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Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

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Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#171

Post by lifeisstillgood »

michaelochurch wrote: post #66
Udo wrote: post #13

I was absolutely with you until but it is a hirers' market which, even if it is (and that's debatable), is not the correct reason for anyone to behave differently. In this case, applicants should not be reading the actual postings because it's a hirers' market and hirers are now somehow considered royalty. Instead, applicants should be reading them because it's basic curtesy and not doing it ends up wasting everybody…

It's a bilateral matching problem, not a clear buyer's or seller's market. The first part of the story is convexity, also known as the "10x phenomenon": http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macle... . This is generally a good thing, but it's bad in the context of rapid scaling (which is what most VC-funded startups are trying to do) because convexity creates a need to fill specialized job queries fa…

Thank you for that anti-myth - good developers never need to look for jobs

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#172

Post by uniclaude »

ig1 wrote: post #153
uniclaude wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might have interviewed a very different subset of the programming world than you, but I wouldn't make the categorization in this way. Indeed, I haven't met any programmer who couldn't understand recursion when explained in clear terms, same goes for indirect referencing. If I had to divide the programmers who really understand algorithmic reasoning into two categories, those would be - A: those who program because…

It's a relatively well studied area of programming pedagogy, numerous studies have shown students struggle with those concepts: https://student.brighton.ac.uk/mod_docs/cmis/past%20papers/c...

Thank you for the link.

You wrote students, while I meant professional programmers. It's not because some people have a tougher time learning those things (whatever the reason can be) that they have no change to get them by the moment they are active professionals.

This said, if I tried to apply your grouping to the people I have been interviewing last year, I would have approximately 100% of them in one category, hence my comment.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#173

Post by SandB0x »

Swannie wrote: post #166
ig1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's recruited heavily at the entry level, you're mistaken. Even substantial number of computer science graduates lack the capability of basic coding (i.e. "here's the detailed specification of this function; go implement it"). There is substantially more demand than available talent. SF, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. all have huge talent shortages. Even developer markets that were relatively…

For London I strongly disagree. When start-ups, profitable ones, are offering £35k + bonus + stock options (worth £0), for senior developers, in Central London, there's not a talent shortage. Similarly skilled developers are getting £35k+ & bonus outside of London, where the cost of commuting/living is significantly cheaper, in established companies with full benefits packages, that don't expect them to work 50 hour…

What regions outside London are you referring to? Genuinely interested.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#174

Post by tzaman »

btilly wrote: post #123
tzaman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rockstars are a myth No they are not. One would think it's easy to find smart people who can learn new things , but I've dealt with both young and senior developers (by senior I mean writing code 15+ years) and was amazed how most of them feel comfortable being completely ignorant of new technologies/libraries/frameworks/best practices/whatever. I've met a rockstar the other day, and could feel him being the one I'…

...and was amazed how most of them feel comfortable being completely ignorant of new technologies/libraries/frameworks/best practices/whatever. I don't know how to judge that comment. It is true that if you take anyone who is competent and ask them to teach you something that they learned in the last year, they should be able to come up with something. If not, then you've likely got "1 year of experience, 15 times".…

From what you have written I can see you don't suck (I'd need to meet you and see some of your code to actually assess you're good :). You see, you used words like "Bayesian", "Promises". Guys that I was writing about not only don't know what promises are, they don't give a fuck either. A rockstar (in my book, at least) would hear about them and google them as soon as possible.

So at the end of the day, it's not really about experience, it's the attitude.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#175

Post by michaelochurch »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #171
michaelochurch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bilateral matching problem, not a clear buyer's or seller's market. The first part of the story is convexity, also known as the "10x phenomenon": http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macle... . This is generally a good thing, but it's bad in the context of rapid scaling (which is what most VC-funded startups are trying to do) because convexity creates a need to fill specialized job queries fa…

Thank you for that anti-myth - good developers never need to look for jobs

It's an excuse to read resumes with the Bozo Bit in the "on" position; if he were any good, he'd have found a way around the HR wall and into a channel that actually works. In which case, why read them at all? Oh, because it's something to do while drawing a monthly salary for it.

The reason for the Resume Blizzard is that it's free to send one. It also gives companies the right to indulge in the myth that they're hyperselective because "we only give an offer to 1 in 500 candidates". It's technically true, because 485 of those were resumes merely scanned for some bullshit reason to reject (e.g. last job was too long/short, state undergrad, lack of buzzwords).

Here's an idea that I had: an online-ed website where you get credits for completing coursework, and sending a resume has a non-zero cost in credits (which is refunded if unopened). It's the best way that I can come up with to make front doors work again.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#176

Post by smoyer »

So you put zero effort into a attempt to reach the top-echelons of software developer/entrepreneurs and you expect the applicant to customize a resume? The person you'd like to hire most likely has a job, as well as a few offers a week from people that are actively seeking them out.

If you really want to reach this type of employee, you'll have to send individualized notes saying you have an open position, that you already understand the person's capabilities and why your company would be a great place for them to work.

tl;dr If you expect to reach the best employees by putting a few paragraphs on Hacker News, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#177

Post by andypants »

goldfeld wrote: post #42
ig1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's recruited heavily at the entry level, you're mistaken. Even substantial number of computer science graduates lack the capability of basic coding (i.e. "here's the detailed specification of this function; go implement it"). There is substantially more demand than available talent. SF, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. all have huge talent shortages. Even developer markets that were relatively…

I have read that 30% of Standford CS freshmen change majors or dropout because they don't get programming at all. Do you see such a thing in recruiting? That you fear the hire doesn't actually understand the reasoning of algorithms and basic programming structures, and is maybe the type who bullheaded through college memorizing solutions as recipes?

Programming is not the same as understanding algorithms and data structures.

If that statistic is true, I would say that they probably understand algorithms very well, can prove the runtimes, know which data structures to use and why, etc. What they can't do is actually implement it in working code, or write anything else outside of those concepts, like writing a graphical user interface or writing a simple website using some popular language + framework.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#178

Post by mst »

lsiebert wrote: post #161
jpgvm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 spaces? Probably because this is similar to the Linux kernel programming style. Many of us learnt C from the kernel or projects that follow it's coding style.

Assuming you mean the code on github, I use tabs for indentation in vim, but have tabstop and setwidth set to 2. So if the code has 8 spaces, that is github or the browser. Feel free to make a pull request, or I can try to fix it (though I am kinda focused on my portfolio for internship applications atm). Should be a simple regex though.

  perl -pi -e 's/^(\t+)/"  " x length($1)/e' recurse.c
seems to do the trick; vary the number of spaces inside the "" to taste.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#179

Post by manku_timma »

Swannie wrote: post #166
ig1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's recruited heavily at the entry level, you're mistaken. Even substantial number of computer science graduates lack the capability of basic coding (i.e. "here's the detailed specification of this function; go implement it"). There is substantially more demand than available talent. SF, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. all have huge talent shortages. Even developer markets that were relatively…

For London I strongly disagree. When start-ups, profitable ones, are offering £35k + bonus + stock options (worth £0), for senior developers, in Central London, there's not a talent shortage. Similarly skilled developers are getting £35k+ & bonus outside of London, where the cost of commuting/living is significantly cheaper, in established companies with full benefits packages, that don't expect them to work 50 hour…

This doesnt sound right to me. I know senior dev's in London getting paid at least double of that (and in some cases even more). It is not in the NY or Bay area range, but it's not £35k either.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#180

Post by infinite8s »

lsiebert wrote: post #108
ig1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with that stat but it's perfectly believable. Many people are clearly getting by with a mixture of memorization and trial-and-error rather than understanding. I think of those who understand algorithmic reasoning (i.e. understand loops, assignment, etc.) they also fall into two categories. Those who can understand more abstract programming concepts (indirect referencing, recursion) and those who can'…

Recursion isn't hard, it's just not taught correctly. It's fairly easy to break it down into rules. Because they are shown examples, instead of taught how, people memorize how to do stuff, instead of learning it from principles. Take the classic question, recursively reverse a linked list. You will see a lot of people making false starts, or trying to reverse the list in some way like they would reverse an array, or…

Agreed about recursion being taught the wrong way. Recursion is implicitly fundamental to learning basic arithmetic (what is 5? it's just (1 + (1 + (1 + (1 + (1 + 0))))). Reasoning by induction is just recursion. I think children have a recursive intuition for counting (at least from watching my 3 year old) that quickly gets squashed when they start learning 'math' in school.
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