We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#21

Post by warent » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

cjf4 wrote: post #3

>When I started programming, I heard a lot about how programmers are down to earth, not like those elitist folks who have uniforms involving suits and ties. You can even wear t-shirts to work! But if you think programmers aren't elitist, try wearing a suit and tie to an interview sometime. Indeed: http://web.archive.org/web/20140618142018/http://blog.42floo...

> Well, dude, no, actually you can overdress for an interview and you just did. Of course I didn’t say it. And we didn’t decline him based on what he decided to wear. We declined on him because he wasn’t a fit for us in many other ways. The suit was just the early give away.

Nah. Let's keep ourselves honest. It was the suit; or, at the very least, it was what the suit represented--professionalism that separates private, personal life from work life. Yuck. Who has time for that when you're trying to get rich off the next big exit? /s

Startup culture (and many tech cultures for that matter) is one of the most obnoxious, cringe-inducing things. I remember starting out in the culture, earning my stripes. It's like high school / college culture, transplanted into a professional work environment. Same toxicity and egos, just with bigger dollar figures. I don't personally wear suits, and I'm not saying you have to call me Mr. Lastname, but let's not fool ourselves: we're business partners, not bros, and this bro behavior is also the hostility that drives gender diversity away from our company. There are two things I swore to never do again: 1) never work in an office; 2) never work for a for-profit startup (i.e. a business that isn't profitable) unless I created it. I've only ever found one private startup that has been amazing to work for, and the CEO used to work directly for Melinda Gates in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Go figure!

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#22

Post by pcwalton » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

For those curious like I was as to when this was published, this is from March 2016. (The date isn't listed in the article, but if you search through the archive you can find it.)

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#23

Post by sigstoat » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

jdmoreira wrote: post #13

I'm sorry but I find it very hard to believe that someone with "11 years in industry" would have any trouble finding a job in this market unless there is something extremely wrong with that person. You don’t create a network of personal relationships with other professionals in 11 years? That’s crazy!

not all roles build equally useful networks. i was in, i dunno, "research aerospace" for 10+ years, and it was basically a waste from a networking standpoint. nearly everyone i knew there is either still in the same job, or retired. the handful of others that left aren't even in the same state any more.

i think the job did really profound damage to my career because of it. i think i'd encourage CS college grads to work 3-4 places before they're 30, and make sure all of them are places with at least a tiny bit of turn over. nowhere that has people trying to hit 30 years in the same chair to get a pension.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#24

Post by draw_down » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #8

rb808 wrote: post #7

I worked on a big C# system with hundreds of windows servers, developed on Visual Studio etc. It was an awesome project and everything worked like clockwork. However there are very few projects using that technology so when I wanted to move I had trouble getting interviews. I'm now working with a very fashionable tech stack, its horrible, infrastructure is regularly broken, people can't trace problems easily, our fun…

There’s a lot of .NET jobs in boring fields like oil and gas - Houston has tons of them.

> because we're trendy we get paid 2x as much

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#25

Post by Ididntdothis » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

I think this is spot on. When I started in the 90s hiring was more like “you are smart so you will be able to learn”. Now it seems you really have to chase the latest cool stuff all the time or you quickly are marked as outdated. What they don’t seem to understand is that if you are the cool hotshot that’s working on an important project for a while you are almost by definition outdated after a while because you will not work on the latest hot tech. Realistically the best way to deal with is to do resume driven development and have constant churn by replacing frameworks and databases constantly just for the heck of it.

Even better is to either have a degree from a fancy school or having the name of a currently cool company on your resume but be aware that the currently cool company may fall out of favor any time.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#26

Post by dkhenry » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

For the specific example given I have turned down many individuals who sound like they have a similar background because they could not figure out how to work outside of their toolchain. I see it all the time with .NET and Java developers, if they are not in Visual Studios or Eclipse they don't know how to even compile their software. Both those ecosystems are fantastic and developers can be very productive, especially in an enterprise setting, but it is rare you can take a .NET developer put them in front of Python or Go and have them actually be able to be productive without extensive training.

Which leads to the second problem. Fenerally I have found a lot of the Enterprise developers to be very resistant to training and change. They don't know how to deal with a world where they have to be responsible for the entire software project not just one small module, and they definitely don't know how to deal with any part of operations like deploying the software or troubleshooting problems. As soon as something goes wrong they blame the tech stack and pine for the days when they could just push a button on Visual Studios and have everything build and test for them without actually understanding what was going on.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#27

Post by zwieback » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

I always have a hard time deciding whether it's sour grapes or an actual problem when I read these posts. The mid tier startups should all be flushed out in a few years if they make such poor decisions, both in hiring and their tech stacks. For the giants I can only say - google and fb stuff works, even if you don't like their culture or morals so how wrong can they be in running their businesses? Over the next few years I'm assuming that the industry as a whole will mature and things will become more stable and sane.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#28

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general

Silicon Valley is all about equality and opportunity. Except when it isn't.

Certain types of bigotry are not only tolerated, they're celebrated.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#29

Post by leetrout » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

I have no way to prove this but I feel certain I missed out on the next step in some jobs because of my Southern accent.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#30

Post by woah » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #20

jdmoreira wrote: post #13

I'm sorry but I find it very hard to believe that someone with "11 years in industry" would have any trouble finding a job in this market unless there is something extremely wrong with that person. You don’t create a network of personal relationships with other professionals in 11 years? That’s crazy!

Try finding a gig as a top-notch embedded coder who has spent a decade or two doing C. Uncool stack with a helping of age bias on top. I’ve personally seen Windows developers assumed to be idiots in interview round tables even if they did fine.

I’d assume that’s pretty in demand, right? Lots of hardware startups trying to hit growth phase and need stuff to work right.