Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

blog.codinghorror.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 373 posts

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#281

Post by sokoloff »

jxm262 wrote: post #59
struppi wrote: post #33

Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…

This is seriously one of the best comments I've read on HN in a long time. I've always had this same inclination, just never had the time to try it myself. If your current environment doesn't allow you to hire inexperienced/no-education people, you can at least work with juniors more to help elevate them (and in turn the entire team). This concept goes way beyond tech as well and can be applied to many many industrie…

The economics are usually way out of whack though. In my experience, a good programmer is easily worth 5x a "not-so-good" programmer and rarely costs more than 2x as much.

We do have a college intern and hire program, but it's very rare for a new college hire to have the same ROI as my best experienced colleagues.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#282

Post by TheOneTrueKyle »

andrewstuart wrote: post #226
gohrt wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, there's simply no way that people who grew up in backwater regions like China, or India, could be competent at building software.

People who want to feel insulted always find ways to feel insulted. If you choose to read my comment that way then you are choosing to hear the message that you want to hear, which is a reflection of you and your personal issues. My comment in no way suggested that overseas developers are incompetent - in fact whether or not a developer is competent has little to do with where they live - although economic opportunit…

Another case of hostility masked as objectivity on HN. You are entitled to your opinion, but it seems like you are justifying your position in life more so than providing anything of value to the conversation.

I do agree with you however in that there is a difference between greatness and adequacy

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#283

Post by sokoloff »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #76

In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes. Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype intervie…

Why on Earth would salary be "grossed up" when paid as severance?

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#284

Post by kafkaesq »

andrewstuart wrote: post #278
sokoloff wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent may have edited the post (as I don't see "monkey" anywhere), but I frequently hear monkey used for any human (often fellow programmers) and have never read a racial or ethnic overtone into it and the usage has generally been to suggest that humans (of all sorts) aren't particularly different from monkeys. I just got back from an business trip spanning 3 cities and 5 flights. The self-loading cargo in the airpo…

I did edit the post, despite the fact that the reference was towards management thinking about programmers as "monkeys" it appears it was being misinterpreted by skim-readers as overseas people being called monkeys. My point is that if you do not understand that programming is highly skilled work (and many companies think this) then you might think you can get anyone to do it for a similar outcome and therefore it is…

Right, I understood the intended abstraction, after the 2nd or 3rd skim.

Just that even analytical people tend to think "associationally" when they see certain keywords -- and one has to keep in mind that not too long ago, people in many of the countries that software development is frequently outsourced to were, in fact, thought of as monkeys, pretty much (or something on the human-monkey spectrum).

So whenever I see associations like that creeping into my own writing, I try to dial it down.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#285

Post by kimdouglasmason »

dang wrote: post #202
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are a life choice? You're part of the problem.

Please don't respond to incivility with further incivility.

I was not uncivil. This kind of belittling of family has to stop. Software development has a major problem hiring women, older people, and minorities. People in the sector belittling things like children and families by using terms like 'lifestyle choices' ARE part of the problem, and the industry has a very serious one. These people need to be called out for the poisonous garbage that they're spouting, and that calling out rarely happens.

The gender gap is not going to get better while these attitudes are accepted. Women avoid tech to a large degree because it is rational to do so. The entire sector is so immersed in brogrammer culture that half the participants aren't even aware of it.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#286

Post by kimdouglasmason »

dominotw wrote: post #191
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are a life choice? You're part of the problem.

>Children are a life choice? You're part of the problem. Are they not though? Aren't you consciously choosing engage in this optional activity when you decide to have kids.

And there we go again. 'optional activity'. And people wonder why there are few women in tech and the situation is not improving. The post above is your answer.

Have a family, it's the end of your career, because you engaged in productivity limiting 'optional activities'. Yes, the tech sector IS that toxic.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#287

Post by ZenoArrow »

ska wrote: post #251
rokhayakebe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there will never be a consensus on the definition of "great programmer" you really cannot argue this point.

I think there is a rough consensus of what "great" means in "a great X" and that it means something like: generally accepted to be significantly better than the vast majority of their peers. Otherwise the adjective becomes meaningless. You will not meet such people very often unless you are in a truly extraordinary situation, which means you may well never work with one. My argument is that such people, whatever the…

> "I think there is a rough consensus of what "great" means in "a great X" and that it means something like: generally accepted to be significantly better than the vast majority of their peers."

You've not really solved the problem by stating that, all you've done is swap one subjective term (great) for another (better).

FWIW, I don't think everyone is naturally suited to programming, but I do know I've met a number of people, with a diverse range of backgrounds, who I am confident would be employable as programmers with the right guidance. The two biggest traits they all share is attention to detail and an openness to learn. I'd argue that's all you really need, everything else is just a matter of effort and experience.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#288

Post by p4wnc6 »

sokoloff wrote: post #283
p4wnc6 wrote: post #76

In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes. Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype intervie…

Why on Earth would salary be "grossed up" when paid as severance?

Why would anything ever be grossed up? Because the purpose of the payment is to give the recipient a particular amount of money, usually related to specific costs, not some amount less taxes.

The costs of sustaining a job search after being fired are a bit different than the costs of living while you have a reliable income stream. The grossing-up part is meant to reflect a nominal amount of money to cover those kinds of costs, not just a virtual continuation of the salary-less-taxes you'd been living on while employed.

In my experience, severance and sign on bonuses are often grossed up, as are payments made for relocation expenses.

But there's no reason to be hung up on that part. It's perfectly fine to just offer a regular severance benefit without grossing it up.

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#289

Post by [deleted] »

kimdouglasmason wrote: post #286
dominotw wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Children are a life choice? You're part of the problem. Are they not though? Aren't you consciously choosing engage in this optional activity when you decide to have kids.

And there we go again. 'optional activity'. And people wonder why there are few women in tech and the situation is not improving. The post above is your answer. Have a family, it's the end of your career, because you engaged in productivity limiting 'optional activities'. Yes, the tech sector IS that toxic.

[deleted]

Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

#290

Post by spitfire »

Tokenadult isn't around to chime in here, so I'll take his place today. Hunter and Schmit did a meta-study of 70 years of research on hiring criteria. [1]

There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields.

  - General mental ability (Are they generally smart)

  - Work sample test (NOT HAZING! As close as possible to the actual work they'd be doing).

  - Integrity (The first two won't matter if the candidate is a sociopath).
This alone will get you > 65% hit rate. [1] http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...
Post reply on HN