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

I don't hire unlucky people

raganwald.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 281 posts

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#161

Post by quaunaut »

brazzy wrote: post #83
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…

The article is almost completely useless. It claims you shouldn't throw out resumes based on simple heuristics and stuff that only correlates with programming ability because there are so few people applying who are any good, but has exactly one sentence to say about how to then actually find those few people: "I grill them, hard, on actual programming and actual software development." Right. Sure. Every single one o…

The 500 applicants gets wittled down quickly after you look at someone's Github or code examples. Suddenly you're looking at 10 or 15 at most. You can do that.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#162

Post by mwd_ »

zanny wrote: post #111
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 a…

My advice to you is that a lot of the qualifications and requirements listed in job ads are pulled out of the air, and many of them are absurd. I've seen plenty of job ads listing "5 years of iPad experience" or "3-5 years JSON experience". Obviously those are not very closely related to real job requirements. The thing to do in those cases, I think, is to look at the company, try to get a sense of what the job would be, and apply if you are interested and if it approximately matches your skill level.

The web startups with rockstar job ads may wish they had John Carmack or Bill Gates sending them resumes but I doubt it happens much. Bill Gates doesn't need to work at a little company somewhere -- he made his own company and is now a billionaire. A skilled, motivated recent CS grad is probably a great candidate for most companies.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#163

Post by ktizo »

EwanG wrote: post #157
ktizo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

nope, just looked it up just now, looks fun

will add it to my reading list, needed some new manga to get into anyways, thanks for that :)

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#164

Post by tedunangst »

quaunaut wrote: post #161
brazzy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is almost completely useless. It claims you shouldn't throw out resumes based on simple heuristics and stuff that only correlates with programming ability because there are so few people applying who are any good, but has exactly one sentence to say about how to then actually find those few people: "I grill them, hard, on actual programming and actual software development." Right. Sure. Every single one o…

The 500 applicants gets wittled down quickly after you look at someone's Github or code examples. Suddenly you're looking at 10 or 15 at most. You can do that.

And now you're using a heuristic even less correlated with programming ability. My list of awesome programmers I would hire again in a heartbeat has, to my knowledge, a combined 0 lines of code on github.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#165

Post by stray »

cgag wrote: post #117
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.

> What exactly is a ninja or a rockstar in terms of programming?

Someone who enthusiastically engages in RDD (resume driven development). Someone who knows whatever is currently fashionable in the blogowhatever...

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#166

Post by tedunangst »

_delirium wrote: post #122
msbarnett wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years exactly, or a bit more than that? The reason I asked is that CS enrollment changed dramatically after the .com bubble burst. When I applied to CS a little more than 10 years ago the bubble was in full swing, and only the top 1/4 of applicants to the program had a hope of getting in. Transferring in was a no-go. 2 years later enrollment had dropped so low that the quotas were gone and transferring in was easy…

These days Stanford, at least, has an active program trying to convince non-CS first-years to switch their major to CS!

It's been a few years, but when I went freshmen at Stanford weren't even allowed to have majors. When did this change? Link?

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#167

Post by cgag »

zanny wrote: post #111
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 a…

I feel the same way, when I hear about this talent shortage, I can't help but assume they mean there are only so many people at the top of stanford/mit's classes.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#168

Post by davidkatz »

roguecoder wrote: post #103
davidkatz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I can try to convince you of our long term vision: developers increasingly take their work online, which results in a mountain of professional data. A lot of it is meaningless, but some of it can be woven into interesting stories. We're still trying to find the best approach to this, but in essence, our mission is making sense of this data. Some of this will have nothing to do with popularity - say, we might…

I think the problem I have is that it is not the case that "developers" are taking their work on line. It is the case that "some developers" are taking their work online. If all you care about is that subset of developers, I'm sure your approach is fine.

I get you. A lot of developers don't take their work online at all. But there are probably a hundred thousands developers who do take at least some parts of their work online.

Perhaps speaking more practically, the market for developers is segmented. Not all companies want to hire all developers, and some companies specifically look for developers who do take their work online. It's those companies we want to help right now.

Take us for example. We just hired Yuval Adam (http://y3xz.com/) for a project, and his online activity had a huge part in raising our interest.

Check out his site. It's essentially a collection of links to professionally relevant online content. Sure, these are no guarantees. If you were hiring a developer though, wouldn't your interest be raised?

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#169

Post by amcintyre »

davidkatz wrote: post #47
yajoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at skills app -- I like the approach and the clean layout, but a couple thoughts from this hiring manager: * Most of the really good devs I know and hire do not bother with easy metrics like number of tweets, followers, or StackOverflow points. They are perfect to paste together on summary reports and look "complete," but their absolute values or essence don't mean anything. * The high numbers on public…

Perhaps I can try to convince you of our long term vision: developers increasingly take their work online, which results in a mountain of professional data. A lot of it is meaningless, but some of it can be woven into interesting stories. We're still trying to find the best approach to this, but in essence, our mission is making sense of this data. Some of this will have nothing to do with popularity - say, we might…

Sometimes developers don't have a choice about putting their work online--many large companies actively discourage (or prohibit) their engineers from participating in any meaningful way in open source projects.

Want to post your personal hacking online under your real name? Nope, sorry--"everything you do belongs to the company, and we can't take the chance that you might accidentally post some uber-valuable trade secret." So rather than risk losing the job, you just find some other, not-publicly-visible way to spend your time.

Maybe this group of developers isn't viewed as interesting to many employers, and if that's the case my argument isn't worth much.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#170

Post by charlieok »

I do wonder why people advertise for “rock stars”. What is the thinking here?

Is it to screen out people who have some self doubt? “Hmm, I think I'm pretty smart, but I don't know if I'm a rock star. I think I better avoid potential embarrassment and look elsewhere”.

Is it code for “seeking brogrammers”?

Post reply on HN