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How to hire low experience, high potential people

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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#261

Post by conro1108 »

walthamstow wrote: post #127
CharlieDigital wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar. - Y-axis is "drive" - X-axis is "aptitude" - low drive + low aptitude: never hire - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test for curiosity a…

Aren't these quadrants from about 100 years ago? Some Prussian General von Whatshisname? Edit: General von Hammerstein I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the…

It's a similar shape but with quite different conclusions

- low drive + low aptitude: never hire

Hammerstein thinks some use can be made of these folks

- low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where you need expertise

Hammerstein has this group as high leadership positions

- high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude growth

These are the ones who Hammerstein avoids

- high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot

These go to the "General Staff"

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#262

Post by dkarl »

nineplay wrote: post #57
bheadmaster wrote: post #7

> “Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter titles from your birth till now.” Once you’ve gotten the overview, dive into each “chapter” and plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent. I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing th…

There's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. "Let me tell you about the years of physical/emotional/sexual abuse I've suffered though." That's just not going to happen - and if it did happen the interviewer is probably not going to come away with "What a brave person to overcome all of that!" but "What a damaged person, I don't need them around". Well done, you've weeded out people wh…

I didn't have a particularly horrific childhood, but every chapter title would be about social struggles, anxiety, and depression. The positive stuff was random events, and the organizing themes were negative. Isn't that true for most people?

I guess the question tests a person's ability to craft positive, attractive narratives about themselves. Maybe we're returning to a time when being outwardly happy is treated as a universal social obligation, like in the 1950s and 1960s. My parents' generation rebelled against the oppressive conformity of the post-WW2 era, and the tendency to value acceptance and emotional transparency continued through my generation (Gen X), but it could easily swing back the other way. Especially since all the stubborn problems in this country (resistance to awareness of racism, resistance to awareness of historic injustice, resistance to action on global warming, etc.) are seen as stemming from the unearned unhappiness of privileged people, I can see cheerfulness becoming obligatory, and lack of cheerfulness being openly stigmatized, instead of just passively and subconsciously discriminated against.

Edit: The rise of social media influencers as role models would obviously be a huge factor in this, and in the increasing pressure on people who struggle with something (whether it's a societal issue like racism or poverty, or a mental illness) to live up to the "positive representation" of the influencers who earn the power to define the public's expectations by presenting themselves in a charismatic, consumable way.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#263

Post by UncleOxidant »

testfoobar wrote: post #229
the_mar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I found the part where the author throws in "cared for a dying parent" particularly distasteful, it's like a benchmark for "palatable damage"

The author appears young. I would give them the benefit of the doubt. It has been my experience that people who have lived a fortunate, trauma free life cannot really understand the trauma experienced by others. They might appear to understand, say all the right words, and so on. Then a few days later or weeks later be confused or upset because of how you react to something. A good friend once said to me, "Wow, that…

That may be true, but it doesn't mean that I have to submit to an interview with people like this who are lacking empathy. It also wouldn't be great if these kinds of interviews proliferate.

Empathy comes from being able to put yourself in other people's shoes. Reading fiction has been shown to increase empathy. If so then these guys need to do more reading.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#264

Post by ok_dad »

93po wrote: post #215
jprete wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As nineplay@ remarked elsewhere, "there's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods". Unethical is one thing, neuroticism should not be a disqualifier from decent employment.

neuroticism, no. asocial or antisocial behavior, yes.

Asocial? I guess autistic people are out!

I assume you’re young: there are many reasons people might be perfectly good at a job but not want to socialize with those people, or any other people.

This whole thread makes me sad as an unemployed autistic person. HN folks are horrible hiring managers!

Edit: and now downvoted for showing you losers that your personal model of the world and the people in it might be lacking; fuck vc tech bros.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#265

Post by jefc1111 »

tptacek wrote: post #258
jefc1111 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some significant names from that world on the fly.io roster :) Like a lot of people I feel like Elixir / BEAM has a real value proposition that is unrealised in the wider IT landscape ... but maybe that's not such a bad thing from some perspectives.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#266

Post by UncleOxidant »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #165
hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interview style seems bound to create a psychologically enmeshed workplace with no healthy boundaries. Or a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems. Would not want to work here, personally.

Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds like this.

The HR people often seem to be the ones that ask the psychological questions.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#267

Post by UncleOxidant »

ryandrake wrote: post #207
AlotOfReading wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds like this.

You'd think this was true, but I've seen some crazy shit in interviews, even at companies that were big enough and had a robust enough legal team, where you'd think they'd have their shit together. I once interviewed at a medium sized, name brand Silicon Valley darling everyone on HN has heard of, where an interviewer outright asked me if I was married and if I had kids! Like, holy shit, just read your interview trai…

My wife was asked that question ("are you married, do you have kids?") in an interview with a tiny company 30 years ago. She attributed it to ignorance and replied "That's not a legal question to ask". The interviewer apologized profusely and he hired her. He turned out to be a really nice person who was unaware of what was out-of-bounds to ask in an interview. But that was 30 years ago, people should know better now.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#268

Post by eszed »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #204
zer00eyz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isnt everyone. Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy. There are other ways to ask these sorts of questions: did you ever have a job that you dont want to go back to but would not give up the experience of? (Do you know how shitty a job can be, were you an amazon driver or a pickle shoveler…

> That isnt everyone. > Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy. Sure. But is "willing to talk about dealing with trauma" really a valid filter to sort potential employees by?

Ability to function during emotionally-difficult circumstances can be a job requirement. (Likely not software engineering, hence the scorn on this forum!) It's unlikely the interviewers are curious about the interviewee's story, but if a question about a traumatic experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform certain roles.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#269

Post by didntcheck »

rqtwteye wrote: post #100
siva7 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd quit such an interview. Those questions are going over the boundaries of a strictly professional relationship. The thing with low-experience, high-potentials is that they may be bit more insecure than seniors and therefore might think that such questions are normal which they are not.

Exactly. You are joining a company, not a cult. Basically they are filtering for people who can speak the same jargon correctly. I have heard a lot of stories about people failing DEI questions during an interview because they didn't know the "correct" phrases to use.

Unfortunately unsurprising. A lot of "DEI" and related topics seems to largely consist of upper-middle-class people flaunting their prestige dialect and reciting their pious knowledge of fashionable beliefs. Whether deliberate or not, it's ironically quite effective at filtering out people from less privileged backgrounds and insinuating moral inferiority in the process

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#270

Post by chefandy »

PaulHoule wrote: post #159
chefandy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, some in the engineering mindset have a pathological need to nail down ambiguous things to a definition because it fits their style of reasoning. Nobody thinks it's easier to work with poorly-defined things-- even with a well-defined overall goal, when the specific goals and risks in achieving it are a bit ambiguous, you're pretty likely to get it wrong if you try to stuff the problem into a neat little bo…

Any real revolution in living conditions (like being able to support 8 billion people on chemical fertilizers) always involved finding order in situations. Everything else is about as effective as pushing the deck chairs around on the Titanic.

Order vs disorder is a false dichotomy. The vast majority of situations fall somewhere in between "math problem with a proof" and "random assortment of unrelated events." The processes required to make progress at one end of that spectrum are different than at the other end, though most problems worth solving have components at different places on that spectrum. Engineers making micro perfection in well organized pockets is only valuable if people working in the far more ambiguous surrounding areas can apply it to the larger context.

People like thinking what they do is the most difficult and important part of any process, but most non-technical people can pretty easily look at technical work and see that they don't have the knowledge to do it-- the complexity and success/failure is very visible. Since other disciplines' obstacles and processes aren't so easily labelled and quantified, many engineers perennially fail to realize that their perceiving less difficulty and complexity in many other fields is because they lack the perception or experience to identify it.

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