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Inside the Mirrortocracy

carlos.bueno.org

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Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#111

Post by facepalm »

opendais wrote: post #107
facepalm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says they are oblivious? Maybe they just don't like to hire people who don't drink. Why should they be obliged to hire them?

I never said they should be obligated to hire them. It is really inefficient to pick IT, UX, Sysadmin, etc. talent based on whether they drink or not. So I'm assuming they are oblivious.

I'm sure if they are desperate enough they will overlook the drinking requirement. Maybe the hiring situation is not that desperate yet.

Edit: re "religious" argument: surely you can get some non-alcoholic drink at a bar? Water, if nothing else?

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#112

Post by rayiner »

facepalm wrote: post #111
opendais wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they should be obligated to hire them. It is really inefficient to pick IT, UX, Sysadmin, etc. talent based on whether they drink or not. So I'm assuming they are oblivious.

I'm sure if they are desperate enough they will overlook the drinking requirement. Maybe the hiring situation is not that desperate yet. Edit: re "religious" argument: surely you can get some non-alcoholic drink at a bar? Water, if nothing else?

Many people do not drink for religious reasons. You are not obligated to hire people who drink, but by virtue of employment discrimination laws, you are obligated not to discriminate against women and minorities in hiring.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#113

Post by fooqux »

danielweber wrote: post #56
DanBC wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hiring practices of some US companies is really surprising. I have no idea how they avoid legal trouble.

A sufficiently aggressive lawyer just hasn't gone after them, yet. Which, for all the nonsense this post points out, might end up being a net negative for our industry. I'd like these jokers to at least worry a little bit about it in order to stop us from entering that world.

Well, it doesn't have as much to do with aggression as it does with payouts. The average startup doesn't have enough capital (or any revenue to speak of) to make it worth a lawyer's time.

Once a company gets bigger, the stakes change and they have to be much more careful in their hiring practices lest they tempt the flock of lawyers circling overhead.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#114

Post by danielweber »

facepalm wrote: post #82
gdewilde wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, let me enlighten you, People do what it takes to get a job. With the exception of 3 or 4 people you really know, that friend of yours, thats not a real friend, he couldn't care less about you. What you have is an employee skilled in pretending to be your friend. It was the only job requirement! You met him because you "accidentally" ran into him. You get along with him because he is a great performer. He likes th…

That's a zero value argument because psychopaths will mimic whatever criterion you have. So the argument "psychopaths will hack your criterion" is worthless. And the point in things like musical taste and blogs is that they are not that easy to fake. You have to make a real investment (spend time listening to music, reading,...). That's the point of signaling, which is what muscial taste is.

Psychopaths can fake a personality test better than you can design around it. They can't fake a work-sample test.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#115

Post by bcoates »

sharpneli wrote: post #61
pron wrote: post #19

> Without a natural feedback loop, interviewing mostly runs on myth and survivor bias. It is a law of human nature that a chaotic environment breeds magical thinking and ingroup allegiance, and there are few business environments more chaotic than Silicon Valley, where startups succeed or fail seemingly at random. The noise calls for reason, and because there are no true known causes for success our mind demands some…

"Correlation doesn't equal causation" I've noticed that people tend to misinterpret this sentence. In a lot of discussions it shows that people think that there can be correlation while the things don't have _ANY_ relationship between eachother, as in the correlation would arise purely trough random chance. That is blatantly false. Correlation implies at very minimum a causal link trough a third effect. The tradition…

I thought the problem was with the statement was the "we've got a strong correlation here" bit, as if that were a meaningful thing. Correlation is weak evidence for a proposition (and sometimes weak evidence is all you've got) but the correlation being strong doesn't mean anything at all past the threshold of pure chance.

Someone who claims it confidently like that is well into the area of making shit up then rationalizing it.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#116

Post by facepalm »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #96
facepalm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose to hire somebody you don't understand? It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know. If you believe X is important for programming, why on earth would you hire somebody who doesn't like/know about X? It's possible that you are mistaken about X being important. But then you are screwed anyway. But if you start hiring based on things you don't know, you are also scre…

I think you're missing the premise of the article. It doesn't say don't hire qualified people based on a set of characteristics. The article brings up various examples where people are totally confused about what those signals and characteristics of qualification actually are. Dress code, common taste in music, beer, literature, etc. are definitely not those characteristics. The article also doesn't say don't hire pe…

The "GitHub fiasco" would not have happened if they had only hired people who are like them. Bad example :-)

I personally don't think there is much to be learned from it. It was just a normal situation where employee and employer don't get along anymore - it happens thousands of times every day. I don't think because of that people should now shut down all emotions at their workplace and only focus on their work and never talk to each other.

You can not really demand that every employee has to be happy at every company and vice versa.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#117

Post by potatolicious »

facepalm wrote: post #91
opendais wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'd decline and not get the job. I know that already [hint: I don't drink]. It is quite amazing how many people are completely oblivious to their own biases.

Who says they are oblivious? Maybe they just don't like to hire people who don't drink. Why should they be obliged to hire them?

Nobody's saying they should be obliged - but their complaints about how hard it is to hire people should now be taken with a larger grain of salt.

It certainly shows where on the spectrum they lie, between "wants to hire people to do a job" and "wants to hire people to hang out with".

Personally, I've got plenty of friends I care deeply about and want to go drinking with, and while I'm not opposed to grabbing a beer with coworkers from time to time, my primary reason for showing up is to do good work, not play developmentally-delayed fraternity grabass. A company that places "drinkbuddyability" before "workability" is a place that's toxic to me.

I feel that there is a growing disconnect in the industry, and a growing contingent of the industry that has reinterpreted tech's historical desire to be easy-going and not-uptight into some sort of frat-like organization.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#118

Post by facepalm »

VexXtreme wrote: post #105
facepalm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"productive, smart, not an asshole, can work with different people etc" People seem to struggle to determine those things during an interview, though. If you don't understand me, I can only diagnose a lack of curiosity on your part. Otherwise you would have read some of the countless articles on hiring issues by now. " people who can't get along with anyone who is not exactly like them" I never said anything like tha…

> It's nice that you don't care about your coworkers as people (having dinner with them or becoming friends). I am sure there are loads of companies that are perfect for you, because they only require blue collar programming drones. First of all, I care about my coworkers to the extent it is necessary to work together. Also, if they ever run into hardships, I am willing to help out if I can. It's just basic human dec…

I would assume "liking each other" is usually a given job requirement. Also putting too many criteria into a job ad increases the risk for discrimination lawsuits, so it's probably better to just be generic.

Also, saying such things beforehand would make them too easy to fake.

I am btw not advocating to hire based on musical taste. I only mentioned it because it seems to be something people often talk about when they get to know each other, and because it might indicate likelihood to get along.

"The fact that you assume that you need to work at a particular kind of startup with a particular culture to have that just shows how prejudiced you are."

Where did you get any of that? I never mentioned startups, nor did I say one culture is better than another. I just think people should be free to choose.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#119

Post by facepalm »

danielweber wrote: post #106
facepalm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose to hire somebody you don't understand? It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know. If you believe X is important for programming, why on earth would you hire somebody who doesn't like/know about X? It's possible that you are mistaken about X being important. But then you are screwed anyway. But if you start hiring based on things you don't know, you are also scre…

It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know. So do that. Stop pretending you are a psychologist, and capable of figuring out what kind of personality is good at this job, because those are things you don't know. Instead, give work-sample tests. Those are something you can know. You can look at the results the person emits. Then hire based on that. Personality only needs basic things…

So you would also say that it is best to leave all hiring to a computer, as I suggested in another comment (to summarize all comments I received)? After all, human perceptions seems to be too flawed?

A computer can administer a psychological test, and it can administer a programming test. Problem solved?

Other than that, again: you can only act based on the things you know. So the conclusion is nobody is qualified to hire (since the article talks to everybody)? Of course it is possible that there are some clueless people in the business of hiring. But people can only do what they can do. I don't see any practical advice in that article.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#120

Post by opendais »

facepalm wrote: post #111
opendais wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they should be obligated to hire them. It is really inefficient to pick IT, UX, Sysadmin, etc. talent based on whether they drink or not. So I'm assuming they are oblivious.

I'm sure if they are desperate enough they will overlook the drinking requirement. Maybe the hiring situation is not that desperate yet. Edit: re "religious" argument: surely you can get some non-alcoholic drink at a bar? Water, if nothing else?

> I'm sure if they are desperate enough they will overlook the drinking requirement. Maybe the hiring situation is not that desperate yet.

Right now, IT is a strong labor environment [e.g. Programmers get multiple offers if they look for a job and pick the best/highest one].

If you are so foolish as to make "drinking" a requirement, that means you are reducing the pool and raising the cost of the employee.

You are free to do that. Your competitor who is more sensible is going to have more breathing room financially because of your poor choices. That tends to be a feedback cycle that causes them to slowly and inevitably beat you in a capitalist society.

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