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

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#521

Post by packetlost » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #517

packetlost wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first job, I agree that it's important and I don't even have a problem with it being a factor. What I do have a problem with is discriminating salary or hiring based on what school you went to 5+ years into your career, by which point it matters a lot less.

> For the first job, I agree that it's important and I don't even have a problem with it being a factor. As someone who went both to a top school and a very average school, I do have a problem with it. If you've not been to an average school, you may be surprised at how many bright and motivated students there are.[1] And if you've not been to a top school, you may be surprised at how average most of the students are…

I've only ever been to 'average schools.' With no data to back up this claim, I'd be willing to bet even the worst students that graduate from top schools are still better than the lower end of average from average schools, because the barrier to entry (and continued attendance) at top schools is higher. I'd also not be surprised if your claim of top school graduates being less honest were true, for the same reasons.

If I were in a position to interview and hire someone, graduating from a top school would at least garner some attention, assuming the degree was relevant, but it's not a 'free pass' through any of the steps of the interview process, and may even earn them a more critical assessment in the implicit 'culture fit/personality' category.

This is just my opinion on the matter, not trying to make any sort of factual claims.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#522

Post by kag0 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #47

> Developer hiring is broken This seems to be a pretty popular opinion. It totally might be right, but it’s not my own experience, so I have a serious question because maybe I don’t know what’s happening out there with most hiring today - what are the broad-stroke outcomes that demonstrate that hiring isn’t working? Are there statistics that show that hiring has problems? All of the reasons given in the article are c…

I would say the issues with interviews are

* they're not cheap (although not that expensive all things considered), assuming you spend say 10 person hours on two calls and an on site.

* they produce false negatives. on the spot exam style algorithms interviews don't reflect day-to-day work, and they filter out people who might be great at the job, but aren't used to the specific type of stress that interview creates.

* they can produce false positives. failure to check for interpersonal skills in leet koders can leave you wishing you had never hired them.

* they're painful for the candidate. ideally your role is the best fit for a candidate. people only have so much emotional and logistical bandwidth. they may take an offer after interviewing with a handful of companies before they ever find you.

now, I don't have numbers for those last three points. I don't know if anyone does. but we can look at most hiring processes and see that they are a problem, we just can't tell if it's a big enough problem to consider the process "broken".

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#523

Post by jgwil2 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:02 PM 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…

Thank you for eloquently articulating my feelings on the subject. Yes, technical interviews can be infuriating. But in many ways they are more egalitarian than the hiring processes in other professions. Anyone with an internet connection can start practicing leetcode problems today and give themselves a shot at landing a job.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#524

Post by jgwil2 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

rafiki6 wrote: post #423

dominotw wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh good weekly 'hiring is broken' thread. I was stuck in stages 2 and 4 ( anger and depression) of 'unable to land a faang(ish) job grief' for years and would make angry comments on this weekly thread. I think I've made peace with it and I hope to be in stage 5 acceptance. I've been leetcoding every single day for last 3 months, 300 problems in I can hit my target of one easy and one medium with 1 hr goal. I hope to…

I'm guessing you're being downvoted because your response hasn't offered anything terribly constructive to the conversation, but I have to actually commend your attitude as I have reached a similar mentality. I am Leetcoding, still suck at it but persisting. I'll play the game because I'm not sure what other choice I have. I don't enjoy my current job and in order to get the jobs I want with the people I want to work…

> Considering how standard it is, we might as well just make it a part of a software developer certification/license that you have to do once to break into the industry.

I think it is only a matter of time for this to happen. All it would really take would be two major companies deciding to standardize on some set of criteria, and smaller companies would follow suit for the sake of simplicity (and because no one really feels like they know what they're doing anyway).

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#525

Post by buzzkillington » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #192

dheera wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More ideally, the interview process would have found that OP was a better fit for the company and that the rewrite-everything guy was producing abnormal interview reviews and should be demoted.

Some process should have figured out that that guy was poison. But putting that function in the interviewing process seems awkward...

There is no such thing as a 'toxic person'. There are people who do not fit in a team, there are people who don't fit a companies goals, there are people you can't stand.

The most difficult lesson I've learned is even the worst person in the world has their uses and I only hurt myself by not admitting that.

If I can't stand a team I move on as quickly and professionally as possible because life is too short to fight pointless battles.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#526

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:49 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #521

BeetleB wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the first job, I agree that it's important and I don't even have a problem with it being a factor. As someone who went both to a top school and a very average school, I do have a problem with it. If you've not been to an average school, you may be surprised at how many bright and motivated students there are.[1] And if you've not been to a top school, you may be surprised at how average most of the students are…

I've only ever been to 'average schools.' With no data to back up this claim, I'd be willing to bet even the worst students that graduate from top schools are still better than the lower end of average from average schools, because the barrier to entry (and continued attendance) at top schools is higher. I'd also not be surprised if your claim of top school graduates being less honest were true, for the same reasons.…

> I'd be willing to bet even the worst students that graduate from top schools are still better than the lower end of average from average schools,

That may be true, but likely both of these have poor GPAs and thus are filtered out anyway. Usually you'll be evaluating candidates with at least a decent GPA.

I'm not claiming the average is the same between the two. But when there are a lot more average schools than top schools, chances are that numerically most good candidates do not come from top schools.

When I look at resumes of new grads, I ignore the school altogether. GPA has to meet some not-high threshold, and then it's just a peek at interesting projects they may have done.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#527

Post by hlmencken » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

Being a manager and hirer is very different from being the interviewee. It's great to believe that you could have some innate ability to judge one's empathy and character in a set of interviews but so much of that runs to favor people who can talk well, which is a wholly different skill from being to code well. Saying technical interviews are disguised IQ tests is quite the horse-shit metaphor. I won't dig into all the problems with IQ tests. Certainly some people have innate ability to do well in quantitative tests, but I know so many people who have put in so much work to get so good at what they do against difficulty and belittling their success at interviewing as something inherent like IQ is awful. Getting to that level takes experience. It takes grit. Programming is a highly technical skill, I have worked with people I don't get along with and people I can't talk to comfortably who have written amazing code and when I am reviewing code that is going to be depended upon by millions of people each day I will always merge good code over someone I like personally. Lots of developers also have responsibilities that use empathy and character and leadership and those people you should always hire along that rubric as well, but if what you need is strong technical skill and ability to solve hard problems with code. You have to find someone who can program well; after that you can have a lot of flexibility in how you work with them and what other responsibilities you give them. I think you are off in comparing programmers to white collar professions. Compare them to skilled professions ala crane operators, machinists, or surgeons. If you don't have hard technical problems then you have the luxury of not needing people who are very good technically, so you can have the luxury of rounding out your interview, but if you have programs for which code quality is very important, you should trust someone who can build good software.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#528

Post by tikiman163 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #318

earthtourist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of my previous bosses (at a large tech company) moved over to the US and was asked to hire 9-10 people in a quarter. Everyone said it was impossible. She went to LinkedIn, found people with the right skills (strong data and ability to communicate), and had a massive fight with HR because none of the candidates came from "top" schools. She won the argument, and all of the hired candidates did a great job. People (…

That entirely depends on the company. The US is nearly the size of Europe, each state is roughly equivalent to a different country. How people think and behave vary vastly.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#529

Post by takeda » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

asn0 wrote: post #154

We (Ambra Health) a few years ago decided our "typical" multi-hour multi-week interview process was a lot of effort for pretty mixed outcomes. We realized an interview can't really answer the most important questions: how a candidate works, and what's it like to work together. So we added an option to interview by way of a paid trial period (work part-time nights/weekends for a few weeks with the hiring team). Figure…

Since it is happening on weekends, and pretty much everywhere a new person needs on-boarding. Does that mean your existing team needs to be also available over the weekend so it can answer any question the new candidate might have?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#530

Post by hunterwerlla » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #397

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my previous bosses (at a large tech company) moved over to the US and was asked to hire 9-10 people in a quarter. Everyone said it was impossible. She went to LinkedIn, found people with the right skills (strong data and ability to communicate), and had a massive fight with HR because none of the candidates came from "top" schools. She won the argument, and all of the hired candidates did a great job. People (…

> especially US people definitely not. french companies actually have engineering salary tables depending on your age and university

That sounds interesting, is there an english source to read about that?