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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#381

Post by jokethrowaway »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #299
throwawaylinux wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, becau…

> I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? Most companies want malleable, fungible engineers. Most companies are not stable, something is usually in flux -- projects, te…

These engineers are not hired to invert binary trees.

They're hired to change glorified forms. If they need to invert a binary tree, they will google it in 30s.

My friend (40+) prepared for a couple of months and got hired at FB a few months ago after a career spent in smaller companies. Great comp, mindlessly boring job (the usual, change this form button, change this endpoint) but hey, now that FANGs are remote and you don't need to commute to an office, they're worth a shot. He's already thinking of quitting but unfortunately he already forgot the algorithms exercises and he doesn't want to do the same interview dance again at Google with the hope that things will be better over there.

Whenever I've been in the hiring manager roles, I skimmed over people not knowing theory well and I read with interest their CVs and their personal project (and asked them about it!). Your behaviour is exactly why I didn't want to work for a FANG and I pursued starting a business instead of growing my career as a IC.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#382

Post by throwawaylinux »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #372
throwawaylinux wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most companies want malleable, fungible engineers. Most companies are not stable, something is usually in flux -- projects, teams, organizations, business models. Most managers would rather have someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes. Okay well that's a bit surprising. > But that is not how I personally hire, it's just reality. I'd rather have someone I can work with. In my experience, a lot of…

> You don't even read the resumes of the 2-3 people per week you decide to interview? The resume is what the applicant wants to tell you about themselves. If I apply for a job, I would be sure to read the position description and read up a bit about the company, their work and people. There's more here to unpack than I have time to so I'll be brief. The recruiter should screen your resume/background. If you're alread…

I don't like to go here because I know very little about your methods from our discussion, I've easily misunderstood some things you've said, etc. and I'm certainly not talking about you as a person, you've obviously been completely polite and respectful of me and others here. (And the same goes for the recruiter in my story -- I'm sure he was not a horrible person either).

And I don't want to throw out something you can't reasonably defend yourself against. So I'm talking entirely about my (surely incomplete and flawed) impression of what you've told me of your profession here. It comes across as being consistent with what workers dislike about the industry.

Not reading people's resumes before you have them interview, preferring those who don't have obvious hobbies in the hope they will do more work, justifying this by talking about power dynamics and the applicant being powerless, they are "items" being filtered for, the love it or shove it attitude.

So I'm sure outside the profession you don't think of people as numbers, and even in the profession you're having a side bar with me and my summary of impressions is probably uncharitable taken out of context. It could be that you are an unwitting or unwilling participant in the normalization of deviance in the HR industry regarding how to treat people -- this is just how things are done.

And in what you say there are some kernels of difficult truth, for some companies and some applicants / employees. But it's not entirely and always true either.

Firstly, no matter the power dynamics, people should be treated with politeness and respect. And personally I'm sure you do, but professionally I don't know that your industry does or necessarily even understands what that means.

Secondly, that assertion about the power dynamic is not always true. I mean, if a company advertises an open position, then it's a signal that they want to buy (at least where I am I believe it's illegal to advertise for a position you have no intention of filling). So all else being equal, they're starting at a disadvantage right out of the gate if you make an adversarial analysis of it.

It's true that FAANG companies have a power dynamic over 99.9% of their applicants because they have a huge oversupply. But for some fraction of that top 0.1% it is the opposite. They get head-hunted and fought over. Presumably the top talent in recruitment process are those who can find and sway and hire these people when the balance of power is not on their side.

And down from FAANG and the top few companies in other industries, a lot of the time companies actually have much bigger problems attracting people.

So the power dynamic can certainly fall the other way in any given hiring, as it was in my story. And the guy clearly didn't know how to cope with that. And I think that is also a symptom of this industry problem.

I had the upper hand there. I was filtering him. Despite that, I was not rude, I was honest, didn't mislead him, I explained my position. And I read everything he wrote. It cost me very little to be polite and respectful.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#383

Post by brailsafe »

ganafagol wrote: post #259
brailsafe wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you default to assuming that someone who wrote code in order to have something to show a prospective employer is attempting usurp the integrity of your hiring funnel. Wtf is a fully qualified SWE anyway, and how is someone supposed to get there if not by getting in the door? Lastly, it's absolutely not rational to follow that line of reasoning. If you find yourself out of work, and discover that the interview pro…

If somebody is trying to stand out by having a github with two projects, one is a merge sort implenentation they typed essentially 1:1 from a book during an algorithms 101 class and the other is an almost-trivial shopping list app that neither compiles nor they can explain anything about it, and then put a link to this github at the top of their resume, then they'd have been better off not having created that github…

Github is used for all kinds of things. Most of mine is forks that I used to try and issue a PR to some other repo, or gists that I use for personal reference. Likewise, I have a website that I barely use, but it's there. Neither are indicative of professional capability or are labeled "portfolio", they're indicative of some of the stuff I do in my spare time. Employers ask for a Github link almost 100% of the time, this is a problem created by the filtering process itself and the proselytizing of having a "passion" for software.

Being prejudiced towards that is as stupid as anything.

Now if someone labels themselves as "an open source contributor" or something along those lines, sure whatever be as critical as you want. I'd probably expect to see at least frequent commits to a repo that people use.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#384

Post by brailsafe »

ganafagol wrote: post #252
brailsafe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you give people negative points for trying anything they can do to compete in a fucking ridiculous job market? I mean, suggest alternatives if your genuine intention is to help people find work, rather than just saying that you actively look down on people for trying something. You get negative points for being a dick. Of course, I'm making assumptions, which you should never do.

"Ridiculous job market"? The job prospects for devs in todays market is an essentially 100% guarantee that you get a job. The demand is huge and there are more jobs to fill than candidates available. You may not get into the company of your dreams, but overall, what's ridiculous is not how low the job chances are, but how high the demand is. If you do 100 interviews and 0 offers then you have an issue. It may not be…

If the job market was 100% guarantee, it probably wouldn't be rational to assume that everything on someone's github profile needs to be there to try and impress you; they wouldn't need to try anything extra, or grind leetcode problems, and Who Wants to be Hired threads wouldn't exist.

I'd personally prefer a low likelihood of getting an interview, because that's way more manageable than current hiring practices where many companies hold global talent contests as the first step, and send them to everyone, as though they're Amazon.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#385

Post by krageon »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #272
krageon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want to work here because I need money to eat and you seemed like a safe choice"

Some day I'm actually going to try this in an interview. Interviewer: "Why do you want to work for us?" Me: "Honestly, I don't want to work for anybody because I have too much other stuff I'd much rather be doing with my time. But I need an income to sustain myself so, if I'm going to work, I want to work here because I think it'll be easy, provide decent benefits, and it's a 20 minute bike ride from my house."

It might be worth trying when you are already have another solid job in the background :) It could be that you've hit the one company that appreciates honesty, but generally I think most don't love it.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#386

Post by jjeaff »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #369
gopher_space wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what your interview process would look like if it was a normal day at work. You show up out of the blue with a task that isn't connected to anything the org does and with all the decisions made already. I cannot search the internet, but you do not explain why. You sit down across from me and stare.

You're describing something else. In my interviews you can use the internet. I don't stare, I'm mostly taking notes and answering questions, either listening to the candidate explain things or explaining things. No decisions have been made. I describe a problem, we solve it together. Just like we might on the job.

I can't do something as simple as empty my bladder while someone is watching. I certainly can't code something complex with someone watching me. Luckily, I have never had a coding job where I had to be watched while working.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#387

Post by jjeaff »

stronglikedan wrote: post #350
ericd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also filters out people who get anxious in interview situations, since anxiety tends to put people in fight or flight mode and shut down the critical thinking parts of the brain.

Sound like it filters out all types of weaknesses, which makes it a good thing when you have a large pool of candidates to filter through.

Why don't we also add a basketball free throw component so we can filter out those that have bad hand eye coordination?
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