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We only hire the trendiest

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#231

Post by braythwayt »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #221
braythwayt wrote: post #194

The “Moneyball” quote is by far the most provocative. Never mind hanging around bashing TendyCo or trendy engineers. There is a market for programmers, and like in every market, some are overvalued and some are undervalued. But unlike stocks, you don’t extract value from your programmers by selling them at what the market perceives it will pay. So you aren’t hunting for programmers that are valued by the market, you’…

In my experience, hiring managers, and almost all companies apart from extremely early-stage do-or-die start-ups, simply do not care about productivity. Sure, they'll use productivity as a political excuse to fire you, overlook you, or ding you on a bonus or something. But that's just a way of cover their political games with plausible deniability paperwork. At the end of the day, they don't really care about product…

Your cynicism is noted.

But my cynicism says that managers often hire people who will be productive because a huge part of their political game is producing software that appears to be “strategic” or will generate the revenues that make their group more valued and garner more budget and power for said managers.

So yes, it’s cynicism all the way down, but no, that doesn’t mean that managers aren’t trying to hire productive programmers :-)

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#232

Post by tptacek »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #224
rdl wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work-sample tests are clearly protected; it's IQ tests which aren't permitted (Duke Power v.)

Right but 2 things: 1) HR (presumably taking direction from in house counsel) takes the position that it will be difficult to distinguish between a work sample test and an IQ test 2) We are a large organization with very broad roles. The Performance Team hiring for a Senior Software Engineer will probably want a different work sample than the Analytics Team...

It is simply not true that the Perf team must deliver the same work-sample test as the Analytics team.

Let's not dignify that argument. I absolutely believe you that your company has allowed HR to sabotage your hiring process, and that sucks. But let's not pretend HR is right to do it.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#233

Post by JoeAltmaier »

binarycheese wrote: post #230

"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Nonesense. Contractors are actually much stronger technically because they usually come in to complete a specific task and are not usually trained by the company. At least that is my experience here on the east coast.

It varies. Some contract houses promise experience but deliver grads. I have more luck with direct contractor hires (not thru a house).

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#234

Post by [deleted] »

TickleSteve wrote: post #126
koevet wrote: post #110

"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Where does this come from? I actually see a contractor as someone who had experienced way more "war stories" than the guy who has been sitting in the same chair for 10/20 years. As a contractor, you are exposed to more technologies, more business sectors, different working cultures.

I'm biased (being a long-term contractor), but I would agree that this statement is exactly wrong. Breadth of experience counts and you can't get that without having 'been around'. On the other hand, if you're hiring a contractor who has had lots of very short contracts, that should raise a warning flag. Quite simply tho, why would any good contractor want to go permie? the attraction for me is simple... I get paid t…

[deleted]

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#235

Post by mdpopescu »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #221
braythwayt wrote: post #194

The “Moneyball” quote is by far the most provocative. Never mind hanging around bashing TendyCo or trendy engineers. There is a market for programmers, and like in every market, some are overvalued and some are undervalued. But unlike stocks, you don’t extract value from your programmers by selling them at what the market perceives it will pay. So you aren’t hunting for programmers that are valued by the market, you’…

In my experience, hiring managers, and almost all companies apart from extremely early-stage do-or-die start-ups, simply do not care about productivity. Sure, they'll use productivity as a political excuse to fire you, overlook you, or ding you on a bonus or something. But that's just a way of cover their political games with plausible deniability paperwork. At the end of the day, they don't really care about product…

Absolutely. I've had a contract where I could have done the job in two months; there were four people in the team and the contract was for six months. I spent most of my time reading articles on the internet :)

The reason for the over-budgeting? The team lead was a permanent employee trying to get promoted to manager; in order to do that, he needed a 1) successful and 2) significant project. Genuinely large projects risk being unsuccessful, but an overestimated one ticks both checkboxes.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#236

Post by santaclaus »

acheron wrote: post #177
jhwhite wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you are saying, but Stanford isn't an Ivy League school. :) But yes, I agree with everything you're saying.

I assumed he was using it as a metaphor, because the actual Ivy League schools aren't especially known for computer science. So "ivy league [of] CS" as in the top CS schools, not literally the Ivy League schools.

Ehhh, something like 6 of the top 20 CS schools are Ivies. Mark Zuckerburg founded Facebook while at an Ivy.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#237

Post by LoSboccacc »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #221
braythwayt wrote: post #194

The “Moneyball” quote is by far the most provocative. Never mind hanging around bashing TendyCo or trendy engineers. There is a market for programmers, and like in every market, some are overvalued and some are undervalued. But unlike stocks, you don’t extract value from your programmers by selling them at what the market perceives it will pay. So you aren’t hunting for programmers that are valued by the market, you’…

In my experience, hiring managers, and almost all companies apart from extremely early-stage do-or-die start-ups, simply do not care about productivity. Sure, they'll use productivity as a political excuse to fire you, overlook you, or ding you on a bonus or something. But that's just a way of cover their political games with plausible deniability paperwork. At the end of the day, they don't really care about product…

Nothing drives that point home as having people come visit the open space as if the techies are the local office zoo.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#238

Post by chucksmash »

bitwize wrote: post #75
dkopi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's an "Anti .NET" bias, as much as it's an "anti too many years in the same exact thing" bias. 1. Choose a different language for your next side project. 2. Step in the door with C#, try to help out on projects or change positions inside the company. 3. Attend hackathons, contribute to opensource projects. A good programmer can quickly feel comfortable in any programming language. Recruiters feel mor…

If you don't have 3-5 years experience in language/framework X, no jobs in language/framework X will be forthcoming. People hire based on what you know, not your ability to learn. A new hire who can "hit the ground running" is an asset; one who can't is a liability.

This varies from place to place.

My first company (as a non-programmer) was very much like this. It was very corporate and they weren't willing to take a risk on cross training a hobbyist without the requisite boxes checked on a resume. It was frustrating but I also understand the CYA logic behind it.

There's someone willing to take a risk on you somewhere for some amount of money. Having a github with noob code in the language you are trying to get hired for helps. If you are just starting out, being able to show you want it bad enough to learn it off the clock is a strong signal vs "I'll start learning it if you start paying me" (which is...also a signal).

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#239

Post by benmccann »

tptacek wrote: post #197
bcg1 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem could also be that many teams simply don't have the time or possess the knowledge to do an assessment like you're suggesting (which I agree is a good way to assess candidates). It requires someone to actually design an assignment (which is a task that many coders might not be good at), and requires one or more people to evaluate it. The ridiculous whiteboard coding of puzzles probably stems from laziness…

Hours? It could take a week, and if you're going to hire more than one person this quarter, it will still be worth it just in the time savings from not having developers deliver bad interviews .

Have you done this? My worry would be that sooner or later you'll have a candidate who posts the assignment online ruining your weeks of effort. It also seems like it makes it much easier to cheat if you make it a take home.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#240

Post by VLM »

wolfgke wrote: post #174
ScottAS wrote: post #165

You can replace "trendy" with "good cultural fit" in many places. Cultural fit is arguably the most important factor in hiring someone. From my network, I see a hugely different culture at Microsoft and Google. Just saying.

If this is so important: why don't they specify the desired culture values beforehand in the job ad so that people who don't fit don't have to waste their time applying for the job?

Because writing "young white men only need apply" is a fast track to a lawsuit.

Its obviously OK to implement it, plenty of examples of that, just not OK to talk about it in public.

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