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He got 1%, we can't hire him

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Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#171

Post by alan_cx »

antirez wrote: post #93
flexie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is a need to "respectfully disagree" to a disrespectful comment. Just like there are terrible dev teams there are terrible HR departments, and this sounds like one of them. But as you mention, if developers were to handle everything related to hiring, firing, sick reports, vacation, benefits, contracts, compliance etc. that HR does, I doubt there would be any profit.

The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission . It's the role that's broken, note the teams.

Ah, so who hired the bad HR staff then? The founders? The programmers? The investors? Who put them there, apparently unqualified and unspecified?

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#172

Post by kamaal »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #37
nomedeplume wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently spent a year working for an "elite" Silicon Valley startup company. The VP engineering had read enough Joel Spolsky to get through the door.. but he didn't practice software literacy. I would love to work for a shop, even in an underling capacity, that really gets software dev right. It would be worth delaying my startup dreams just so I can do it right at scale.

Count the number of people in senior mgmt and in all positions who can do fizzbuzz. Greater than 50% in all cases - great. Greater than 50 % for all but less than 20% in senior positions - get out. Anything less - run for the hills. It's not saying its important - everyone in Hollywood says the story is the thing - but only Pixar seems to live by it. See any talk by Ed Catmull

VP Engineering is a parking title.

The role or the person performing it in most cases generally does nothing even remotely close to engineering. If you sit down and seriously grill the guy, he will have no clue what he is doing, why he is doing it or if he is even necessary.

There are a few good people who become VP's but such people are exceedingly rare. Most of the times, VP's are made and hired through politics, strong friend network, god fathers or sometimes sheer luck.

A person I know who has done a few successful start ups once told me, he purposefully avoids hiring anyone with 'director' or 'VP' titles from big companies. Often, they are the ones which take the highest compensation, while actually being the most useless people on the team.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#173

Post by wisty »

aaron695 wrote: post #146

Interesting article. RE: Nuremberg Defence. Do you really think it would have been smart for the Germans to hire people who wouldn't have followed their orders? But in a profession environment, yep I'd agree you don't want all people who just follow orders, quite different to work environments where you want people to act more like machines aka call centres, sweat shops, army etc.

> Do you really think it would have been smart for the Germans to hire people who wouldn't have followed their orders?

Have you heard of a guy called Erwin Rommel?

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#174

Post by RougeFemme »

Retric wrote: post #86
Xylakant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Get some decent HR people and don't give them the last call on hiring decisions. Make it clear that HR is supporting the process, but not leading the process and that the last call is with the department/team that is looking for a hire. Let HR take all the tedious tasks of hiring from the developers, such as all the legalese, handling employee benefits, sick reports and all associated paperwo…

Be careful, if HR screens resumes then they effectivly have a last call on highering decisions by rejecting people before anyone else sees them. From what I have seen the only useful function for HR in the highering process is a background verification check. Aka did John Smith work at your company from 2000-2004. Anything else is risky.

I agree that HR can screen out some otherwise qualified people. I've seen that from both sides. But I think that if the criteria you provide to HR are sufficiently broad and high-level, they can be helpful. If the candidate clearly has no relevant (as defined by the hiring team/manager) education or experience, HR doesn't need to send that one down.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#175

Post by einhverfr »

RougeFemme wrote: post #165
einhverfr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the CEO have time to analyze optimal organization designs? Optimal for what? I do think the CEO or someone similar needs to figure out what you want from the organization and design it. HR may have input but it is just input. HR can do the market calibration research. That's a good role for them. Initial fit? That should be the team or team manager. Background checks? Either HR or an administrative assistant s…

If the team manager is doing background checks - initiating, conducting, following up, etc.- how much time does that allow for him/her to manage the team, do whatever technical work is required at level, interact with the rest of the company as required, take a breath and think strategically, etc.? And how many team mangers WANT conducting background checks as part of their jobs? Even farming that out to a contractor…

Please re-read what I said. Background checks should be either HR or an administrative assistant tot he team manager. But things like initial fit interviews should be with the team, not just the manager.

The point is that bringing someone onto the team and seeing if that is a good fit, is something that belongs at the team level. Some of the support could be done by a small HR department, or the old fashioned way, by an administrative assistant.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#176

Post by ddeck »

gringofyx wrote: post #100
redpola wrote: post #84

It's really not my attention to offend/troll, but I found it amusing that whilst reading the blog post I found myself thinking "The grammar of this article is so bad, I wonder if the author's first language is English"... just as I hit the same question in the text. :) To add something constructive to the discussion: I've hired tens of developers over the years. Recruiting is by far the most black art I've ever suffe…

I'm a little offended - I wrote, the community upvoted - is grammar more important than the story? Additionally, it's hypocritical to comment on ones grammar and then use bad grammar yourself.

The story is certainly more important, which is presumably why the majority of redpola's comments are about it. But to be fair, I actually asked myself exactly the same question and went to your "About Me" page to check.

Try not to be offended. He's likely just pointing out what many who read the story may think, but not say. Just take it on-board as constructive feedback for future articles.

It's an interesting story. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#177

Post by olalonde »

eplumlee wrote: post #151

Some people are hell-bent to kill a deal in order to demonstrate their worth. This happens sometimes with lawyers, and these 'ambitious' deal-killing lawyers are toxic to work with. I hadn't considered it before, but this may be common elsewhere too, such as HRA departments.

Maybe we should come up with an HR equivalent to the "duck"? Story pasted below:

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the “actual” animation.

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, “That looks great. Just one thing—get rid of the duck.”

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jar...

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#178

Post by GFischer »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #3

> The problem here is that we didn't have the final say. Yup ... There is going to be a real big shift in the next twenty years. We look at things like Developer Anarchy and say "what let the programmers run the company?" - but that's the wrong idea. It's let those with software literacy run the company - just as 500 years ago those who were literate took over running companies For a while we shall see parallel organ…

"Stop working for companies that are not dedicated to software literacy. Schumpter will be round soon enough to have a word with them."

You wish. Once a company is a certain size, it can ignore market pressure by colluding with government (the company I work for should have been obliterated long ago, but there are artificial barriers to entry).

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#179

Post by einhverfr »

Xylakant wrote: post #141
einhverfr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, specifically is that task?

The task for an HR person? The scope really depends on your organisations needs and on the quality and qualifications of your HR person. In general: Handle or at least support all tasks that are associated with employees and other people in your company. The scope can be as narrow as "do background checks on hires, do the math on their desired pay and tell me how much each one would cost and if there's any red flags"…

Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better?

Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers?

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#180

Post by ttt_ »

lutusp wrote: post #145
Fuxy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there good HR departments? I haven't had the honor of seeing any so by my book they're classified in the same section as unicorns and fairies.

> Are there good HR departments? That depends. Are they staffed by psychologists? If yes, then no. Psychology and psychological testing are losing credibility very rapidly right now: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...

Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.

In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:

1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,

2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregarded.

Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions. All fields have different branches and disagreements. True some fields like psychology have a harder time producing great professionals, in my assesment. I think it's because of it being a young field and it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.

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