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Inside the Mirrortocracy

carlos.bueno.org

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Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#171

Post by jdbernard »

facepalm wrote: post #168
jdbernard wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would assume "liking each other" is usually a given job requirement. Not really. I've had plenty of co-workers over the years I did not particularly like, but with whom I've had very productive working relationships. I'm not saying I actively disliked them, but they are not the type of people I would have become friends with in other situations. There was the guy who was super into his micro-brewery, had to make…

But did you make the hiring decision for those people?

Not for one of the three I chose as examples, but yes for others.

One guy was very awkward socially, over confident in himself and under-appreciative of everyone else. At least that is how he appeared in the interview. My team at the time rotated three people through as a hiring board to spread out the work of finding people and I was on the board that interviewed him. He was a very weird guy, and I mean more than your typical loner/introvert with underdeveloped social skills. We were a little worried about his ability to work well with the team, but on technical merits he was fantastic. He also didn't show any red flags, just general weirdness. So we hired him, and he was a good fit. Definitely in the top half of our team as far as quality and timeliness of his output.

I'm also glad that the people managing the hiring process for the other two employees I mentioned was willing to look at their professional record and not at their "culture fit" because pug-lady and microbrewery-guy were some of our best people. When I left the company where I worked with microbrewery guy, he was the one to whom I handed all of my outstanding projects.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#172

Post by smoyer »

epochwolf wrote: post #139
smoyer wrote: post #131

"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter.” — Mark Zuckerberg I always chuckle to myself when I read this because I realize that one day Zuck's going to say "Hey, I'm older" and by extension he'll have to also say "Ouch, I'm dumber". I suspect he'll recant the statement due to "youthful arrogance" at some point!

There's a half truth there, a lot of young people think they are a lot smarter than they really are. They have false confidence that goes with not knowing what they don't know.

Agreed ... my own parents were pretty dumb until I moved out of the house, got a job, rented a house and had to completely support myself. Getting married and having kids added more responsibility (and made my parents seem even smarter).

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#173

Post by smoyer »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #60

> “Well, I grabbed coffee with the founder, and I had dinner with the team last night, and then we went to a bar together.” I'm no teetotaler, but bars can be uncomfortable to downright hostile places for the majority of people (women + people who don't drink for religious or health reasons). It's absolutely inappropriate and unprofessional to incorporate one into an interview. This is typical "old boy's club" shit,…

I do drink. A bit. Not much, though, and I'm not the bar type. For me, that would likely kill the interview. Maybe that's for the best; maybe I wouldn't fit with them, and that's a good filter. They're clearly looking for social as well as technical fits, and I wouldn't be that.

I feel the same way ... but I'd like to add that the main reason I hate bars is that they're too loud to have an intelligent conversation (except when they're almost empty). I have problems filtering background noise so it's even tougher for me - to the point where I commonly read lips.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#174

Post by jonnathanson »

facepalm wrote: post #163
jonnathanson wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that religion, sexual orientation, etc., aren't supposed to be criteria in your hiring process, one way or the other. It doesn't matter if you prefer atheists or devout Christians. You are welcome to hold personal beliefs about religion -- but the topic itself shouldn't come up in the interview. And unless you're a religious organization, I can think of few reasons why it should ever come up in the workp…

But if you can't go to a bar with your colleagues, suddenly religion enters the equation. Should your colleagues never go to a bar to respect you? Or should they just go without you - but then maybe you don't get the promotion because your boss became friendly with a colleague who went along to the bar. I didn't enter religion - somebody else started mentioning it as a reason to not go to a bar. I don't think there s…

Nobody is saying your company shouldn't go out to a bar "just because somebody's religious feelings might be offended." If you want to have company outings at bars, that is totally fine, provided a) attendance at said outings is optional and not mandatory (or even de facto mandatory, i.e., employees are held in some sort of disregard for not attending); b) attendance at bars is not evaluative, i.e., you are not using the bar as an indirect test of someone's fit on a protected dimension.

Ok: You invite everyone out for drinks.

Questionable: You make someone's ability to hang at a bar an explicit or implicit criterion for hiring them.

Not ok: You determine that you are going to use the bar as a direct "test" for religious affiliation, sexual orientation, personal beliefs about alcohol, etc. (Extreme example: "I don't want to hire any Muslims or Mormons here. I'm going to ask all candidates to a bar as part of the interview process and offer them a drink, to suss out their religious affiliation.")

Obviously this isn't a binary situation. There is a spectrum of acceptable and unacceptable practices to be navigated. Some of it comes down to personal judgment, some of it comes down to common sense, and some of it comes down to the law.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#175

Post by sharpneli »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
sharpneli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> That is blatantly false. Correlation implies at very minimum a causal link trough a third effect. No, it doesn't. Correlation can be coincidence; while a particular correlation may be unlikely on its own to be coincidence, there are lots of combinations of things in the universe that might be compared side-by-side, and so unlikely coincidental correlations are everywhere, and so if you troll through the universe lo…

Sure. But with enough datapoints the probability of the correlation being a mere accident is going to be vanishingly small.

And by enough I am talking about hundreds and more of datapoints. If one looks at things like yearly values of something for within last 10 years like the page spurious correlations is doing one is bound to find some weird ones.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#176

Post by lsh123 »

I am managing software development teams in small startups and big companies in the Valley for more than 10 years now. I've probably had several hundreds of interviews, looked at thousands of resumes and hired a couple hundred people directly. One of the things I always look for during the interview is how the candidate is different from me. I obviously don't want to have weird folks who behave outside of the social norm in my team. But I absolutely love employees with different than my experience, education, background, and especially I love people who disagree with me. The team members who can argue with me are my best employees. These are the people I will be chatting to bounce ideas. These are the people I will be working hard to convince that my proposal is the right one. And these are the people whom I will go to when I need an advice (simply because they might see the problem from a different angle than I do).

"The Company Culture" is important. But you do not create it by writing blog posts or even by having company off-sites every month. I create the culture in my team by re-enforcing my values every day during meetings or simple chats at the water cooler. Most software developers are smart and can easily see through the BS of startup or large company "culture building exercises" when the day-to-day processes in the company go in a completely opposite direction.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#177

Post by tptacek »

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?

It's a little alarming how quick the thread here backed away from this point, to reassure you that nobody is really saying that anyone is obligated to disregard drinking habits. No. People should definitely be reinforcing this (very real) ethical obligation. Don't select candidates based on their willingness to go to a bar during the interview process.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#178

Post by tptacek »

CmonDev wrote: post #31

"It's hard to find good people to hire" Oh, come on! Where is this myth coming from? I don't know about USA, but here in London there is an over-abundance of IT workforce (what else would justify the sub £60k senior dev job offers).

Perhaps not in the valley, but ~$105k is not ballpark absurd for senior dev in the US.

(I'm in London at the moment and I do acknowledge that this place is fucking fabulously expensive).

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#179

Post by gaius »

seestheday wrote: post #97
CmonDev wrote: post #31

"It's hard to find good people to hire" Oh, come on! Where is this myth coming from? I don't know about USA, but here in London there is an over-abundance of IT workforce (what else would justify the sub £60k senior dev job offers).

Every time I hear about salaries in London it makes me mad. Why is the pay so bad? How is it possible that the value isn't recognized? Are you able to demonstrate the value that you bring, or is it so much an old boys club that dev's are thought of as factory workers? On a related note - why aren't there more senior software dev's building their own businesses? It seems like you have so little to lose.

Yes, the old class system. Engineers, no matter how qualified, better even than managers, are "blue collar" workers still. Better to have the right tie, played the right sports, and your father to use his network to give you a leg up. Even if you only have a a Third from Loughborough or Aberyswyth or Durham or some other joke university.

Only the City pays fair market wages to technical people, because contrary to popular belief, the old boys were ruthlessly driven out in the 80s.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#180

Post by zem »

facepalm wrote: post #47
watwut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But isn't there a basic curiosity in some people?" Someone who does not read the same old blog as you is not curious? That does not make any sense. I checked out Joels blog now (after years) and there does seem to be anything exceptional or different then what is on gazillion other blogs. If anything, Java guy reading about Java could learn about map reduce, full text search, security, compilers, algorithms, sound p…

I'm willing to bet that you don't live up to your own standards of being friendly with people. But I think you don't even understand what I am trying to say. "I would try various topics until I find the one we can talk about." I am not talking about meeting once and making small talk. I am talking about meeting every day, for 10 years straight. Curiosity: if somebody can give me a good reason why they don't like Joel…

anecdotally, yes, i've noticed very little correlation betweeen people's personalities and their tastes in music. why would you even expect there to be one?
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