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Hire people who aren’t proven

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Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#231

Post by rademacher »

daveslash wrote: post #113
snowwrestler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

I agree with you, but I'd like to add to the "did you treat any diseases in high school". I knew someone in high school who wanted to be a doctor. She didn't cure any diseases or perform surgery, but she did read all that she could and was fascinated by medical-themed tv & movies. She had been inspired by her pediatrician when she was young. She did't treat people before becoming a doctor, but from early on she had t…

Why penalize folks who didn't know what they wanted to do in high school. It took me a long time to get a vague idea of what I wanted to do for a career and it's something I have to constantly contend with. In fact, I'm still trying to pinpoint what exactly I'm looking for. I know things have changed in the last few years, to the point where high school kids are in pre-engineering or pre-cs programs and getting special instruction.

As an aside, the advantages of knowing what you want early are huge assuming that you continue down that path for a long while. If we consider something like graduate school, knowing as a freshmen that you want a PhD means growing your network early, cozying up to professors to write recs, doing REUs. You could have someone figure out towards the end of undergrad that they want to continue on and really struggle to put together a compelling package even though they might be just as passionate or have just as much potential.

Sorry that was kind of a rant.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#232

Post by plurgid »

arkades wrote: post #151
daveslash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I'd like to add to the "did you treat any diseases in high school". I knew someone in high school who wanted to be a doctor. She didn't cure any diseases or perform surgery, but she did read all that she could and was fascinated by medical-themed tv & movies. She had been inspired by her pediatrician when she was young. She did't treat people before becoming a doctor, but from early on she had t…

Ironically, med schools are taking the opposite tack. Because reading books and watching TV shows about medicine are so wildly divorced from the real thing, and because so many kids are really launched towards medicine by their parents, "I always wanted to be a doctor" is considered a (mild) red flag: it's an indicator that someone is pursuing the field based on childish fantasies rather than a rational, adult decisi…

> you can't become a doc for love of the profession, because it's a profession you can't test drive

oh, I don't know about that. It's like a 6 week community college course to become an EMT. There's a test drive for you. There are 2 year programs that will get you a nursing license.

You can get a taste of the medical career path without going the full MD route. Maybe not as accessible as coding, but it is accessible.

As my kids are just now graduating HS, this is something I try to drill into them. College can be like an assembly line that spits you out saddled with the equivalent of a 30 year mortgage, trained for a job space that you literally have no idea if you'll even want to do ... or it can be like a Baskin Robins of careers, and you can try every last one of them until you find what you really like.

passion and knowledge of self are everything. the rest is a commodity.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#233

Post by amorphous »

jl2718 wrote: post #220
amorphous wrote: post #103

I recommend "Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea" by Chuck Blakeman. It describes how to build a company where everyone is a stakeholder and not a child that needs constanct watching and stupid rules in order to function. No titles, no working hours, unlimited vacation time, you hire the whole person (not just the BS smile at work part). You work together because you want to find and make meaning. No CVs and skills a…

Can you please share what you think is the best example of a large tech-ish company that operates like this?

I wish I knew. However, I believe that this only works up to a certain company size.

The author blogs here http://chuckblakeman.com/blog you may find examples there

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#234

Post by jkingsbery »

For what it's worth, I work at one of the large tech companies mentioned. I would disagree with some of the characterization. For example "Don't do whiteboard coding on riddles or puzzles" - I think this is great advice, because questions like that are frowned on where I work too! Generally, the coding questions we ask come from real world applications.

I've also worked at a startup, and I think this article misses something that really could be helpful: there are different skills needed to work at most large companies and most start-ups. At most early-stage start-ups, scaling is not a problem. There are examples of companies that had to scale quickly, but for the most part life at a startup is about finding where your market is. I think that start-up hires also need to be more flexible: there's more room for specialization in larger companies, whereas in smaller companies, engineers that focus on one or two things can be pretty disruptive as the needed work shifts.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#235

Post by alistairSH »

microtherion wrote: post #86
snowwrestler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

> But in most high-end professional fields, that's not true. Yeah, for some reason, when you're interviewing as a forensic pathologist, mentioning that you're cutting up partially decomposed bodies in your spare time does NOT count as a positive. I still think there is value in looking for passion in people, but maybe passion for craftsmanship in a field other than software should count equally well.

FWIW, we've found that passion for music is a huge positive signal that somebody will be successful as a developer within our product line (small portion of a large company - don't know if that signal holds true outside my group).

Obviously, we don't limit candidates to those who are also musicians. Heck, we don't even tend to ask about it in interviews. But, it serves as a general "we probably did ok with this hire" shortly after on-boarding.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#236

Post by rademacher »

Seems to me that at some point hiring moved away from hiring based on potential to hiring based on pure skill and how many boxes the candidate has checked. Companies seem to just want people who can turn the crank, which doesn't sound all that appealing.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#238

Post by ConcernedCoder »

rpedela wrote: post #217
ConcernedCoder wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will, but who would you rather have take out your appendix? The doctor who worked nights and weekends to put him/herself through medical school because it was the love of their life and their dream to help people?... or the guy/gal who only chose the same career path for the money?

How could you tell the difference?

How can you tell the difference between products/services made by someone who makes said things out of the sheer love of making them vs. someone who only makes said things when compensated properly?

-- one word: QUALITY

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#239

Post by blauditore »

The problem is that those things can be faked during an classic interview by a good actor (or "salesperson"). It's much harder to fake problem solving skills on a whiteboard.

The pair programming approach is not terrible, but might be problematic if skill fields (technologies, environment) of interviewer and candidate are not perfectly aligned. So either the candidate will have to work in the company's setup they're not familiar with, or the interviewer will try to follow something they don't easily understand.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#240

Post by snowwrestler »

dev_dull wrote: post #117
microtherion wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in most high-end professional fields, that's not true. Yeah, for some reason, when you're interviewing as a forensic pathologist, mentioning that you're cutting up partially decomposed bodies in your spare time does NOT count as a positive. I still think there is value in looking for passion in people, but maybe passion for craftsmanship in a field other than software should count equally well.

Everybody looks for someone passionate for the job. Why would CS be any different?

Personally I am not a big fan of the word "passionate" as the number 1 attribute for employees. I think there are better words like competence, commitment, empathy, independence, maturity, etc.

There was a time some while ago (as I blow mental dust off my college literature studies) when "passion" was not a word that carried wholly positive connotations. It came with implications of things like irrationality, moodiness, strong emotions, even violence.

Passion can be an asset if a person must maintain momentum in the face of hardships and competition. It can be the base for tremendously hard work (which is one reason I think employers like it). But, it could potentially be a liability too, if it drives a person to create conflict or inhibits teamwork. Depends on the role and the team.

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