Hire people who aren’t proven • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#391

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #298

jondubois wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. As someone who started programming from a young age and has almost 10 years of commercial experience, I have to say that being in this industry is horrible. If they promoted people using a random number generator, it would be a step up from what we have now. The most horrible thing is that in spite of your passion and experience, your ideas are constant…

I was at a Big-4 consulting company at my first job. I once got passed up for promotion because they said "i didnt handle critical production situations with clients, analyzing them and planning to bring them to a close." I explained...that is because I had such perfectly tested work that I didnt have any major Production issues requiring critical client meetings or mitigation plans. The success criteria there was al…

I was at a defense contractor early in my career, and the government had this idea that our CMMI-certified process was supposed to demonstrate that defects were being found and corrected at various stages of the review and testing process.

Implicit in this was an assumption that a certain number of defects were there to be found in the first place. As a result, if you were too thorough and conscientious before your reviews it actually reflected badly on your reviewers, because they weren't finding anything. As a result, we started pushing out intermediate WIP that we knew had problems so the defects could be "found" and "fixed".

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#392

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #252

sharemywin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30-50%(used to be 90%) of any programming job is doing crap you didn't know how to do before. If they have a proven track record of figuring things out experience is minimally valuable.

> If they have a proven track record of figuring things out experience is minimally valuable. I can't understand this point of view at all. When Google wanted to build the world's best JS JIT they didn't hire anyone who was generally able to figure things out - they hired the person with the most experience in building dynamic language JITs in the world. Experience is everything! Experience is knowing which rabbit ho…

And what about the other 98% of jobs?

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#393

Post by 1123581321 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

arkades wrote: post #366

sizzle wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about shadowing a doctor in high school? You literally follow them around all day and get a taste of what they do.

The thing is, the salient bits of being a doctor have to do with the thought process going on in their head, the stresses of responsibility and decision-making, and all the considerations they weigh with each patient. It's just not an "observable" thing. Docs don't really start sharing their internal processes with you until you're in the second half of med school, and even then not commonly. From the outside, it jus…

Your comments have been interesting; thank you.

It remains that there are young people who understand this and still long to study arduously to be doctors, and then put in the work. It seems there is something appealing about the work that can be done, even if it’s imperfect. Is there any kind of enthusiasm you could accept as beneficial?

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#394

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #71

princekolt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is only true if you see the list of things a person can learn how to do as a closed set. For instance, I really disliked maths in school. I've avoided every software job posting that involved any maths (3D, statistics, etc). However, if I was given a job offer to work on a math-related product I deeply connected with, and that I felt I wanted to contribute, I'd probably be more interested in learning the math st…

You're suggesting companies build teams of amateurs with the hope that they can all pick up the skills amongst themselves as they go. If you have to for example build a new operating system kernel, or a new compiler, or implement a machine learning system, hiring a bunch of well-intentioned smart people with the vague idea that they can probably figure it out as they go is a bad idea. You sometimes need someone with…

The market for new OS kernels or compilers is approaching zero.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#395

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

krinchan wrote: post #171

closeparen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because CS education is in its infancy and the material changes so fast, we can’t expect college to be comprehensive. Rather than structured learning, we rely on people who are peripherally exposed to various topics to have the “spark” to become curious about them and go deeper. To a first order approximation, someone who has been into computers their whole life has that “spark” as second nature. Someone who sees pro…

Yet a lifelong computer nerd with that structured learning foundation will leave a non-passionate CS degree holder and a degreeless lifelong computer nerd in the dust. People want to scream about CS degrees being trash and yet all the passion in the world doesn't seem to convey an understanding of memory leaks, garbage collection, and VM/bytecode/etc. hijinks (like JVM, MRI, etc.) to the degreeless people in my team.…

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Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#396

Post by stevenwoo » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

sj3k wrote: post #327

docker_up wrote: post #290

The problem that has happened at my company is that we take a "chance" on bootcampers or other people who aren't proven, we spend the time and effort to mentor and train them, pay them well, and then they turn around in 9-12 months and leave us for another company with their enhanced experience. It has happened 3 times so far, so we have stopped hiring bootcampers, and fresh grads and instead have started hiring peop…

This is me. I graduated last year and work at a small consulting shop doing web apps. I'm currently interviewing and getting offers from more established companies. This is the first time I've felt bad about leaving a company after one year. My coworkers are awesome. But the benefits suck, the clients are a nightmare, pay isn't great. I feel like I would be a fool to stay.

What happened when you asked for better compensation after a year?

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#397

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

recraft wrote: post #210

krinchan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet a lifelong computer nerd with that structured learning foundation will leave a non-passionate CS degree holder and a degreeless lifelong computer nerd in the dust. People want to scream about CS degrees being trash and yet all the passion in the world doesn't seem to convey an understanding of memory leaks, garbage collection, and VM/bytecode/etc. hijinks (like JVM, MRI, etc.) to the degreeless people in my team.…

As a degreeless completely self-taught programmer with a strong interest in vm implementations and garbage collection (eg I found the MLKit paper to be super exciting and at the time an incredible innovation (and then rust came along shortly after that)), I feel obligated to inform you that since ruby 2.2 (which is required by Rails 5+), symbols are in fact garbage collected, and are thus now effectively the same as…

[deleted]

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#398

Post by ryanmcbride » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #290

The problem that has happened at my company is that we take a "chance" on bootcampers or other people who aren't proven, we spend the time and effort to mentor and train them, pay them well, and then they turn around in 9-12 months and leave us for another company with their enhanced experience. It has happened 3 times so far, so we have stopped hiring bootcampers, and fresh grads and instead have started hiring peop…

How much does their pay increase after their first year?

I was a bootcamp grad and I stayed at my first company for 3 years because the pay was adjusted to roughly market value (actually a little bit lower, but not too much) every year. I worked with a lot of other bootcamp grads, that have stayed there for 2-5 years. Our turnover rate for grads was very low.

Right now there are bootcamp grads that got hired before me that are still working at that company.

It's true that most bootcamps tell their grads that they should look for a new job every 1-2 years, but if you want to hold on to them, you have to pay them at roughly the same level they would get elsewhere. That's how you get them to stay.

You can't expect them to just leave money sitting on the table.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#399

Post by eclat » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

laurentl wrote: post #10

> 1. Can this candidate do the job? I'd go so far as to ask: "can this candidate learn to do the job?". In our recent job postings, I've started adding a specific paragraph after the desired qualifications stating more or less "if you don't tick all the boxes above but are motivated to learn and grow, please apply. We'll teach you what you need to do the job" > 2. Will this candidate be motivated? This. Even more tha…

Mind saying where you work? Companies with sane hiring culture are few and far between.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#400

Post by glizzard9 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

blizzard8 wrote: post #334

zschuessler wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My anecdotes are the complete opposite of yours, so I guess they cancel out :)