How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by UrMomReadsHN » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #149

kazinator wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is hard to avoid, because people are called in to interviews based on how they look on paper. And (hopefully) how well they did in the phone screen...?

If you phone screen people and don't call them in for an interview, you are still rejecting them.

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

#172

Post by lukeschlather » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #145

sfilipov wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a CS student who's still not very confident in his skills and without enough experience to recognize his own weak spots, I would say that "you understand X's language well, but you need to improve your knowledge of algorithms and data structures" or "you have a good theoretical understanding X and Y Computer Science concepts but you need to work on side projects to gain programming experience" or "you have shallow…

I'm not talking about that...I'm talking about people who are confused about things learned in CS101. I am assuming you can program FizzBuzz.

"For this job, writing a simple function like this with one for loop should be something you can do without thinking about it."

I've told candidates variants on that theme before.

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

#173

Post by Joky » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:04 AM UTC

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…

This is what poor programmer are saying usually :)

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

#174

Post by kazinator » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

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.

> "if you continue entertain their followups with responses"

That was, incidentally, sekasi's point #3, several parent references up:

"3. Always respond to requests for more information"

No. :)

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

#175

Post by kazinator » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:12 AM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #162

kazinator wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your comment is on the mark. But in that particular question they were asked something like, show a singly linked insertion on a white board using some box-and-arrow notation. They were not asked to write it in C or whatever. They couldn't visually whiteboard the concept at all.

(The job area was embedded development, involving C and C++, so asking for C code related to linked lists would have been fair game!)

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

#176

Post by midnightclubbed » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:14 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #33

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 exa…

Yes yes and yes. On #2 if a candidate gets to a technical interview they are fairly likely to know if they crashed and burned or not. If they are not right for some other issue (they didn't communicate clearly, were rude, dwelt on negatives about previous employers) then there is not always a professional way to say it other than a straight NO.

A decent candidate will learn from difficult questions and things they tripped up on. If you are acting professionally, asking pertinent questions and responding to the candidates answers then you are providing all the help they should need to nail their next opportunity.

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

#177

Post by bbcbasic » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:14 AM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #47

bbcbasic wrote: post #32

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 co…

I completely agree. I would include supporting open source projects as another way to practice sustainable development. Many kinds of personalities wilt in corporate environments that could work (for relatively cheap wages) on open source projects that benefit everyone.

I read Michael Church's blog and from reading that I am convinced that we are our own worst enemy. We spend our spare time writing open source code, which then businesses can profit from without having to pay any of their own staff.

I think companies should allow staff to spend some time on open source. It could even benefit the company by having their name associated with it, making it seem like a cool place to work, and having CV's coming in the 'we're hiring' page begging for an interview instead of expensive agencies. But there you go.

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

#178

Post by wyager » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:16 AM UTC

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.

>regarding things that, in practice, will never happen.

It can and does happen. People sue over hiring decisions all the time.

It's unfortunate, but the way I figure, if you try to make laws that dictate morality (a la anti-discrimination laws), people are less likely to have and follow their own moral code in that area. "Why do I need to decide what's right or reasonable when the law does it for me?"

Also, most people are nice, but the small minority of people who are assholes can cause huge damage, amplified by the legal system. It's those people whom lawyers are (reasonably) worried about.

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

#179

Post by wyager » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:20 AM UTC

q2 wrote: post #93

wyager wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve Many recruiters don't do this for legal reasons. Anti-discrimination laws make it very risky for companies to explain their hiring rationale, even if it's perfectly reasonable. It would be too expensive to have the lawyers check over every rejection.

After all, we are humans and rejection hurts any one. Related case is, firing without reason, all of a sudden which also hurts. What explanation can the effected employee provides to his family/friends for this sudden change? In both cases, human mind keeps circling on what went wrong. Is there any misunderstanding or wrong perception? So providing reasons is humane in any such life altering transaction. Related to l…

>there will be an agreement needs to be signed by interviewee, recruiter, company involved, so that, after interview, recruiters can provide reasons for rejections and as long as the reason is with in the laws of the country or appears reasonable, then involved parties will not proceed legally.

Unfortunately, the government puts strict limits on the purview of contract law, so an agreement like this would likely not hold up in court.

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

#180

Post by click170 » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 2:25 AM UTC

acoleman616 wrote: post #76

WalterBright wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also why companies do not apologize, except as part of a settlement. An apology is an admission of guilt, opening the company to liability.

Man, this country is really messed up sometimes...

What's really messed up is that companies can lose a case in court, and then still not admit guilt or wrong doing.

At that point, hasn't the court basically overruled them? They lost the court case. End of story (?)