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It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

fredandrandall.com

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Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#151

Post by lrobb »

pyre wrote: post #97
smsm42 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this has a lot to do with recruiters/HR being the intermediate. If I hire a programmer, I'd prefer him of course to know the platform he's working on and hit the ground running, but I'd much rather have a good programmer that can learn a new platform and become productive in a month than a mediocre one which knows the platform but will be mediocre forever. The problem, however, is that if I am a software en…

It's not just an HR issue. I've come across a number of situations where developers are making hiring decisions and using arbitrary criteria to base them on. E.g.: * The fire storm over Deviant Art's 'we only hired 0.0000001% of people' blogpost/HN discussion. * I went through the application process at a start-up where they were "really excited" about me after the first interview, but dropped me after the second bec…

Exhibit B: We code in Ruby, but are open to engineers with strong backgrounds in any interpreted or functional languages (Python, Lisp, Scala, Erlang . . .). Even a Java background might be OK, if you can show us that you are still learning and growing as an engineer. No C# /.Net engineers though: there are limits!* Ad for Principal Engineer at Slideshare

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#152

Post by eli_gottlieb »

yason wrote: post #70
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Yes, there is something wrong. I had a good friend put himself on the job market six months ago. He has the total package -- has worked on and shipped well-known products, has reviewable open-source projects and contributions, great academic pedigree, nice guy, even good looking -- I said something like, "You'll have five offers at the end of this week". Three months later, no offer. What was most interesting was how…

But the fact that someone who I would actually describe as top 1% of devs I've worked with can't get a job without relying on his network is kind of scary. Isn't it expected and the way things have worked? Friends give friends who give you jobs. Applying blind is like the shotgun approach because the relationship between you and the candidate company is nonexistent and has no context. If you're a friend of Jack's fro…

And what of those of us who are just young and don't have extensive networks everywhere yet?

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#153

Post by pyre »

lrobb wrote: post #151
pyre wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just an HR issue. I've come across a number of situations where developers are making hiring decisions and using arbitrary criteria to base them on. E.g.: * The fire storm over Deviant Art's 'we only hired 0.0000001% of people' blogpost/HN discussion. * I went through the application process at a start-up where they were "really excited" about me after the first interview, but dropped me after the second bec…

Exhibit B: We code in Ruby, but are open to engineers with strong backgrounds in any interpreted or functional languages (Python , Lisp, Scala, Erlang . . .). Even a Java background might be OK, if you can show us that you are still learning and growing as an engineer. No C# /.Net engineers though: there are limits!* Ad for Principal Engineer at Slideshare

My point wasn't to paint all developers as being bad at hiring. My point is that HR shouldn't be used as a scapegoat for what's wrong with technical hiring.

I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like some non-technical person is blocking you from talking to someone that you can relate to and prove your value to. But it is just as frustrating once you get to someone technical that can understand you, only to find that that person is using equally arbitrary criterion to evaluate you.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#154

Post by droithomme »

RandallBrown wrote: post #68
wyclif wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel If you're having trouble hiring, it's probably because you're not paying enough. It turns out that talented people are worth paying a lot for.

It's not that people are having trouble with people accepting offers. They're never getting to that point because they don't think anyone is qualified.

That assumes that people smart enough to meet their standards aren't smart enough to look up salary surveys that show whether the company pays market rate before bothering to apply.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#155

Post by yason »

yason wrote: post #70
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Yes, there is something wrong. I had a good friend put himself on the job market six months ago. He has the total package -- has worked on and shipped well-known products, has reviewable open-source projects and contributions, great academic pedigree, nice guy, even good looking -- I said something like, "You'll have five offers at the end of this week". Three months later, no offer. What was most interesting was how…

But the fact that someone who I would actually describe as top 1% of devs I've worked with can't get a job without relying on his network is kind of scary. Isn't it expected and the way things have worked? Friends give friends who give you jobs. Applying blind is like the shotgun approach because the relationship between you and the candidate company is nonexistent and has no context. If you're a friend of Jack's fro…

Sorry about the formatting mess. I'm not allowed to edit the post anymore so it's there to stay. If only the virtual keyboard on my tablet had cursor keys, everything would be a lot simpler...

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#156

Post by kelnos »

ma2rten wrote: post #115
pyre wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is not that someone who doesn't know about Java memory issues is useless. The point is just that someone who knows those things, but doesn't know graph theory well may be a better fit for the job, but the interview process doesn't account for this.

Well, I think the goal of these graph questions is not so much figuring out if they "know graph theory". But, rather, figuring out if the candidate had a solid Computer Science education and if they can think about a problem in abstract terms (as a proxy for being smart in general). The idea being that if those two things hold true, they can learn everything else on the spot.

I don't have a solid CS education (I studied EE in college), and I've had no trouble getting interesting, satisfying jobs at startups. Frankly I've found little correlation between CS background and whether a candidate is a good developer or not.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#157

Post by lrobb »

pyre wrote: post #153
lrobb wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exhibit B: We code in Ruby, but are open to engineers with strong backgrounds in any interpreted or functional languages (Python , Lisp, Scala, Erlang . . .). Even a Java background might be OK, if you can show us that you are still learning and growing as an engineer. No C# /.Net engineers though: there are limits!* Ad for Principal Engineer at Slideshare

My point wasn't to paint all developers as being bad at hiring. My point is that HR shouldn't be used as a scapegoat for what's wrong with technical hiring. I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like some non-technical person is blocking you from talking to someone that you can relate to and prove your value to. But it is just as frustrating once you get to someone technical that can understand you, only to…

I messed up the formatting on that.

I agree with your point, and posted that job ad in support of it: To disqualify someone because they are using C#/.NET is arbitrary and stupid, and apparently came from engineering.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#158

Post by duck »

up_and_up wrote: post #17
duck wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to look it up on my phone, but someone did that about a month ago.

Not sure if you are referring to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3351699 . I ran that experiment.

That was it, thanks.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#159

Post by danbmil99 »

javajosh wrote: post #130
jarek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never even have to think about rephrasing something or explaining it more simply; everyone operates at or above my level. This implies some others have to think about rephrasing or explaining more simply when speaking with you.

The same thought occurred to me. Perhaps Google is like Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average. :) But a kinder interpretation is to note that there is a kind of threshold of intelligence which, if most everyone is across it, makes technical communication much easier. This fact mixed with (false?) humility to yield the mistake.

I think the problem with this attitude is the assumption that what you are filtering for, which for the sake of this discussion is called 'intelligence', is the sole scalar factor that makes an employee great.

Haven't we all worked with that guy (or gal) who can't explain things as succinctly as the great, super-quick-witted double-800 SAT guy, but who has something different, a creative spark, a way of thinking outside the box? To assume that that character is simply a 'false negative' that an organization can do without, I think is very naive.

It comes down to risk and reward. Google has a proven business model; maybe they don't need that extra something that is worth the risk of a few non-performers. Or, as I suspect, that spark comes mostly from people who ended up at Google through acquisition, or the few who have reputations that allow them to bypass the traditional screening process, or they were just there at the beginning before the process was so ironclad. Or they got lucky and the interviewer liked them and gave them a bit of a pass.

TL; DR: Do you really only need an army of facile, confident test-takers who are good at making first impressions?

[Addendum: it occurs to me that if you are as large as Google, you can accept a process that only produces 0.1% (or less) creative geniuses (because lots of false negatives get rejected). You may even prefer to keep that number small but non-zero (a surfeit of true creative geniuses has its own problems). But is a ratio like 1:1000 the right number for a 20-person startup? I think the dynamics are much different at a small company. Let's remember, Google is not a startup, they are one of the largest companies in the world.]

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#160

Post by cheatercheater »

tokenadult wrote: post #123

There is a whole field of study, called industrial and organizational psychology, that researches issues like what hiring processes are most likely to obtain employees who do good work for organizations. Studies of many different hiring practices across many different industries and job categories have shown that the two most valid predictors of work performance and success in an occupation are a) work-sample tests,…

CITATION NEEDED.
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