We only hire the trendiest • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#401

Post by gtolle » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #96

dunkelheit wrote: post #78

I see wonderful symmetry here. There are TrendyCos (hot startup unicorns), BigCos (established companies like google or amazon or microsoft) and UnknownCos (not in the limelight so there is not much information about them). Likewise there are TrendyDevs (hotshots who produce one heavily github-starred framework after another), BigCoDevs (multiple years of experience at one of the BigCos, probably were responsible for…

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…

I love this approach. I'm also wondering what you think about giving well-designed work-sample tests over Google Hangout instead.

The candidate shares their screen with you, so you can watch as they solve the problem in their own dev environment. You can understand how they approach problems (quick and dirty, slow and methodical, lots of rewriting, etc), and you can ask questions at the end. You get a good sense for how they work as an engineer even before having to bring them onsite.

This seems to resolve the time asymmetry of take-home tests as well -- the interviewer spends as much time watching as the candidate spends working.

The only downside I can see is that you have to design your problems to take about an hour instead of the 2-5 hours you could imagine for a take-home test. But, you can break them up into multiple rounds, and give additional exercises to the candidates who do well on the first one, for no more total time cost than a collection of onsite interviews.

For what it's worth, I've done this at my startup and hired a great developer, and got very positive feedback about the process from the candidates I didn't end up hiring.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#402

Post by Arainach » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:02 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…

>- desire to grow -- does this person have clear career growth goals. Ideally these are not tied to titles or bossing others around, which are negatives.

Can you give an example of what you WOULD like to see here? There's some selection bias among the kinds of developers who tend to hang out on online technical communities and learn new things, but what IS the right long term goal, and how is this different from "desire to ship"? Sure, I'd like to work on meaningful projects and have enough breadth and depth of knowledge to design and contribute in a meaningful way in them, but if we're being totally honest my career goals are absolutely "make enough money to pay the mortgage, go on the occasional vacation, and save for retirement". I'm not in this to be a rock star who works 100 hours a week for the chance to be a multimillionaire, and I'm not in this to achieve fame in the developer community. I'm in it to get a paycheck doing work that is intellectually stimulating while still having enough free time to do things OTHER than work, but it's long been obvious that you're not allowed to say that in a job interview, so what ARE you looking for people to say?

To put it another way, in the title terms you don't want to discuss, I have no desire to be a principle architect or C*O. I'm perfectly content being a good-to-great senior-level engineer who's a solid team contributor if not in control of everything. I'm on board with your other qualifications - continual learning, adapting, and gaining exposure to new technologies is great - but is there a limit to career growth? Based simply on number of positions in existence, it's impossible for everyone in the field to keep growing and advancing indefinitely.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#403

Post by SonicSoul » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:08 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…

these are all great traits, but how do you determine them in an interview? for example openness. Everyone will say they are open and interested to new ideas, maybe accept few odd cases. how do you test for rationality? do you wait to catch them on something and keep drilling until they admit defeat?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#404

Post by branchless » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

digler999 wrote: post #362

p4wnc6 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustrating part is that even when this is brought up and openly described and discussed explicitly in the context of working towards a better and healthier hiring practice, manager and HR types still insist on the cargo cult nonsense. It goes further than just an inefficient heuristic or biases. It becomes codified, even venerated, standard practice, and gains an air of certified approval up the corporate ladder…

I can see HR's desire to follow some sort of procedure though. If you let any manager hire anyway they so desire, it could open the company up to discriminatory hiring practices. By having a codified (if ineffective ) "procedure", they can use this as a defense in a lawsuit and say "look, see ? Everyone gets hired the same way at this company, and the plaintiff was subjected to the exact same scrutiny as everyone els…

I think most people in middle management, especially HR, are looking for "plausible deniability". They want their actions to appear defensive enough to keep their job. So don't hire self-taught, always demand a degree. Follow "industry standard" hiring practices. etc.

They don't understand tech and they don't need to. If something goes wrong they need to be able to demonstrate it's not their fault.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#405

Post by elipsey » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:11 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…

>> - poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness?

By nature I am pretty open, and not especially competitive. While my credentials are not great, I have been praised by certain mentors for other desirable attributes in this list: open mindedness, humility, pragmatism, adaptability, willingness to collaborate, and “growth mindset.”

The problem with these attitudes is that they can work to your disadvantage around non-technical authority figures.

For example, a little while ago I was invited to meeting with possible collaborator in another department. After being introduced, I asked few general questions about his project. He probed for clarification until I finally said something he found technically wanting, and then made a great show of grandstanding at my expense in front of the group, but didn't answer the question. My (non-developer) boss was very impressed with him, but other employees that had to work with this guy were not as impressed. I wasn't invited back, although maybe that was good thing.

Obviously it's not good to seem evasive in interviews, but in general I have had to learn the hard way that not everyone at work wants to be my friend.

How do others here deal with this sort problem?

Edit: I guess I'm not sure how far I have to go in the direction of measured answers before it might seem evasive in an interview. Because of these experiences, I'm probably inclined to give more measured or carefully considered answers in general to people I don't know well. I'm not sure what degree of this sort of behavior will seem evasive. My last boss told me once that I was generally "very careful." Maybe that's a hint?

So what I mean to ask is: how do others calibrate their degree of openess to a given situation, in an interview or otherwise?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#406

Post by ArkyBeagle » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #205

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this takes far too long.

It saved us enormous amounts of time at Matasano. When we designed our work-sample rubric, our #1 concern was filtering out people who interviewed well and/or had great resumes but weren't worth a billable hour on a real project, but our #2 concern was interviewing faster and getting results back to candidates quickly. (We didn't discover the best reason to do work-samples --- discovering hidden talent --- until afte…

Aha! I sort of like that, then. Assuming of course that it actually does work.

Back when things were simpler, we had a multiple guess questionnaire that did the similar. For onsites, we then looked for evidence of rigor and thoroughness, the ability to estimate how much communication was required, had they deployed real systems?

You understand that it sounds like you "fixed" hiring, and so we're all sorta skeptical, right? If you could bottle that, there's your billion.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#407

Post by Cerium » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #378

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…

> - rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully. I think this is a super important characteristic for a great employee to have, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect to see much of it in an interview. In an interview setting, the candidate is…

At the company I work at when we interview we tend to ask tougher and tougher questions until the candidate either starts spouting BS or replies that they don't know. BS is a no-hire.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#408

Post by Futurebot » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

qmalzp wrote: post #218

jhwhite wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you are saying, but Stanford isn't an Ivy League school. :) But yes, I agree with everything you're saying.

I propose "Silicon League" to refer to {Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, CalTech, ...?}.

They're better lumped together as "elite" schools to avoid "that's not Ivy" arguments.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#409

Post by quantum_nerd » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

"When I started programming, I heard a lot about how programmers are down to earth, not like those elitist folks who have uniforms involving suits and ties. You can even wear t-shirts to work! But if you think programmers aren’t elitist, try wearing a suit and tie to an interview sometime. You’ll have to go above and beyond to prove that you’re not a bad cultural fit. We like to think that we’re different from all those industries that judge people based on appearance, but we do the same thing, only instead of saying that people are a bad fit because they don’t wear ties, we say they’re a bad fit because they do, and instead of saying people aren’t smart enough because they don’t have the right pedigree… wait, that’s exactly the same." --- that's his conclusion and that pretty much sums it up for me as a black junior developer from MidWest University who's looking for work now.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#410

Post by grandalf » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

Arainach wrote: post #402

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…

>- desire to grow -- does this person have clear career growth goals. Ideally these are not tied to titles or bossing others around, which are negatives. Can you give an example of what you WOULD like to see here? There's some selection bias among the kinds of developers who tend to hang out on online technical communities and learn new things, but what IS the right long term goal, and how is this different from "des…

Well, I ideally like to see some interests that are on the edge of the candidate's current skill-set which indicate that he/she is aware that technology is changing and that we must all plan ahead a bit to remain relevant and employable in 5 years. Not trend-tracking, but deepening and broadening the skill-set.