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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

#161

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #141
kazinator wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this potentially opens an endless debate against a candidate who is absolutely convinced that they know how to program, and that you're wrong.

A debate can only happen if you continue to entertain their followups with responses. If someone is silly enough to claim they know how to program (or some other critical skill) when their interview demonstrated that they could not, you can simply stop answering their email. It's sufficient to have given them one explanation for why they're not getting the job; that's more than most potential employers offer.

Point being: It's not going to be constructive. Telling someone who thinks they know how to program they can't isn't going to help them and will only seem mean. Because those types can't see they have no idea what they are doing.

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

#162

Post by fencepost »

kazinator wrote: post #135
001sky wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you "interview" people that are blatantly incompetent , that's on you not on them. Just sayin.

That is hard to avoid, because people are called in to interviews based on how they look on paper. Some blatantly incompetent people write themselves up to look good on paper. They have relevant education, skills, plausible-looking experience and so on. Following up on some references before calling people in for an interview isn't a bad idea. Man, I have seen some blatantly incompetent ones. You'd give them a white…

While linked lists are fundamental, depending on the language(s) people have used and how people were taught they may actually not be something people have used. Anyone using mostly high-level interpreted languages (e.g. Python) or something like PHP may not have ever used them, and if they're somewhat self-taught then they may not have encountered them in their reading.

Hash tables might be a better filter, because IMHO you're a lot more likely to find those in real use these days than linked lists.

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

#163

Post by rifung »

shortcircuit01 wrote: post #78

This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided dice. Then they have to come to the company building and roll each dice once every hour. And during that hour they have to dance and sing in front of someone while being recorded. If they roll all 6 on all 5 dice, their dancing and singing will be judged by the com…

Maybe I'm just dumb but it's not at all obvious which company you're talking about

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

#164

Post by jerf »

eropple wrote: post #111
wyager wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're trying to help them forward and give them useful tips for improving their portfolio and skillset, the conversation is almost exclusively positive and 9/10 times I get a thank you very much in the end. No doubt, and I know a lot of US recruiters wish very strongly that they could have these kind of interactions with potential hires. However, the difficulty of friendly, open interviewer-interviewee discussio…

It's a better example of people rationalizing away humanity under the guise of "preventing liability" regarding things that, in practice, will never happen. Bill S. Preston told you everything you need to know. People are not out to get you. Acting as if they are is toxic and inhumane.

A person is not out to get you. People collectively are. That is, that one person who sues you out of a literal thousand candidates will on their own still create enough of a stink that you'll do what you can to never have it happen again. There's no way to avoid this and retain the capability for lawsuits to cause actual damage, either. You can't have it all every way which around.

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

#165

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

benihana wrote: post #107
georgeecollins wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think kazinator is wrong about this. And yes I take the commenters point below that they take hiring very seriously. Study after study shows that people are much less objective than they think. And that they have an impression that they rationalize. I have seen people be very strongly influenced negatively or positively by a word or phrase on the resume that in the scheme of things wasn't that important. I am…

They're not wrong in that people often rationalize their 'instinctual' choices, but to imply that nobody is cognizant of any of their thoughts or biases and that we're all slaves to our lizard brains is a bit of a stretch.

There is a TON of data out there demonstrating we all have subconscious bias. Moreso than we believe. Even of our own groups! We are slaves to our brain!

This is a good summary of some of the data:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-b...

Professors at the University of Chicago and MIT sent 5,000 fictitious resumes in response to 1,300 help wanted ads. Each resume listed identical qualifications except for one variation -- some applicants had Anglo-sounding names such as "Brendan," while others had black-sounding names such as "Jamal." Applicants with Anglo-sounding names were 50% more likely to get calls for interviews than their black-sounding counterparts.

Most of the people who didn't call "Jamal" were probably unaware that their decision was motivated by racial bias, says Daniel L. Ames, a UCLA researcher who has studied and written about bias.

"If you ask someone on the hiring committee, none of them are going to say they're racially biased," Ames says. "They're not lying. They're just wrong."

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

#166

Post by midnightclubbed »

WalterBright wrote: post #119
midnightclubbed wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into any specifics as to what was (allegedly) said to the candidates? 18 cases sounds like the company was either interviewing thousands of applicants or giving very strong reasons for legal challenges.

A person does not need 'very strong' reasons for legal challenges. They can be spurious, with the plaintiff hoping the company will find it cheaper to settle than defend themselves. A system where the loser pays the winner the amount the loser paid their own lawyers will stop most of this nonsense.

How often does this happen in these kinds of cases? Lawyers don't work for free and payouts from a hiring suit are unlikely to be all that large (compared to medical malpractice and the like).

I've been at companies hit with employment law cases but always from current or former employees, never from potential applicants. It seems difficult to prove, unless the rejected candidate is given physical proof of wrong-doing.

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

#167

Post by HackerNewsWayne »

BrookeTAllen wrote: post #124

Hi, this is Brooke, the original hiring manager. I'm new to HN so please excuse me if I violate protocol. I agree, life is about treating people well. However, although I find hiring is probably the single most satisfying thing I did on my job, it was very hard emotionally because in the case of nearly everyone I don’t’ hire it is because they say “NO” to me, and boy, rejection hurts. But at least I have a job and my…

Did I read it right when you said you were hiring in Jan 2014, but retired in Feb 2014? May I know if the capital markets have become so broken too that you decided not to participate anymore? I think this will be helpful to all aspiring algo traders.

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

#168

Post by JoshTriplett »

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #161
JoshTriplett wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A debate can only happen if you continue to entertain their followups with responses. If someone is silly enough to claim they know how to program (or some other critical skill) when their interview demonstrated that they could not, you can simply stop answering their email. It's sufficient to have given them one explanation for why they're not getting the job; that's more than most potential employers offer.

Point being: It's not going to be constructive. Telling someone who thinks they know how to program they can't isn't going to help them and will only seem mean. Because those types can't see they have no idea what they are doing.

On the other hand, it's rare to get someone as far as an interview and have to tell them "you don't know how to program". More common answers would be something specific, like "we need someone with more experience doing collaborative Open Source development", or "we need someone with more skill navigating a complex and unfamiliar codebase and making changes without having to have the entire system architecture in their head". Those are useful and constructive bits of feedback.

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

#169

Post by RandallBrown »

jen729w wrote: post #138
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I feel this 100%. You know from the resume whether the person can do the job. It's whether you want to sit next to them for 8 hours a day while they do it. 30 seconds? Yep.

I have interviewed some people with impressive resumes that still sucked at programming.

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

#170

Post by theseoafs »

jen729w wrote: post #138
RobertKerans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I feel this 100%. You know from the resume whether the person can do the job. It's whether you want to sit next to them for 8 hours a day while they do it. 30 seconds? Yep.

> You know from the resume whether the person can do the job.

Do you? I remember reading a bunch of articles that asserted most people that come in for programming interviews (even if their resumes look solid) are useless.

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