The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

When I hire people, I care about potential and attitude more than merit. I don’t care as much about what someone has accomplished as I do about whether someone wants to learn, is smart and eager to be part of a team. I’ve seen with my own eyes people that come with a lot of accomplishment and a ton of skill, people who have a lot of merit by any definition, and who are terrible people to hire who cause real damage on teams. I don’t believe that “merit” is a particularly strong signal for job performance.

What are you referring to about credentials being gained illicitly? How often does this happen? Are you talking about degrees? I’ve never met someone with an illicitly gained degree, and it would be stupid to try that; you’d get caught immediately. It’s not as easy as just lying. If you’re talking about degrees, I serious doubt that happens “often”, but feel free to provide some evidence that it’s more than statistical noise or anecdotes. If not degrees, what are you talking about?

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the meta point here is that “actual ability” is to some degree a socially unjust metric. IQ correlates with family income. Why? Because people with more money get better nutrition, more training, better schools, stronger business networks. The advantages in life are, statistically, a major component of what leads to “ability” in the first place.

I do think standardized tests do a pretty good job. Test mostly on algorithms/tech related questions and you'll mostly find people with interest in these topics. You're right that people who do well on these types of tests may still be terrible people, but it hasn't been my experience that interviews are good at snuffing out terrible people as opposed to people who aren't like the interviewers (ex. people who grew up in poor environments whereas the interviewer didn't).

> What are you referring to about credentials being gained illicitly? How often does this happen?

Regarding degrees, it's well known for example that the Ivy League have large biases towards legacy admissions and for example Asian Americans are highly penalized due to affirmative action. Any effects caused by these types of biases are immoral to me, maybe "illicit" wasn't the right choice of word.

> IQ correlates with family income. Why? Because people with more money get better nutrition, more training, better schools, stronger business networks. The advantages in life are, statistically, a major component of what leads to “ability” in the first place.

This is not true. In the US at least, the effect of shared environment on IQ is known to be very low by late adolescence. IQ correlates with family income because smarter parents have higher income and pass their genes down to their children. https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2016/05/09/my-response-to...

I’m not seeing a compelling problem with the outcome. The question is: are companies not able to hire good people? And: are good people not able to find jobs?

Interviews are also expensive for a company. And I don’t really see a clear or compelling argument that interviews somehow cost the candidate money. How much money? If the candidate doesn’t have a job, then what exactly is money or time cost to the candidate? Doesn’t the eventual job with income outweigh all interviewing costs? Isn’t the cost somewhat irrelevant if it’s not egregious, and there’s really no choice if you want a job? Isn’t the alternative, choosing not to interview, potentially way more expensive?

If you’re going to frame it as expensive, I think it’s more than fair to counter with you need to average the cost of the interview over the time period that you’re employed. If you interview for 10 hours, and you work there for 5 years, the cost of the interview is 20 seconds per day.

> they’re painful for the candidate

I agree that interviews have a time cost and that candidates have a finite budget. That means someone looking for a job should invest wisely, figure out how & when to decline an interview, study the companies before interviewing.

This is subjective, and it’s not a solvable “hiring problem”. This is something the candidate has to fix for themselves. Nobody is going to give you a six figure salary and ask you to work with them for many years without vetting you. It will always take time, and it will always be somewhat uncomfortable and emotionally draining. Some people prepare for interviews, and some people like to interview. If you view it as a skill, one that you can learn and improve at, maybe it will become less painful for you. But don’t expect that companies are ever going to do that for you.

Anyway, my anecdote: we were interviewing for a C developer position. The next candidate was in his 50s. Our project leader took a dislike to him the moment he saw his resume. No idea why but I assumed it was either his age or that this project leader knew him and didn't want to work with him for some personal reason.

The project leader arrived to the interview at least 40m late. In that time this candidate impressed me (as the C guy) very much and I said 'hire' immediately. However, as presaged, the project leader said no.

This candidate had no way of knowing what had happened. He definitely could tell I was impressed so he probably assumed it was his age. Just imagine how he must've felt. I probably should've contacted him to let him know how messed up the our process was.