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I don't hire unlucky people

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#111

Post by zanny »

DarkShikari wrote: post #10

This article is superb. We tried placing ads for ninjas, rock stars, and so on, but I discovered this was the cultural equivalent of advertising for white males who drink dry martinis. Not that white males who drink dry martinis can’t do the job, but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people. Either way, you end up with fewer r…

I'm a semi-introvert graduating with my BS in CS and am looking for jobs right now.

And this is all I ever feel. I read dozens of job ads across the country (I look through all of them because I really want to get out and move some place new, see the world - being fresh out of college is the best time for me to do that and all) and in the process I see only two kinds of jobs for someone like me.

The ads either come across as wanting rock star geniuses that could develop in a month the entirety of the next facebook or google in their sleep, or they come off as grossly incompentant in that they don't know what they want from an employee.

When an ad lists skill sets from assembly to rails to genetic algorithms I just sigh because the company obviously doesn't know what they want, and I want to work some where that I can not only get better at my trade and create great things but also have confidence in the business not going under in a few months.

Simultaneously, the other set of job seekers want 5+ years experience for a startup and they use the rock star vocabulary, and I get turned off on that because I am not the second coming of John Carmack or Bill Gates, I wish I was, but I just am not that smart.

Compound that with the reality that I have a passion for software and as a result I only want to work on things I find interesting and useful myself (eating my own dog food) and I might consider one ad in a hundred. And I'm not even location limited!

It just seems to me like there is no middle ground, either you are a genius rock star or the employer appears clueless about what they are after in a developer. It really grinds my gears with all this job hunting shenanigans.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#113

Post by jack-r-abbit »

joshAg wrote: post #109
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along that same lines... you never see a good ninja. So if I'm hired under the guise of being a ninja you can expect to never see me in the office. So telecommuting would be expected?

if you don't mind, I'm going to borrow that line from you...

I don't mind at all.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#115

Post by overcyn »

plinkplonk wrote: post #26

I agree with every point Reginald makes but (and I am being nitpicky here) the form of the story - the seeming overtailored parable nature of it, of the kind you'd find in the Reader's Digest or a religious tract - rubs me ever so slightly the wrong way. I could have done without all the fake (or seemingly fake anyway) dialogue between the Wooster/Oscar etc and would have preferred a straightforward "This is what I(R…

Look at me outwitting these fictionalized characters I've created

vs.

Here are some interesting ideas I have.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#116

Post by Steko »

cosecant wrote: post #107
jamesli wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was open to new job opportunities, I immediately turned it down if the job description included words like rock starts, ninjas, etc. I am not against the mindset. It is just not a good fit to my personality. I want to work on products that I consider meaningful and work with good and serious engineers. It is nice to hang out with colleagues, have drinks, saying jokes, etc. I am a big fan of classic rock. But c…

Job descriptions just shouldn't have "rock star" or "ninja" unless they are hired on their ability to perform music in front of an audience or on their katana wielding skills.

Rock Star: that guy who shows up late and worked on a hit project 15 years ago that he's always bringing up.

Ninja: that guy who's never at his desk and never says anything in meetings.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#117

Post by cgag »

DarkShikari wrote: post #10

This article is superb. We tried placing ads for ninjas, rock stars, and so on, but I discovered this was the cultural equivalent of advertising for white males who drink dry martinis. Not that white males who drink dry martinis can’t do the job, but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people. Either way, you end up with fewer r…

What exactly is a ninja or a rockstar in terms of programming? If you're not a rockstar what are you? Would anyone ever actually describe themselves as a rockstar programmer?

I was pretty glad to see "anyone who uses rockstar as an adjective" on the list of people take out in the God Bless America trailer.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#118

Post by civilian »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #105

I'm not sure I agree with putting people who can't put together a resume without spelling/grammar mistakes into the same unlucky group that simply had their resumes tossed by chance. Having spelling and grammar mistakes on a resume is sloppy... not unlucky. At a minimum it indicates they may not pay attention to details when it really matters. But maybe that is just me. Or maybe it just doesn't matter on a resume any…

No. One of my coworkers is a terrible speller, and especially so in IM. I haven't seen his resume, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a mistake or two in it. And he's pretty scatterbrained.

But when it comes to coding CSS or using javascript design patterns, he is awesome. I ask him tons of questions. He is incredibly valuable.

I mean, it's okay for you to keep on doing what you're comfortable with. But do you understand what you're missing out on? You're missing out on great developers, and you're giving people like Reginald & I an advantage.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#119

Post by Domenic_S »

msbarnett wrote: post #68
reinhardt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, a job seeker that rejects an ad based on a keyword or two is exactly the shallow reasoning this article criticizes; it's just the other side of the same coin. I'm pretty sure there are actually good startups that put out "cool" (lame) ads just, like good programmers that let a typo slip by.

> Ironically, a job seeker that rejects an ad based on a keyword or two is exactly the shallow reasoning this article criticizes; it's just the other side of the same coin. Not really. The situations are asymmetric -- an employer seeking a talented programmer needs to be rejecting potential employees on as few arbitrary criteria as possible, to maximize their chance at finding just a single qualified candidate. A tal…

> You need to winnow out any opportunity that is even the slightest bit unappealing just to get the flood down to a manageable level.

This is precisely what the article was talking about but in reverse, like the GP said. You're implying that job ads that rub you the wrong way on a minor point are ads that are at the bottom of the desirability list -- this is the exactly the correlation/causation fallacy the article discussed.

In other words, that vast list of companies looking to hire the talented programmer is comprised of 1) companies that suck 2) companies that are OK, and 3) companies that rock. The occurrence of the word "ninja" or "rockstar" in their ad isn't an indicator of which group the company falls into. What you're advocating is no more scientific than throwing away unlucky resumes.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#120

Post by k00kykelly »

raganwald wrote: post #51
emmett wrote: post #43

This is the opposite of my experience. When we greatly narrowed the pool of applicants from "people who want to work on live video" to "people who want to work on live video for gaming", we saw a huge uptick in how many people were interested in working for us. TwitchTV is more attractive for programmers than Justin.tv ever was. There is something to be said for appealing to a smaller group of people more strongly.

Great comment. May I suggest for discussion the following proposition: There is a difference between narrowing the pool of applicants by being specific about things directly relevant for the job and narrowing the pool of applicants by being specific about things only indirectly related to the job. “We’re looking for Haskell Programmers” is not the same thing as, “We like to hire MIT Graduates."

This is a HUGE difference. It makes the job ad go from we want "someone good" to we want "someone with skill X". If the manager of the project isn't competent enough to know what they are hiring for (skill X) then that is a red flag.

If you need to filter the applicants more then ask them to answer a question on their approach to a common problem or provide a code sample whichever makes more sense for the particular scenario.

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