The Hiring Post • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hiring Post

#221

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #9

sdevlin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a phone interview wherein I was required to write some code and then read it to the interviewer (character by character!) over the phone. I asked him whether it would make more sense for us to use etherpad (this was maybe five years ago), but he said no.

Have you ever had a productive phone screen? I think they might all be evil.

For full time devs? Rarely. For interns? Absolutely. We had many applicants whose programming experience was closer to web design, and weren't conversant in basic data structures. I don't think it was inherently evil to tell them to come back next year, after they've taken a course in algorithms.

Re: The Hiring Post

#222

Post by aminox » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #207

aminox wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me first start by saying that I, too, dislike the prevailing interview process for software development jobs. While I agreed with many of your points, I could not stop thinking what a huge time burden of implementing something like what you propose, at scale. For a growing company with several work streams and projects hungry for talent, the interview approach you posit would never work. Another thing that came t…

Actually, go look for the 'tokenadult comments on work-sample tests to learn that this approach has been known for something like half a century to outperform interviews.

This answer could possible address the test question. It leaves the other two issues I raised unanswered. Not that you have to address them, but just saying that the approach you guys implemented might work well for a very small subset of companies that share traits in terms of company size, structure and industry sector.

Re: The Hiring Post

#223

Post by Ilovecroissants » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

I think of hiring someone as a process akin to testing experiments in my startup. There are so many variables when people try to work together. Hiring processes that mimic that strategy should be the best bet IMO. This article is a little low on practical advice although I realize it's focused on the issue.

Re: The Hiring Post

#224

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The Hiring Post

#225

Post by picardo » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

Are you familiar with the psychological research about bias in decisionmaking?[0]

It sounds like you have come to the same conclusion psychologists are coming to. Under stress, the human mind uses mental shortcuts, or heuristics, while making important decisions, and act irrationally.

I don't often come across a post that takes on these biases so systematically, and translates them into one of the most important decisions a startup has to make, i.e. the hiring decision, and you even invent useful ways to mitigate their effects. Kudos for that!

Every company should be doing this. Overcoming bias should be a top priority at all HR departments.

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[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_deci...

Re: The Hiring Post

#226

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #194

alxndr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "At the end of every trivia question I'm tempted to ask: so is this typical of what I will be doing here? Will I be implementing rand(7) given rand(5) once a week?" That sounds like a great question to ask!

Because being passive-agressive is a great way to get the job?

If someone is asking you to implement rand(7) given rand(5) as part of their way to qualify your ability to do a job, you probably no longer want the job.

Re: The Hiring Post

#227

Post by rhizome » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

spydum wrote: post #203

rhizome wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a red flag on the company though, isn't it? Why would they be asking you to recount what's on your resume?

this is true and at many companies the hiring process is so broken, the interviewer might have only an hour or less heads up that they will be interviewing someone. i have done that maybe twice, and since then i refuse tomdo interviews on candidates without more prep time. on the reverse of that, i have sometimes avoided topics that the candidate was familiar with because i didnt see relevant experience on a resume.…

When I was at EA, I would get an email saying I had to interview someone that afternoon, here's their resume, and here's the title they're interviewing for. It was ridiculous.

Re: The Hiring Post

#228

Post by wavesounds » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #147

tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had three work-sample exercises at Matasano. All told, they took candidates mid-single-digit hours to finish (many geeked out, or golfed on them; we did our best to keep this from happening --- you can read about this on our hiring page: http://www.matasano.com/careers This sounds onerous, but it is less onerous than the normal dev hiring process, which involves an onsite interview that eats the whole day. We did…

My concern here is that it seems to signal a lack of respect for the candidate if the company expects them to complete a task with no matching employee time. Interviews are even; both sides clearly have skin in the game; a work-sample test could be given to any number of people at basically no cost. This is somewhat alleviated by the knowledge that you do a phone screen with each person prior to that stage, but it st…

It totally depends on the work sample they ask you to do. If no thought went into it then you are correct. If, however, a company devises an interesting project to work on it show they also put some energy into this.

Most importantly though I like programming, but I don't like speaking up in front of a group of strangers, so 6 hours of programming is much more enjoyable to me then even just 1 hour of interviewing.

Re: The Hiring Post

#229

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

The software developer job interview doesn’t work. Companies should stop relying on them. The savviest teams will outcompete their peers by devising alternative hiring schemes.

I remember talking with a manager after an interview, and listening to him go on about how his company was empirical and data driven. Later, he mentions how this one interview activity was valuable because it resembles something in the job, and I asked him what his empirical data was, and he had to admit that he was caught out.

Re: The Hiring Post

#230

Post by dougabug » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #213

dougabug wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's exactly a zero-sum game, but the rate at which talent is created doesn't seem to be amazingly high given that there are over 7 billion people on Earth. Certainly the talent pool seems to be a small fraction of the population. Top universities, which for the most part feed the tech industry, face a similar problem at an earlier stage in the pipeline. It's been noted that less prestigious universit…

I think part of the problem is that hiring bars are unrealistically high. Pulling numbers out of my ass for illustration, it's like companies that control 10% of the software engineering jobs all only want to hire the top 5% of software engineers. They can't all get their way, so the top 5%[1] bounces between these companies whilst the companies whine about "talent shortages". [1] Should be noted that it isn't the en…

I don't know that there is a "right" level for the bar. There might be a game theoretic way of looking at the problem which explains how we wind up with the levels that we do.

In relative terms, the bar for, say, the NBA is much higher than for top universities and tech companies. They set the bar high enough so that, for all practical purposes, minor league teams cannot come close to matching their combined level of play. Also, if you don't compete regularly against NBA caliber players, with NBA quality coaches and trainers, it would be hard to reach the same level of skill even with comparable native ability. I don't think the league is that concerned with missing out on marginal players, as long as on balance it gets those correct. The disaster would be to miss out on the Michael Jordans or Lebrons, Bird and Magic. So they scout and pay through the nose even for the slim chance of that kind of greatness, with the tolerable outcome being a good role player.

At some level, we're all looking for greatness. Nobody wants to see a league entirely made up of role players doing somewhat above average things.

The analogy breaks down in that it's a lot easier to accurately measure (though perhaps not predict) athletic ability. I do think that investors in tech tend to heavily favor obviously stellar performers over "good but not great" ones.