Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

He got 1%, we can't hire him

codingjohnson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 594 posts

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

#571

Post by rdl »

Peroni wrote: post #32
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)…

it would explain why Europe lags so far behind the US in tech startups The primary reason Europe lags behind is the substantial lack of investors & VC's. The case highlighted by the author is typical of large corporates but if you look at any decent tech company in London for example, this case would sound ridiculous and extreme.

Yeah, I didn't mean to say it was the sole reason or even a primary reason, but it's a contributing factor. The risk-averse culture (investment and employees), and lack of exemplars of successful entrepreneurs (vs. going into banking, government, etc.) is probably the biggest problem.

I get the general perception top tier Sand Hill VCs are now willing to invest in Series B or later (and some Series A) in Europe. Costs have dropped, even in Europe, so you can get pretty far on $50-100k in savings for a seed round. So the big problem in the long term is probably risk-aversion in hiring, vs. raising money.

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

#572

Post by wpietri »

crucini wrote: post #517
wpietri wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are reassuring from a systemic design perspective, or from the perspective of someone who is accused but innocent. But in the individual case of an obviously guilty person going free, it is legitimately maddening.

I think with more perspective, there is nothing maddening about it. It's like a pool filter. Any one particle of feces can float around the pool forever, but in aggregate the feces level is reduced.

I think that's a valid perspective, but that's not the only one.

If you have been a victim of a crime and the perp walks, it's reasonable to say something besides, "Thanks goodness our system works to protect the innocent!"

I also think prosecutors should always be a little maddened by it. It's they're job to keep the guilty-but-free error as low as possible.

Or to put it differently, aggregate feces reduction is great, but you are unlikely to say that if you discover a bit of somebody's poop in your mouth. And you never want the person in charge of cleaning the pool to say, "Fuck it, a little poop never killed anybody."

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

#573

Post by nknighthb »

diminish wrote: post #566
victoriap wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose, HR unit for recruitment belongs to the Taylor's scientific management; where companies were machines and recruitment unit would efficiently find resources to fill the openings. Also, resources were abundant and job openings were scarce, so HR's non-smart screening made some sense. Now, for the technology world, the valley, or any company where people with unique skills are needed, HR unit struggles to help…

From a skills perspective HR maybe struggling, but recruitment is more than finding the right skills. It includes background checking, psychological screening, screening for fitness to corporate culture etc. I don't claim all HR are more skilled than everyone here, but most of non-HR people are not experts in all aspects of recruitment neither.

Background checks are contracted out to third parties, psychological screening is nonsensical and discriminatory, and HR has not the first clue what corporate culture is like outside their bubble.

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

#574

Post by ballard »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #547
ballard wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three buckets of people you don't want to hire: - helpless - depressed - jerks In my subjective experience: The top one has about %50 shot of being a character flaw, eg, no amount of confidence-building will help. The middle one has the most hope, if the talent potential is significant. The best in the field can be painfully shy as well as depressed. The problem is that depression (not shyness) hurts morale…

Your buckets are quite simplistic and I doubt your company will be successful. First, if this is the states, you are not allowed to discriminate against clinical depression, so (2) will just lead to a lawsuit eventually. As for (1), if they have the skills are they helpless? Jerks are quite deplorable, but its a gradient right? How much jerkiness do you tolerate, or do you want saints?

Hiring is discrimination. That's the point.

Only someone without life experience would not read between the lines that buckets are ideals and need the explanation that hiring is holistic.

To then make a straw man fallacy out of the opposite of an ideal is to be inconsistent: you can't have it both ways.

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

#575

Post by ballard »

dferlemann wrote: post #558
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your buckets are quite simplistic and I doubt your company will be successful. First, if this is the states, you are not allowed to discriminate against clinical depression, so (2) will just lead to a lawsuit eventually. As for (1), if they have the skills are they helpless? Jerks are quite deplorable, but its a gradient right? How much jerkiness do you tolerate, or do you want saints?

I agree. I am working with people have these 3 types of characteristics. This 3-type categorization is way too simplistic to describe an individual. I find no problem working with them. People are interesting. They all have some kind of quirks and behavior patterns. It's important to be tolerant and adaptive. But people with strong technical depth is really hard to come by.

Duh. Value is holistic. We can find anything we want to find to support an argument.

When you have worked with someone that screams at their coworkers, can barely feed/clothe themselves or refuses to lift a finger to help you... then you will know how much time and emotional effort these behavioral traits can waste.

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

#576

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ballard wrote: post #575
dferlemann wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am working with people have these 3 types of characteristics. This 3-type categorization is way too simplistic to describe an individual. I find no problem working with them. People are interesting. They all have some kind of quirks and behavior patterns. It's important to be tolerant and adaptive. But people with strong technical depth is really hard to come by.

Duh. Value is holistic. We can find anything we want to find to support an argument. When you have worked with someone that screams at their coworkers, can barely feed/clothe themselves or refuses to lift a finger to help you... then you will know how much time and emotional effort these behavioral traits can waste.

Toxic employees exist at the extremes of those buckets. Avoid hiring toxic employees, but the filters available to you might not be good enough to screen them out, so fire them quickly. During the interview, you might just be able to observe minor quirks which are hardly indicators either way.

I cringe whenever I read job ads that are aiming for a culture fit: "we only want to hire harmonious, independent, extroverted employees;" when in my experience, the best employees do not hold strongly to those ideals, but neither to do they hangout at the other extremes.

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

#577

Post by bougiefever »

At one company, they gave a personality test in two sessions. The test gave everyone a color, green, yellow, blue or red, that determined if you were better in sales, management, tech, or whatever. Techs were supposed to be green. Well, the first group took the test, and we were able to figure out how to game the test so that the score would come out exactly centered. Everyone in the second batch of tester scored exactly in the center. Boy was the HR manager pissed! He was fuming! It was so hilarious. They too used those kinds of tests to determine whether people would be promoted or fired.

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

#579

Post by switch33 »

People really need to start realizing not everyone is specializing in communication/social-interaction or business writing. And that does NOT make them horrible candidates for being more professional in other aspects of their work. These tests the HR departments keep making are not helping and detering very skilled and productive people who should have otherwise been hired.

And this is coming from someone who is from US and natively speaks English. Social awkwardness is in a sense showing intelligence, however it is hard to convey speech articulate for some people. Some people are much more wrapped in the news of now and what is going on the world than others. And people all have different ways of jumbling facts in their head and through speech, so it's not exactly fair to say one person is smarter based on them using cleaner and more syntactic language.

But generally companies do need to hire people that they can at least get along with. That I can understand, because if you can't stand a person who is there by your side for 6 hours or more then you can't really work with them.

Companies that are looking to hire people based off of speech and writing are looking at it as a communication issue. This could be good or it could be much worse. They need to realize the trade-off between communication and talent being there.

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

#580

Post by switch33 »

darasen wrote: post #223

I disdain idiotic psych "tests". The mentality of "here's a few questions and now I know how you think or what kind of person you are" is, frankly, insulting.

The worst is psych "tests" without context. What are we supposed to feel from x sentence, but without a given contextual situation? That is bound to go wrong.
Post reply on HN