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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

#431

Post by AnIrishDuck »

nekopa wrote: post #345
HarryHirsch wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is correct. Remember you are a mindless drone, as such you are not expected to take charge. Them above, they know best. Anyone remember that case when a prank caller called a McDonalds, telling them that they were management and that they should strip-search a female employee? McDonalds has an employee handbook with all the procedures for the robot, and if you can make it appear that what you ask is in the ha…

I think the caller pretended to be a cop. Pretty sure they made a movie about it recently...

Not sure about a movie, but it was the lede case in a Law & Order SVU episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1015439/

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

#432

Post by nraynaud »

At my last job, we decided to do a little recruitment test. My co-worker set up a php file (and a mirror python file to let the candidates choose), with a blank in a function and a bunch of unit tests for the function. We needed someone to try and debug the test, so I volunteered. Seeing that the team manager was about to take a development literacy test, the whole development team got up and rounded around my screen. It was the most stressful 20 min of my career, I prefer having the website down, at least everybody is focused on work and rooting for success. (I passed the test and I we ironed the last wrinkles doing so)

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

#433

Post by PeterisP »

troels wrote: post #213
toyg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me more about "have the government pick up 100% of the tab if it fails". I'm aware of some incubators here and there (which are mostly a way to create artificial markets for well-connected "advisors" and Euro-funded "trainers"), and I know about the new R&D legislation (which is mainly benefiting BigCo, like anything else patent-related), but I don't see how you could drop the whole bill of your private e…

If you invest under a certain threshold you can actually deduct the full amount from taxes in case of failure. Don't recall the details, but it makes for a pretty sweet deal for angel investors.

If it's fully tax deductible, then you simply don't pay tax on that amount (not reduce your payable tax by that). It saves you about a third of the money, but doesn't make it risk-free.

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

#434

Post by reinhardt »

orangecat wrote: post #269
georgemcbay wrote: post #211

Oh god, I am shocked and horrified to hear that these sorts of tests may now be making their way into the tech industry. I've never encountered one of these personally, but my then-girlfriend who was a recent nursing school graduate looking for her first job ran into them and failed the first few of them. After reading about them online I'm convinced the only way for you to "pass" these tests is to be slightly psycho…

Wow. That test looks like an excellent way to select for a combination of mindless corporate drones and skilled liars.

I'm confident I would ace this test. All I'd have to do is pick the exact opposite of what my honest answer would be.

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

#435

Post by guard-of-terra »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #405
rayiner wrote: post #218

There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person. HR people are valuable in a company. But their role is to get resumes in front of the real decision makers, and to take care of all the stuff like W-2 forms and whatnot nobody wants to deal with, not make…

"There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

You basically shift responsibility to HR people (who don't know shit about candidates) and they only hire mediocre bets to avoid blame.

That's because they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones.

I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking. You'll give talent away to avoid it.

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

#436

Post by guard-of-terra »

jgross206 wrote: post #393
enraged_camel wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were a business owner and a customer judged me for allowing my employees to wear comfortable clothes around the office, I would not want them as a customer. Same with investors. Why? Because them caring about outward appearances would signal to me that they have a fundamental lack of understanding about what factors are relevant to running a successful business. Don't get me wrong: if an employee is visiting a c…

> Why? Because them caring about outward appearances would signal to me that they have a fundamental lack of understanding about what factors are relevant to running a successful business. why does it matter to you if your customers understand what factors are relevant to running a business?

What do customers do in your back/development office?

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

#437

Post by PeterisP »

sthommes wrote: post #295

I love this. I not only illustrates the concept of the false negative (which is presumably as likely as the false positive)- it also showcases that disciplines and best practices, even policies hr, finance, sales ops and yes, even product are not absolute. every case is unique and can be quantum- not binary right or wrong, but every infinity in between

By the way, in hiring you typically are ok with a reasonable number of false negatives, but you really want to eliminate false positives - so a strict filter is actually appropriate.

For example, if you're interviewing candidates with "true objective fit optimalities" of 31%, 52%, 84%, 91%, 94%, 96% - then your process must ensure that there is no way that the bad candidates get hired because they got lucky, even if it means that sometimes the top one gets thrown out by the filter. The delta between best and second best candidates is likely to be narrow (certainly much smaller than any margin of error of your interviewing/'measurement' process), and insignificant compared to the delta between a good candidate and a shiny-looking bad apple - except if your job market is starving and almost noone good applies.

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

#438

Post by mindcrime »

tptacek wrote: post #421
ChuckMcM wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

This sounds good in theory, but in reality HR people are not especially skilled in picking up on the character issues that matter to teams; moreover, when you instruct the HR team that their role in the process is to screen for this kind of stuff, you end up with HR people creating sporadic roadblocks for hiring. Rayiner is absolutely 100% right about this. The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance…

The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else.

Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.

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

#439

Post by ChuckMcM »

tptacek wrote: post #421
ChuckMcM wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

This sounds good in theory, but in reality HR people are not especially skilled in picking up on the character issues that matter to teams; moreover, when you instruct the HR team that their role in the process is to screen for this kind of stuff, you end up with HR people creating sporadic roadblocks for hiring. Rayiner is absolutely 100% right about this. The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance…

I don't disagree with Rayiner here, I'm just sharing how I've seen this sort of stuff get put into place. When you ask "How the hell did HR get to have veto power over hires?", I have found more often than not there is a story of "that guy" or "that gal" who got through the "old process" which is now some legendary part of the company history.

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

#440

Post by dragonwriter »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #435
ChuckMcM wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is absolutely zero reason why HR/recruiting people should have final say on a candidate. None. It should be inconceivable, at a technical company, to hand over that much hiring power to a non-technical person." And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies. What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are…

You basically shift responsibility to HR people (who don't know shit about candidates) and they only hire mediocre bets to avoid blame. That's because they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones. I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking. You'll give talent away to avoid it.

> I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking.

Because blame goes down, and reward goes up, so its a lot more important to make sure that the blame for wrong doesn't get to you than to make sure you get the credit for right, since the reward for right is an "attaboy" where those above you reap the substantive benefits, while the punishment for wrong remains substantive.

TL;DR Because capitalism, mostly.

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