We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#91

Post by akhilcacharya » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

> It’s not like 90% of the students that attended Stanford are brighter than 90% that attended CMU.

But they probably are brighter than 99% of people that attended NC State.

As a sidenote, I've noticed these sorts of microaggressions against the South as well, but it's dampened by the fact that I don't appear stereotypically "southern" because I don't have an accent and am also South-Asian by ethnicity.

(Disclaimer - I went to NC State, so I can say this)

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#92

Post by jkaptur » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

> You see a lot of talk about moneyball, but for some reason people are less excited about… trainingball? Practiceball? Whatever you want to call taking people who aren't “the best” and teaching them how to be “the best”.

I think this is the biggest insight in the article, and the one that's gotten the least traction, both here in this thread and in SWE culture more broadly.

This industry doesn't have a clear way to transmit knowledge and practices, and it DEFINITELY doesn't have a way to do so at scale. HN will debate about interviews (no wait! take-home tests! no wait! ..) all day long, but when it comes to how to make someone a senior SWE, we don't have anything other than 1) set up your dev environment (ideally the same way as I did) 2) dive in for a couple years.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#93

Post by fzeroracer » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #60

plughs wrote: post #45

One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…

As someone who uses Github and OSS contribution as a strong hiring signal, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. People who do a lot of personal projects tend to be very good developers, especially when you can see a demonstrated ability to ship. This is also helpful for people who haven't worked at big name companies or don't have degrees from elite universities. I'd happily hire someone with no experience a…

Please please please P L E A S E keep in mind that a lot of developers literally cannot work on many projects in their free time because the company they work for owns everything they do on and off company time.

Even contributing to open source efforts can become an issue because you're expected to ask for permission first and it can become a sticky legal issue of ownership. Companies expect and want people to work on personal projects but then don't give ownership of said projects to the developer.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#94

Post by allovernow » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

denhaus wrote: post #75

toasterlovin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but do they pay as much?

they probably pay comparably to Bay Area jobs but are in Texas, ergo you can buy a house in 2 years

Confirming, and far less than two years. If you have good credit, you can get a decent house, 3+BR with 5k-10k sqft lot, within reasonable commuting distance for $250k-$350k with $20k-$40k down which is pretty easy to save up in 6-12 months with a 100k+ salary in Houston.

The downside is that Houston is topographically flat, there's not much to do outside, and summer months are oppressively hot/humid.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#95

Post by ufmace » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #28

throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general Silicon Valley is all about equality and opportunity. Except when it isn't. Certain types of bigotry are not only tolerated, they're celebrated.

I see a lot of that in deep Blue country these days. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... is a good exploration of what's going on.

Everybody wants to pat themselves on the back about how non-bigoted they are because they stopped hating the last outgroup. In reality, there's just as much hatred and bigotry as ever, they just transferred it to a new outgroup.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#96

Post by MS90 » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #28

throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general Silicon Valley is all about equality and opportunity. Except when it isn't. Certain types of bigotry are not only tolerated, they're celebrated.

James Hetfield talked about that as a reason he left.

"I kind of got sick of the Bay Area, the attitudes of the people there, a little bit. They talk about how diverse they are, and things like that, and it's fine if you're diverse like them. But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County. My form of eating organic doesn't vibe with theirs."

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-james-hetfield-m...

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#97

Post by plughs » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #83

plughs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who do a lot of personal projects also tend to be young with minimal outside responsibilities. It is no secret that they are appealing hires - someone who's willing to spend long hours on personal projects is probably also willing to spend long hours on work projects. That's what makes it discrimination.

I've never asked my employees to work long hours. That's basic management. I also let them continue working on personal projects whenever possible (getting the rest of the company to agree...).

Few managers ask their employees to work long hours. That doesn't mean they don't expect them to work long hours.

"let them continue working on personal projects". How considerate of you to allow them to decide if they want to work long hours on their time or the company's.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#98

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

traderjane wrote: post #73

alfalfasprout wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly go to any large unicorn or many FANGs and those T-Shirt and jeans are often a $200 "hypebeast" style shirt, $200 raw denim jeans, and $400 sneakers. I mean, I'm guilty of owning more than one of those items but I think it's dumb to claim that wearing t-shirt and jeans is much better in this regard.

> I hate the anti-suit thing in SV. Suits look great, you feel great wearing a good tailored suit... Tailored suit? Seriously? Does that not smell like luxury? Why is that part of the discussion for workplace uniform? A college student wearing a hoodie given for free by TripleByte doesn't look bad at the world's largest software firm. If you wear a t-shirt I cannot tell if you graduated from Stanford. But if you're a…

[deleted]

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#99

Post by thawaway1837 » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #57

rb808 wrote: post #7

I worked on a big C# system with hundreds of windows servers, developed on Visual Studio etc. It was an awesome project and everything worked like clockwork. However there are very few projects using that technology so when I wanted to move I had trouble getting interviews. I'm now working with a very fashionable tech stack, its horrible, infrastructure is regularly broken, people can't trace problems easily, our fun…

I'm a C# developer at what I think is a really good dev environment. Tons of smart people here and we're highly productive. I like C# and I honestly feel boring software is better. I can't get behind chasing the latest trends. Why should I learn Node instead? Does writing backend Javascript mean you're a better developer?

My problem with C# server development until recently has been the reliance on visual studio. A lot of configurations need to be done through VS and lead to the creation of config files that cannot be edited or read outside of VS.

And a lot of the “magic” in the .Net server technologies mean that when things go wrong, there’s almost nothing you can do other than raise a ticket with MS, but you end up spending a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what might be wrong before going that route.

Fortunately, both of these issues have been resolved with the open source .Net Core, and while we continue to use .Net Framework, I’m looking forward to doing more .Net Core development going forward.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#100

Post by bradlys » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

MS90 wrote: post #82

malvosenior wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses Github and OSS contribution as a strong hiring signal, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. People who do a lot of personal projects tend to be very good developers, especially when you can see a demonstrated ability to ship. This is also helpful for people who haven't worked at big name companies or don't have degrees from elite universities. I'd happily hire someone with no experience a…

It's just frustrating because not everyone wants to spend 24/7 working at a computer, some of us have other hobbies and prefer to keep a good work/life balance. I already get paid to code 8 hours a day, the last thing I want to do is go home and do it for free. Would an architect get denied employment because they didn't have a "pet project" skyscraper in their backyard to show off?

I get the idea but I don't think people expect you to do this all the time. It's more to back up a resume that's weak in other areas. (no name companies, no name University, etc. And this is all relevant to the area you're applying, what is no name somewhere is a name known elsewhere)

I found having some open source contributions was a positive for my resume. People knew I could ship something then. They could literally go online and check to see what I did.

I've done most of mine when I didn't have a job or knew I needed something to get the next job. So, it was not much different than investing time in interview prep.

Couldn't tell ya if I prefer leetcode or open source contributions. As for the last five years, I've mainly had to do leetcode every year cause no one gave much care to my contributions after a point. (leetcode is #1 in sv)