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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

#231

Post by marcosdumay »

hrvbr wrote: post #72
antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

Well, developers can hire other developers, but we can't easily hire the accountants, lawyers and others (including HR, ironically). The big question is: how do we hire people from a field we're not competent in? But yes, at my last job interview, I succeeded at the technical interview but failed at the 'personality' one. It's a loss for them, not for me.

> we can't easily hire the accountants, lawyers and others

What makes you think HR people are any better than we in hiring those ones? (Hiring other HR personal excluded, they are probably good on that, the same way that we are good on hiring techies.)

I don't have an answer to your question, but I'm quite confident that it isn't "you ask a psychologist".

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

#232

Post by drdeadringer »

Xylakant wrote: post #212
tetha wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our recruiters learn about the field they are recruiting in and search and evaluate potential candidates. Our HR admins manage and monitor sickness days, vacation days, contract renewals, contract terminations and so on. The HR managers, well, manage the rest of the HR.

Personal anecdote: One of the first companies I worked to as CTO lost me because they didn't have an HR person. The person in charge let the contract renewal negotiations slip from scheduled meeting to scheduled meeting for more than 6 month and by the time the actual meeting took place all I could say was "Sorry, I just signed somewhere else." That was the shortest contract negotiation I ever had.

Question: Did you not bring this up yourself, to the person in charge? ... or were you possibly not so interested in continuing to work there, or maybe feeling that bringing it up was the sole responsibility of the person in charge?

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

#233

Post by VLM »

gvb wrote: post #191
antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

The problem with departments named "Human Resources" is that employees are not resources and they resent the dehumanization of being treated as such. All the HR horror stories have the same thread: they are dehumanizing employees. In my limted experience this is much more of a problem in big companies than small. In small companies, employees know each other as fellow human beings from the owner to the interns. In bi…

I worked at a small telco (couple hundred people) long ago where HR saw themselves as providing "Resources for Humans" (as opposed to the physical plant guy who could replace lightbulbs all day but couldn't help figure out your health insurance)

They had their nose pretty deep in payroll operations; we were always paid correctly and on time. Insurance problems? They'd help. They were frankly pretty decent service providers for us.

Unfortunately this is extremely rare in corporate life.

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

#235

Post by mgkimsal »

tehwalrus wrote: post #209
mgkimsal wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I wasn't university educated at 9, when I took my first tests, although I was born in the US and spoke English.

fair point indeed - the tests are highly weighted (and thus rather unsatisfactory - the skewing reduces the resolution of the test, if you like) for young people.

I suspect the tests I had at 9 were age-specific, but I've still kept in the same percentile.

What was interesting to me was tests a couple years ago - the questions were sometimes things like

"I'll say a number, you repeat it back to me with the digits reversed".

They kept going until you couldn't do it anymore. I think I conked out around 9 or 10 digits.

"Give me as many names as you can in 10 seconds" (something like that).

"Spot the differences between these two pictures".

I'm wondering in what ways questions like these can be (or are) culturally biased? I can think of ways myself, but curious as to what others think.

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

#236

Post by icebraining »

flexd wrote: post #29
rdl wrote: post #6

I don't get it -- was this at an operating company hiring people, or at the author's recruiting company (which seems to be a depressingly common way to hire people in Europe)? If a recruiting company is so incompetent as to require personality profiling, and worse, enforce it so rigidly, it would explain why Europe lags so far behind the US in tech startups, despite having at least as many (if not substantially more)…

I was interested in applying for a job here in Norway, but it turned out the company had 2-3+ interviews (which would mean spending the day at their offices) over several months, as well as some sort of IQ test and other things. That was in the spring and they expected to have picked out some people by the end of summer. I didn't apply, mostly because I am happy where I am, but also because a 3-5 month interview proc…

I interviewed for Sybase here in Portugal, and the process took about 3-4 months as well, after which I dropped out of it before getting an answer. The interviews didn't take a full day, though, just a couple of hours each.

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

#237

Post by drdeadringer »

gvb wrote: post #191
antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

The problem with departments named "Human Resources" is that employees are not resources and they resent the dehumanization of being treated as such. All the HR horror stories have the same thread: they are dehumanizing employees. In my limted experience this is much more of a problem in big companies than small. In small companies, employees know each other as fellow human beings from the owner to the interns. In bi…

In Verner Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky" there's a [Human] culture with a filled position called "Director of Human Resources". In the context of that book, that title and position has about as happy undertones as if you were to watch 'The Matrix' and then hear Chevron's advertisement blurb: "Human Energy".

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

#238

Post by bguthrie »

antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

There are two things driving policies like this.

First, personal interviews can be poor predictors of future hire performance. People will often hire someone who resonates on a personal level, or who is otherwise charismatic, rather than for the right skillset. Standardized tests, administered correctly, are one way of reducing the variability.

And variability is pain. Your HR and hiring people are likely being judged just the way everyone else is. Hiring, or forcing dev teams to interview, a lot of low-quality candidates without an effective screen is a good way to find yourself being replaced.

The second is that, as people are fond of saying, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. This is the source of a lot of foolish "musts"––candidates must have a certain GPA, or only go to a certain school, or they have to hit a certain percentage on some tests. Having standards is all well and good until you find a case that doesn't fit your profile and you either get flexible or look foolish.

Being flexible means that other hires complain that you're lowering your standards, and no one likes hearing that either.

The test in this case wasn't correctly administered, as columbo pointed out elsewhere, and I agree that hiring managers shouldn't have a veto over technical hires. But this is the sort of human-dynamics problem that can't be solved by firing entire departments. If you don't address the problem head-on it'll just come back next year in a different form.

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

#239

Post by 6cxs2hd6 »

gnu8 wrote: post #205
Spooky23 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 3: Grow, and attract some parasitic employees Step 4: Lose a trivial discrimination / disability / wrongful termination suit because you didn't keep the right paperwork.

Companies should lose discrimination / disability / wrongful termination lawsuits. HR's purpose is to get businesses off the hook for these crimes. Maybe you're thinking about it as an actual or theoretical startup owner, where you don't want to get in trouble. I can understand that. But people are more important than businesses and any business that abuses people deserves to be shut down.

> Companies should lose

I don't know how you feel about silly software patents being used to extort money from companies, because trolls know it will be cheaper to settle than to fight.

The same thing can and does happen with labor law.

Obviously some claims have merit and deserve to be heard by a court and get some reasonable relief.

At the same time, just as there are "patent trolls", there are "employment law trolls".

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

#240

Post by VLM »

buyx wrote: post #228
kabouseng wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I thought my company was one of the few doing it in SA...

Software consulting places and body shops (unfortunately the line is increasingly blurry) don't generally do them. There was small software company in Jhb that used to send candidates for invasive IQ and personality tests to a psychologist, but they don't exist anymore. Many big corporates have psychometricians on staff. At least one even has a department dedicated to psychometric testing. There's plenty of demand fo…

"I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the tests contain an element of uncorrected racial/cultural bias, and the psychometric industry has been exploiting the inability of the government to enforce the law (Employment Equity Act), which makes discriminatory testing illegal."

Bingo! The way it actually works is you organize everything with the assumption that applicants will fail 20% of tests. A different failure mode each time, but the odds are excellent if you give an applicant ten tests, and they fail 1 in 5, every applicant will fail at least one. Then you remove all the undesirables (skin color, sexuality, that kind of thing) and declare the fact that the bosses nephew being the only guy to fail the 360 interview with the janitor turns out to be not relevant, so lets hire him.

In the original article the only reason the 1% test result mattered In That Particular Case is the HR person didn't like that asian's nationality, or race, or religion, or something like that. Guarantee if I was the candidate it would be swept under the rug (unless the HR lady hates me because of my race, politics, religion, of course)

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