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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

#181

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

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…

You can't sign away your legal rights like that.

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

#182

Post by wyager »

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…

I've interviewed at all/most of the companies you're probably referring to.

None of my interviews were as you described. Sure, some of them were very abstract questions, but it's pretty obvious what the interviewers are getting at.

In fact, I prefer this over "implement a red-black tree" or other excessively technical questions. Those kinds of interviews just test memorization and not skill or reasoning ability. A skilled programmer with good reasoning can learn any of those concrete mechanical concepts very quickly.

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

#183

Post by reledi »

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…

> hidden talent; those good at doing a job but bad at getting one

I really like this. If you're bad at getting a (good) job then employers safely assume you would also be bad at the job - it's too risky otherwise. But often that isn't the case, because there's a lot of "hidden talent".

What can we do to give those people a fair chance? We need effective ways to discover hidden talent. The process you described worked for you, but it doesn't seem practical. Too time consuming for both the employer and job seekers, and not rewarding enough for those who don't get a job out of it.

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

#184

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

lukeschlather wrote: post #172
UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very good! I guess I just let my negativity get the best of me in frustration and doesn't make me think in a positive manner.

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

#185

Post by nathan-muir »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #132

So unless I'm reading the cached text wrongly 38 people read the given manual and answered programming questions based on it. They then met informally. Lets say they burnt a day on this. 27 of those people then suggested being taught how to program in APL (after building a classroom). I'm assuming anyone who didnt want to attend got cut. 3 additional days spent. They were then given 3 weeks to solve some difficult pr…

Totally agree. They should have received a wage, as the learning program wouldn't result in a qualification, and was mostly a part of a hiring process.

If there were a wage involved, potentially more of the original applicants could afford to go through the hiring process.

At least the modern standard is to pay the potential hire as a contractor / consultant to do a few small projects, and then decide if you'd like to hire them on as an employee.

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

#186

Post by RandallBrown »

MichaelGG wrote: post #100
dccoolgai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet the number of interviewees with a CS degree that can't even explain a basic algorithm, like traversing linked lists or binary search, is staggering.

It's amazing how the brain can totally blank in stressful situations.

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

#187

Post by twright0 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #127
bvanslyke wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir?

I believe he or she is talking about Google.

Google's acceptance rate is well above .01%, just using basic reasoning. Google employs tens of thousands of engineers, which means they would have had to reject hundreds of millions of candidates for the role of software engineer.

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

#188

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #168
UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Well I said in an earlier comment that our HR team tells us who to interview.

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

#189

Post by dorfsmay »

electic wrote: post #53
humanrebar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve This is my inclination: "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of , maybe start contributing to or experiment in and reapply in a year or two." ...my concern is opening up my company for legal liabilities. Am I just being paranoid?

This happened at my last company. It does in fact open you up to legal liabilities. The company had to settle 18 cases where applicants "disagreed" with the reason of their rejection.

I was looking for something like this. Regardless of how true the legal exposure is, every company I worked for claim this exact issue for not giving any reason. Been on the rwcicing end too, and felt that the whole exercise was a big waste of time considering the lack of feedback.

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

#190

Post by joedavison »

WalterBright wrote: post #152
kstenerud wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "loser pays" system sounds great on the surface, but is fraught with unintended consequences: - A complainant who loses on a technicality or procedural failure, and is now on the hook for hundreds of thousands in legal fees. - A big company that bullies the complainant with legal shenanegans until the complainant is worn out, drops the case, and is now on the hook for hundreds of thousands in legal fees. Just the f…

The loser's max liability will be what he paid his own lawyers, not what the other party paid theirs. Thus, you cannot spend your opponent into oblivion. A better formula for what loser pays would be: min(what you paid your lawyers, what the other side paid their lawyers)

And what about pro se litigants?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_se_legal_representation_in...

For individuals, representing oneself pro se is extremely common.

Corporations must have an attorney, of course.

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