We only hire the trendiest • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#351

Post by pbz » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #345

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…

Any tips on how to find out about (some of) these in a quick (phone) interview?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#352

Post by tptacek » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

cp9 wrote: post #344

tptacek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no magic to it at all. Have every candidate work on programming problems related to the work you do at your company. Have every candidate work on the same problems, and let them do it from home. Build and iterate on a rubric for grading those challenges. It is amazing to me that almost nobody does this, but: almost nobody does this. They have programmers write code on a whiteboard, or on some whiteboard-codin…

cause I have a job that pays me. I'm not working on stuff for your company for free

That's exactly what you're doing when you go to an on-site job interview, so this objection is slightly less clever than you think it is.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#353

Post by billions » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

jamesdutc wrote: post #148

koevet wrote: post #110

"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Where does this come from? I actually see a contractor as someone who had experienced way more "war stories" than the guy who has been sitting in the same chair for 10/20 years. As a contractor, you are exposed to more technologies, more business sectors, different working cultures.

"Consulting" or "contracting" can refer to different kinds of work arrangements. One of these is what's called "staff augmentation." Large companies with huge teams of full-time employed software programmers will often hire contractors to fill gaps. These contractors are typically contractors-in-name-only: they work under exactly the same conditions as full-time employees but with a worse tax situation, without acces…

There are two types of contractors and they lie on either side of the skill bell curve. What you describe are the lower end contractors. Top end contractors refuse to take full time. They run their taxes through S-Corps, come in to fix the most challenging problems, and big-co's get in bidding wars over their next contract.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#354

Post by mbrock » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #50

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…

Appreciate the humanization of both job candidates and employers inherent in the shift you advocate. I have done a bit of hiring and it was very hard to walk the line between effective use of my time and being open to people with all kinds of experience. (It was a junior position and I talked to some very junior candidates.) But it is always important to remember that there is a human being on both sides of the table…

Well, and I always make sure to run a quick Voight-Kampff just to screen out the replicants before the real interview.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#355

Post by cp9 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #352

cp9 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cause I have a job that pays me. I'm not working on stuff for your company for free

That's exactly what you're doing when you go to an on-site job interview, so this objection is slightly less clever than you think it is.

except this is on top of that. nobody does a phone screen, checks a sample of code and says "tada, you're hired"

we were going to get together in a room anyways.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#356

Post by hitekker » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

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…

Georgia Tech is a no-name school? Ridiculous.

I did not go there but all the engineers I've had the pleasure of meeting from there seem to know their stuff.

Which is far, far, more than I can say for my alma mater.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#357

Post by grandalf » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

pbz wrote: post #351

grandalf wrote: post #345

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…

Any tips on how to find out about (some of) these in a quick (phone) interview?

I usually ask "What are you interested in?" and just let them speak, then ask them to elaborate a few times. People who find this frustrating are usually low-openness, as are people who become noticeably indignant after being asked to share more.

Also, I ask what are the most important things they are looking for in the team they will be joining. Some people are interviewing because they dislike their current job so this is a good clue about their morale and what kinds of situations can lead them to give up and start interviewing.

By this point, after talking to someone for a few minutes I usually have a sense of whether they are easy to talk to or whether the conversation was draining for me and a notion of how smart I think they are. If both of those feel good I focus on selling the team and what it offers so they bring their A game to the in person interview.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#358

Post by rdl » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

djb_hackernews wrote: post #348

rdl wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you looking for a job? :)

I'm looking for a leadership role. Whether that happens at my current company (I'm an IC with a lot of technical leadership and mentorship responsibilities) or elsewhere only time will tell. If you or anyone you know is interested I'm a software developer and spend a lot of my time on cloud architectures/containers/multi tenancy optimizations but just generally enjoy solving business problems with technology. In a pa…

https://careers.jobscore.com/careers/cloudflare/jobs/enginee...

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#359

Post by steego » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

haddr wrote: post #330

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…

Limited time makes it immensely difficult. However, I've found my prejudices against people not like myself have gone way past the interview. I had one intern for 2-3 months before I realized I was really lucky to have him, and it was only because someone else pointed it out.

This person didn't have the right education (classes, not pedigree) nor did he project a passion for coding on his sleeve, but it turned out he was disciplined, a fast autodidact and had a very good sense of priorities. I couldn't have been more wrong about his potential.

It's not just that. I think we too often discount people's ability to grow. My suspicion is we probably place too much emphasis on keeping the wrong people out and not enough on developing the people we have.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#360

Post by serg_chernata » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

thegayngler wrote: post #100

In interviews I actively try to down play the companies I've worked for and the things I've done with them. The reason I do this is that I don't want people to come in with unrealistic expectations and expect me to live up to them. I also don't believe in preparing for interviews. I'm ok with the rough edges I have. I want my imperfections to come through on some level. Yes I have a preference for certain technologie…

I struggle with this as well and it worries me. I tend to be painfully realistic about things I can and can not / have not done. However sometimes I feel like I need to do a better job of selling myself. Walking the line between 2 extremes is quite difficult.