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How to hire low experience, high potential people

worktopia.substack.com

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Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#211

Post by strich »

tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

In a world where chat gpt exists I think even work samples are untrustworthy sources of excellence unfortunately. It would seem one has to either watch the process or devise unique and difficult to game tests.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#212

Post by tptacek »

strich wrote: post #211
tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

In a world where chat gpt exists I think even work samples are untrustworthy sources of excellence unfortunately. It would seem one has to either watch the process or devise unique and difficult to game tests.

Work samples aren't all straight coding; in fact, only a small subset of ours are.

Later

I want to add: I fully believe LLMs can reliably knock out the code for most programming challenges, but a good coding work sample is as much about what you choose to code as it is about the code itself.

If you're asking people to invert binaries trees or whatever, that's not a work-sample test, it's a coding quiz. Work-sample tests mirror the actual work you're doing; that's what makes them predictive. Writing a function to do X, Y, or Z is usually the easy part about building software; the hard part is deciding which X, which Y, and which Z, and how they fit together.

We didn't deliberately set out to design work samples where the decisions we're grading are things LLMs don't just do for you; we do a lot of systems programming work and those kinds of decisions just dominate systems programming.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#213

Post by swozey »

mrandish wrote: post #163
nineplay wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. "Let me tell you about the years of physical/emotional/sexual abuse I've suffered though." That's just not going to happen - and if it did happen the interviewer is probably not going to come away with "What a brave person to overcome all of that!" but "What a damaged person, I don't need them around". Well done, you've weeded out people wh…

> bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods. I didn't read this as a bias against significant prior challenges, in childhood or after. I certainly had such challenges and I've always thought most people have. Since the author's stated goal is identifying high potential, early career candidates in the absence of prior success or obvious metrics, it seems essential to look for resilience. To me, understan…

I'm not marrying my company.

I want to hold it as far from my heart as corporately possible. I don't want to think about it after work, I don't want to work on it after work. I don't want it to know my secrets nor do I need to know its.

I want to be able to say peace bro and walk away whenever I want with no thought of a sad feeling. Which unfortunately does happen but it's always coworkers or cool tech.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#214

Post by BadHumans »

tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

Is this how Fly still operates? If you're hiring Rust developers, are you open to someone who has never touched Rust in their life?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#215

Post by 93po »

jprete wrote: post #188
smeeth wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this, but I do think it misses the social stuff. Just a few neurotic/unethical people can completely ruin a team and make all the best people quit. I find this to be extra true on diverse teams (all types of diversity).

As nineplay@ remarked elsewhere, "there's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods". Unethical is one thing, neuroticism should not be a disqualifier from decent employment.

neuroticism, no. asocial or antisocial behavior, yes.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#216

Post by bigtunacan »

nineplay wrote: post #170
the_mar wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that asking about resume gaps is a very biased question and a no-no, especially if it is a single gap, as opposed to a pattern. Usually the answer to a single resume gap is something personal and none of my business as an interviewer, it's not my place to pry if you were raising children, caring for dying relatives or battling severe depression

That whole line of questioning is a HR nightmare and I don't think they'd get away with it in any large company. You are _not_ supposed to ask open ended questions that could reveal a candidate as a member of a protected group. They tell you that their parents kicked them out because they were gay, they don't get hired, and they file a lawsuit saying that there were forced to reveal their sexual orientation and they…

This scenario is unlikely to be an _easy_ win in court, but presents enough headache and just the risk of the company losing in court would most likely result in a settlement offer.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#217

Post by b112 »

ryandrake wrote: post #207
AlotOfReading wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds like this.

You'd think this was true, but I've seen some crazy shit in interviews, even at companies that were big enough and had a robust enough legal team, where you'd think they'd have their shit together. I once interviewed at a medium sized, name brand Silicon Valley darling everyone on HN has heard of, where an interviewer outright asked me if I was married and if I had kids! Like, holy shit, just read your interview trai…

And now, the company is filled with those willing, or not caring about HR abuse.

An interesting strategy?

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#219

Post by swozey »

tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

So you communicated via email and the only consideration was the quality of their sample?

Nobody at any point literally spoke to this person?

We've had a ton of issues at my corp of people having other people handle their interview questions, code, or having AI listen to the conversation and answer questions by text as if we prompted it. Then they show up online after being hired and they have webcam problems or never go on cam, talk as little as possible, basically never communicate to anyone really, miss a lot of meetings, etc.

We've had probably 5 instances of this last year we're absolutely super strict about things now. Our assumption is that they want to get in, potentially get any bonuses if there are any, get a few huge (for their call center) paychecks until they get caught. Do no or almost no work. And it's a call center you can sometimes hear tons of convos going on in the background so they're just doing this en masse.

This is happening ALL over since covid. I think some of them may have even filed unjust termination sort of things to the workforce commission but I may be wrong. Huge companies are dealing with this at a really rough scale.

Re: How to hire low experience, high potential people

#220

Post by tptacek »

BadHumans wrote: post #214
tptacek wrote: post #179

We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring people at every level of experience without having to make decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their first job in our field. I'm a little grumpy about…

Is this how Fly still operates? If you're hiring Rust developers, are you open to someone who has never touched Rust in their life?

We wouldn't know if you've never touched it, only whether you can solve problems in it today.
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