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Inside the Mirrortocracy

carlos.bueno.org

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Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#101

Post by CapitalistCartr »

rayiner wrote: post #60

> “Well, I grabbed coffee with the founder, and I had dinner with the team last night, and then we went to a bar together.” I'm no teetotaler, but bars can be uncomfortable to downright hostile places for the majority of people (women + people who don't drink for religious or health reasons). It's absolutely inappropriate and unprofessional to incorporate one into an interview. This is typical "old boy's club" shit,…

I do drink. A bit. Not much, though, and I'm not the bar type. For me, that would likely kill the interview. Maybe that's for the best; maybe I wouldn't fit with them, and that's a good filter. They're clearly looking for social as well as technical fits, and I wouldn't be that.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#102

Post by vfxGer »

What I find infuriating is how all these companies think they are so unique with their interviewing process then ask the same inane questions. This is worse when the same questions are asked by different people at the same company.

College qualifications or any real qualifications are being dismissed by more and more people but the vacuum that has been left is being filled with crap like 15+ rounds of interviews and/or 12 hour interviews.

The hiring process is currently broken. I think the only fix is to have proper, trusted qualifications (again?).

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#103

Post by facepalm »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #90
facepalm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where is the fundamental argument against monocultures? The paypal founder seems to disagree? Is it just political correctness, or is there some hard data? In theory I am all for diversity, but I can imagine that in some endeavours it helps if you get along with the people in your team. I don't think "hiring what you know" is really that much of a mistake. I would hire my friends, for example, because I already kn…

I've been in both kinds of environments and I much prefer diversity. It's way too easy to burn out in a monoculture. I like working with people that have hobbies and passions both within and outside of work. It's just better on all sorts of levels to be in that kind of environment instead of one where people just parrot whatever is on the front page of HN. You learn more and consequently grow more as an individual in…

Well I am all for people hiring or entering companies based on their preferences. If you prefer diversity, sure, go for it. I just don't see the sense in dictating people their preferences.

It's a good thing that there are all sorts of companies. There are companies where everybody has to wear a uniform all day, and companies where people work in their underwear all day (because they work from home). Some people might prefer the one, others the other. But then to write "everybody should be working in their underwear at all times" is just bullshit.

Maybe the underwear people will outperform the uniform people. In 20 years there would be only underwear companies left. Or vice versa. Or there will always be a mix. But if you want to predict that ("I claim that underwear programmers will outperform uniform programmers"), you should provide some very good arguments.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#104

Post by [deleted] »

facepalm wrote: post #91
opendais wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'd decline and not get the job. I know that already [hint: I don't drink]. It is quite amazing how many people are completely oblivious to their own biases.

Who says they are oblivious? Maybe they just don't like to hire people who don't drink. Why should they be obliged to hire them?

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#105

Post by VexXtreme »

facepalm wrote: post #71
VexXtreme wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is a good/correct hiring criterion? I was under the impression that nobody really knows. Actually I can't believe you can say this with a straight face. It is well known what a good hiring criterion is (e.g. productive, smart, not an asshole, can work with different people etc). All these things can be sussed out during the interview process quite professionally without resorting to questioning people's mus…

"productive, smart, not an asshole, can work with different people etc" People seem to struggle to determine those things during an interview, though. If you don't understand me, I can only diagnose a lack of curiosity on your part. Otherwise you would have read some of the countless articles on hiring issues by now. " people who can't get along with anyone who is not exactly like them" I never said anything like tha…

> It's nice that you don't care about your coworkers as people (having dinner with them or becoming friends). I am sure there are loads of companies that are perfect for you, because they only require blue collar programming drones.

First of all, I care about my coworkers to the extent it is necessary to work together. Also, if they ever run into hardships, I am willing to help out if I can. It's just basic human decency that I will afford to anyone in my life, not just coworkers. But at the end of the day, I am primarily seeking a mutually profitable business relationship, not an emotional relationship.

Second of all, I don't have the need to become friends with my coworkers. If it happens spontaneously then fine. Work is a good place as any to make friends. If it doesn't happen, I'm really not going to lose my sleep over it. I don't have an obsessive need to be friends with my coworkers.

Also, I think you'll be surprised when I tell you I actually work for a company building cutting edge stuff. The fact that you assume that you need to work at a particular kind of startup with a particular culture to have that just shows how prejudiced you are. There are plenty of amazing and rewarding jobs that don't require these things.

> But why should what you prefer be good for every company? Why shouldn't a company be allowed to aim for co-workers who become friends? Why not let the market sort it out (maybe the drone companies will outperform the friend companies, maybe not).

Fair enough. I respect your opinion. However, if you're going to screen people based on arbitrary criteria, why don't you go ahead and put those criteria in the job ad? What's preventing you from making the process transparent by writing say, "Only people who are like us and seek to become friends need apply"? Or perhaps "Only people who listen to Michael Bolton and like drinking beer on Fridays...". That would be perfect because people who are not interested in those aspects could just skip your job ad and move on without having their precious time wasted jumping through hoops in a lopsided game with oblique rules. Don't you think that simply listing technical requirements in the ad and then turning tables on people and changing the rules of the game once they're sitting in the room with you is unfair and disrespectful? Are you afraid that listing those criteria would make your company look ridiculous?

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#106

Post by danielweber »

facepalm wrote: post #74
danielweber wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. "I do/am X ." 2. Just-so story about how X is essential for good programmers (which, by definition, I am.) 3. "Therefore I interview for developers who do/are X ."

How do you propose to hire somebody you don't understand? It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know. If you believe X is important for programming, why on earth would you hire somebody who doesn't like/know about X? It's possible that you are mistaken about X being important. But then you are screwed anyway. But if you start hiring based on things you don't know, you are also scre…

It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know.

So do that. Stop pretending you are a psychologist, and capable of figuring out what kind of personality is good at this job, because those are things you don't know.

Instead, give work-sample tests. Those are something you can know. You can look at the results the person emits. Then hire based on that. Personality only needs basic things like "doesn't spit on other people" and "doesn't say racial/sexual slurs to coworkers/clients."

There's no reason to think that a psychological test designed by non-psychologists is even as good as random guessing. On the other hand, work-sample tests have been studied and are a very good guide. Commenter 'tokenadult has FAQd this up for us: http://www.focus.vc/tokenadult-recruiting-faq/

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#107

Post by opendais »

facepalm wrote: post #91
opendais wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'd decline and not get the job. I know that already [hint: I don't drink]. It is quite amazing how many people are completely oblivious to their own biases.

Who says they are oblivious? Maybe they just don't like to hire people who don't drink. Why should they be obliged to hire them?

I never said they should be obligated to hire them.

It is really inefficient to pick IT, UX, Sysadmin, etc. talent based on whether they drink or not. So I'm assuming they are oblivious.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#108

Post by danielweber »

sharpneli wrote: post #61
pron wrote: post #19

> Without a natural feedback loop, interviewing mostly runs on myth and survivor bias. It is a law of human nature that a chaotic environment breeds magical thinking and ingroup allegiance, and there are few business environments more chaotic than Silicon Valley, where startups succeed or fail seemingly at random. The noise calls for reason, and because there are no true known causes for success our mind demands some…

"Correlation doesn't equal causation" I've noticed that people tend to misinterpret this sentence. In a lot of discussions it shows that people think that there can be correlation while the things don't have _ANY_ relationship between eachother, as in the correlation would arise purely trough random chance. That is blatantly false. Correlation implies at very minimum a causal link trough a third effect. The tradition…

Divorce rate in Maine has a 0.99 correlation with US per-capita consumption of margarine.

http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#109

Post by facepalm »

coriny wrote: post #84
facepalm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am asking you why you think it is important. I am not really interested in "beliefs". It seems curious that it is automatically assumed that diversity is beneficial. As I said, maybe there is a reason why your pals are your pals and you work better together with them than with strangers. I guess I believe that a company does not have a moral obligation to foster diversity and social mobility. It is possible that a…

I don't seem to be able to reply to your reply to me further down the thread. So I'm just going to ask one question: "What is the point of asking for hard data when you're going to dismiss it since it doesn't agree with you?" If you don't believe the body of research, you are not going to agree with anyone's opinions here (unless of course they match your own). The result has been repeated ad nauseum, it's not exactl…

I think the deeper nested a comment is, the longer it takes for a reply button to appear. It's a HN heuristic, they think deeply nested threads are possibly flame wars and they want to slow them down.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#110

Post by jonnathanson »

minikomi wrote: post #17
austinz wrote: post #3

That linked 42Floors blog post is terribly self-unaware. > Most startups take the building of their culture very seriously, especially when the culture is still new and quite fragile. If your culture is so fucking fragile that a guy wearing a suit (as opposed to a T-shirt and jeans) poses an existential threat to it, you need to re-evaluate whether you are actually building a company 'culture', or just some random ag…

To think, all this time, I've been bringing non-organic carrots to interviews. Oh the shame.

"This is a Golden Sunrise carrot, in burnt orange with off-green foliage. Heritage. What do you think?"

"Very nice, Bateman," Bryce replies. "When did a dork like you get so tasteful?"

It's all going well, and then Van Patten places his carrot on the table. It's fucking magnificent.

"This," he says, "Is a Pioneer Ridge carrot, in deep ochre with leaves in a color called 'hazy forest.' The seed stock is heritage, and the planting was organic."

"Amazing," says Bryce. "This is the best carrot I've seen all day."

I can't believe Bryce prefers Van Patten's carrot to mine.

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