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Hiring Is Broken?

software.rajivprab.com

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Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#191

Post by Yukata »

alexbanks wrote: post #113
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…

This is a mindblowing response to me. To say "look at how good we are a hiring minorities" feels like it has to be an obvious troll.

Asians don't count as minorities. We privilege now!

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#192

Post by neilv »

0x445442 wrote: post #136
neilv wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked a recruiter there whether someone like that (like the creator of a popular programming language) would have to go through the normal new-grad-style whiteboard coding hazing gauntlet (phrased diplomatically) interview process that they were expecting me to. The recruiter said no. I decided not to interview, because it turns out the hazing wasn't something "everyone" had to do, and I just didn't rate decent tre…

At this point in my career I won’t do coding tests or problems at home or over the phone. I’ve done my fair share of hiring and I’ve never needed to resort to such things. Being asked to perform these tasks is actually a pretty good litmus test to filter out companies. Also, I expect a certain degree of deference given my resume shows a 25 year history of implementing and delivering systems.

I don't expect deference. I expect an experienced developer to be able to tell -- from talking with me, and from looking at open source work, and from asking my references -- that we are peers.

I'm happy to have real technical discussions and sketch out things, but I've seen enough negging "coding interviews" administered by smug people, and it seems to have little-to-nothing to do with legitimately assessing competence.

I'd also like to have an opportunity to get a sense of the people from talking with them. The FAANG coding theatre performance that undergrads now drill for doesn't tell me much about the team's personality, competence, and working style -- all it tells me is that apparently they are willing to play along with that dysfunctional one-sided game.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#193

Post by ddebernardy »

tyscorp wrote: post #127
ddebernardy wrote: post #21

The biggest issue isn't one mentioned in the article. No amount of hiring tricks and hacks will work around the fact that hardly anyone (including most managers and HR pros) gets trained on how to review a resume, conduct an interview, and evaluate a candidate.

How can someone get this training outside of their job?

There are a few excellent episodes on the topic over at Manager Tools.

(I'd be happy to train your team if you don't want to go through their archive.)

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#194

Post by [deleted] »

closeparen wrote: post #158
lubesGordi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's pretty easy to tell where a senior engineer is at if you're in the same domain as them. Just discussing projects really provides much more insight than leetcoding them to death. It's shocking to me how many places are leetcoding senior engineers before talking to them about their past work or discussing design. Is it because we want to have hiring automated? Is it because of discrimination? Why is the leetc…

Behavioral, system design, coding, and problem solving interviews are AND gated. It's not a question of one being more important, but which ordering optimizes the funnel and employee time. There are many more calendar slots belonging to tech ICs than to hiring managers; you can run a higher velocity pipeline if you start with a technical phone screen. The coding interview itself is an immune system against the surpri…

[deleted]

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#195

Post by 0x445442 »

thoman23 wrote: post #179
0x445442 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in my career I won’t do coding tests or problems at home or over the phone. I’ve done my fair share of hiring and I’ve never needed to resort to such things. Being asked to perform these tasks is actually a pretty good litmus test to filter out companies. Also, I expect a certain degree of deference given my resume shows a 25 year history of implementing and delivering systems.

How much hiring and interviewing have you done? I've seen countless resumes with 25 years of stated glorious achievements, and they couldn't write a for loop.

I've done quite a bit and have never had any difficulty sniffing out "gloss" with just a few minutes of questions over the phone using the applicant's resume as a starting point for the conversation.

When you're focused on system implementation, delivery and maintenance you can pick one of the past projects listed and start probing. It's not hard to quickly get a picture of what the candidate did and didn't do on the project and whether or not they're blowing smoke.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#196

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #188

Why is it that no one questions the system in which these —at best, ridiculously obtuse—at worst, totally corrupt, often nepotistic— “interviews” reside? The whole “interview/audition” culture comes out of a kind of gladiator/Olympic ethos that pits "commoners" against one another for the amusement of the powerful, while solidifying the collective deception that keeps them in power. It’s a lever workers hand over wil…

The thing is, I’m actually interested in why we, a community of engineers and tech people, aren’t genuinely interested in evolving the fundamental failures of our system. We might learn something from classical music’s failures which led to its musicians being mostly unable to continue to be professionals. They used this same organization building system we are using now and it led to a collapse of their entire industry. If we “peer review” our code, why don’t we “peer review” the way we build our companies and the way we bring new folks in. We mostly only pretend to care about diversity and we only care about innovation when we are comfortable. It would be great to hear about why we look to the individual interview process for faults it can’t really accept responsibility for. Don’t its fundamental failures lie in the greater system and by extension, the (even unconscious) intentions of the folks who designed it? Ibram Kendi (youngest winner of the National Book Award) recently wrote a book “How to be an Anti-racist”. In it, he details how the SAT was written and how it was specifically and consciously designed to be eugenicist. I’m not claiming that’s the case with interviews, but don’t you think we should consider better ways NOT to redline certain folks out of the hiring process?

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#197

Post by erikpukinskis »

I don’t get how “Look at what University they went to” becomes “Check if they went to Stanford”.

There are lots of good schools. If you got a BS in Computer Science from UIUC, that means something to me. That’s a good school and you got through it.

Same with jobs, why does “Look at their job history” mean “Check if they went to any big name tech companies”?

You look at the companies, look at what the company does, what the applicant said they did for them, and ask them questions about what that was like. It doesn’t really matter if it’s Google or it’s Pet Food Express, the important questions are the role and the work.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#198

Post by UK-Al05 »

Aeolun wrote: post #186
UK-Al05 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"people start stammering and deflecting if they’re full of shit. " - I think what your evaluating there is charisma.

It’s possible you are interviewing that one charismatic fraud, but what’s more likely is that you’re just interviewing the mediocre developer caught in a lie.

Or a introverted developer who's nervous and not very confident at interviews. Which is very likely.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#199

Post by clairity »

dredmorbius wrote: post #182
clairity wrote: post #140

hiring is really simple: you can straightforwardly filter out the obvious no's, but beyond that, it's a crapshoot. basketball analogy time! (my favorite =) the NBA employs 450 of the best basketball players on the planet, and at any given time, the league is evaluating a few thousand more (out of hundreds of millions of basketball players, out of ~7.5 billion people worldwide). all the easy filtering is done. every y…

Pro sports is an interesting comparison, in that it has a very long-chain training and recruiting system, starting as young as age 5-10, and including sport leagues and/or school teams to refine talent. Though professional recruiters may not be looking at younger players, sports leagues and schools are quite conscious of talent. Professional lifetimes are also frequently quite short. For gymnasts, competing life is v…

yes, mainly, i'm using the nba to show that even among folks who are constantly and publicly evaluated for ~10 years (the time from discovery to draft), you have ~10-20% chance of hiring the right player at the right time.

so then, why would one expect to be able to evaluate a candidate for a few hours and do better than that? if anything, professional (office) skills are harder to evaluate than athletic ones.

reasonable folks should expect only 10-20% of hires to be good fits, regardless of the skill or integrity of the hire.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#200

Post by Aeolun »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #198
Aeolun wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible you are interviewing that one charismatic fraud, but what’s more likely is that you’re just interviewing the mediocre developer caught in a lie.

Or a introverted developer who's nervous and not very confident at interviews. Which is very likely.

I have yet to meet the first introverted developer that does not open up and become enthusiastic when asked to talk about one of his (personal) projects. I’ll admit they may exist though.
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