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Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#131

Post by brandall10 »

ghaff wrote: post #129
tnel77 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how you confirm this, but I don’t see how it’s not true. Do you (or other people on this thread) genuinely believe that the best software engineers aren’t demanding the best salaries? Who doesn’t want to make more money given the opportunity?

>Who doesn’t want to make more money given the opportunity? Tons of people remain at jobs they enjoy/companies they like even if they suspect they could probably get a better offer elsewhere. There are plenty of people elsewhere in the country who aren't interested in moving to Silicon Valley and working for one of the large firms. More generally there's probably some relation between quality (which is an elusive var…

The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels, now have offices spread out across the country. You won’t make as much in say Austin or Denver, but it will still be dramatically better than other local options.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#132

Post by 12xdev »

jstummbillig wrote: post #105
tsimionescu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you think FAANG is getting the cream of the crop. Looking at stuff like Rob Pike's comments about Go's use for the general Google employee base [0], I think there is quite a lot of misalignment between the aura of mystique from the outside and the situation as seen from the inside. [0]“The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out…

> Not sure why you think FAANG is getting the cream of the crop. The best coders can demand the highest salary. If you can afford to pay the highest salary you are in an advanced position position to get the best coders. FAANG can afford to pay the highest salary. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary does not cancel this mechanism.

> this mechanism.

Lmao we're not particles in a simulation. Not everybody optimizes for earnings. I optimize for not giving a fuck, so I'll never work at a FAANG. Not everybody wants to trade ten years of their life span for... a modest home in the tri valley and a horrible commute.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#133

Post by Gustomaximus »

I had an interesting call once asking me to interview for marketing job at a women's online fashion business.

I said to the person "not sure IM the right person, I'm male and have zero interest in fashion". To which she replied "That's great because I've got plenty of that fit, I want someone that looks at this more as a business than personal interest"

I never interviewed as they salary was low, but I really liked that approach. I find that 'must love and be passionate about our company products' a little overdone, especially in the US. Its healthy to have people with different points of view, and staff that use alternatives and can discuss why.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#134

Post by decafninja »

zerr wrote: post #113
EvilEy3 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they replacing it with? Back to prestigious university?

With the stuff related to the actual day job. I've heard this about their London office.

Frontend interviews are already like this from my experience. They have you implement features or functions in JavaScript. I think I got tossed one leetcode supereasy level question.

In fact, I'd say at least some of top tech companies are doing frontend interviews like this. Can confirm with firsthand experience for Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Uber. Go a tier (or more) lower and it seems it's still just leetcode interviews though, barely any different from a general or backend track.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#136

Post by ghaff »

indymike wrote: post #45
johnsmith4739 wrote: post #30

Amazes me how little data-driven recruiting is. Just as the author puts it, a good hire is for culture ad, and that means being explicitly aware of what's missing. Tough stuff to really look inside and see what's missing. Most hires I see are either out of desperation or because the recruiter had a good chemistry with the candidate. A 1h interview means 0,3% of the time I will work with that person in one year. Talk…

>Amazes me how little data-driven recruiting is. I'm a founder of a rectech startup. I see four big problems in most companies: 1. Turtle speed. The hiring process takes 45 days, and most of the best candidates get hired by someone else, usually before the hiring manager gets around to interviewing the candidates. 2. Arbitrary process. Candidates get a completely different set of questions, completely different inter…

3. is, I think, one reason personal contacts tend to work well. A top candidate for a position that may not even be actually listed yet can easily end up screened out by someone or something just flipping through a pile of resumes because they are missing some keyword.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#137

Post by EvilEy3 »

onion2k wrote: post #108
EvilEy3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> expert in sprint planning Because they need tech expert and not PO? > passionate about user value Lmao, this is such a vague and useless statement that it is barely worth commenting. What the hell is "passion", how do quantify it and how do you use it? What happens when person you hired for "passion" loses it? > Sometimes the best hire for the team is the second best developer but the best person-who-can-explain-th…

Sprint planning is a collaboration between dev and product. If your devs aren't good at it they'll agree to far too much stuff in a sprint, or they won't spot what things are blocked, or they'll fail to report what happened in a sprint in the retrospective, which impacts everything from planning the next sprint to writing release notes to when the company can do marketing about a major release. Hiring developers who…

> If your devs aren't good at it they'll agree to far too much stuff in a sprint, or they won't spot what things are blocked, or they'll fail to report what happened in a sprint in the retrospective, which impacts everything from planning the next sprint to writing release notes to when the company can do marketing about a major release.

You're describing common sense, not sprint planning.

> Hiring developers who are amazing at algorithms but terrible at everything else has huge

I like this argument from every anti-algo advocate. Because if they're good at algos they're certainly bad at everything else, like you need to sacrifice one to get another.

> Being a good developer is about so much more than writing good code.

Indeed, writing good code is a basis. You can't be good without writing good code, and you can't write good code without knowing basics of algorithmic design and thinking.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#138

Post by decafninja »

ema wrote: post #120
jstummbillig wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure why you think FAANG is getting the cream of the crop. The best coders can demand the highest salary. If you can afford to pay the highest salary you are in an advanced position position to get the best coders. FAANG can afford to pay the highest salary. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary does not cancel this mechanism.

Sure a big salary is nice but especially Google hasn't done much in the last decade to make it look there is exciting, or even just satisfying, engineering happening there.

Because it's all relative. Most other companies (both tech and non-tech) probably have more negatives and less positives than Google has.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#139

Post by decafninja »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #91
lostcolony wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite honestly I have my doubts FAANG selects for "top" candidates anyway. Unless you define "top candidate" as "those FAANG selects".

The loop variance is very high, so there's a lot of error, but in terms of the overall quality of my co-workers, the FAANG i spent five years at was definitely the best. I do notice a substantial difference in average quality between them and less successful Bay Area companies, which does suggest that they are doing a reasonably good job at getting pretty good people in the door.

I think passion comes into play here. You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies.

Even if at the end of the day, it's still a job, I don't think you can get into these companies unless you dedicate a way-above-average amount of time and effort to do so.

Ignore all of the above if you are a natural leetcode wizard; yes I know there are some people like that.

Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses

#140

Post by EvilEy3 »

kowlo wrote: post #103
EvilEy3 wrote: post #95

Sorry, we don't buy snake oil here. Try this bs on LinkedIn they absolutely love a lot of words justifying hiring inferior talent.

You speak on behalf of HN, however, this submission appears to be on the front-page. It seems that the majority of voting users browsing HN throughout the duration of this posts existence do indeed love this bs.

What makes you think that upvote equals agree or love? I also upvoted post because I wanted to see more people discuss the matter at hand.
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