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We Only Hire the Best

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Re: We Only Hire the Best

#111

Post by ArkyBeagle »

deedubaya wrote: post #7

Such a no brainer, but jezus it's about time for someone to call out the hiring posts. Hiring a good employee is like shopping for a car. You don't buy the coup if you have a family of six, a gas guzzler when you're a commuter, or a 2wd when you live in the boonies. It's a balance of values. I've seen "rock star" coders fail in team environments because they can't communicate. I've seen great communicators fail becau…

I think the article is more about Dunning-Kueger coupled with that special narcissism we all know and love so much.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#112

Post by DrJokepu »

vonmoltke wrote: post #104
joncrocks wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.

> The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. > They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. It is supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Sales staff can't make money if they have nothing to sell, and engineers can't build product if they have no customers. The sales staff is just as critical as the product developmen…

In fact, a great way to increase your reputation as an engineer at your job is to talk to the top sales people at the company and help them improve the product in ways that will help them selling more. It will open up very interesting career options that are normally not available to most engineers.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#113

Post by coredog64 »

angelbob wrote: post #54
busterarm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also that "market average" is usually below market average.

"Market average" is generally based on salary surveys, which kind of have to trim the extremes. So it's the median (ish), which is often lower than the mean.

I've found that there are other ways to scam those surveys. My employer uses an unreasonably low threshold of years of experience for a so-called senior level.

We hire a lot of H1B candidates, so I'm convinced that the point of the scam is to depress wage scales for the LCA.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#114

Post by FireBeyond »

arethuza wrote: post #99
joncrocks wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.

"The counter-point is that without something to sell" Never met a salesperson who was deterred from selling something by the trivial detail that it doesn't actually exist. ;-)

"Sir, I promised the client that it would have Feature X, and the developers are refusing, saying it will take too long!"

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#115

Post by querulous »

cortesoft wrote: post #83
leroy_masochist wrote: post #12

One other aspect of "we only hire the best" that wasn't explored by this article is the practice -- especially common among unicorn companies -- of purposely casting a far wider net than needed, so that their hiring yield on applicants is dauntingly low. The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false negatives -- i.e., applicants who are qualified on both skill and fit who are rejected for some…

Well, lots of people have to be rejected for a the not-bullshit reason that there are only n jobs available at the company and n+x people applied. Even if they are all great, x number of people are going to be rejected.

the point is that if you are interviewing 30 people for every hire you are spending way too much time and effort on interviewing. if you had better recruiting funnels you could easily get down to 2 or 3 interviews per hire

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#116

Post by galdosdi »

pascal1usa wrote: post #88
pmiller2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry. I'm sucking right there along side you. 3.5 years experience and I'm not even getting recruiter spam in the volume some of the people here are. :P

You probably would be if you lived in SF. Since the available housing ratio to jobs is 1 to 3, they have effectively guaranteed that not all jobs can ever be filled. Great for the job supply!

Or NYC. Or another major urban area with plenty of tech jobs. Anecdotal but everyone I know here in tech (varying roles, skills, and levels of experience) gets plenty of recruiter spam. By contrast, I do know similar people who have had a tough time with the only difference being they're in a smaller market in the interior and are not willing to relocate.

I think location really matters a lot. Telecommuting has not made it irrelevant. There's strong network / market effects for an industry with frequent job hopping and frequent changing of company hiring needs -- employees want to be somewhere with a lot of employers and employers want to be somewhere with a lot of employees, so the top few cities end up taking the lion's share of the tech work.

If anything, easier communications maybe has made it easier for companies to just open up an office somewhere just because that place has a lot of prospective employees. Maybe in an earlier era slower communications with colleagues in other offices might have made this less attractive, but it's so easy now. E.g., tech companies starting in SV but then also opening up an Austin, Pittsburgh, London, Seattle, NYC office because there's plenty of prospective hires there. What you don't see them do much is also open a St Louis, Tampa, or Little Rock office. It's just not worth it.

DEFINITELY consider trying moving to a major tech hub, or just a bigger city at least, if you have persistently had a hard time finding a job locally.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#117

Post by joncrocks »

vonmoltke wrote: post #104
joncrocks wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.

> The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. > They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. It is supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Sales staff can't make money if they have nothing to sell, and engineers can't build product if they have no customers. The sales staff is just as critical as the product developmen…

I agree, there's a balance. I don't personally think that sales people have no value.

I think my point is that with sales people, there's usually actual numbers involved (that the salesperson has visibility of), which can help anchor perceived value. But it's still potentially hard to actually determine value.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#118

Post by FireBeyond »

LargeWu wrote: post #21
leroy_masochist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want people who are motivated by the mission .

If the mission is feeding starving children, or curing cancer, or public service, then yes, I want people who are motivated by the mission. But usually the mission, the real mission, is to make the founders exceptionally wealthy, and forgive me if that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning.

"We want to change the world, by finding a more efficient way to bike courier organic Nicaraguan coffee beans to your doorstep in the Mission or SoMa."

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#119

Post by graycat »

And what if a candidate has a good background in computing, computer science, AI, and pure and applied math and, then, also a good STEM field Ph.D. degree from a leading research university.

Do you want to "hire the best" or do you want to reject anyone with a Ph.D. degree? E.g., how many STEM field Ph.D. holders have you hired to date?

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#120

Post by robbyking »

CaptSpify wrote: post #38
asb wrote: post #11

Corp: "We only hire the very best" Programmer: "What's the salary?" Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"

I see a similar effect that drives me nuts: Corp: "We only hire the best, but we can't find any good people. There must be an industry shortage of good engineers!" Me: "What about $candidate that we interviewed last week, I thought you liked him?" Corp: "He was great! But he wanted too much money" Me: "..."

I worked at a company who almost passed on a candidate because the company thought the offer was too low, and they were worried he'd get frustrated and move on.
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