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The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

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Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#111

Post by joshuacc »

lifehug wrote: post #105
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #46

>Staffup Weekend put the lie to Stein’s pronouncement. As Nicholson later wrote me, “The fact that people stayed for 48 hours to work on something put them head and shoulders above the thousands of applications we receive, because the participants are people who show up and see things through.” And this event is an attempt to make showing up for a 48 hour 'work trial' a norm. This favors the younger, single populatio…

"One reason is that employers can easily be flooded with hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of applications" We're told our immigration policy has caused a drought in programmers, yet employers are flooded with applications from the nonexistent workforce.

To be fair, that's not a self-contradictory position. It is quite possible that there could be a lack of qualified programmers, while employers are flooded with applications from unqualified programmers. The obvious solution to that problem is, of course, for companies to spend the time and money on training.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#112

Post by joshuacc »

tessierashpool wrote: post #97
pluma wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would the world be like if contract/freelance/part time/short term work were the default? That's actually one of the reasons I find the idea of a guaranteed basic income so promising. The biggest thing making an "everybody freelances" world a dystopia rather than a eutopia (sic) is that it would eliminate any semblance of income stability. Static long-term contracts would still be an option because of the reli…

a dystopia rather than a eutopia (sic) This is an awesome typo. "Utopia" is a transliteration from Ancient Greek meaning "No place." The same rules of transliteration would make "eutopia" mean "good place." "Utopia" came into English through a satire, the meaning being that nowhere's really paradise, but today we mostly use it without that edge, i.e., as if it really were spelled "eutopia."

FYI, St. Thomas More, who coined the term Utopia, seems to have been intentionally ambiguous about whether the term was a transliteration of eutopia (good place) and outopia (no place).

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#113

Post by owennoah »

BrookeTAllen wrote: post #103

This is awesome; I am so thrilled you are talking about this. I am preparing a response to Deborah’s article; working title: A Hackathon Cannot Fix a Broken Hiring Process. But the Right Experiences Can. You see, in 2004 my life changed when I started caring about the people I did not hire. You discussed that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8859199 But the thing you probably don’t get, and I didn't get unt…

I'm Noah, Brooke's partner in crime at Staffup Weekend. To me this has always been an emperor-has-no-clothes situation. People seem to think in terms of "hackathons" whereas we more simply think of things as "doing the work." Since when did resumes and brain teasing interview questions and all this nonsense become MORE obvious and sensical than DOING THE WORK. Let people DO THE WORK that needs to be done and you can save dozens of person-hours, lots of frustration and heartache AND get a better hire than the "traditional" method.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#114

Post by dlwj »

The thing I didn't realize about the hiring process before going through it a couple times is that it's not an inherently evil process or system.

It's just that no one knows what the hell they are doing. It's Hanlon's razor.

The initial filtering is done by HR people only looking for keywords and looking for canned answers to basic questions.

They can also be done by recruiters hired by a hiring manager who hired every recruiter, thus inundating themselves with resumes by their own fault thinking more would be better

The phone screen will check you for "status". Having an Ivy League education will help because even if you fail completely the hiring manager won't lose face. If he takes a chance on a non-ivy league he will be roasted for wasting company resources. You will also have to claim to be very very passionate thus over-promising and in a position of constant not-good-enough-its-an-honor-to-work-here.

After they decide to bring you in, random people are chosen based on their free time to interview you. The list will usually include an extroverted person who tries to be buddy-buddy too soon and feels stiffed unless the other person has a similar personality. A puzzle lover who looked up an answer to a riddle before-hand and uses it to gauge your IQ. A new person who googled some good questions to ask just a few minutes before and makes sure he knows the answer. An H1B employee who doesn't speak that clearly and assumes you are an idiot when you ask a simple question to be repeated. Finally a boss type will come in and make a final decision. The process is semi-democratic in that her yes cannot go against many no's but her no can veto the yes's.

----

Nowhere in this chain do people actually care. People are just trying to do their jobs. The hiring manager is trying to fill in slots b/c a project manager is behind schedule and needs and excuse. The interviewers want to "have beers with you" thus gauging your integrated-ness into american culture.

Startup hiring is also fundamentally different and confusing. Young 20s make the best friends in their college days and often seek that same level of camaraderie in colleagues. However the resume process doesn't lend itself to that. You are essentially blind dating. Startups escape the large system failures of large companies and so can focus on product rather than system management, but they also have to relearn many thing or else follow a heuristic script in semblance of a skeleton system. (e.g. top schools only)

----

Broadly speaking however, jobs are becoming more and more sparse because tools allow one person to do the job of many. One very very smart person that is. It's already happening with many developer positions. Good tools for IT allow developers to do IT work, creating a merged "devOps" position. Easier web frameworks allow designers and developers to be merged. Good testing tools and frameworks gets rid of QAs. The merged positions reduce the amount of time required for these tasks but the new tool-user has to be super qualified.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#115

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

aswerty wrote: post #8
crdoconnor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies hire contractors and then turn them into permanent employees.

While that sounds like a reasonable hiring approach most of the contractors I know (in the UK and Ireland) wouldn't take permanency because contractors earn significantly more. Maybe it's a bit different in the US though.

It was different in the US before ACA (Obamacare) was implemented. Before then, employer subsidized healthcare was significantly cheaper than buying private insurance on the open market. That was a major impetus to taking a full time job. Now, the employer health plans are little better than what you can get through ACA, especially if you're young and healthy and can opt for the cheaper options with less coverage.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#116

Post by dropit_sphere »

stormbrew wrote: post #101
whiddershins wrote: post #6

What a bizarre and compelling story. Glad to have read it. Meanwhile I think the hiring problem/solution is staring us right in the face. What would the world be like if contract/freelance/part time/short term work were the default? Isn't it perhaps weird that there is an assumption companies and employees should bind their fates together, and, if it doesn't work out, one or both parties is pretty screwed because of…

People have kind of touched on this a bit, but I just want to say this as explicitly as possible, because I think this is a thing that's been kind of forgotten over time: Forcing employers to commit to their employees on some level was one of the most significant achievements of the labour movement. Most people don't really want to have the 'flexibility' of working, because that also comes with having to find work on…

Preach it, brother.

Committment forces cultivation of talent rather than frontrunning.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#117

Post by Iftheshoefits »

sosborn wrote: post #99
ansible wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually one of the reasons I find the idea of a guaranteed basic income so promising. The biggest thing making an "everybody freelances" world a dystopia rather than a eutopia (sic) is that it would eliminate any semblance of income stability. Don't forget health care. That plus a basic living stipend would be quite a revolution to the economy. We'd start to price activities more sanely, and use automation mo…

> Don't forget health care. That plus a basic living stipend would be quite a revolution to the economy. Don't get me wrong, I think this would be incredible, but where would the money come from to fund this? How would you guarantee that the funding stays in place for the long haul?

In America, there is plenty of money to be had by taxing the affluent, wealthy, and "obscenely" rich (a lot) more. There is nothing to guarantee any source of money beyond varying levels of confidence. Medicare and SS have lasted a long time, albeit after repeatedly being weakened. For similar reasons I have some confidence that said taxes used explicitly for guarantees of basic income and health care would be left in place for some considerable time.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#118

Post by wnissen »

jia_min wrote: post #88
VLM wrote: post #66

"We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess." Something overlooked is the millions (billions?) of non-productive labor hours that go into the failed traditional hiring process, when even the smartest guys in the room have to admit that upon statistical analysis its all a waste of time. That's an enormous staggering financial drain on the economy. Overall, across the entire economy, the overall minimum co…

From the NYT's article quoting Laszlo Bock: "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring." Google made the classic mistake of using the interviewer as the predictor of interest. Meanwhile, decades of research has shown it's not who does the asking but how and what you ask. For example, structured interviews are about 50% more predictive of job performance (r = .51) c…

Do you have a cite for this? I thought Google looked at interviewers and found that no particular interviewer did any better than any other, except, literally, one guy in a narrow sub-specialty. That's quite a lot different than concluding a 50% success rate is no better than chance, which I agree would be problematic at best, flat wrong at worst if the expected occurrence was low.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#119

Post by dropit_sphere »

BrookeTAllen wrote: post #103

This is awesome; I am so thrilled you are talking about this. I am preparing a response to Deborah’s article; working title: A Hackathon Cannot Fix a Broken Hiring Process. But the Right Experiences Can. You see, in 2004 my life changed when I started caring about the people I did not hire. You discussed that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8859199 But the thing you probably don’t get, and I didn't get unt…

I came across your (or Chris's?) ad on craigslist, emailed, wanted to attend, and then, uh, completely spaced it.

I think you're onto something, but I don't think it can scale. I also think that that is not necessarily a bad thing. Would you prefer Staffup Weekend to have a nationally-recognized brand and attract people who "heard it was a good way to get a job/find good candidates" without much caring about whether they helped other attendees?

Anyway. Glad someone out there is doing this.

Re: The Way We Hire Is All Wrong

#120

Post by dropit_sphere »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #46

>Staffup Weekend put the lie to Stein’s pronouncement. As Nicholson later wrote me, “The fact that people stayed for 48 hours to work on something put them head and shoulders above the thousands of applications we receive, because the participants are people who show up and see things through.” And this event is an attempt to make showing up for a 48 hour 'work trial' a norm. This favors the younger, single populatio…

Indeed, the dwarves are for the dwarves.
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