They state they are a hiring manager. If they can't manage difficult but productive employees, they may need some aid learning how to manage effectively.
It's very easy to manage them: don't hire them. Bringing on someone who is a disruption to an already productive team because they seem like they may be a good individual contributor, based off the extremely limited exposure you have had to this individual, is a bad idea.
It is exceptionally easy to manage when there's nothing to manage. At that point, managers are superfluous, and the company is wasting money and not maximizing their profits that could benefit from a good manager working with excellent contributors with imperfect dispositions.
> Five years in, 75% of Ultranauts’ staff are on the autistic spectrum – and one reason for this is its innovative approach to hiring. Given that autism has a significant male to female ratio (quick Googling suggested 4:1 for Male:Female for autism), this seems to indicate that their percentage of women developers is low.
Autism spectrum disorders are also massively underdiagnosed in women, in part because the way many girls are socialised requires them to behave in ways that can mask the social symptoms.
> companies have their own cultures, and if you're not a fit to that culture, bringing you on runs the risk of ruining the culture they have been building and making their employees quit. You can justify any kind of discrimination that way. I can come up with a number of reasons that would make women, people of color, foreigners or literally any other group a "poor culture fit". > Sure, we probably miss some good peo…
> You can justify any kind of discrimination that way. I can come up with a number of reasons that would make women, people of color, foreigners or literally any other group a "poor culture fit". Do/would you hire any person who can answer your questions? There are plenty of smart people who are entirely unenjoyable people. Not liking someone is not discrimination. > So you'd reject a candidate because of comfort and…
>Not liking someone is not discrimination.
I've heard the same by some individuals who say they don't like people of color. Perhaps your line of reasoning is not complete.
Aha... so you know. Hopefully my long piece will be useful to someone else, then. "Red flag", that's the expression I was looking for indeed.
Don't worry, that text will very likely impact many people, and nearly none of them will be aware enough of it to tell you what they thought. The worst thing is that, in a cold rational way the optimum strategy for both the company and the employee is hiring with little evidence, and firing relatively quickly. But it's only good if everybody does it, and nobody is actually able to do it.
Haha. Dunno if I should smile or cry. ;)
Very interesting remark on the hiring/firing process, I do concur.
It's an approach worth keeping in mind; it may one day fit in a much more dynamic labor legal framework provided both sides find interest — closer to a frictionless market[1], yielding more productivity... I think there's a case to be made for a non-zero-sum evolution here. Maybe for the next decade, or the one after.
I'm curious, what do you think is a "good" answer? Because, from the interviewer standpoint, here's what such questions are about. Prepare to have your mind blown, maybe. 1. Hiring is by far the most stressful, unpredictable, career-destroying part of a manager's job. And that's as an employee, if that's your business (founder, entrepreneur) you're scared shitless that a mistake may plain and simple ruin your busines…
This is the most thoughtful comment I've ever read on HN.
Lol, you can't wrap your naive opinions as "personal experience" and then apply them to a generality of millions of people. You passed off this claim as real . Just because you frame it as personal experience doesn't suddenly make it not a form of prejudice, and doesn't suddenly make it correct and valid. I don't need data to counter your "personal experience" a.k.a. anecdotal evidence, because it was never valid to…
Are you saying your own personal experience is a counter to mine? I accept that. There are all kinds of people out there. Sharing personal experiences is how normal humans learn about each other.
Are you saying your own personal experience is a counter to mine?
You keep trying to twist this situation with carefully crafted language into something that it isn't.
I'm not offering you "personal experience", you are attempting to equate our statements here in order to maintain a level playing field. Unfortunately, you are trying to pass off as a generalized fact something which my very existence disproves. You can study me independently to reach this conclusion. I am a data point. It has nothing to do with my own experiences, but the very real and measurable phenomenon that is my actions in the world.
I don't know if it's to coerce loyalty. I would presume that the main motivation is that they know that you are what generates profit. So if they can exploit you as a profit-generating resource, and get away with it, they will do so. This isn't novel. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for entire families, children included, to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and barely earn enough to survive. Th…
Yeah, that's one of the big problems with capitalism. The laws of microeconomics state that in a free market, the market will produce as many widgets as possible, using up all possible resources to do so. This isn't good for human happiness or for the environment. Who really wants to live in a world where we are buying and producing as much as possible?
I do think there are certainly problems, but I don't agree what you describe is any rational conclusion of the principles of a free market. No one wants to live in a world where all resources are consumed to make widgets. Therefore, those people will not pay to buy that many widgets if they're informed enough to understand the true price of things. Most models of capitalism have weaknesses like this surrounding the need for information to be universally and equally available for their conclusions to hold, which can produce some incentives to obscure or hide information that makes exploitation easier. The issue with modern day overwork, though, isn't a lack of information but more a change in cultural values which needs to take place. Currently, the 'work hard and you will be rewarded' mindset which was productive (and often honest) in the factory-oriented past is being misapplied in modern environments where it is both counter-productive and false. 'Salary' doesn't mean 'paid for completing the work' as it was supposed to when legally created as a category, it means nothing more than 'required to perform large quantities of unpaid work'.
I've been asked that question a few times. Currently interviewing and was asked that by one company by the guy that runs the dept, he also went on to ask me why I "want to work in this field". It was for a job that was pretty much the exact same as what I'm doing now (just trying to move cities). I found it incredibly insulting to have to justify why I want to do the work that I do, when I've been doing it for many y…
I wouldn't judge them to badly for such an inane question by itself. Being an interviewer is also hard. (If they did other weird things before, it might just be the straw to break the camels back.) The status quo needs justification every once in a while, too. Though you could formulate the same question nicer as: "If you could do it all over again, what other fields would you be interested in? What are the pros and…
That's true, but there were several other points of contention too. The guy that interviewed me was the head of the group I would be working in and I could tell the things we valued were incompatible.
Are you saying your own personal experience is a counter to mine? I accept that. There are all kinds of people out there. Sharing personal experiences is how normal humans learn about each other.
Are you saying your own personal experience is a counter to mine? You keep trying to twist this situation with carefully crafted language into something that it isn't. I'm not offering you "personal experience", you are attempting to equate our statements here in order to maintain a level playing field. Unfortunately, you are trying to pass off as a generalized fact something which my very existence disproves. You ca…
There are exceptions to every rule. Are you claiming you are an exception or the rule? If so, how do you back up your claim?
>Resolving a dispute involves, y'know, actually talking and understanding each other's point of view. But that requires empathy. History would disagree, and then hit you with a stick until you agree with its disagreement. Resolving a reasonable dispute (aka, a debate) can be done via talking it out, but this requires both parties to agree upon the rules for "winning" this dispute. Typically, in regards to physical co…
Holy shit, I can't believe I even bothered trying to reason with someone on the Internet who seriously thinks an impromptu wrestling match is a good way to resolve a disagreement at work. You're either a troll or larping. "Wrestling things out builds comradery"? We're talking about a disagreement about a work issue in a software company. Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A: kempbellt. EDIT: I'm eagerly awaiting being cha…
Please don't cross into flamewar, regardless of how wrong or annoying another commenter is. It only makes things worse.