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We Only Hire the Best

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Re: We Only Hire the Best

#171

Post by gtk40 »

Yhippa wrote: post #69
johngalt wrote: post #37

Experience tells me that hiring posts that demand this level of excellence are often covering for weaknesses in their process. "We only hire the best!" The best at what? "The best at everything of course. We want a full stack wish fulfillment genie." Either you have no idea what skills are missing from your current team, or they are all missing, and you want to fill that gap with one person rather than a team. Job po…

Here are some of my favorite lazy hiring manager practices: * asking for "everything but the kitchen sink" skills * confusing Java with Javascript * even mentioning J2EE in the requisiton (who on Earth wants to do that in this day and age?) * copy-pasting of the requisition leading to truncation of the posting

I was talking to the product manager for a product we were having issues with from a major player in the corporate software place who, when we told the manager we were experiencing Java exceptions and instability, kept calling them "JavaScript exceptions." I couldn't believe a PM couldn't even keep the language that the product was written in straight.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#172

Post by monknomo »

jazzyk wrote: post #143
cortesoft wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80k was the top bracket? I am pretty sure most developers in California make a lot more than that, especially top ones.

Select "100 top salaries"

But those seem mostly like chief investment officers, CEOs, doctors, dentists and surgeons...

I mean, public service can pay well if you are a commissioner or head of a for-profit part of public service. I'm not sure there is much of a comparison to be made for software developers, though.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#173

Post by vonmoltke »

jrs235 wrote: post #149
vonmoltke wrote: post #104

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. 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…

This $5 Billion Software Company Has No Sales Staff Atlassian sold $320 million worth of business software last year without a single sales employee. Everyone else in the industry noticed. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-18/this-5-bil...

A single anecdote disproves "rare"?

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#174

Post by dmitrygr »

galistoca wrote: post #90

I see a lot of people on this thread who just say it's bullshit without understanding what's going on. You can live your life that way, or you can enlighten yourself on what really is going on and make the right decision. This "salary cut" works only in this case: The employee is not just looking for money but something intangible from the job (Experience/network/etc.) This doesn't apply to most of you guys who have…

I'm not even going to try to reply on the sexist nature of the second half of this comment, but focus on the startup-related one.

Your guy switched to another company because you were on track to become rich off his work, and he was not. If you incentivized him right, he'd stay. Did you ask him why he left? Because if not, you really did not learn a lesson.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#175

Post by st3v3r »

pmiller2 wrote: post #76
bitwize wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I must suck then because there aren't companies lining up to just hand me a job like Joel says happens to all good developers. I have to hustle in order to keep food and a roof.

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

Do you guys put your stuff out there? Recruiters can't really harass you if they don't know you exist.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#176

Post by galfarragem »

optimiz3 wrote: post #53
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"

If someone says to you: "we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money" You should counter: "there's no shortage of meaningful problems; I'd be irresponsible if I didn't work on the one that improves my family's standard of living the most"

Or more simplistic:

"Me also."

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#177

Post by st3v3r »

Karunamon wrote: post #106
leroy_masochist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We don't hire assholes!" ... "Our company is founded on an engineering mindset in which the best ideas always win and people are encouraged to candidly speak their minds!"

Those... are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to have a culture in which people are not shut down for saying "This course of action sucks because X" without there being a lot of profanity and other between-the-lines nastiness in that previous sentence. Of course, some people find being told "no" to be asshole move. 🤷 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It is entirely possible. However, assholes will do it because they find they can have control over things. And still others, like myself, will do it despite not really wanting to. I find it's extremely easy to "shut down" things in a discussion like that, and make other people not want to speak, even though I don't want to. It's much more difficult to take a bit of time, rethink how I'm going to say something, and try to phrase it in a way that still encourages people to talk about ideas.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#178

Post by superuser2 »

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.

I'm not so sure. My understanding is the big tech companies hire engineers on a rolling basis and basically take everyone they like.

They're not approaching it for the frame of satisfying a requisition for a specific role with the best of the N applicants for it on X date, they're picking up talent as quickly as possible and then sorting out where to place people after the hire/no-hire decision is made.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#179

Post by galistoca »

dmitrygr wrote: post #174
galistoca wrote: post #90

I see a lot of people on this thread who just say it's bullshit without understanding what's going on. You can live your life that way, or you can enlighten yourself on what really is going on and make the right decision. This "salary cut" works only in this case: The employee is not just looking for money but something intangible from the job (Experience/network/etc.) This doesn't apply to most of you guys who have…

I'm not even going to try to reply on the sexist nature of the second half of this comment, but focus on the startup-related one. Your guy switched to another company because you were on track to become rich off his work, and he was not. If you incentivized him right, he'd stay. Did you ask him why he left? Because if not, you really did not learn a lesson.

I knew someone would call me sexist. I know where you're coming from but I think people whenever they come across something that makes them uncomfortable just call it "sexist", "racist", etc. and call it a day. All I did was state the fact. You explain how it is sexist and if it's logical I will shut up.

Lastly, he switched because no one was getting rich off anyone's work. We were going through difficult times. But that was not the point of my comment. You blame me of being sexist but maybe you should also be less biased when reading someone else's words.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#180

Post by Loughla »

st3v3r wrote: post #165
anotherhacker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I called BS on Chris Dixon on this on Twitter and he blocked me. It was when he and Paul Graham were arguing that "not enough (good)engineers exist for startups, so we need to import more". I was arguing that plenty of great engineers exist, you just have to pay for it.

But.. But startups are special! They can't pay for stuff! We can't treat them like an actual business!

That's honestly something that has always confounded me as an outsider to the glitz and glam of coastal tech life. How are technology start-ups any different than say, a new butcher shop in the midwest in terms of obligations to their employees?
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