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We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

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Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#351

Post by zormino »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #127
soneca wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: "go-out-for-a-beer test" I am sure this is not a literal "going out for a beer", but still it bothers me that it exists and is called that way. I am 40yo (still junior though as I started learning to code at 37) and I don't drink. I like to work on startups because I like to be generalist and solve problems that impact the fate of the company. So I always work with a lot of young people that like to g…

See if your city has a sober bar.

You can also go-out-for-a-beer and not order an alcoholic drink. I've never met anyone who had a problem with someone for ordering a soda, especially if you say you don't drink. Go-out-for-a-beer can be any social event just to see if you'll get along with a team easily, or if it will be too much of a culture difference.

Where I work, when we interview someone on-site the team they'll be working with takes the person out for lunch somewhere and spends an hour or two getting to know them.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#352

Post by tptacek »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #346
tptacek wrote: post #201

Last night on Twitter, someone said "Nearly every entrepreneur I talk so says hiring is their biggest challenge. The world is starving for competent people with a strong work-ethic." This is of course false. The world is not starving for competent people. It's starving for high-status resumes. If those resumes are attached to people who are competent or hard workers, that's a bonus. The high-status resumes without th…

I've been sad more than once that Starfighter was shut down. What are you working on now and what's your hiring strategy?

For the last couple years Erin & I have been partners at Latacora, which is like a version of Matasano that instead of just doing application vulnerability assessment, joins startup engineering teams for 9-18 months to run their whole security team and then recruits full-timers in to replace us once it's up and running (there are 4 other partners, including one of my Matasano cofounders). In addition to appsec, we do cloud security, secops, and corpsec/vendorsec. It's been pretty great!

We hire almost the same way we did at Matasano, but more so: we're almost completely resume-blind, don't do phone screens, and have only an hour or so of face-to-face interviews that don't include any tech-out at all.

Even here, where part of the premise of retaining us is that we're going to do recruiting work for you, we still have to actively sell our approach for qualifying candidates, and many of our clients still do some technical interviews.

(Patrick, of course, has been at Stripe since we wound down Starfighter).

I miss the technical work we did at Starfighter but if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't make it a business through contingency recruiting; fee-for-placement contingency recruiting is an experiment I expect never to repeat again.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#353

Post by pc86 »

raxxorrax wrote: post #199
scottlamb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From later in that second twitter thread: > I was at a party tonight and someone asked me what my favorite book was. Couldn't answer. They relaxed the constraint and asked about "a good book". Couldn't answer. They relaxed the constraint again and asked me about "any book, good or bad". Couldn't answer. From his blog, Dan is obviously a great engineer. I'd love to say as an interviewer I'd recognize this and say "str…

Don't know the party, but it would be a weak question in an interview in my opinion.

I think it's possible you're missing the point.

If you have such crippling social anxiety that you cannot name literally any book, whether you've read it or not, and you can't even make one up, the odds of you performing well at an interview are extremely small.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#354

Post by pc86 »

eggsnbacon1 wrote: post #121
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…

This is a stupid signal. Many/most developers are prohibited from working on open source projects by their employers. In any state besides California and Illinois you will be forced to sign an IP assignment agreement to work for any medium/large companies. Open source projects will not let you contribute under such an agreement, and anything you do on your own is owned by your employer.

> Many/most developers are prohibited from working on open source projects by their employers.

This is 100% untrue. IP assignment is not enforceable if you do work on your own time and use your own equipment (including connectivity).

If you don't own a personal computer and your GitHub page is loaded with commits during your working hours, yeah you're going to have a hard time arguing it's not company IP. But for the vast majority of developers this is a complete non-issue, and insinuating the contrary is just FUD.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#355

Post by pc86 »

plughs wrote: post #77
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…

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.

Calling this discrimination is offensive to people who are actually discriminated against.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#356

Post by pc86 »

simsla wrote: post #293
ddevault wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest: if you have one person who spends 8 hours a day practicing a talent, and another who spends 10 or 12 hours a day practicing their talent, which is going to be better at that skill? Having lots of open source code to read demonstrates in public the prospect's talent for writing code, has examples of their collaboration with others, etc, but also simply means they spend more time writing code and gettin…

My company disallows me from doing open source (without an incredibly rigorous review process that makes it honestly not worth the hassle). Nice plus? Sure. Near-mandatory? Fuck no.

How exactly do they do that?

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#357

Post by ritchiea »

csa wrote: post #350
ritchiea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A professor in my social circle has taught at various schools across North America including Harvard, University of Toronto and a few prominent USA state schools. He says in his experience there's no difference between the intellect and quality of work he sees at the schools he's taught at but the Harvard students are more ambitious and more entitled. In my own personal experience Harvard, Princeton, Stanford types o…

> Harvard could admit sufficiently qualified students from it's applicants several times over the actual count of its freshman class The key word there being "sufficiently". The academics at Harvard are not unusually difficult (relatively easy in some majors), and I would argue that the content in the coursework is distinctly not what makes Harvard what it is. If Harvard only accepted their third-tier of admits (i.e.…

As opposed to the current 1/3 legacy, unclear percentage propped up by wealthy parents, elite prep school system that consistently and efficiently finds the best students.

There are still plenty of directionless Harvard kids that end up back in their parents's basements after graduation.

Also have you ever stopped to ask yourself who reads and evaluates these admission packets? How often do we complain about hiring here on HN? That it's hard, that you can't tell enough from the slice of information you have about a person. Do you really think the admission people at Harvard have such a gift to accurately tier these teens futures?

And if they had such a gift, why are they admission officers at a university and not in a position where their impeccable qualitative assessment skills can be better leveraged to make tons of money or truly great careers? The same people assessing these applications are the same, reasonably intelligent but flawed people that are doing recruiting and hiring and screening in every other prestigious institution that struggles to choose the best candidates.

Anyway I'm not trying to argue most people are undeserving (except for the legacy and wealthy parents kids, who are again, a very sizable percentage). But the idea that we actually have a finely enough tuned comb and good enough data to actually pick the children with the most elite futures is on its face absurd. And culturally both the benefactors and the people in awe of the halo of achievement around our elite universities are taking it too far.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#358

Post by neilparikh »

MS90 wrote: post #96
reaperducer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-hetf…

I don't understand why that's a form of bigotry. If someone legitimately thinks that hunting is unethical, it seems reasonable to look down upon someone who hunts.

Replace hunting with some act you find unethical, and you'll see why this doesn't make sense.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#359

Post by plughs »

malvosenior wrote: post #87
MS90 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not about denying you employment. It's about hiring someone who can ship software. If someone has publicly shipped software and you can see that, they make for a good candidate. It seems reasonable to me that people who really love writing software and do it a lot would get jobs and be successful in the industry. I wouldn't judge them on their work/life balance, some people really do enjoy programming that much.

I find it strange to associate OSS contributions with 'shipping software'. I've shipped plenty of software. I've dealt with drop dead release dates, 5 nines HA requirements, production war rooms, and a product paid for and used by millions of people.

Is 'shipping software' the same when there are no angry customers who can burn up the support line demanding refunds and threatening to leave 1 star reviews on amazon?

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#360

Post by davidwitt415 »

bsder wrote: post #277
MS90 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-hetf…

1) I really wouldn't quote James Hetfield as a bastion of "tolerance", thanks. 2) Lots of old Metallica metal fans will regale you at length about how Metallica sold out to Redneck America(tm) in return for lots and lots of cash. So, lots of this kind of stuff is suspect as to whether it is genuine vs planned marketing. 3) "But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County." Erm, actually James I k…

Regarding #2, I don't know who the 'Lots' are you are referring to, but I do know people who were OG Friends of Metallica, as in they were at the Metallica Mansion when Cliff Burton auditioned and full circle, invited to join the band when they were inducted into the RRHoF. Your poor mouthing is at odds with the experiences of people who actually know the members of Metallica (well, except for Lars) have always been super down to earth and remain committed to making great metal music for their fans. Personally, I prefer the old stuff, but I don't condescend to the 'Redneck America' sellout bs. You should try not to as well.
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