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We only hire the trendiest

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#321

Post by softawre »

Grishnakh wrote: post #275
mooreds wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. I definitely wasted time interviewing underqualified people. But I wasted time interviewing some overqualified people too (because of salary/location expectations that should have been communicated up front). Actually, all of interviewing feels like wasted time (you have this burning need, and you want to fill it yesterday, or better yet a month ago, and yet you have to go through this process and learn about all…

>But I wasted time interviewing some overqualified people too (because of salary/location expectations that should have been communicated up front). Well that's your own fault as the job advertiser, and when I say "you", I mean almost all companies that advertise jobs. You almost never state the salaries to be paid, so tons of peoples' time gets wasted by pointless interviewing which gets followed up with insultingly…

Don't let the downvotes get to you. You're right on.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#322

Post by leovonl »

“Experience is too random, with payments, mobile, data analytics, and UX.”

This one made me chuckle.

Same thing usually happens with my résumé: either one discards completely the part where I cite strong OCaml knowledge plus functional/logic programming interest and/or they discard completely the part where I mention experience with ARM PRU assembly and the fact that I ported an educational OS to MIPS during graduation.

It usually comes down to:

- "So you are a C++ programmer?"

- "Yes, I have a good experience with C++."

- "Good, we'll like to hire someone with your knowledge, we have PHP and Perl codebases to maintain and your profile seems a good fit."

- "...."

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#323

Post by zeveb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #319
zeveb wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with much of Spolsky's writing, it's a really fun piece to read, and thought-provoking too. But I think the bigger distinction between Unix and Windows is not differential valuation of programmers and non-programmers: it's believing that non-programmers exist or not. From the Unix perspective, everyone is a programmer, and that is appropriate: anyone is capable of directing a computer to achieve tasks. From the Wi…

Programming exists so most people don't need to program - in the same way that other professions exist so most people don't need to become experts in medicine, law, engineering, building trades, or car maintenance. What makes programming so special that it needs to be different here?

> Programming exists so most people don't need to program - in the same way that other professions exist so most people don't need to become experts in medicine, law, engineering, building trades, or car maintenance.

You might as well write, 'reading exists so most people don't need to read,' which would be equivalently true.

> What makes programming so special that it needs to be different here?

Because directing computers to perform work is as fundamental a skill in the modern world as is reading. Yes, there are people nowadays who cannot read, and there are some few jobs for them. But there aren't many, and it's not a good place to be.

Programming is not a specialised skill: it is a general skill with applicability in almost every field of human endeavour.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#324

Post by chipgap98 »

donretag wrote: post #264

I once had an internal recruiter tell me during a phone screen that my resume was weak since I went to a no-name school in the south called Georgia Tech. During my last interview round, another interviewer found it hard to believe that I did not use Twitter. I think these problems existing more in the "trendy" areas such as the Bay area. Once you leave that culture, ignorant recruiters are still around, but the exclu…

I think this is spot on. I've seen people on HN say that they prefer the Bay Area to Boston/NY because the Bay Area is so much less exclusive. I think in reality Silicon Valley has its own flavor exclusivity and boxes they are looking to check off in potential employees

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#325

Post by im_down_w_otp »

Bahamut wrote: post #269
mbrock wrote: post #39

I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring, looking for someone "good enough to qualify." Instead, I like to think of it as, we are looking for someone to help us , someone who has different experience and knowledge, someone who could tell us how we can improve. Then instead of this adversarial situation of selecting a new ingroup member, it's a solicitation for assistance with a b…

When I interview candidates, the make or break question for me is does the person possess critical thinking skills? Various things may point one way or another for this, but it is a mistake to assume [insert working at a particular company] is an indication that someone has to have the skills, as well as to assume someone not having [insert pet qualification] is an indication that someone does not have these skills.…

I would be interested to know how you're assessing for "critical thinking skills".

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#326

Post by ufmace »

oxplot wrote: post #128
wolfgke wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But not only that, unix goes deeper and teaches you about how to do things inside your program, even if that part never talks to other programs. Things like do the dumb thing first; or when you have nothing to say, say nothing (e.g. `ls` prints nothing if no files found), etc. It's about mindset and values and those are almost always dictated by the environment. Also values cannot be looked up on stackoverflow and…

It's not that unix folks don't appreciate it, but that it's not clear what to appreciate. From solely a personal standpoint, years of both using and programming on Windows taught me nothing about its values. However, I can talk about Apple and its values for hours and I've never owned anything Apple except its keyboard. Joel, the author of the article you linked to, states the core value of Windows as being "useful t…

I'd say on the contrary, Android shows what it takes to make Linux do well with the general public - a huge company to ignore like 80% of the standard Linux install and build a whole new UI layer from scratch that is designed to appeal to end users.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#328

Post by vonmoltke »

annnnd wrote: post #296

Minor nitpick: how difficult is it to slap a date somewhere? Especially with this design it is impossible to tell when in the last 30 years this post was written (for the curious, it looks like it was posted today).

It may be published that way intentionally. Some people don't want their content judged by the publishing date.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#329

Post by jghn »

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.

id rather the person who will be overall better once they ramp up instead of worrying about hitting the ground running.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#330

Post by haddr »

steego wrote: post #270

Daniel Kahneman talks about an idea called substitution in his book Thinking Fast and Slow that I think really applies here. Here's the jist: When your brain is faced with doing a task that's going to require a lot of glucose it will look for shortcuts to save you energy. One of those shortcuts is your mind will look for an available heuristic, swap out the energy hungry analysis for the heuristic, and then signal yo…

I would also say that interviewing is hard because we have limited time to decide upon each person and what we judge is (apart from some technical qualities) not what kind of person really is but rather what we believe the person is (based on our limited human perception). And with handful of techniques a person can be really cool from at the first sight (trendy, rock star, etc.) but might be a bad choice in the long run.
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