The software industry's greatest sin: hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#51

Post by drchickensalad » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

non-entity wrote: post #3

That "bad hires" section describes a lot of people I've know and worked with and tbh, I kind of feel sorry for them. They're often incredibly intelligent people that want to apply themselves. We hired this one guy who constantly attempts to re-architect and rewrite various systems on his own, just to have his works rejected. At the same time, some of these guys are seniors. How on earth have you been in the industry…

I think in this field, it's not at all guaranteed that years worked means better. For some people, they grow a mountain in a year. For others, barely at all.

Honestly I agree with your pain because the above situation is also not completely tied to how much you care. Luckily though, most of the time it is.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#52

Post by renewiltord » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #46

renewiltord wrote: post #31

You've got to know if the other person can code. Lots of people can talk a mean game and make nothing and few people can spot them. That's the thing, though. If you make a reputation as the kind of guy who can near 100% spot the good engineers, you will make boatloads of money. An employer will pay you more than $30k if you only do great hires. You do 10 of them with your conversation out to lunch and you've made $30…

It's worthwhile to interview the people you've worked with as they change over time, usually for the better with Junior Engineers becoming Senior or Principal Engineers, DBAs becoming engineers etc. But sometimes a long stint in management or getting stuck in KTLO hell for a few years can dull technical skills.

That's a fair point. Perhaps this is what people are talking about the conversations over lunch. I find it hard to believe that someone who wants to work as an IC and knows you would try to do that knowing their skills had dulled.

The shame of failing someone who trusted you to deliver would be too much!

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#53

Post by missosoup » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:40 AM UTC

mattbillenstein wrote: post #26

sumanthvepa wrote: post #6

This makes so much sense. I've stopped doing in-depth technical interviews for precisely this reason. Instead, I take the developer out for lunch and spend an afternoon discussing our software stack and business with them. It always gives be better results. There is no stress. I don't want to see their code, but I do want to understand how they think and work.

You should absolutely see how they code - I've interviewed so many people on the phone who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, but they could speak to it enough to fool you.

Maybe enough to fool you.

It's pretty easy to tell if someone knows a topic or not by just asking increasingly more specific technical questions to follow up on their answers.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#54

Post by hirundo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #6

This makes so much sense. I've stopped doing in-depth technical interviews for precisely this reason. Instead, I take the developer out for lunch and spend an afternoon discussing our software stack and business with them. It always gives be better results. There is no stress. I don't want to see their code, but I do want to understand how they think and work.

Would you hire a sculpter by taking them to lunch and talking about tools but never seeing their sculpture?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#55

Post by nine_k » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #48

jackcosgrove wrote: post #22

Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. Contrast this with other hiring processes which are more irrational, like med residency match, investment banks favoring "target school graduates", law firms favoring "top 14 graduates", etc. I think whiteboarding is dumb an…

> Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. > You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. I think it stops being seen as a breath of fresh air when e.g. Google's explicit expectation is that you will spend multiple months studying for the privilege before interviewing with them.

Google ≠ the industry.

If you're not a fresh graduate, likely you've had much of the preparation as part of your previous job experience.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#56

Post by dvt » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

mattbillenstein wrote: post #26

sumanthvepa wrote: post #6

This makes so much sense. I've stopped doing in-depth technical interviews for precisely this reason. Instead, I take the developer out for lunch and spend an afternoon discussing our software stack and business with them. It always gives be better results. There is no stress. I don't want to see their code, but I do want to understand how they think and work.

You should absolutely see how they code - I've interviewed so many people on the phone who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, but they could speak to it enough to fool you.

> ...but they could speak to it enough to fool you

I keep hearing about this mythical coding con man, but I've yet to find anyone that can both have an intellectually stimulating conversation about a technical topic while at the same time suck at coding. I can generally tease it out in 15 minutes tops.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#57

Post by earthtourist » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #22

Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. Contrast this with other hiring processes which are more irrational, like med residency match, investment banks favoring "target school graduates", law firms favoring "top 14 graduates", etc. I think whiteboarding is dumb an…

It is true that you can succeed well at tech companies without a degree from a top school. Class, race, gender, sexual orientation are not barriers to success. That's the positive thing.

The negative thing is that most tech companies heavily favor "top school" candidates and actively recruit for them. They would rather higher someone provably less qualified from a "top school" than someone else. They track and boast about how many "top school" candidates they hire.

Tech companies are hugely biased in favoring the upper class. And then they misguidedly try to pay a recompense for this unethical bias by discriminating on the basis of race in favor of "unrepresented minorities". Of course, they still really want those "URMs" to come from a "top school".

Their goal is to counter their active classism through active racism. As if they somehow cancel each other out.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#58

Post by jackcosgrove » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #48

jackcosgrove wrote: post #22

Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. Contrast this with other hiring processes which are more irrational, like med residency match, investment banks favoring "target school graduates", law firms favoring "top 14 graduates", etc. I think whiteboarding is dumb an…

> Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. > You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. I think it stops being seen as a breath of fresh air when e.g. Google's explicit expectation is that you will spend multiple months studying for the privilege before interviewing with them.

That's how long people study for the bar and board exams.

And that's after investing years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra schooling.

You also don't get to retake those every couple years.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#59

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

michael_storm wrote: post #45

lazyjones wrote: post #40

People who hire developers wouldn't be as focused on the candidates' experience with the technology in the job ad if developers were typically more open for new tech that would be learnt at the job. Try to teach a 40+ Perl developer a new language if you want to see what I mean... When you compare IT with other industries like the author did, this is what makes hiring so different. Other industries are fine with hiri…

Ageism isn't cool, dude.

[deleted]

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#60

Post by gonehome » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

kamikaz1k wrote: post #39

gonehome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s largely still that way - you need to know someone to get the referral to get the whiteboard interview (after two phone screens). That said it’s at least a partially objective skill check and I don’t know a better way.

Plenty of people freely offer referrals, since they get referral bonuses (or feel like they wanna help people out).

Maybe for FAANG (though even that isn’t super easy if you don’t know them personally), but it’s harder for interesting smaller companies.