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How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

brookeallen.com

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Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#31

Post by JeremyMorgan »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #7

The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

Never configured Apache that way, that sounds really interesting. I was running the site on a fairly well tuned LEMP stack and was using a cache plugin (forgot the name) but it would still choke fairly often.

Since the content of my site only changes a couple times a month I started migrating away from towards a static solution. I'm not trying to say WP is bad but I think if your content is relatively static and you aren't doing a ton of updating, just make it static HTML instead of doing hacky cache stuff. It's simple, secure and runs on any type of server.

The only thing that's lacking right now is a really solid static site generator. Octopress/Jekyll are good solutions but can be a bit frustrating and not very portable.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#32

Post by bbcbasic »

To generalize the point a bit:

I don't think enough companies are doing enough to help the ecosystem.

Like foresters chopping down the Amazon, or fishers taking the last fish from the ocean, they want to harvest good talent and then stick them in jobs where they can be a cog in the wheel it is hard to grow. They expect other companies to have given them the training or perfect relevant experience.

And then we hear complaints there there is a shortage of hackers etc.!

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#33

Post by smacktoward »

seagreen wrote: post #6

"So, here is my answer to the question, “What do we owe the people who we do not hire?” 1. Information on where they stand. 2. An explanation of what they are doing wrong. 3. Help improving." Nope! You don't owe them those things. Good for the author that they tried it and it worked out, but it's not a general rule. Everything works smoother in lots of different parts of life if all parties understand the concept of…

I would say you absolutely do owe them #1 -- since you've asked them to give up their time working with you to see if they're appropriate, you owe it to them to not waste that time by stringing them along with endless irrelevant meetings and document requests and "we're still working on it" non-responses. Respect their time: evaluate them, make your decision, and move on.

#2 is more discretionary. Letting someone exactly why you chose not to hire them is a nice thing to do, since it helps them sharpen their prospects for the next gig they go after. But the bottom line of what they're looking for from you is (as you state) a "yes" or "no," not a comprehensive review of their life choices to date.

#3 is even more discretionary, to the point where (to be blunt) I find it completely baffling. Interviewing a job applicant is entering into a very specific business transaction with them -- they agree to present their qualifications and answer your questions, you agree to review them and decide if they meet the needs of the open position. They're not entitled to anything beyond that from you, and I doubt any reasonable person would expect anything beyond that from you. At this point you're just creating work for yourself.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#34

Post by dredmorbius »

bjterry wrote: post #2

Google cache since site is down: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bfmrmRK...

And Coral Cache (it'll have to rely on the page coming back up at least briefly): http://brookeallen.com.nyud.net/pages/archives/1234

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#35

Post by seagreen »

slagfart wrote: post #12
seagreen wrote: post #6

"So, here is my answer to the question, “What do we owe the people who we do not hire?” 1. Information on where they stand. 2. An explanation of what they are doing wrong. 3. Help improving." Nope! You don't owe them those things. Good for the author that they tried it and it worked out, but it's not a general rule. Everything works smoother in lots of different parts of life if all parties understand the concept of…

Works out smoother for who? The candidate? Hardly. You've short-changed them after you've wasted their time. Works out smoother for you? I think you're losing a great chance to build networks and keep potentially great resources in touch. I don't think that a modern hiring manager can afford to think this way, especially when tech wages are so high.

Man, I wish we had better discussion tools than pure text:(

The author (1) took an action in a specific situation, and (2) generalized that action out to a broader rule covering hiring in general.

The author's actions in (1) were absolutely correct (especially after giving the applicants a three week course!). The author's generalization (2) is just wrong.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#36

Post by nilved »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #7

The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

This is first time I've seen the words "Apache is just easier" in that arrangement. I think php-fpm is significantly easier to set up than Apache and expect it to be more performant with less resources.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#37

Post by smacktoward »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #21
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #7

The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

I'm not even sure step 2 is necessary, my WP blog has hit HN a few times and the supercache plugin alone has been more than sufficient to handle it.

Really the big problem at this point is that stock WordPress falling over under even moderate traffic is such a common experience that having caching broken out into an optional plugin doesn't make a whole lot of sense. WP should probably ship with at least a basic caching solution built in.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#38

Post by JeremyMorgan »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #19
sosuke wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought so, and I figure it is a case of our sue-happy culture and a cover your ass tactic "anything you say can and will be used against you" kind of fear. I'd love to have reached out to some applicants in the past to offer help, but what if they don't want any?

It would be nice if, at the start of the application process, companies could ask you if you would like to agree not to sue them in exchange for open, honest feedback, e.g. notes from your interviewers. Sometimes its pretty clear if you are not a good match, but sometimes its really not, and it seems like it would be best for both parties if certain kind of feedback could be provided, e.g. you were close, please cons…

I would check that box in a heartbeat, as would 99% of people. But good luck getting your legal department to allow that, they would likely see it as an unnecessary legal risk.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#39

Post by S4M »

This hiring process is great, but requires lots of time, for the applicants and especially for the hiring manager - I suspect the author was targeting unemployed people, so they would have time for this long application (he put his job advert on the New York Times). To be honest, that is what surprised me the most in this article: that someone who runs a statistical arbitrage desk has the time for all of this.

I wonder if companies could collaborate to create this hiring process. It would save hiring manager's time, applicants' time since one application will count for different jobs, and then a system could be set for candidates to rank their employees, then the candidate who performs the best get his first wish, the second candidate gets is first wish if there is still room, otherwise he gets his second wish, and so on - a similar system is being used in France for students to chose in which universities they want to go after competitive exam entrance, basically lots of universities pool exams together.

On one hand it would scale hiring process, on the other hand it's not flexible and offers have to be transparent (it's currently not the case but maybe that would be a good thing), and it would hurt the pride of companies who are ranked in the last position.

In the case of the article, I am sure someone who is able to solve in a language he recently learn the non trivial software that are mentioned will be able to land a job at some point. It was written in 2004, maybe Github, Stackoverflow and Open Source in general are now contributing to that selection.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#40

Post by dccoolgai »

bbcbasic wrote: post #20
deedubaya wrote: post #3

When you hire for a person , you find that personality traits are much more important than what an applicant has done in the past, including passion, drive, etc. When you hire to fill a position, all this goes out the window the applicant goes into the hiring lottery pool to maybe get an interview, and then the traditional "You could totally goog this IRL, but I'm going to hire you based off your memory" type of hiri…

I find that > 90% of interviews to be the latter, unfortunately. The ones where I got the job were the former! I am stronger at concepts than memory.

The worst is when you have to go through one of those interviews with some smug hoser across from you whose face is contorted into a rictus grin because you couldn't recall, immediately from memory, some obscure Junior Year Computer Science thing. It's just amazing how bad the hiring situation is - It makes me a lot less likely to look around because I just don't want to go through that.
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