Why I Won't Hire You • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#91

Post by radarsat1 » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #83

> I have a super BS detector, and most other interviewers do too. I have a good BS detector too. Lots of people do. Here's the problem: Lots of people are full of BS. That includes interviewers. Since people are very sensitive to BS either way, a BS impedance mismatch can completely ruin an interview. That means that the BS-appraisal process must complete efficiently and accurately within the first 30 seconds of the…

I should mention that in reality things are, of course, more subtle, and this two-category quantization is not realistic. In the real situation you'll not only want to identify the BS-status of the interviewer, but give them just the right amount of BS. Don't be too honest, you have to sell yourself after all. Frankly, it's tricky, especially for people who aren't used to talking about themselves.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#92

Post by nsxwolf » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

99%+?!

This guy must spending every waking hour interviewing.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#93

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #42

I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in the first 5 minutes. If you can't narrow down resumes and phone interviews to candidates with better than a 1% chance of being accepted, then your interviewing pre-screening process is flawed. What other processes in our everyday work will also be flawed? You send me a stupidly long resume 90% of all written correspondence (from customers, use…

Pretty much exactly right. 1 difference for me, though. I already know what I want to be when I grow up:

A programmer!

Yes, I've reached the end of my career. I'm where I want to be, and I don't want to change. I don't want to be a manager, team leader, or otherwise do anything other than programming. If there were any change I wanted, it would be 'do fewer non-programming things'.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#94

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:23 PM UTC

tkiley wrote: post #62

/No career plans or vision/ The best developers I've ever worked with tend to lack career plans. If you're sufficiently happy with your life that you don't need a change strategy, that's pretty cool.

Are you sure they didn't? Perhaps, like me, they have already finished their career plan and they are working their dream job.

That's the thing these interviews fail to take into account. They assume that everyone wants more, when that's not always the case. Happiness means knowing when you have what you want, and enjoying it.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#95

Post by balloot » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:05 PM UTC

Why I won't work for you:

1) You are a self-important douche who writes lengthy blog posts on all the reasons you deem people unworthy of working with you.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#96

Post by balloot » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/golem-technologies

Employees: 1

He's been doing this for almost a year and hasn't hired anyone. Sounds about right.

Also, the website is taking 20s to serve any page. Maybe he should spend less time blogging about how awesome he is and how everyone sucks, and instead build a website that can handle a surge of traffic.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#97

Post by analyst74 » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:18 PM UTC

ntkachov wrote: post #37

gk1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not from HR, but my guess is that a question like that is for learning whether the candidate is goal-oriented or just goes by living day-to-day. I agree that it's a cliche question, and could be phrased more originally and/or specifically in most cases, but it is not _totallt_ useless.

Well, I think it's a bit of loaded question. What do I say? If I reach to high I endanger my own prospects at being hired. A buddy of mine answered the "see yourself in 5 years" question with "Probably working at Google". Needless to say he wasn't hired. If I reach too low I sound like a deadbeat. If I answer with something like "Working at the position you are hiring me for" I sound like I have no vision and no driv…

That's funny, I gave similar answer when interviewing with my current company, and I got hired. Turns out it's been the best company I've ever worked for.

The question is a test for you, but the answer you give, is also a test for the employer.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#98

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:20 PM UTC

Notably, going through his blog's archives, there's no post on the subject of "Why on Earth You'd Want to Work for Me."

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#99

Post by maeon3 » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

He has every right to be bitter. Good candidates are avoiding him like the plague, and what is left over is terrible. It's a feedback loop.

Re: Why I Won't Hire You

#100

Post by noduerme » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

I wrote this in their comments, and got blocked by an auto filter. Wonder why?

"About halfway through the first bullet point I decided I wasn't interested in reading every juicy word of this boring essay. I thought about writing a rebuttal along the lines of "why I won't work for you", but it boils down to this -- you sound like a bad listener and a self-important jerk."

Response:

Your posting on Golem Technologies from ... has been automatically flagged by our spam filters as being inappropriate for this website.