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I don't hire unlucky people

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#151

Post by ktizo »

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...

if you were really a ninja however, you would have stolen that line under cover of night, replacing it with a forgery that looked identical, before using a selection of grappling hooks to make a stealthy escape across the rooftops...

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#152

Post by novalis »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #60
cookiecaper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My ad scoring program deducts 5 points and transparently kills off ads that contain terms like "ninja" and "rock star" because to my mind they indicate a propensity for either abuse ("a rock star should be able to code this in three days!!") or fad-following ineptitude ("rock stars are the coolest kind of programmers, I must have them! also, we write EVERYTHING in Ruby, it's like the Mac of programming").

Personally I think those terms indicate feeble attempts at psychological manipulation. I feel like responding to job ads like that would be like admitting you're a gullible fool. They're trying to recruit and stroke egos, not people.

You are on to something here. If people want o make it a hipster contest don't use the recruiting op and waste it. It simply does not add up unless you are stuck in a mindset that is not conductive to anything productive. Nihilists are us should never be a place one "wants" to work at unless there are no other ops available.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#153

Post by runawaybottle »

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…

My friend had a pretty nifty looking resume, wonderfully laid out and spaced, while remaning very minimalist. He created it in InDesign. Just before I hit the job market last summer, I had a brilliant idea to do a full revamp of my resume in InDesign. I copied and pasted most of the resume from a spellchecked Word document, but I added a word or two directly in InDesign. There was a typo, and InDesign did not indicate anything. It was very slight, and after having stared at the resume for hours, the typo was pretty much invisible to me. When did I find out? After I had sent it out to 5 postings.

Whenever I read/type I often forget shorter length conjunction words, and a lot of grammer checkers won't detect it as a mistake. In fact, once I proof-read an entire email over multiple times on gmail, only to realize that I forgot a 'the' in one sentence after it was sent. Gmail showed no squiggly lines for that error. Grammer checkers often don't go off when you accidentally interchange singular/plural as well.

My resume still got picked up by a lot of places, so either it was impressive, or a lot more people read as quickly/carelessly as I do.

I don't know how exactly I developed this habit, but it could be a by-product of skimming code very quickly, or generally skimming things when perusing through articles/comments.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#154

Post by ktizo »

tomkin wrote: post #142
raganwald wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The style gives the impression that Raganwald is claiming "this really happened, and those people used this technique, and they lived happily ever after – so if it worked for them, it will work for you; give this technique a try Respectfully, no it doesn’t. Try showing the story to one hundred randomly selected people and ask whether they think this really happened. I think you will find that there are a few people w…

I don't like that we can't question this story because it's fictional . It has legs because of the way it is written, but no one can jab or poke at it without the obvious " well, it's just a story, man " line. I hate outs like that. It's been mentioned that there is an overall religious feel to these articles. I think it's because religion always has an out when it needs to explain something using evidence. Then ther…

How does it being fiction stop people jabbing and poking at it? And how have you read this far down the thread and still held that conclusion?

As for glancing at it and knowing that it is fictional, it is fairly obvious in the first paragraph, even without the names, purely by the style of writing.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#155

Post by mc32 »

roryokane wrote: post #79
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…

I dislike the story form too, and I can explain why. The style gives the impression that Reginald is claiming "this really happened, and those people used this technique, and they lived happily ever after – so if it worked for them, it will work for you; give this technique a try". But this tale never happened, so that implied argument is a lie. This story forces me to put on my "disbelieve, disbelieve, disbelieve" m…

I'm beginning to feel the style is a bit overwrought. Once in a while, it's ok. I feel as though the style is. Wing overused. Just personal preference I guess.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#156

Post by wisty »

robterrell wrote: post #38
dustingetz wrote: post #21

i know a guy running a software shop. he's an active participant in the local meetup community, and he cares about people. it's no surpise that he has all sorts of talented people trying to work with him, and not enough funding to hire them all . (at least, i think that's why he hasn't hired me ;) i also know a few other people running software shops, who don't participate in the local meetup community. none of the b…

Isn't that just another filter for luck? You're filtering out candidates who don't know about the meetup, or have kids and can't make the meetup's evening hours, or prefer another meetup that happens to be at the same time elsewhere, etc.

Yes, and if you get really good candidates (by going to meetups and being a nice person), then you can afford to do that.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#157

Post by EwanG »

ktizo wrote: post #151
joshAg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

if you were really a ninja however, you would have stolen that line under cover of night, replacing it with a forgery that looked identical, before using a selection of grappling hooks to make a stealthy escape across the rooftops...

I gather you read Perfect Crime Party (Bakuman around chapter 90) then?

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#158

Post by wisty »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #53

While I enjoyed the article and its message, I found the spelling error on the resume example underwhelming. A professional's resume is the veneer they present to strangers. It's like the login page for your app. Do you want a spelling error there when it is so easy to avoid? It screams sloppy and lazy in the same sentence. Maybe the general quality of professional devs is so bad that sloppiness and laziness are bett…

If you want a DBA or release manager, that's a good point. A release manager should be professional to the point of OCD.

If you want someone who can rapidly prototype, fix bugs, optimise stuff, and work on a team; perfectionism might not be so important.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#159

Post by Steko »

jleader wrote: post #145
Steko wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You forgot to mention "brings his katana to meetings" (the sword, not the Suzuki motorcycle). It's kind of "friend-of-a-friend", but I had a boss who told me about working with a developer who actually did that, I think at a game company in the late 80s.

By any chance was it puts on sunglasses John Romero?

YEAHHH!

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#160

Post by crasshopper »

I hoped this article would discuss how to advertise your position to increase the SNR (really, the appropriate-to-inappropriate-resume ratio).

Some things are obvious: if you use words like "ninja" and "rockstar" you are communicating that you want young Rails programmers or something like that.

Likewise if you posted flyers inside a museum, or hid a puzzle in a Superbowl TV ad, or wrote "Programmer needed!!! immediate openings!must be comfortable with WordPerfect" on Craigslist, each of those is going to signal something about your firm and attract a different type of person.

Someday I would love to see something on HN that goes much deeper into those issues: how to pitch your culture appropriately and improve the resume stack before it even gets to you.

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