?"

Not a fair comparison because the practice of medicine is not accessible anywhere to the same extent as the practice of programming. You need a license to practice medicine. You don't need one for programming. Similarly, surgeons need facilities and equipment to perform surgeries. The only thing programmers need is a computer.

I think the OP has a point. I know several brilliant mechanical engineers for instance, and every single one of them used to tinker with cars and gadgets and whatever else they could get their hands on when growing up. Indeed, such a background is a strong signal for curiosity, which is an important factor in success and professional growth.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#340

Post by ralmidani » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

apeace wrote: post #337

I get the sentiment but I have two problems with this. 1) Different stages of companies require different hires. When you're starting out, find the hungry ones. They'll get better at programming if they care, and they'll build a lot of stuff. Once you have real customers and are growing like crazy, hire experienced people to help you scale. 2) There is a difference between the "interview process" and the screening pr…

"Years of experience" is a very misleading metric. Someone could have 2 years of experience but be more motivated and/or have worked in a more demanding environment than someone with 5 years of experience.

seniority !== skill