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I don't hire unlucky people

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#241

Post by eli_gottlieb »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #180
cgag wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, when I hear about this talent shortage, I can't help but assume they mean there are only so many people at the top of stanford/mit's classes.

This is wrong. I don't know a single Rails developer (with or without a degree) who doesn't have more work than they can handle available to them. Sometimes the jobs are more concentrated in certain areas than others, but I personally get several cold calls from recruiters every week, and I have no degree, and I am no rockstar.

Rails developer not, in fact, Rails developers.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#242

Post by kharasoft »

simonbrown wrote: post #230
TheBoff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of that job advert which specifically asked for programmers with MacBooks only. No way in a million years would I apply there! I have an iMac, but only because I'm interested in different sorts of computer. I mean seriously, not everyone can afford an Mac. I've had this on my chest since I saw that advert. Just needed to vent :)

I can't fine one exactly like that. I remember: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2370022 http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000433.html

Reminds me of this steaming pile from last year http://blog.expensify.com/2011/03/25/ceo-friday-why-we-dont-...

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#243

Post by loup-vaillant »

raganwald wrote: post #144
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article criticises the unquestioning use of bad heuristics. One needs to think very carefully about how accurate the heuristics employed are at describing the unseen (but directly desired) attribute(s) as well as what un-desirable attributes it may be silently signalling. As someone who worked at an investment bank, I'd go ballistic when managers would turn away candidates because their resumes weren't properly a…

I agree with everything you are all saying. What I was trying to claim is that there’s a relationship between heuristics and the ham/spam ratio of the documents being classified. When there is very little ham and a lot of spam, my claim is that false negatives are extremely expensive. When the benefit of hiring is very high and the cost of interviewing is low, my claim is that false positives are relatively cheap. Gi…

That "extraneous noise" actually stresses your point beautifully. While we don't want to generalize from fictional evidence, fictions can be great at making the reader pay attention to your case (and yours certainly is).

Now that I'm a bit more aware of the gazillion ways my resume can be mistakenly filtered, I can (i) work on defeating those filters, and (ii) not take it personally when it still doesn't pass through. I know it sounds obvious, but I didn't get it on a gut level until your story put me in the shoes of the recruiter, and showed me that one can be both reasonably competent, not evil, and still miss many relevant resumes.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#244

Post by eli_gottlieb »

einai wrote: post #202
DarkShikari wrote: post #10

This article is superb. We tried placing ads for ninjas, rock stars, and so on, but I discovered this was the cultural equivalent of advertising for white males who drink dry martinis. Not that white males who drink dry martinis can’t do the job, but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people. Either way, you end up with fewer r…

What's worse: Looking for: Leonardo da Vinci 2.0, Einstein reincarnated Compensation: We cannot afford to pay you now but we promise equity

What's worst:

Looking for: the lovechild of Richard Feynman and the second coming of Jesus

Compensation: small salary with some equity

Actual work: it's like Craigslist, but for social mobile

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#245

Post by danenania »

zxcvb wrote: post #233
danenania wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're coming from, but software is a lot different from banking. "You have to get a job right away." definitely isn't true or good advice for a programmer. You can learn a lot more a lot faster and add more impressive pieces to your portfolio by working on your own projects, open source, or contracting than by accepting a bad job at some dysfunctional company.

Nonsense. Getting a programming job at a company that uses the technologies you want to work with will seriously help you move into another role in the near future. Even if the company is crap. It's nice that some people will care about your personal projects but A LOT of good companies won't see these in the same light as real professional experience dealing with real production, team and stake holder issues. Also,…

Speaking from experience, most of your assumptions are completely wrong. It's much easier to gain valuable skills in personal, open source, and consulting projects, because you can target your work towards sought after languages, tools, and frameworks, and clients you contract with will often let you choose the technologies if you make a good case for them. Bad companies will tend to use bad and outdated technologies, and they won't be open to the suggestions from a new hire.

It's also extremely difficult to build a strong portfolio working at a bad company, because bad companies by their nature rarely get anything done, and even if they do, they'll pigeonhole you into the most monotonous tasks and you'll get 0 experience making architectural decisions or working on anything outside whatever little gutter they throw you in.

On the contrary, doing your own projects or contracting (ideally with startups or small companies) will force you to learn every level of the tech-business stack, from feature planning to architecture to coding to design to deployment to launching and promotion. You can work on many projects in a short timespan, and you'll be left with numerous portfolio pieces that are all your own.

"Most companies wouldn't even consider you as a contractor unless you have several years of solid experience. I can only assume you mean the kind of 'contracting' that happens at places like rentacoder.com."

This simply isn't true. You just need to sell yourself and show that you have good ideas and get things done. I got paid $60 per hour on my first rails project with no experience whatsoever in rails. The client never asked. She just saw that I had several strong pieces of work in my portfolio (half of them personal projects), and told me to use whatever tools I thought best for the job. If you're considering rent-a-coder you're definitely doing it wrong.

Don't settle for mediocrity. Take the initiative and start building a portfolio any way you can. The sky's the limit once you have a solid body of work to point to. You can make good money contracting or you can have your pick of awesome jobs. Having experience in some crappy job isn't what matters, it's showing that you can build great software.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#246

Post by ShardPhoenix »

zacharycohn wrote: post #213
wonnage wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the importance of cultural fit, too. People dismiss cultural fit because it seems superficial. In reality, programming ability is part of cultural fit - who wants to work with an incompetent? A good programmer does not exist in isolation, a good programmer exists in context of the people s/he works with. So if you find that rockstar/ninja advertising attracts the type of people you want - why not? Pers…

We're currently hiring at Startup Weekend, and at the end of the job ad we said something like "Ninjas, rockstars, gurus, and jedi masters need not apply." In hindsight, I think that actually says a fair bit about who we're looking for AND our culture. "Do a good job. Don't get distracted by buzzwords."

I think that comes across as a bit smug.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#248

Post by joshAg »

ktizo wrote: post #151
joshAg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you don't mind, I'm going to borrow that line from you...

if you were really a ninja however, you would have stolen that line under cover of night, replacing it with a forgery that looked identical, before using a selection of grappling hooks to make a stealthy escape across the rooftops...

how do you know that i didn't, and this is just a diversion?

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#249

Post by ktizo »

joshAg wrote: post #248
ktizo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you were really a ninja however, you would have stolen that line under cover of night, replacing it with a forgery that looked identical, before using a selection of grappling hooks to make a stealthy escape across the rooftops...

how do you know that i didn't, and this is just a diversion?

Because I'm wearing lucky pants, of course.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#250

Post by BobBobBobRob »

I've heard of the "unlucky resume' selection process" elsewhere. And you were doing good with it, but, sorry, the article runs on way beyond it's perceived point-of-purpose.

Also, when Ernestine says "...I have a much lower signal-to-noise ratio?" She had it backwards, she actually has the HIGHER signal-to-noise ratio. Whereby the one guy has a large group of qualified candidates and can afford to throw some away, she has a one in a hundred group of qualified candidates, thus, she has the higher signal-to-noise ratio.

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