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I don't hire unlucky people

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#21

Post by dustingetz »

i know a guy running a software shop. he's an active participant in the local meetup community, and he cares about people. it's no surpise that he has all sorts of talented people trying to work with him, and not enough funding to hire them all. (at least, i think that's why he hasn't hired me ;)

i also know a few other people running software shops, who don't participate in the local meetup community. none of the best local developers even know who these other employers are. i'm sort of sick of hearing them complain about how hard it is to find talent.

the flip side of this, is that if I as an engineer want to have a steady stream of future opportunities with the best employers, I need to make myself known to them, by, you guessed it! making myself visible in the meetup community, and internet community at large.

ez game.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#22

Post by TheCowboy »

cousin_it wrote: post #9

So the most efficient interviewing process for the employer is also the nicest to candidates? What a curious coincidence. Are you sure there was no wishful thinking involved in writing this post?

It sounds more like it is a less efficient process for finding employees, and seems to require someone sharp to find the diamonds. It just simply yields the most optimal result.

Given a lack of time, or someone in HR who knows nothing about programmers, this approach may not turn out as well.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#26

Post by plinkplonk »

I agree with every point Reginald makes but (and I am being nitpicky here) the form of the story - the seeming overtailored parable nature of it, of the kind you'd find in the Reader's Digest or a religious tract - rubs me ever so slightly the wrong way.

I could have done without all the fake (or seemingly fake anyway) dialogue between the Wooster/Oscar etc and would have preferred a straightforward "This is what I(Reginald) think" mode.

Imagine pg writing his essays in the form of "Paul wrote an ecommerce site in Lisp while Peter used C++. When Paul met Peter's wife Rosa in a coffee shop he asked her why Peter was looking so haggard and she said 'he is working through the night fixing bugs and not getting enough sleep. Would you mind talking to him? ..' "

Again, this is a very minor nitpick, just consider this feedback from one reader. I am probably considerably outnumbered by the people who like this "story" form better (and that is perfectly fine). Of course it is completely Reginald's prerogative to pick any style he wants.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#27

Post by idan »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
idan wrote: post #4

This is exactly what we've been thinking about for the last year while we've been building http://skillsapp.com . Exactly. Love it when lucid, articulate writers take my mess of a brain and put the right words to it.

How do you measure "passion" and "respect"? And how are the twitter tags determined?

http://help.skillsapp.com/kb/skills-basics/scores-passion-an... is about scoring.

Twitter tags are based on lists, but with some amount of tokenization and stemming so we count "djangonauts" and "Django" as contributing towards the same tag.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#28

Post by cousin_it »

raganwald wrote: post #16
cousin_it wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it sounds very reasonable. But the article mentions A/B tests. Did you actually do these tests? The heroine of your story has good reasons to believe that the described interviewing process is pretty good, but why do you believe that?

Sorry, my first reply added zero bits of information. Yes, I have absolutely managed hiring ads exactly the same way one manages selling things online, right down to split testing different ads, managing keyword buys, the usual yadda yadda. It’s tough, because there is so little signal. It’s also harsh because the best source of good candidates are personal contacts, which violate just about everything in the post. W…

Thanks, and sorry for asking a harsh question :-)

Your recommendations are sensible. It's curious that they seem to suggest that coding ability is close to a one-dimensional measurement of the candidate. Do you think we could measure the largest principal component of coding ability with a standardized exam, like IQ? That would save everyone the hassle of interviewing, and also ensure non-discrimination as a nice bonus.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#29

Post by brudgers »

delinka wrote: post #3

Aside from the Sesame Street names, a fairly decent read. Many years ago, I decided to stop writing my résumé to each recipient and just let my List Of Things speak for itself. I don't want to work for someone caught up on details that are irrelevant to the jobs I'd be doing.

The concept of not hiring unlucky people reminded me of Larry Niven's Ringworld.
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