Judging by the comments here the article in question was intended to elicit a strong emotional response out of readers. A reflex that predominantly swings towards controversial.
It succeeded in its supposed mission.
How to hire low experience, high potential people
251–260 of 433 posts
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#252Meanwhile all the grads are on teamblind and grinding out leetcode. They know Amazon is easier to get a job at but will work you hard. They already know the system and are playing it.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#253People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think a good process reduces down to something like: - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates effectively) - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be around) - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias) - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the role? Those are pretty strong priors for success. If y…
> People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough.
People's intuitions around hiring are extremely Bayesian, which is why we have all sorts of laws and regulations and HR departments that try to counteract various prejudicial priors.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from their day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is HN after all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut, especially when the…
"But that's naive." Or perhaps we realize that company "culture" or "fit" are often used to discriminate.
The verb "discriminate" has been (perhaps rightfully) saddled with negative connotations, but discrimination is exactly what any hiring manager is doing. You're discriminating between candidates on the basis of non-protected attributes. Obviously we don't want to discriminate on the basis of protected attributes, and it gets messy when there are areas of strong (often causal) overlap between protected classes of people and the non-protected characteristics that employers are looking for in candidates. But that doesn't obviate the need for discrimination along some axis or other. (Hard technical skills being the example that is probably most salient for the HN crowd.)
In an ideal world, anyone could do anything they wanted without impediment. But to quote Mr Lightyear, we're not on that planet. In this world, if I'm hiring you for a role where you're responsible for safeguarding the wellbeing of others (teacher, manager, doctor, whatever), then of course it's going to put downward pressure on my ability to hire you if you have a super fucked up background that makes you snap at people, attack them without provocation, jump at shadows, have traumatic flashbacks mid-sentence, whatever. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. There are other jobs that are better suited for people in those situations.
Regarding "culture fit":
While we should try very hard to avoid promoting monocultures when hiring (for a whole lot of different reasons, particularly because diversity is crucial for organizational resilience and adaptability), the truth is that it remains a very subjective determination. It depends on your criteria for what constitutes a monoculture. You could say that we live in a monoculture with regard to our expectations for treating everyone in the workplace with a baseline amount of respect. But not everyone agrees where that baseline should be drawn. If you come into an interview and it's immediately clear to me that you're the kind of employee who's going to be disrespectful of your coworkers, and I reject your application accordingly -- well, I'm promoting a sort of company monoculture in that sense.
Then you can walk back from that into varying shades of grey regarding different individual's varying ways of signaling respect, or deemphasis of candor in certain situations, unwillingness to openly address issues, etc, and it gets very messy very quickly. Where is the line between avoiding hiring rude people and discriminating against people from backgrounds or cultures that have patterns of communication that others may perceive as rude? And so on. It requires great care.
This is the sort of ambiguity I'm talking about. To think that this ambiguity doesn't exist, or believe that we can simply wish it out of existence -- that's why I reached for the word "naive" in my original post. I think a lot of engineers are fortunate to work in positions where they don't need to wrestle with this sort of ambiguity in their day-to-day.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#255This is agitprop
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#256We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…
I don't know if I would hire like this, but I do think a lot about the current hiring landscape is pretty broken, so maybe I should! I expect an employer needs a certain amount of cachet before being able to do this or anything else similarly left-field.
Side note - I started down two paths of significant new learning early last year: Security & Elixir / BEAM. I love Security Cryptography Whatever and had no idea you crossed over into the Elixir world (fly.io). Cool!
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Cool" isn't a good word to use, but it is important to filter for people who can get along with others. Some candidates can't make it through an interview without being condescending to someone, making snide remarks, being arrogant, trying to start arguments about trivial things, or other negative behaviors. If they're doing this during the interview, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It's going to be 100X…
I completely agree that toxic people destroy teams. I just have no idea how to detect that in an interview. It definitely makes sense to immediately filter out anyone who sets off "this person may be an asshole" vibes, but beyond that, what can you do? Some sort of "probationary let's see if we get along" period would probably be pretty effective, but that's unfair to new hires.
Also culture plays a big part. If asshole behaviour is unacceptable all the way to the top it tends not to happen. Being the only asshole sticks out and if there is a safe way people can complain that helps. Worked at a wide range of cultures on the asshole scale. Being at a zero asshole company is why I will probably life it here even if it hurts TC.
Asshole means different things to different people but if someone is power flexing, condescending, aggressive, uses process as a weapon, bullying etc. this is what I mean rather than say straight shooting and direct talk.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#258We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…
I don't know if I would hire like this, but I do think a lot about the current hiring landscape is pretty broken, so maybe I should! I expect an employer needs a certain amount of cachet before being able to do this or anything else similarly left-field. Side note - I started down two paths of significant new learning early last year: Security & Elixir / BEAM. I love Security Cryptography Whatever and had no idea you…
I've been at Fly.io since 2020. I wouldn't describe us as an Elixir company so much as a company that appreciates Elixir. Some of our backend is in Elixir but the majority of it is Rust and Go.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Cool" isn't a good word to use, but it is important to filter for people who can get along with others. Some candidates can't make it through an interview without being condescending to someone, making snide remarks, being arrogant, trying to start arguments about trivial things, or other negative behaviors. If they're doing this during the interview, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It's going to be 100X…
I completely agree that toxic people destroy teams. I just have no idea how to detect that in an interview. It definitely makes sense to immediately filter out anyone who sets off "this person may be an asshole" vibes, but beyond that, what can you do? Some sort of "probationary let's see if we get along" period would probably be pretty effective, but that's unfair to new hires.
Probationary periods are pretty much standard in the Netherlands. First month you can leave or get fired for any reason, without delay.
Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok so how should someone with a traumatic childhood answer questions about their childhood? You can change the subject or answer very surface-level and be labeled "unengaged" or "socially inept" You can answer truthfully and be judged for traumadumping You can make up a fake origin story that fits the interviewer's criteria and be disingenuous
I don't know about you or your story. I hope you're doing well. I've learned that the majority of people just don't want to hear anything negative or anything that makes them feel sad. If I want to have social, casual friends, I have to wall off parts of my life story. Thankfully, I have a couple of close friends and family who know the reality and that is enough for me.
I'm really glad I don't live in a country like this.