I don't hire unlucky people • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#231

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 1:10 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #49

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…

The writing style reminded me a lot of the book "Leadership and self-deception" ( http://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-out-... ) in which a guy shows up at a new job and gets a day-long welcoming from the CEO, during which they slowly go through the idea of putting people in boxes and what to do about it. The ending of raganwald's post especially was similar in tone with "You belong here. We'll do…

[deleted]

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#232

Post by tedunangst » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

vellum wrote: post #171

tedunangst wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's one heuristic out of many, and it's a fast one. If you go through all 10-15 github profiles, and you find an awesome programmer, than you're done for that point in time. If you don't find any, you can use a more time-consuming heuristic.

Throwing out resumes with spelling mistakes is even faster, and if you don't find anyone, you can always go back. The same can be said for any filtering technique.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#233

Post by zxcvb » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 1:49 PM UTC

danenania wrote: post #218

krschultz wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in no way condescending to you, but realize that your options will massively open after 2 years of work experience. I graduated in 2010, I got 3 job offers out of the 3 companies I applied to. However, none were exactly my dream job and the few companies I really wanted to work for didn't even talk to new grads. Today I can absolutely get those jobs. My girlfriend went through the exact same evolution. It was…

I see where you're coming from, but software is a lot different from banking. "You have to get a job right away." definitely isn't true or good advice for a programmer. You can learn a lot more a lot faster and add more impressive pieces to your portfolio by working on your own projects, open source, or contracting than by accepting a bad job at some dysfunctional company.

Nonsense.

Getting a programming job at a company that uses the technologies you want to work with will seriously help you move into another role in the near future. Even if the company is crap.

It's nice that some people will care about your personal projects but A LOT of good companies won't see these in the same light as real professional experience dealing with real production, team and stake holder issues.

Also, how can anyone support themselves for months whilst they wait for the perfect job which may never come because it gets harder to find a job the longer you are unemployed?

As for contracting; to land a good contracting role (I'm talking stuff outside of rent-a-coder) is very difficult. Most companies wouldn't even consider you as a contractor unless you have several years of solid experience. I can only assume you mean the kind of 'contracting' that happens at places like rentacoder.com. If you think anyone will care about this then you are mistaken, plus, it's a waste of your time as you'll get paid peanuts and end up providing free support to the idiots that gave you the work in the first place.

If you're fresh out of education and will not be landing a role with Google (or the likes of) and you're struggling to get work at a good company then you should take the first job that comes along that works with the technology you want to specialise in.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#234

Post by gnosis » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 1:55 PM UTC

"but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people"

This assumes getting hired by you was a lucky event in their life. In fact, it could very well be unlucky.

Perhaps if they hadn't been hired by you, they would have gotten a much better job elsewhere. Or any number of other things in their life might have turned out better had they not landed this particular job. Or maybe they'll wind up hating the job, and wish they'd have gone to work somewhere else.

Considering someone to be lucky to work for you is very self-centered. Perhaps it is you who are the lucky one to have someone like them working for you, and they the unlucky one.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#235

Post by DannoHung » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 2:00 PM UTC

Political affiliation and views are not a protected class.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#236

Post by SagelyGuru » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 2:15 PM UTC

The comments are missing out what to me was the most insightful and central point of this post.

Namely that finding the only candidate who can possibly do the job at all requires a very different approach to selection, compared to when it is sufficient to eliminate applicants any of whom could do the job well.

Raising the talent bar tends to transform the latter situation to the former and thus the advice given in this article is right and valuable.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#237

Post by Tycho » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 3:03 PM UTC

Does anyone else hate how every job advert says they need

- excellent communication skills blablabla - 'team player' - able to work in a fast-paced environment - bunch of other generic 'skills'

Of course those things are important to varying degrees in different jobs, but having on the ad is pointless since every other ad asks for the exact same thing. I find it off-putting straight away because it suggests the company is happy to stick to idiotic norms.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#238

Post by CubicleNinjas » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 3:10 PM UTC

So, we should hire people who are so good they have spelling mistakes in their holiest-of-holy document, don't fit in with your core company culture (ninja or not), and hold back on research because it might bias your delicate sensibilities.

This is garbage.

Really. I can't imagine a quicker way to fill a room with B-players.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#239

Post by kharasoft » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 3:16 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #134

Domenic_S wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

> 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. You've misunderstood. The employer faces the problem of there being too few really good programmers, and so must do nothing that would prevent them from possibly seeing one in their candidate pool. It's like p…

Honestly, there are a lot of crap jobs posing as dream jobs as well. I remember talking to my (female) cousin once and she said to me "People act like it's only good men that are hard to find. The sword cuts both ways." Just because there's a higher ratio of Women to Men doesn't mean that the ratio of good women to not so good women is higher than it is for men. I didn't get what she was saying until I started dating heavily.

In the same regards just because there are more jobs than candidates doesn't mean there isn't just a high ratio of crap jobs. So the same 100 job ads will likely have 1 or 2 great opportunities and 98-99 posers. The candidate's job is just as tough as the recruiter.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#240

Post by kharasoft » Fri, Apr 06, 2012, 3:21 PM UTC

jamesli wrote: post #76

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…

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…

I think another over-abused phrase is "smart and gets things done". Thanks for regurgitating Spolsky in your ad. Tell me do you have individual offices for your engineers? No...it's the standard cube farm? Then you don't get to quote Spolsky.