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We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

danluu.com

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Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#391

Post by jpindar »

dcolkitt wrote: post #186
plughs wrote: post #45

One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…

> One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. As someone coming from the hiring side, I don't understand how these companies are finding enough candidates that they can afford to put up all these arbitrary requirements. Right now in the US, software engineers are one of (if not the the most) in-demand position in one of (if not the most) tightest la…

How long is your list of requirements? Are they all absolutely necessary from day one or are some of them things a good developer could learn in a reasonable amount of time?

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#392

Post by dang »

ghaff wrote: post #386
dang wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong or annoying another commenter is being. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.

I know. It's a particular hot button and when I went to delete it, it had already been replied to so I couldn't.

Ah. I didn't see the rest of the thread when I posted above.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#393

Post by dang »

busterarm wrote: post #232
pc86 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest, it's pretty hilarious to read someone talking about taking down the rich when their company was acquired for $13 million in cash, give or take.

everyone knows tptacek is woke af. What I find funny is just a few weeks ago he was posting that he had the end all be all answer to everyones' hiring and now in this post he's saying it didn't work and he was happy to walk away from it. All that said, everything Dan Luu said and quoted I agree with.

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of whom you're attacking. We've had to warn you about this before. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#394

Post by perl4ever »

dkhenry wrote: post #238
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overwhelming evidence? For such claims, citations are generally requires, or is the evidence all anecdata? > Something like 95% of people with CS degrees can't do any of the things you listed there. Again, I don’t think this is born out at all. Yes, a lot of people fail or answer that LeetCode question with that special trick solution in 45 minutes, but we don’t really have any quick tests to gauge actual ability in…

I am only aware of one study that found it was actually 97% of full time engineers couldn't write code[1], but I don't think that was a very rigorous study. The best evidence would be the very well known blog post by Jeff Atwood [2] or this article on c2[3]. Also you don't need to ask LeetCode questions, simple for loops can throw most people off, that I know from anecdata. 1. https://www.gadgetsnow.com/jobs/95-engin…

97% of everyone knows that 97% of everyone is incompetent. But not the other 97% which includes you and me.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#395

Post by _bxg1 »

My diagnosis is that almost nobody knows how to hire programmers. Recruiters don't know how to hire programmers. MBAs certainly don't know how to hire programmers. Even many programmers don't know how to hire programmers. Good programming sense is an art, and it's really hard to evaluate it in someone else without truly grasping it yourself.

So in the absence of real criteria, like a poorly-trained ML model everyone just latches on to superficial signifiers that have worked out in the past, and that local maximum probably gives them slightly-better-than-random outcomes, even if it's far below what it could be.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#396

Post by marcus_holmes »

anarchodev wrote: post #251
marcus_holmes wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally can't code in the evening if I've been doing it all day. I have to be creative in other ways (sketching, blacksmithing, leatherwork, bookbinding, even minecraft has worked for this). All my side projects have been done between gigs when freelancing, or while working in management roles where I can code as a creative outlet in the evenings because I haven't been coding all day. I'm always slightly suspicio…

This isn't a popular sentiment on HN but a lot of software jobs (even at trendy fast-moving startups) are a form of busywork. Once you get to a certain number of devs, accountability slides and it's entirely possible you'll have nothing to work on. Meetings are dominated by more senior-level devs whose work is important, and so management quotas are the only reason you're even still around. How you react to this depe…

I think you might be right. I've been in those positions, too. And yeah, I could code in the evenings then, because I'd basically done all my actual work by about midday (and then spent 5 hours twiddling my thumbs and looking busy while wondering why I was wasting my life on this shit). But I never lasted long in those positions, I was too obviously unhappy.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#397

Post by pmiller2 »

hyperpape wrote: post #154
plughs wrote: post #45

One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…

You may enjoy a tweet of Dan's, where he says his open source code has been completely irrelevant in most of his interviews: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/806222862663053312 . Lest you think he's just a superstar who doesn't care about interviews, he says he's quite bad at them https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1058029337923014656

Re: the second tweet

I managed to fail 11 or 12 onsites in a row over a 5 month period before landing my current job.

What I’d like to know is who these people they talk about later in that same thread who interview somewhere every month. Do people really do that? I’m wondering if _I_ should start doing that.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#398

Post by skrebbel »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #99
asdfman123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a C# developer at what I think is a really good dev environment. Tons of smart people here and we're highly productive. I like C# and I honestly feel boring software is better. I can't get behind chasing the latest trends. Why should I learn Node instead? Does writing backend Javascript mean you're a better developer?

My problem with C# server development until recently has been the reliance on visual studio. A lot of configurations need to be done through VS and lead to the creation of config files that cannot be edited or read outside of VS. And a lot of the “magic” in the .Net server technologies mean that when things go wrong, there’s almost nothing you can do other than raise a ticket with MS, but you end up spending a lot of…

I ran the tech team at a startup around 2014 and we had a C# stack with almost no visual studio. Most people were on mac or Linux and used MonoDevelop. We ran it on Mono in docker containers (which was brand new those days) on Linux VPSes.

Truth is, for a long time already, C# has been a decent boring cross-platform language. The only reason people refused to use it was hype and stigma. There was no deep rational reason.

Sure, mono was slower than .net-on-windows at the time (.net core fixed this), but it was still way faster than the then-default Rails setup.

Whenever I told people about our setup at eg tech events they got very confused. Some dismissed me as a moron but to be honest most people were just surprised you could run a cross platform C# devteam and deploy to Linux. People simply didn't seem to know this was possible. That's been some pretty bad marketing in Microsoft's part.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#399

Post by exolymph »

eggsnbacon1 wrote: post #121
malvosenior wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses Github and OSS contribution as a strong hiring signal, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. People who do a lot of personal projects tend to be very good developers, especially when you can see a demonstrated ability to ship. This is also helpful for people who haven't worked at big name companies or don't have degrees from elite universities. I'd happily hire someone with no experience a…

This is a stupid signal. Many/most developers are prohibited from working on open source projects by their employers. In any state besides California and Illinois you will be forced to sign an IP assignment agreement to work for any medium/large companies. Open source projects will not let you contribute under such an agreement, and anything you do on your own is owned by your employer.

What he's telling you is that he'd rather accept false negatives than false positives. That's the hiring mindset, because getting rid of someone bad is difficult and costly.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#400

Post by bsder »

MS90 wrote: post #328
bsder wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I really wouldn't quote James Hetfield as a bastion of "tolerance", thanks. 2) Lots of old Metallica metal fans will regale you at length about how Metallica sold out to Redneck America(tm) in return for lots and lots of cash. So, lots of this kind of stuff is suspect as to whether it is genuine vs planned marketing. 3) "But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County." Erm, actually James I k…

Just passing along a quote that I heard, nothing more. As for your first point, he's put up with Lars Ulrich for almost 40 years now. If that's not tolerance I don't know what is. For point 2, decrying a large portion of the country as "Redneck America(tm)" sounds like the exact type of thing Hetfield is talking about, the same as your dismissive "thanks" at the end of point 1. They sold out with the black album in 9…

> For point 2, decrying a large portion of the country as "Redneck America(tm)" sounds like the exact type of thing Hetfield is talking about

This comes from the fan reaction directly to "Load", specifically. A GREAT deal of Metallica's then-current fanbase was incredibly pissed off.

Metallica, I am sure, cried all the way to the bank. I am reminded of Neal Schon from Journey (paraphrased): "Everybody says we sold out. We played prog rock for how long and where did it get us? We write a couple pop ballads and suddenly we're drowning in money and swimming in women. Did we sell out? Damn straight we did and I have nothing to apologize for."

And maybe James Hetfield really believes what he is saying, and maybe he doesn't. For the amount of money he gets paid, you could get me to say quite lot--some of which I might even believe after a while.

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but the successful people in the music business all understand that they are in the business, first, of making music, second. So, I'm going to regard any "public persona" through the lens of being a carefully crafted marketing construct.

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