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Hiring Is Broken?

software.rajivprab.com

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Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#91

Post by esotericn »

0x445442 wrote: post #86
esotericn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. Fundamentally, companies do not hire for raw technical ability. Would you hire Linus for your bog standard dev role? Of course not. He'd be bored in days. You probably wouldn't want a supermodel as a life partner. The whole thing is about selecting model employees. People who will rock the boat in the correct ways; need money, but are neither impoverished nor independent; are reliable; an…

> Would you hire Linus for your bog standard dev role? Of course not. He'd be bored in days. I've often wondered if Rob Pike or Guido Van Rossum went through the same interview process at Google that we all hear stories about. I'd be very surprised if they did and my guess is, for them, it was much more of a negotiation of what they were going to work on and what their compensation was going to be.

Almost certainly not, indeed.

But then, if you ran a business, that's almost precisely what you'd do. It's completely rational. The hoi polloi need to be filtered aggressively, most companies need to select for hunger, etc.

By contrast, you might as well give a big name an honorary position if you can afford it. If they do useful stuff - bonus. Hell, if I owned a company the size of Google, I'd give Guido some money just because I could.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#92

Post by z3t4 »

o10449366 wrote: post #6
esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

Could the system be better? Yes. But there's also a ridiculous amount of entitlement in the tech industry. There are very few other industries where someone with a bachelors degree or no college degree at all can obtain a low to mid six figure job with no prior work experience + benefits. Even for the average experienced hire, who's compensation can easily exceed that of the average doctor, it isn't like things get w…

Google would have no problem paying out 7 figure, they would pay out 8 figure if they had to. But its a market and no other pays that well. Just go outside SF and the market is different, much lower pay, but they are just as picky.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#93

Post by thewhitetulip »

0x445442 wrote: post #86
esotericn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. Fundamentally, companies do not hire for raw technical ability. Would you hire Linus for your bog standard dev role? Of course not. He'd be bored in days. You probably wouldn't want a supermodel as a life partner. The whole thing is about selecting model employees. People who will rock the boat in the correct ways; need money, but are neither impoverished nor independent; are reliable; an…

> Would you hire Linus for your bog standard dev role? Of course not. He'd be bored in days. I've often wondered if Rob Pike or Guido Van Rossum went through the same interview process at Google that we all hear stories about. I'd be very surprised if they did and my guess is, for them, it was much more of a negotiation of what they were going to work on and what their compensation was going to be.

I read a book by Eric Schmidt, can't remember the name. I remember reading him say that "the way interviews are conducted right now, if I wasn't in Google and was interviewed then I'd probably get rejected."

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#94

Post by Apocryphon »

zug_zug wrote: post #33
Frost1x wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an impression that this problem is only at a few places like Google which is not the case. As someone recently browsing the market I've seen this process adopted rampantly and without reason or rationale. So many companies I would consider mid-tier, lower, or not even technology companies have outsourced have adopted similar if not the same hiring models of FAANG or outsource hiring/recruiting/assessments tha…

Meh. I don't buy it. I agree with the parent that it's usually people not getting hired being mad about it. - "interviewing is broken" is a meaningless linkbait title. All you can really say is it's less efficient than it could be. - In fact, interviewing in tech might be the best of any industry. Look how good we are at hiring minorities, people without college degrees, people who don't wear suits, people with verba…

People doing the hiring are complaining, not just the people failing to get hired.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#95

Post by Apocryphon »

esotericn wrote: post #11
o10449366 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the system be better? Yes. But there's also a ridiculous amount of entitlement in the tech industry. There are very few other industries where someone with a bachelors degree or no college degree at all can obtain a low to mid six figure job with no prior work experience + benefits. Even for the average experienced hire, who's compensation can easily exceed that of the average doctor, it isn't like things get w…

I don't think of it as entitlement so much as a refusal to see the world as it is. There are a trillion arbitrary signals that will help or hinder your success in various ways. Physical attractiveness, gender, race, parental background, your nationality, where you can work, your accent, language... the list is honestly almost endless. You can wish for a world in which none of this were true, or do your best to find a…

The tech industry, and Silicon Valley in particular, has long pretended to be an ultra-rational meritocracy. Some people buy into the rhetoric, and get bitterly disappointed when proven wrong. If the industry didn’t feed the myth, perhaps people would have less of an emotional reaction.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#96

Post by djhworld »

n_ary wrote: post #25
nafeydev wrote: post #2

Whats the general consensus on take home projects? How helpful are they?

Take home has two sides to it. Group A: People who excel at face to face interviews(extroverted) will complain that it is waste of time and disrespectful, because it demands significant time commitment compared to a 1 hour in-person interview. Group B: People with interview anxiety(introverted) will excel at this type of test because they have the freedom to set aside their own time, do things at their own pace and e…

> significant time commitment compared to a 1 hour in-person interview.

I don't think I've ever been in a software engineer interview where the face to face portion is less than 3 hours (at minimum!)

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#97

Post by o10449366 »

nkohari wrote: post #66
zug_zug wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. I don't buy it. I agree with the parent that it's usually people not getting hired being mad about it. - "interviewing is broken" is a meaningless linkbait title. All you can really say is it's less efficient than it could be. - In fact, interviewing in tech might be the best of any industry. Look how good we are at hiring minorities, people without college degrees, people who don't wear suits, people with verba…

> Look how good we are at hiring minorities Wait, what? Are you talking about the software industry?

In terms of providing high paying jobs with good career progressions to minority groups that doesn't necessarily discriminate on the basis of prior education, credentials, background (or lack thereof), yeah, I'd say software engineering is pretty decent compared to many other industries.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#98

Post by username90 »

dahart wrote: post #87

> Anyone can glamorize and exaggerate the work they have done, and make it sound a lot more impressive than it actually was My personal experience interviewing is that people cannot easily glamorize their past projects when pressed for details. It might be easy to make it look good on a resume, but hard in person during a discussion with follow up questions. I think asking about past projects is a fantastic interview…

Or they could just lie and tell you from the perspective of another dev on their team, or even combining the achievements from several of them at once. Of course most people wont lie a lot but this style heavily favors those who do so you will get a disproportionate amount of liars on your team.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#99

Post by AdrianB1 »

esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

Sometimes you need to pick at the top end. If you just hire from the middle and bottom, there will be nobody there to show the right direction and to organize what the less qualified people should do. It will rot. So you need at minimum a few very good people to keep the organization alive and well.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#100

Post by gridlockd »

dymk wrote: post #48
gridlockd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "best developer" probably doesn't want someone better than them on the job.

What a weirdly insulting straw man of a developer you set up. Many engineers including myself would be thrilled to have somebody else highly skilled around, and "selfish/vain" isn't the default in our industry.

> Many engineers including myself would be thrilled to have somebody else highly skilled around, and "selfish/vain" isn't the default in our industry.

What else are you supposed to say about yourself or anyone else?

I'm not talking about the best developers in general, I'm talking about "the best developer in the team". The "golden child". Do you sincerely believe they're thrilled about giving up that special status to the new hire?

Yes, people are that petty, they're not necessarily that self-aware though.

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