Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Secondments at Zapier

zapier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 55 posts

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#31

Post by hahajk »

awb wrote: post #20
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more of a TV gimmick than a test for sycophants. You know Branson does daring activities, you know you're on a TV show where the utmost care is taken by a whole team of professionals, ... it's a cheap trick. So, instead of people who trust the proven professionals around them to do their job you get people scared of heights or averse to physical risks (who could be perfectly happy taking massive financial risks…

I must have seen it ~20 years ago on FOX I think. It was certainly a “made for TV” / theatrical way of making a point. But the point stuck with me as it was pretty diametrically opposed to the other Apprentice show which rewarded people for following instructions. Looks like it was Victoria Falls: https://youtu.be/BrA__e6s1kg Clip starts at 4:38 > you know you're on a TV show where the utmost care is taken by a whole…

Thanks for the clip, it really is pretty dumb. They just had a challenge where they jumped/fell off the cliff with a bungee cord as a team-building exercise. It looks like they were expected to say "yes" to that but say "no" to falling off in what was described as a "high-tech barrel." Maybe there were cues or other information not shown in the clip, but I have no idea how any contestant was supposed to assess the risk of either of those activities.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#32

Post by prepend »

awb wrote: post #27
FeepingCreature wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that’s kind of the point though, is if you’re saying you’re capable of being President of Virgin (the prize I believe), then there is little to no safety net. You are the professional in charge responsible for everyone else’s safety. But you're not, in that situation. That's sort of the point. This isn't hiring for prudence, this is hiring for ability to guess Branson's gotcha.

Well the contestant believed they were in charge of the drop. Common sense tells you that a 350’ drop will kill you, but they assumed it was safe because Branson was there. So, he wants people who will view a scenario objectively and not be biased by his presence or opinions. As a control it would have been interesting to have half the contestants in a capsule by themselves and see how many were willing to drop witho…

Common sense tells me that there’s no way a tv show and a billionaire would let me kill myself and others. So that would make me think that there’s some characteristic of the capsule or the falls that would make the drop survivable.

This text seems stupid for weeding out a specific type of contestant.

There’s lots of scenarios of people who would or would not press the button. They may as well flip a coin.

My biggest complaint is that it rewards hesitation or inability to decide and isn’t really a forcing function.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#33

Post by infinitezest »

> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?"

What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#34

Post by ace32229 »

bux93 wrote: post #28
Moissanite wrote: post #16

Nice approach. However, my main take-away from the article is that they have 40 recruiters for a company of 800, which seems high. I know a company expecting growth is going to need more recruiters, but still 20:1 feels excessive. Is there a widley-known ratio which is sufficient to make regular turnover of staff manageable?

According to this, those 40 recruiters grew Zapier from 550 to 800 in 2022. So they added 250 staff with about 40 recruiters, or 6.25 new hires per recruiter. That means less than 1 new hire per recruiter per month. Gitlab target 4-5 new hires per recruiter per month as per https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/metrics/

[dead]

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#35

Post by andrew_ »

> And we also realize a downturn is temporary.

Wait, what? We're in a legitimate recession. Are they speaking about a recruiting downturn or an economic downturn here?

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#36

Post by bluedino »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Yes Richard Branson does this and I learnt it from one of his videos. You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.

> You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.

The last part is important. Some people can't recognize/accept that the person is not a great worker. And then each department wonders what idiot is going to show up this week.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#37

Post by lloydatkinson »

infinitezest wrote: post #33

> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?

Your quote and this one are both real gems.

> We also looked at roles that were being cut from our headcount and saw opportunities for our team to contribute in areas where leaders wanted full-time team members but couldn't make those hires due to budget constraints.

Corporate bullshit speak for, we fired people without realising what they were actually contributing and then things started to fall apart, but we can't hire replacements, so we came up with this idea.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#38

Post by canucklady »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #37
infinitezest wrote: post #33

> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?

Your quote and this one are both real gems. > We also looked at roles that were being cut from our headcount and saw opportunities for our team to contribute in areas where leaders wanted full-time team members but couldn't make those hires due to budget constraints. Corporate bullshit speak for, we fired people without realising what they were actually contributing and then things started to fall apart, but we can't…

They didn't "cut headcount" by firing people, they just didn't hire new people into those roles. Instead they let people move internally to work on projects where teams wanted more headcount.

As someone in a stupidly rigid organization where managers all fight each other to get the limited headcount by inflating their own roadmap, it actually sounds refreshing.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#39

Post by code_runner »

Moissanite wrote: post #16

Nice approach. However, my main take-away from the article is that they have 40 recruiters for a company of 800, which seems high. I know a company expecting growth is going to need more recruiters, but still 20:1 feels excessive. Is there a widley-known ratio which is sufficient to make regular turnover of staff manageable?

I have a very good friend who is in tech recruiting. I feel for them a lot.

But I also can’t justify this ratio. When times are good they ramp up to support wild hiring.

Even if times are still good you hit some critical mass where the recruiter count just doesn’t make sense.

As much as they can be annoying at times, recruiters do get used and abused.

Re: Secondments at Zapier

#40

Post by IanCal »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #37
infinitezest wrote: post #33

> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?

Your quote and this one are both real gems. > We also looked at roles that were being cut from our headcount and saw opportunities for our team to contribute in areas where leaders wanted full-time team members but couldn't make those hires due to budget constraints. Corporate bullshit speak for, we fired people without realising what they were actually contributing and then things started to fall apart, but we can't…

You're mixing up roles and people.

The role is going away because it's not profitable enough, and unless you find something else for the person to do then that person gets fired (or insert whatever the legally correct term for your area is). You also have unfulfilled roles elsewhere which would add value if they were filled but you don't have spare cash to add new people to fill them.

Instead of firing one person and hiring a different person, try and keep the person and swap their role. They may need training to do this, but while they may need to learn some new tech/etc parts they don't need to learn all the zapier specific stuff. The institutional knowledge can remain.

This can have a benefit of making people feel more comfortable to stay, an attitude of "if your project gets canned we'll try and help you into a different role"

Sure there's a lot of corpo speak here, IMO because the idea seems pretty obvious and they want a nice release here but this looks planned and well executed.

Post reply on HN