Guide to scaling engineering organizations • Hacker News Board

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#31

Post by PopeDotNinja » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #28

These are all great points and there are some good nuggets in this article but I feel like it misses the main issue with recruiting. The shortcoming in my experience, is hardly ever in the process, it's in the people who work in recruiting. When setting up pipelines, most of the people I worked with knew what we had to do - the points in this article are pretty obvious. What isn't obvious is how to find the right peo…

> I've only worked with a handful of recruiters that were actually worth anything

I learned how to hire & train recruiters to work for me pretty effectively for certain pieces of recruiting. To you, what makes a recruiter good and/or not good? Maybe I can share some thoughts on how to improve the not good parts!

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#32

Post by avitzurel » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

I did not read the article to the end (I plan to). It's mostly good and I agree with the point it's making.

However, I think we need to flip it on its head. From my point of view as an engineer, your pipeline doesn't really matter, no matter how smart and well thought out it is.

The weakest link in the pipeline is what isn't mentioned here, how do you get candidates into the pipeline.

I get 5-10 recruiting emails a week and about the same number of linked-in messages, none of them ever even come to a phone call. (and yes, I have gotten a few from Stripe as well).

How do you email/call/text candidates? How do you define them? Do you have the same email for all or you distinguish between levels?

A lof of companies have a good pipeline and they say "we don't do whiteboards" but their recruiters are doing a disgusting job at finding people, just absolutely shameful.

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#33

Post by gadders » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

bhuga wrote: post #24

gadders wrote: post #3

>> In addition to building clear rubrics, we began unconscious bias training to maintain consistency and objectivity. Is that still valid? I thought the tests to support this concept had failed to be replicated? http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/iat-behavior-problem.... https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-...

Unconscious bias is not implicit association. Unconscious bias is rationalizing decisions based on the candidate's personal characteristics as something else. Studies about unconscious bias readily replicate, i.e. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes... Most training to overcome unconscious bias is about defining criteria before you see a candidate. If, before you view resumes, you've written…

Partly why I'm asking. Wikipedia seems to conflate the two [1]:

A critical component of unconscious bias training is creating awareness for implicit bias. Since 1998, the online Implicit-Association Test (IAT) has provided a platform for the general public to assess their unconscious biases. Although the IAT measure has come under scrutiny, it has sparked conversation about unconscious bias in both popular media and the scientific community. In addition to the public’s increased awareness of the influence of implicit biases, the reality of racial and gender inequalities in our society has led to the creation of many unconscious bias training programs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_bias_training

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#34

Post by julianozen » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #7

mebassett wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that? the article suggests a phone call with a recruiter, a video call with a tech team, and an onsite interview. 2 phone calls and an onsite doesn't seem like an excessive amount of interviews.

If you've ever done an onsite interview, you'd understand what a gruelling experience 6 hours of whiteboard problem solving really is. The worst part, of course, is that these exercises are completely irrelevant to the work most candidates will do on a day to day. That alone feels like a joke. Not to mention that you will be judged by people who also don't care about how well you balance a tree but are forced to anyw…

I actually recently interviewed at Stripe (did not receive an offer) and though the day was long, Stripe question’s were very fair and relevant to the job. This was true from my first phone call to all my onsite questions. I was very impressed by the preparation they had put into their interview questions.

So if you work at Stripe and are reading this, good work improving interviewing process

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#35

Post by vibrato » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

bhuga wrote: post #24

gadders wrote: post #3

>> In addition to building clear rubrics, we began unconscious bias training to maintain consistency and objectivity. Is that still valid? I thought the tests to support this concept had failed to be replicated? http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/iat-behavior-problem.... https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-...

Unconscious bias is not implicit association. Unconscious bias is rationalizing decisions based on the candidate's personal characteristics as something else. Studies about unconscious bias readily replicate, i.e. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes... Most training to overcome unconscious bias is about defining criteria before you see a candidate. If, before you view resumes, you've written…

There is no evidence that unconcious bias can be effectively mitigated by "training".

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#36

Post by rizzom5000 » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #16

avip wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the logical tradeoff for any company. Bad hires create an incredible amount of damage that can sink a whole team. It is x10 better to have no hire than a bad one.

I've worked in companies that struggle to hire any candidate, let alone top candidates. Stripe is amongst the top employers. The vast majority of smaller shops (banks, b2b software companies, agencies) just need to staff up and would rather hire and fire than miss out on a good candidate.

Maybe, but hire and fire is also a great way to show the team that you don't know what you're doing as a hiring manager; not to mention how firing a team member, who may be incompetent but still well-liked, affects morale. Then, there is the problem where you fail to fire when you should. To me, this is just not a good way to build an effective team.

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#37

Post by cbhl » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

stevoski wrote: post #2

Judging by the article, you need to go through a _lot_ of interviews before Stripe makes you an offer. I wonder if they miss out on whole groups of job candidates because those candidates have good job prospects that don't involve this gruelling slog. Of course, Stripe does seem to have an excellent team.

From what I've heard of Stripe, this is a non-issue for them. Like Google/Facebook, their brand and compensation are strong enough that they have enough candidates at the top of the funnel. Plus they have specialized processes to explicitly reach groups of candidates that they're worried about missing (hiring through Triplebyte; posting on top universities' job boards; diversity programs like offering job interviews at Grace Hopper).

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#38

Post by ainiriand » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

Some time ago I went to the Dublin open house because they were opening news teams here and one of the positions was backed api engineer. Considering that I've been doing the same for almost 10 years and that I got personally invited to the event I decided to apply to the role.

They rejected me even before having a personal interview. I wonder what is happening behind the scenes but it was very demoralizing. Was anything wrong about my CV? About me? Am I too old? Right now, I prefer to stick with smaller companies, they have clearer intentions when contacting you and they are much more easier to approach.

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#39

Post by bhuga » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

vibrato wrote: post #35

bhuga wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unconscious bias is not implicit association. Unconscious bias is rationalizing decisions based on the candidate's personal characteristics as something else. Studies about unconscious bias readily replicate, i.e. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes... Most training to overcome unconscious bias is about defining criteria before you see a candidate. If, before you view resumes, you've written…

There is no evidence that unconcious bias can be effectively mitigated by "training".

Training to pre-select criteria before viewing candidates is well supported as a mitigation by literature such as: https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005....

From the abstract: Commitment to hiring criteria prior to disclosure of the applicant’s gender eliminated discrimination

I'm sure there are many sitautions where training is less effective, but the hiring example is well supported.

Re: Guide to scaling engineering organizations

#40

Post by Fede_V » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

ainiriand wrote: post #38

Some time ago I went to the Dublin open house because they were opening news teams here and one of the positions was backed api engineer. Considering that I've been doing the same for almost 10 years and that I got personally invited to the event I decided to apply to the role. They rejected me even before having a personal interview. I wonder what is happening behind the scenes but it was very demoralizing. Was anyt…

In my experience, it's incredibly difficult to get a strong positive signal from a CV. You can definitely find red flags (my favorite example: people describing themselves as experts deep learning with 1 year of experience and zero publications) - but, after removing the obviously unqualified, the next steps have very low accuracy.

Honestly, it might have just been a sourcer/recruiter fuck up. If you can at all, ask a friend (or even a friend of a friend) if you can get an internal referal and bypass the broken resume filtering step.