Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 653 posts

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#471

Post by sbuttgereit »

derefr wrote: post #439
sbuttgereit wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there probably is a tech shortage in terms of strong candidates. I've worked with some companies where there are people that are employed as "developers", but they can't tell you the simplest of basics; I don't consider myself a developer, yet my meager knowledge and understanding far exceeds the skills of some of these people. I see more of these types than you'd think could survive for long (much of my work…

> I've worked with some companies where there are people that are employed as "developers", but they can't tell you the simplest of basics; I don't consider myself a developer, yet my meager knowledge and understanding far exceeds the skills of some of these people. Hypothesis: these people might not have knowledge, but they're very willing to schlep, and so—with enough effort and iteration—they can take a plan and t…

Sure. I would agree, though at some point this approach runs out of steam. Larger problems tend to lead to failure and the technical debt eventually demands to be paid. A not insignificant portion of my work comes from sorting out the messes when such failures happens; I have a solid understanding of the business domains and the application types (I basically have a good product management type knowledge, what the applications -should- do).

The other side of this is that, at this level of developer, these are exactly the positions where offshoring makes sense. If you're going to get people whose primary talent is a willingness to schlep just adequately enough to be employable... well, I can find those kinds all over the world, and can probably do better in the skills category, for much less cash. So if I'm looking for domestic (I'm in the US) technical talent, I'm usually looking for those that are worth the higher pay commanded in the US... which means I am absolutely trying to sort out the schlepers for the most part. Naturally, offshoring has its own difficulties regardless of why you're doing it; so there are times when schleppers (I like that term :-) ) are sufficient, but at some point that strategy changes (growth, etc.)

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#472

Post by compumike »

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

(Disclosure: I'm one of the engineers and technical interviewers at Triplebyte.)

This comment is spot on: most companies are forced to create cheap heuristics for filtering engineering applicants, and most of these quick-to-evaluate rules will have surprisingly high false positive and false negative rates. You'll miss out on great engineers you auto-reject, and spend hours interviewing people you shouldn't.

Part of the reason for unfairness is that everyone doing hiring is creating these heuristics independently.

Better filters are possible -- we've found that it's even better when you avoid resumes entirely and go background-blind! But these are no longer simple "if typos >= 2 then reject" or "if GPA > 3.x" heuristics, and are of sufficient complexity that they're beyond the scope of each individual company or hiring manager to develop independently.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#473

Post by gugagore »

flamedoge wrote: post #456
gugagore wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "simple" is a matter of opinion, but in this case I think your opinion is pretty incorrect. The fact that the "rules" vary with region, generation, level of formality, and so on seems to fly in the face of your claim. Not to mention, most native speakers may speak correctly but cannot articulate a correct list of rules.

What I referred to with 'rules of the language' was the national standard version of the language. Those are publicly well known and promoted by a majority body. I argue that these rules are much easier to learn than rules of dialects.

First of all, in numerous cases, the "national standard" (whatever that means) dialect is not the dialect spoken by the majority.

Can you give an example of rules of "standard English" being easier to learn than some rule of non-standard English?

Also note that English as far as I know doesn't even have an official codification of its rules and usage: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#474

Post by citizens »

austincheney wrote: post #441
beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

I don't like resumes as 98% of each is probably bullshit unless the candidate is a truly amazing rockstar with 10+ years of valid experience. As a result any heuristic applied to resumes is just as worthless as most candidates. When I have interviewed in the past I literally stopped reading once I see contact information and save reading it for during the interview. If the contact information is not the first thing o…

You've mentioned several ways to reduce the number of candidates that you consider for each role, but I don't see how any of it leads to better quality hires.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#475

Post by einarfd »

beat wrote: post #431
einarfd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consider it evidence of carelessness - I don't care if you can't spell, but I do care if you don't bother to run it past someone else who can for editing. Getting someone to look over your stuff and looking for spelling errors sounds like a simple and easy fix doesn’t it? But in my experience that doesn't work as well as one would think, prof reading is a lot harder than it looks. After all it's isn't enough to c…

To be clear here - being a poor speller, due to dyslexia or any other reason, is not the problem. But if you know you are a poor speller, you should have someone who is a good speller edit your resume, looking for spelling errors. If you know a misspelled resume can cost you a job, and you don't take additional steps to make sure it's spelled correctly, that's careless.

As I said earlier, getting someone to prof read your text, and catch all the problems is not as easy as you would think. Nor is getting a spell checker to catch all your errors.

I have to admit I thought I was done with getting graded on spelling in high school. I haven't seen anything on either side of the fence, in my carer to indicate that some spelling mistakes is enough to cost people an opportunity. But I'm sure your right and there are companies out there that does that. But I don't need to work in every company, only the good ones. So it hasn't been a problem for me so far.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#476

Post by skellington »

Klockan wrote: post #333
hpcjoe wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you and your friends weren't fluent enough with algorithms. That is the point, they don't care about all of your degrees, years of experience, conferences etc, they care about your fluency with maths and algorithms. I didn't fail those portions. Actually did quite well on them. So did my friends. You are making a number of invalid assumptions, starting from the assumption that their processes are fundamentally…

> I didn't fail those portions. Actually did quite well on them. So did my friends. Then I don't see your point, what are you saying caused you to fail? I have a physics degree from an unknown school, learned to code in my thirties and got a job at Google by just doing well at their algorithms and maths questions so it is definitely possible to get in without ticking any of the hip boxes.

His point is that Google's and everyone else's hiring process is subject to large amounts of randomness and capriciousness. Google themselves have at various times mentioned how their hiring scores don't strongly correlate to performance.

Don't feel because you got in that you are some ordained snowflake. If you had interviewed on another day or with another group within Google you very possibly wouldn't have gotten in.

There are many variables at work when it comes to getting hired and hiring.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#477

Post by user5994461 »

einarfd wrote: post #475
beat wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear here - being a poor speller, due to dyslexia or any other reason, is not the problem. But if you know you are a poor speller, you should have someone who is a good speller edit your resume, looking for spelling errors. If you know a misspelled resume can cost you a job, and you don't take additional steps to make sure it's spelled correctly, that's careless.

As I said earlier, getting someone to prof read your text, and catch all the problems is not as easy as you would think. Nor is getting a spell checker to catch all your errors. I have to admit I thought I was done with getting graded on spelling in high school. I haven't seen anything on either side of the fence, in my carer to indicate that some spelling mistakes is enough to cost people an opportunity. But I'm sur…

>>> As I said earlier, getting someone to prof read your text, and catch all the problems is not as easy as you would think.

Careless and bad at collaboration. Noted.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#478

Post by jdgiese »

mikeash wrote: post #462
beat wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear here - being a poor speller, due to dyslexia or any other reason, is not the problem. But if you know you are a poor speller, you should have someone who is a good speller edit your resume, looking for spelling errors. If you know a misspelled resume can cost you a job, and you don't take additional steps to make sure it's spelled correctly, that's careless.

Isn't that rather circular? You need to ensure you don't have spelling mistakes, otherwise that indicates carelessness because it could cost you a job. Why would it cost you a non-spelling-related job? Because it indicates carelessness! If we criticize job applicants for mistakes which are unrelated to their field, why shouldn't we do the same for employers? Rejecting applicants for spelling mistakes is not in and of…

> but it indicates carelessness in the hiring process

Perhaps we are using the word careless differently, but I don't see how using heuristics like this implies carelessness on behalf of the employer. If anything, it seems to indicate that the employer is making a well-reasoned choice to balance economic constraints with company values.

I run a small software consulting firm and have now hired three people (not too many). I believe that attention to detail and pride in how you present yourself, either via your resume or your code quality, is essential. For this reason, I think applicants should spell-check their resume (or use Grammarly).

In fact, we even mention this in our company values page:

> We value correct grammar and a strong grasp of the English language.

> We write with a clear and professional tone in our external communication.

> We try not to send vague or confusing emails.

> We invest in improving our writing, presentation, and conversational skills.

http://innolitics.com/about/#communicate-clearly

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#479

Post by gnopgnip »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #453
stult wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prof is in the pudding.

Speaking of correctness... This has always bothered me because I grew up understanding the correct phrase to be "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" and assumed that the shorter form arose because of people who simply didn't know what it really meant. So I googled it and it turns out that the short form, "the proof is in the pudding," has been around since the 1920's ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_proof_…

Most idioms don't make sense when taken literally. There is an understood meaning beyond the literal words. Monkey business, pull the wool over your eyes, cost an arm and a leg, chip on his shoulder, break a leg, raining cats and dogs.
Post reply on HN