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The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

neilwithdata.com

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Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#71

Post by pishpash »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #58
thaumasiotes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For those you get credentialed once and you're done. Not the same thing at all.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#72

Post by solveit »

earthtourist wrote: post #57
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…

> They would rather higher someone provably less qualified from a "top school" than someone else.

Is this true? I can see this being the result of poorly implemented hiring processes, but I can't see this being the explicit goal at a reasonable company doing reasonable things.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#73

Post by dontreact »

earthtourist wrote: post #57
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…

Why do you say Google discriminates on the basis of race? I used to work there and was involved in the hiring processes and never saw evidence for this

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#74

Post by peterwwillis »

Maybe that's just a software developer thing? When we hire technical but not primarily software-developer roles, we focus on the particular role's requirements, and the skillset and experience the candidate is bringing. If this is a product support role, have you done product support? If this is an ops role, have you fielded random "urgent" requests from development teams and recovered bad production deploys? Do we need someone who can get something done ASAP, and as such do they have all the needed skills now, or can we wait while they familiarize themselves with a bunch of new stuff?

I generally ask few technical questions because I'm mostly interested in everything other than your technical knowledge. I can find 50 people who have taken a coding bootcamp and memorized an entire language's inner workings. And I can usually quickly determine how deep your technical knowledge is by throwing stupidly specific questions at you. But I won't know whether you can apply that knowledge in a way that will gel with the team and the requirements of the role.

Which is why most quality candidates come from personal referrals. If you want to get a good job, develop good working relationships.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#75

Post by [deleted] »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #42
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 has never ever been true that you can “be a nobody” and get hired on merit alone. Even with dozens of responders to this comment coming to say that’s how they got hired, it’s total round-off error compared to size of tech hiring at large. Your credentials and political connections are what allow your resume through the ten arbitrary filters before you even get to the technical screen, collaborative coding, etc., a…

[deleted]

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#76

Post by jariel »

dvt wrote: post #50
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…

> 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. If only this were true. I've co-authored a (technical) book, edited another, have dozens of OSS contributions, and GitHub projects with hundreds of stars. Everyone still tries to whiteboard interview me. Usually I tell them to screw off, but still. My theory is that (a) people are too…

Nobody should be either afraid or unwilling to do 'whiteboarding', rather, it should be an opportunity. It's not perfect, but reasonably structured it's a good thing.

Academic credentials are not necessarily conducive to great dev talent ... OSS with lots of stars is a much better measure, but even then, it's not a guarantee of anything.

Companies have to be responsible about their due diligence.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#77

Post by KungFuJohnny »

hirundo wrote: post #54
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?

Would you hire a doctor by insisting they perform surgery in front of you? Would you hire a lawyer by demanding they filling out legal paperwork in front of you?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#78

Post by ransom1538 »

My favorite interview was at digg.com. A four hour interview was going great. My dream job. I knew their tech solid. Then the last guy - walked in [ianeure]. He asked: "What is a having statement in sql". I leaped in - rambled on and on how you can filter aggregated sets. His response: "I don't think you know how they work." I sat there confused and concerned. He explained you don't need a group by with a having statement and that I needed to go back and study sql. I sat there awkwardly [I have been writing sql since I was 14 - I was 25]. Welp, he then rolled his eyes and left. Four hours of an interview ruined. Oh well. Yep. That is how tech interviews go. He went on to ruin digg.com (the rewrite everything guy) and I promised myself to never be a dick to people I interview.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#79

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

nine_k wrote: post #64
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never ever been true that you can “be a nobody” and get hired on merit alone. Even with dozens of responders to this comment coming to say that’s how they got hired, it’s total round-off error compared to size of tech hiring at large. Your credentials and political connections are what allow your resume through the ten arbitrary filters before you even get to the technical screen, collaborative coding, etc., a…

Totally not my experience. And I do 3-4 hiring interviews a week here in NYC. What connections? First show that you can code; a lot don't pass this filter. Then show that you can architect a large distributed system on a whiteboard; a lot of people applying for a senior software engineer position lack the breadth of knowledge and the consideration required. And after that you'd speak to CTO, where maybe you can say o…

My experience as a hiring manager disagrees with yours. Large system design interviews are par for the course - everyone knows how to do them and everyone has lots of experience. They don’t tell you really anything about a candidate, to the point that we should stop using them.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#80

Post by vips7L »

nine_k wrote: post #64
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never ever been true that you can “be a nobody” and get hired on merit alone. Even with dozens of responders to this comment coming to say that’s how they got hired, it’s total round-off error compared to size of tech hiring at large. Your credentials and political connections are what allow your resume through the ten arbitrary filters before you even get to the technical screen, collaborative coding, etc., a…

Totally not my experience. And I do 3-4 hiring interviews a week here in NYC. What connections? First show that you can code; a lot don't pass this filter. Then show that you can architect a large distributed system on a whiteboard; a lot of people applying for a senior software engineer position lack the breadth of knowledge and the consideration required. And after that you'd speak to CTO, where maybe you can say o…

I don't think every system needs to be large or distributed. 90% of engineers aren't going to need to go beyond the basics of load balancing.
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