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IRC as a Hiring Filter
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#42Another proposed hiring metric that is likely to favor the stereotypical coding-since-childhood male developer. IRC channels are often just as bad if not worse than mailing lists when it comes to providing a welcoming space for minorities.
I had a similar thought - also, what if the person is just graduating? I know IRC is still around, but I don't think it's nearly as widely known or used as it was back in the 90s and early 2000s.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#43I'm very technical, I've written hacks for online games, boot loaders, my own micro-operating system, accounting software, http servers. I've written patches for snort (the ids, not public) and a ton of other stuff. Yet I'm not on irc, I'd be a hire you'd miss if you used irc as a screening filter. > "and I have actually decided not to work with specific developers before in a professional setting because they litera…
" very technical person has never seen it before and has trouble with the irc commands " technical person having trouble with the irc commands - isn't that oxymoron?
[deleted]
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
" very technical person has never seen it before and has trouble with the irc commands " technical person having trouble with the irc commands - isn't that oxymoron?
No. If you don't use it regularly, there's a lot of commands to learn. It's not hard per se, but I wouldn't want to be judged on it within a few minutes of being introduced to it.
And a third:
/ignore #room-name JOINS PARTS QUITS
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#45Pretty ridiculous. Aren't we having problems finding candidates? Why care if they use the most leet irc client or write irc bots? Recruiting people you find on irc in coding related channels I'm all for that. But it doesn't scale obviously.
Yes, today "we can't find candidates" means usually "we can't find someone that fits our biased hiring filter determined by the personal preferences of the senior developer"
And yes, make senior people write FizzBuzz on a whiteboard, they find it thrilling.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#46I'm very technical, I've written hacks for online games, boot loaders, my own micro-operating system, accounting software, http servers. I've written patches for snort (the ids, not public) and a ton of other stuff. Yet I'm not on irc, I'd be a hire you'd miss if you used irc as a screening filter. > "and I have actually decided not to work with specific developers before in a professional setting because they litera…
" very technical person has never seen it before and has trouble with the irc commands " technical person having trouble with the irc commands - isn't that oxymoron?
Of course not, the breath of technology these days is huge. Knowledge of irc, a chat protocol that's been in decline since 2003 and perhaps used by about 400k people daily, is by no means indicative of technical skill.
Can you imagine that it'd be kind of hard to join to join a channel for your interview if you've never been told how or were granted the time to find out?
Sure it's popular in opensource/hackers/etc, but I'm sure that 'people who use irc' is a true subset of 'people who are technical' and not the other way around.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#47One (of the many) problems with using IRC as a signal is that it's biased towards people with large chunks of predictable free time. I spend a lot of time communicating with people online, but IRC isn't a channel I use. The problem is that I have a family that naturally consumes a lot of my time. That means I don't control when I'm available to communicate. I get a decent amount of total time, but it's in bits and pi…
Most people on IRC are in an "away mode". It works exactly like any other IM system. You don't have to be logged in 24/7.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#48Maybe 20 years ago.
If you gave someone time to figure it out, and they seemed unwilling or unable to figure out how to get on IRC, then yes, that'd indicate someone unwilling/unable to figure out a relatively simple tool.
But expecting them to already (or still) be IRC users today is a bit like expecting them to still spend lots of time on USENET.
Looking at the drastic decline in user numbers on the major IRC networks as numbers of internet users have skyrocketed should be enough to make it clear going by irc usage is likely to be a stupid idea.
Then again, I'm biased - I've not used IRC seriously for a decade at least, and did most of my IRC usage (including customizing irc-ii) about 20 years ago.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#49If the OP finds that knowing how to use IRC correlates well with the kind of people that the OP wants to hire, then I think it is reasonable to OP to test for basic IRC skills in their hiring process. For example, maybe IRC is the preferred communication medium during an emergency at OP's company, because it is more reliable than email or Skype when a data center goes down.
But as a general practice, I don't see why this would be more beneficial than presenting a candidate with a rotary telephone and telling them to make a phone call with it.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
" very technical person has never seen it before and has trouble with the irc commands " technical person having trouble with the irc commands - isn't that oxymoron?
No. If you don't use it regularly, there's a lot of commands to learn. It's not hard per se, but I wouldn't want to be judged on it within a few minutes of being introduced to it.
First of all there are just few command that you need to learn. and they are so easy and obvious that it's crazy. Second, it is an oxymoron, because if you claim that you are technical person, you should have no problem doing /help and reading the documentation. if you can't do that - you're not technical . Oxymoron.