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We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

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Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#411

Post by malvosenior »

scarface74 wrote: post #409
malvosenior wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the beauty of it being published on Github. I can look at the project and see if it was just a `git push` of something meaningless or if it's actually well thought out and demonstrates ability.

That may show an ability to write software. But shipping and putting them on production servers is still different v

Shipping is different than deploying server-side code. Going from concept to execution is shipping, and it's what I look for in a candidate. Again, this has worked out very well for me. An added bonus is if you hire OSS contributors, they tend to attract more OSS contributors.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#412

Post by malvosenior »

plughs wrote: post #359
malvosenior wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about denying you employment. It's about hiring someone who can ship software. If someone has publicly shipped software and you can see that, they make for a good candidate. It seems reasonable to me that people who really love writing software and do it a lot would get jobs and be successful in the industry. I wouldn't judge them on their work/life balance, some people really do enjoy programming that much.

I find it strange to associate OSS contributions with 'shipping software'. I've shipped plenty of software. I've dealt with drop dead release dates, 5 nines HA requirements, production war rooms, and a product paid for and used by millions of people. Is 'shipping software' the same when there are no angry customers who can burn up the support line demanding refunds and threatening to leave 1 star reviews on amazon?

Being able to produce a solution to a problem where one didn't exist before is "shipping". I've never regretted hiring someone who has multiple projects they've created from scratch.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#413

Post by LargeWu »

boring_twenties wrote: post #314
boring_twenties wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be happy to know I have nothing to do with hiring of any kind, but just as an individual contributor it seems quite unhealthy to me to work on a team where work is my #1 priority, but everyone else's distant second. I suspect you'd find it quite ridiculous to have to pick up my slack as I have to run at 5pm to practice with my bandmates, at least if you weren't paid correspondingly more for the extra effort. C…

Not sure what the proper way to respond to a deeply nested comment around here is, but @scarface74: Company A will pay me $400k/yr, but only if I make work my top priority Company B will pay me $150k/yr, no matter what Please explain why it's "naive" to choose Company A. I don't need "ownership" in the company to profit from this. I don't see how the company's reaction to my death factors into the decision at all.

That's a legitimate tradeoff, which may or may not be worth it to everyone.

But that's not even close to the situation most developers are in. Most are getting paid somewhere around an average salary, maybe with a few probably-worthless stock options, and they're getting asked to sacrifice their personal time working for free to make founders rich. Working extra hard isn't likely to advance their career at all; it just gives them a reputation as somebody who is willing to take abuse.

If you're in a situation to make a crazy good salary by working hard, by all means, do that if you want. But understand that situation is very rare. And even if you're getting that deal, the person sitting next to you might not be in the same boat.

Working hard to make other people rich is a sucker's bet, akin to playing a slot machine. For a rare few, it pays off big. For a somewhat larger cohort, there's a modest payoff. For the large majority, it's just wasting their career and their time.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#414

Post by bigred100 »

ritchiea wrote: post #89
throwaway444010 wrote: post #15

> When I've compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine. I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correla…

A professor in my social circle has taught at various schools across North America including Harvard, University of Toronto and a few prominent USA state schools. He says in his experience there's no difference between the intellect and quality of work he sees at the schools he's taught at but the Harvard students are more ambitious and more entitled. In my own personal experience Harvard, Princeton, Stanford types o…

Something I did as I did when younger that annoyed more ambitious friends: go to Wikipedia and find the incoming freshman class size for the top schools (say Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT). Add them together. Now look up the number of high schools in the US and assume there’s 1 valedictorian per school. There just aren’t enough spots to even fit them.

Now complicate things more: all the elite high schools like Groton or something are gonna be sending way more than their top 1 student to these programs.

My conclusion was that it frankly doesn’t matter how much you compete with your personal classmates unless you have some other angle.

However outcompeting your classmates might get you a full scholarship to the state flagship, which is actually massive if you don’t use it completely imprudently.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#415

Post by natalyarostova »

scarface74 wrote: post #408
natalyarostova wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is about trade-offs. If you want to spend more time outside of work on things like friends and family, that's great. In fact, it's probably optimal. But to then say it's discrimination when someone who has made the choice to instead only focus on their technical skill, at the exclusion of friends and family, is better than you, is a little silly.

If you’re spending 40+ hours a week at work and not being able to “focus on your technical skills”, you’re doing it wrong.

No one at work is going to let me learn Lisp :)

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#416

Post by scarface74 »

natalyarostova wrote: post #415
scarface74 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re spending 40+ hours a week at work and not being able to “focus on your technical skills”, you’re doing it wrong.

No one at work is going to let me learn Lisp :)

But if the purpose of doing side projects is to be more competitive in the job market, are there that many high paying jobs that want Lisp?

Besides, in my experience, knowing a specific technology from doing side projects usually doesn’t count as much to potential employees as having on the job experience unless your open source project is really popular.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#417

Post by malvosenior »

scarface74 wrote: post #416
natalyarostova wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one at work is going to let me learn Lisp :)

But if the purpose of doing side projects is to be more competitive in the job market, are there that many high paying jobs that want Lisp? Besides, in my experience, knowing a specific technology from doing side projects usually doesn’t count as much to potential employees as having on the job experience unless your open source project is really popular.

I would view any Lisp project as a major bonus in favor of a candidate. It's really encouraging when you see people who have an interest in different programming languages. When I look at people's open source, being a polyglot is a huge plus. Each language offers a unique perspective on programming and the desire to explore them is a strong signal of a self-learner and someone who is passionate about tech.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#418

Post by perl4ever »

leetrout wrote: post #404
perl4ever wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't expect that working on your own time is automatically considered to be your employer's property anywhere. But some (Fortune 500) companies absolutely do require everyone to sign an agreement that everything you create 24 hrs a day until you leave the job, belongs to them.

I would be willing to sign that for $250,000 or more a year outside the California markets. I had an offer from a game company that went through my list of disclosures and said I would have to report my potential book royalties to them (why? Dunno) and that I could not continue to work for the local university. I was dumbfounded. I explained upfront in the interview I worked 5-10 hours for the school and the recruite…

"I suspect most people done have the privilege of paying $300-1000 to have their contracts reviewed / red lined"

I mean, I've never had a six-figure job, but I could pay that much to have a contract reviewed, if there was a point. But I don't think there is a point, because unless I literally had a bidding war going on for my services, I'd have zero leverage.

A few years back, I thought I'd figured out how to negotiate, because I tried a method when buying a car that worked very well. But it completely failed when negotiating a salary, because tying someone in knots and exposing their BS, no matter how politely, has no value whatsoever when you don't have an immediate alternative. If you're trying to buy a new car and there are several dealers in town with the same one, that's completely different from having a single job offer outstanding.

I've learned in my personal life too, it doesn't matter how inescapable your logic is, if you don't have any leverage and the other person is willing to jettison logic, it's irrelevant.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#419

Post by wool_gather »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #147
wool_gather wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a way to wordsmith an expectation like that into the post. Off the top of my head, you could include a bullet along the lines of - Responsible for advocating for the team's needs in liaison with vendors Although doing so kind of points out the fundamental problem: that you probably shouldn't expect a data nerd to do this. Ideally you'd have an account manager of some kind with just enough technical und…

Yes the reason we decided not to include that in the post is that it wouldn't account for very much of the person's time, but it could absolutely produce a hang up if handled incorrectly. We could also have had an account manager to handle this but they would really just have been forwarding technical specifications from the analyst, and wouldn't have much work to do.

Tough position to be in, for sure.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#420

Post by Baltonwilliam »

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