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How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

brookeallen.com

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Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#301

Post by AnonJ »

brianwawok wrote: post #298
yaddayadda wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I'm in bind with first impressions. By nature, I'm a massive introvert, which has always caused me problems. But I'm also coming from a toxic workplace environment (our boss regularly berates employees in front of other employees, to include profanity and yelling loud enough to be clearly understood through multiple walls, and he's been know to literally rip doors off their hinges, just because he's mad…

So get better at being a fake extrovert for 90 seconds. Programmers as a class of people are shy and awkward. Not hard to be not the shyest and awkwardest around.

Just be yourself. Interviews are not equal to acting like an extrovert, and any attempt to "fake" will likely backfire. But indeed I have to admit I was quite shocked at how incredibly unsociable and inexpressive those programmers are at my first work. Probably it's just because I'm not working at a world-class place yet and the sample size is way too small, I can only assume.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#302

Post by ErikRogneby »

I attended a bootcamp at ArsDigita on building database backed web applications back in 1999. I don't recall now if it was two weeks or three, but the things I learned in that short time have been useful in almost every job I've had since. Just knowing my way around Oracle an PL/SQL landed me a position at a telecom. The bootcamp was free, and at the end of the bootcamp after a code review I was offered an interview. I declined because I didn't want to live in Boston. I realize that Philips motives weren't entirely altruistic but I am sincerely thankful that he took this approach to staffing up.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#303

Post by AnonJ »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #264
yaddayadda wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many orchestras have found a fairly simple solution to the problem - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22blind+auditions%22+hiring+music... I'd hope to have a similar 'audition' approach that included not only basic programming skills but also –and as a junior level programmer, more importantly – learning skills. For example, commenting or debugging internal framework code (something that all interviewees are experiencing f…

That would be pretty cool-- and although software development is meritocratic, it's not as meritocratic as those orchestras, right?. They simply want the best musicians PERIOD, whereas lots of software companies would probably hesitate to hire someone with a lot of talent but a toxic attitude.

I've always figured that the thing about an "absolutely impartial" standard is a mirage. Go way too much into it and what you create will be deformed, mechanical processes which largely deviates from the thing's original intention and end up worse than what it intends to replace. Look at any huge national exam system(China for example) then you'll perfectly understand what I mean. Students get absolutely no space for personality, and nothing else than abilities to do specified types of exams get evaluated. No holistic abilities at all. A process with space for subjectivity certainly isn't perfect, but it allows so much more to be evaluated than purely mechanical and many times deformed narrow "skill sets", if so can be called. I remember reading Peter Thiel say PayPal didn't recruit a guy because "he loved playing basketball", although all other attributes looked great. That might be a little bit extreme but it says a lot about how hiring, and generally admission processes, isn't a precision science, and that's actually probably how lots of decision-makers want it to be. It requires dynamism, interactions and gauging between people. Simple blind mechanical assessment results aren't equal to "justice" in any way. It's the same thing as you cannot just choose your friends nor your mate by "assessment scores". I feel many commentators are stressing too much on another extreme of things here.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#304

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

doorhammer wrote: post #273
tomp wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did you even read the article you are commenting on? No, I was just commenting on the logic of the quote in the parent comment, which I find faulty. I'm not saying people aren't racist, or subconsciously racist; I'm just saying that you can't reduce any statistical effect down to racist, while other explanations are just as possible. > And what the hell does someone coming from a poor neighborhood have anything to…

> No I'd really encourage you to read it an other articles on implicit bias; they're really important issues that have disastrous impacts. > I'm pretty sure that if you run statistics, you would find out that people from poor neighborhoods are more likely to be criminals, violent, less educated, less intelligent. The problem I have with this is that it's a hunch that sounds reasonable, but there's no data to support…

>I think the problem a lot of people have is that it feels a lot like we're saying everyone is racist, which feels a lot like an attack

And the article I linked to says that. Individuals don't MEAN to be racist (or sexist, etc.) but are, because culture gives us biases. Addressing unintended racism is hard, because it isn't visible. We aren't attacking individuals.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#305

Post by JohnBooty »

yaddayadda wrote: post #269
waylandsmithers wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be pretty cool-- and although software development is meritocratic, it's not as meritocratic as those orchestras, right?. They simply want the best musicians PERIOD, whereas lots of software companies would probably hesitate to hire someone with a lot of talent but a toxic attitude.

Unfortunately I'm in bind with first impressions. By nature, I'm a massive introvert, which has always caused me problems. But I'm also coming from a toxic workplace environment (our boss regularly berates employees in front of other employees, to include profanity and yelling loud enough to be clearly understood through multiple walls, and he's been know to literally rip doors off their hinges, just because he's mad…

I also realize that no two people or situations are alike, and that I have no idea what you're going through!

But from a fellow introvert who has had success with interviews: an interview is a good example of a social situation that's fairly "hackable."

By hackable I mean an interview is something where, at least compared to an open-ended conversation with a stranger, there are certain... branching paths of conversation?... that you can practice ahead of time.

The inevitable questions about why you're leaving your current job are definitely a thing you can practice. I don't think it's necessarily bad to mention some negatives regarding your current position and why you want to get out of it. If it didn't suck in some way, why would you be looking for a new job?

I think a good answer to the "why are you looking to leave your current position?" question would involve:

1. What you like about the new company ("You guys seem to hire really good coders, you're growing as a company, and I like your approach to A, B, and C.")

2. What you want to achieve at the new company (ex: "I'm looking for an opportunity to do less support and more coding.")

3. Optionally, something about what's bad at your current company. Preferably in a positive context. (ex: "I'm really excited about building modern web applications, and I'm not able to achieve that at Company XYZ because we've committed to supporting IE6.0 until 2050 because it's what the owner's mom uses.")

Anyway, it's not easy, but it's.... hackable. Unless it's a really weird interview, most of the ground you'll cover is rehearseable. Good luck!!

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#306

Post by DaveWalk »

marcosdumay wrote: post #299
AnonJ wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't such absolute statements actually be your own "rationalization" and prejudice? How can you be sure it was others who messed it up, not you, if you keep thinking this way everywhere? Very probably you indeed have some aspects to improve, but you just convinced yourself that "no, I'm perfectly capable, but that interviewer sucked and judged me arbitrarily. That was his fault, not mine." Thus you look at the wo…

The problem is there's no good heuristic for determining when that "no" was a resolt of a clear flaw of the candidate, or of subjective prejudice of the interviewer. On that situation the prevailing policy is to always assume prejudice and try to discover you flaws by some other mean.

I'm not so sure you should default to assume prejudice, because every bit of advice has some benefit (even if it's just an insight into what the other person thinks is importnat). You bring up a great tactic, however: discovering your flaws by some other means. The best practice I've heard is to seek comments from a neutral third party, like a professional acquaintance or coach. A friend or SO will go too easy on you by design.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#307

Post by ugh123 »

RobertKerans wrote: post #98
kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

Robert, I didn't know everyone at Accenture were such great psychologists!

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#308

Post by jes5199 »

RobertKerans wrote: post #98
kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

my experience is the opposite: I often have a very good first impression of someone that gets shattered when they try to write some code or to explain an algorithm.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#309

Post by mcguire »

tomp wrote: post #250
UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus... did you even read the article you are commenting on? It isn't just one example. And it isnt about being racist, its about racism without racists. > One study conducted by a Brigham Young University economics professor showed that white NBA referees call more fouls on black layers, and black referees call more fouls on white players. Another study that was published in the American Journal of Sociology showed…

> did you even read the article you are commenting on? No, I was just commenting on the logic of the quote in the parent comment, which I find faulty. I'm not saying people aren't racist, or subconsciously racist; I'm just saying that you can't reduce any statistical effect down to racist, while other explanations are just as possible. > And what the hell does someone coming from a poor neighborhood have anything to…

"I'm pretty sure that if you run statistics, you would find out that people from poor neighborhoods are more likely to be criminals, violent, less educated, less intelligent."

What you are describing is, specifically, racism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#310

Post by JeremyMorgan »

ibudiallo wrote: post #117
FooBarWidget wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

In my case, I did two things: 1. Add memcached 2. Serve static files via nginx It allowed me to handle 2.9 million requests I documented it here: http://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request

Nice! I tweeted this, you might see some additional traffic, definitely something my group of friends would be interested in.
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