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

#211

Post by jlees » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 4:40 AM UTC

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #120

jlees wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not a fit" can get dangerously close to "You're not the same gender/race/orientation/age-range as our core team" (especially if that happens to be true).

Or... you're not a potential drinking buddy. ;) http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/12/03/employers-...

I specifically meant the prohibited criteria, though I suppose as not drinking could be due to health or religion, it's also in a grey area... Could you sue someone for not hiring you because you don't fit in at the frat house?

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

#212

Post by namelezz » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 4:40 AM UTC

reledi wrote: post #183

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…

Are there ways to help those talents get together and start their own companies? Otherwise, they may go to interviews and keep getting rejected.

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

#213

Post by mc32 » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

yarou wrote: post #206

courtf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this. No amount of formality and forced stoicism is going to eliminate the myriad biases that creep into every minute action and decision we all make every day. Hiring is a notorious minefield where believing in your own impartiality merely demonstrates a lack of self-awareness, or worse.

I cannot upvote your comment ( and the parent ) enough. If the labor market in tech was a perfectly competitive market where all parties had perfect information, hiring would be a lot more straightforward. However, as you state, cognitive biases and lack of rationality on both the supply and demand side muddy the waters.

I agree to some extent that we all have biases and that the reason given for a turn down might be individual and idiosyncratic; however, if you're getting similar feedback from different interviews, then one might want to reassess things.

So, yes, individually maybe they're not valuable, but in multiplicity they can become meaningful.

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

#214

Post by jdeisenberg » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 4:50 AM UTC

RobertKerans wrote: post #98

kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

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…

See http://www.businessinsider.com/daniel-kahneman-on-hiring-dec... for a very different viewpoint. (The full details are in Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow")

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

#215

Post by eropple » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 4:58 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #178

eropple wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

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

It happens often enough that the conventional wisdom (and "conventional" generally means "wrong", so excuse my skepticism) is that people sue all the time, and so liability-paranoid corporate entities concoct policies that institutionalize fear of the people who could go work for them. To go along with the fear of the people who do work for them.

But I have yet to see data that suggests that it's on the top thousand things any corporation big enough to hire people should worry about.

> It's those people whom lawyers are (reasonably) worried about.

Fight them. I have long ago decided that I will quit if my job interferes with doing right by people.

It hasn't happened yet, but I'm careful about my employer.

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

#216

Post by pcthrowaway » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 5:26 AM UTC

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…

I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. The author was both willing to hire people with no experience, and provided free training to candidates. I realize that APL isn't a skill in incredibly high demand, but I think the author may have helped these candidates out in the long term. The ones with the most aptitude for programming were able to discover that aptitude (and "a number" of them were hired because of their investment), and the less apt candidates got a little bit of training and possibly an indication that if they are interested in programming they would have to accept putting in a bit more effort than the more apt candidates.

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

#217

Post by Thrymr » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 5:27 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #192

click170 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (?)

Losing a civil case is not proof beyond reasonable doubt, but a 51% preponderance of evidence. A company can lose a case, and still not be guilty - why apologize for something you're not guilty of?

Why not apologize for something you know you are guilty of? That's the real problem, that rarely happens (especially in the case of a corporation).

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

#218

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 5:30 AM UTC

joedavison wrote: post #190

WalterBright wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their legal liability would then be $0. It wouldn't be worse than it is now.

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

#219

Post by Schwolop » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 5:35 AM UTC

jen729w wrote: post #204

theseoafs wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm a Wintel systems & infra person rather than a programmer, so maybe it's different. But yeah, generally, I can tell from the way the thing is written, from the depth of previous experience, from the types of companies the person has worked at, from the career progression. It also helps that I live in Melbourne, Australia - the IT world here isn't massive, and if you haven't worked with the person the odds are you…

Well the Melbourne part is definitely true. I was the first hire in a 100 person company that didn't know anyone else here.

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

#220

Post by skazka16 » Fri, Jan 09, 2015, 6:13 AM UTC

I interviewed an engineer today. Probably a lot of companies would not hire him. He was not that great. I said "Yes" because I noticed a passion and a huge desire to learn and grow. We'll see if that was a mistake or not.