I went to High School in the 1980s. I think I did okay in those classes, but I fail to see how something that happened more than 30 years ago would be relevant for hiring purposes in the 2020s.
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I said "more than 30 years ago".
WTF with high school questions?
141–150 of 238 posts
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#142When I was 20 years old I was offered a job at D.E. Shaw (for Juno, not as like a quant) on a team of my friends. I was gearing up to move to NYC from Chicago when their HR process kicked in and asked for a copy of my high school grades, whereupon I immediately noped out.
I can think of worse red flags than asking about grades, but not like a lot of worse red flags. Don't put up with this stuff.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#143Their hiring process is, ah, "interesting", but without getting into that let me note: 1) There are more questions about high school if you make it into the interviews, so they do take it seriously. 2) There is research indicating that "who or how we are" is pretty well determined in our formative years, with the high school years being a prime driver, so there is at least some rational motivation to ask about it. Ex…
In high school I was stealing to order so I could afford rent, oh, and heroin.
I've not subsequently done either of those things for at least 25 years and counting, so I'm not overly sure on point #2.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#144The best way to see if someone will perform well at a job, is to have them do that job and see. The second best way is to ask them for proof they succeeded at a similar job. That proof is usually a combination of references and a discussion about work they did at the previous job. If you can't do any of those things, like for some recent grads, then the next best predictors of job performance are going to be psychome…
That was a whole lot of psychobabble.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#145Related: This was the first step in the interview process at Canonical – I withdrew (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678
They really do want the people that will crawl through broken glass for them.
The whole tech industry is insane. Can we please go back to: I give you work, you give me money. And if you want passion then I want equity.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#146Related: This was the first step in the interview process at Canonical – I withdrew (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678
The great thing about being FI is the lack of worry over this garbage. I would have truthfully answered that I was a terrible student, that I could only focus on subjects that truly interested me, and that one of those subjects fortunately happened to be coding.
They want to toss my resume for my struggles 20 years ago? So be it. It's as good of a filter for me not wanting to work for them as it is vice versa.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#147Definitely put 4.0 GPA. If they ask for proof, spend a few bucks on fiverr and get a photoshop wizard to cook you up a transcript.
It wouldn't be very difficult for me to get my high school transcript if I wanted to. But hypothesize that someone in their 30s now grew up in a country like South Africa, Zaire, or one of the Balkans. How exactly do you even prove you attended High School at this point? Much less get a transcript?
I've sometimes wondered how easy it'd be to lie about where I went to university, even. In my 15 year career I've literally never had anyone ask for any proof of my degree. I did some research just now though and there is in fact a National Student Clearinghouse that background check companies use to verify school info, so maybe it's been happening as part of background checks?
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#148I met a former HR person from a company that had these kinds of questions, such as your SAT scores. She told me the point was hiring people who are competitive enough to care about that stuff.
Feels like the implication is that they favor people who positively respond to certain types of incentives, such as fighting for job titles.
And that they only hire people who grew up in the US.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#149> I got kicked out of AP English for insubordination in high school. The difference between my high-school performance in English classes and professional accomplishments as a writer is vast Ironically, if I was a hiring manager I would much rather care about your history of insubordination than your self-ascribed writing skills.
You'd judge a grown-ass adult based on... ...being a bit of a dick as a teenager?
Hoo boy.
Re: WTF with high school questions?
#150Related: This was the first step in the interview process at Canonical – I withdrew (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678
Good grief, that's definitely the bigger WTF. Each of those engineering questions could be its own essay. What's even left to talk about if you answer all of those?
A Canonical dev in the replies offhandedly mentions that they read every one thoroughly whether its "3 or 30 pages" which is certainly an ask when you have people submitting an autobiographical novella as the first step in your interview process.