Hire people who aren’t proven

Post by imhoguy » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 8:42 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #84

ghaff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great way of putting it. "Choose your battles" in other words. I look back and I can remember getting very wound up about some things that just didn't matter . And, today, I shake my head a little bit at people for whom every single little thing is something to man the barricades over.

I remember a job as a junior programmer: typical 90’s era C++ Windows application. Compiling it with compiler defaults would spew out a continuous stream of thousands of warnings. This was before unit tests and static analysis were in vogue, so random crashes and errors everywhere. Major performance problems. I argued for code hygiene, fix all these crashes, figure out what’s behind the compiler warnings, etc. The re…

Post by techsin101 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #362

docker_up wrote: post #290

The problem that has happened at my company is that we take a "chance" on bootcampers or other people who aren't proven, we spend the time and effort to mentor and train them, pay them well, and then they turn around in 9-12 months and leave us for another company with their enhanced experience. It has happened 3 times so far, so we have stopped hiring bootcampers, and fresh grads and instead have started hiring peop…

Conversely, I found it really hard to establish myself as a solid contributor and even a technical leader when I joined a team as a (relatively) newly minted developer. No matter how far I progressed, or how competent (even excellent) I became, I was still perceived as the "kid", even though my colleagues are only a few years older. I think I've mostly overcome this, but TBH I'm still not certain and I've been here f…

Post by tomnipotent » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

ankimal wrote: post #377

tomnipotent wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I translate this as wanting a candidate that is compliant and can remove his ego to work in a hierarchal management structure. This is fine, of course, but let's not confuse that as "getting along" or "culture fit" when it's really "following orders".

We have taken out any mention of "culture fit" which to me means more of the same. Instead, we measure culture addition. How will this person add to our culture?

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #272

arkades wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> become a doctor for the love of taking care of people that are sick and help them overcome a bad situation That’s the fantasy. And, hey, when it pops up, awesome - it’s a very energizing moment. However, most medicine has absolutely nothing to do with that day to day. The day to day is subject to Pareto’s Law. A surgeon may occasionally get to “take care of the sick,” but 80% of the time they get to do a five minut…

One likely won't get that good at surgery unless they practiced a lot. And if they had no interest towards that profession they likely won't be putting in crazy hours in their prime early career time becoming a surgeon. You can't even become good at flipping burgers without being interested in doing it.

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

mirko22 wrote: post #127

Lately what I have been trying out is telling people: if you want to come for an interview can you prepare a small presentation of one of the data structures that you know about or like, or ideally hash tables (as they cover wide range of topics). If a person than comes in for the interview in about a week from when he is told this and can’t present that DS to some depth I don’t bother to go on with much longer inter…