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

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

#531

Post by CydeWeys »

cableshaft wrote: post #267
deepGem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have the option of taking the test in Java, C++ or Python. I hadn't heard of the C# option. Thank you for mentioning the same.

At my in-person interview at Google, they told me I could use whatever I felt most comfortable with, which at that point in time was Objective-C. In retrospect it was a terrible idea. That language is stupid verbose, and I ran out of whiteboard for every single question I had there. They were mainly interested in me for iOS development though. They did not give me an offer, although I don't think it was for that reas…

It's definitely true that some languages are better than others, because the types of problem and time limitations are the same regardless of the language chosen. Lower level languages tend to be worse because they take longer and there's more ways to trip yourself up.

Personally, I think that C# is the ideal language for interviewing in, as the .NET standard library is very powerful. SortedDictionary alone can easily polish off entire classes of interview questions, and the same can be said for pretty simply LINQ statements. I actually solved one problem so trivially using a combination of the right data structure and LINQ that the interviewer asked me to provide an alternate imperative implementation of the LINQ statement, just so he could see that I actually knew how to implement something like that rather than just use it.

You can approach similar levels of power with use of Java 8's Streams APIs and a good collections library like Guava, but Guava is only likely to be understood by a majority of interviewers at Google, whereas the C# standard library should be understood by a majority of C# interviewers everywhere.

It's absolutely worth spending a few hours brushing up on a "better" interviewing language and then using that rather than using a less optimal language just because it happens to be all you've used recently.

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

#532

Post by lynnetye »

teen wrote: post #526
lynnetye wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say divisive things. This will allow job-seeke…

> This will allow job-seekers to self-filter ?? The problem is not employers casting a wide net, but everyone applying for the job.

There are two problems:

For employers, it's casting a wide net and then struggling to filter out "noise" quickly. Employers will use pass on great engineers and interview not-so great ones (see parent comment). Instead of saying, "Work for us, we're the best!" why don't engineering teams say, "We prioritize speed over quality, are great for individual contributors, and prefer asynchronous comms over lots of meetings. Work for us if this sounds like you."

For job-seekers, the problem is applying to dozens to companies that you don't even want to work for (and just don't know it yet). If I value quality over speed, prefer working in teams rather than independently, and believe in-person meetings are incredibly valuable, then I would know not to even both applying to the company above.

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

#533

Post by kafkaesq »

lynnetye wrote: post #509
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'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say divisive things. This will allow job-seeke…

I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly.

What's to be confused about?

They don't give a fuck - about you, or your time.

Why? Because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that there's no business incentive for them to do so.

Either way... if they leave you dangling, or make you answer just a few silly questions too many, and/or sign up for (nearly) unlimited numbers of whiteboarding or hacker ranks sessions, or "take-home projects" they never (or at best only barely) look at, it's because... look, do you think these people have time to think about what they're doing, let alone how it affects the time and patience of those candidates they don't necessarily want to hire... or even, in some abstract sense, their long-term reputation as a company that makes at least some kind of effort to create a not entirely-unpleasant interview process?

Of course not. It's much easier to just throw shit at the wall -- or as it were, at the whiteboard -- and see what sticks.

So that's what they do.

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

#534

Post by pjmlp »

aetherson wrote: post #508
hyperpape wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even disagree with this. It's just also an admission that you don't hire the best. We can argue about whether there are 10x developers or not, but it doesn't matter for this discussion. If you assume that a developer is going to be with you for a year or more, then it starts to be worth a week or more of your (collective) time to improve the expected productivity of the people you hire by 10%. Not 2x, not 10x…

If you have 100 candidates for a job, then doing a half-hour phone screen for all 100 of them is 50 hours of work -- a bit more than one whole work-week. And if you're committed to not missing a candidate who might be really good but your heuristics would lead to a false negative on, how much does a half-hour phone screen really tell you? I mean, can you really reject more than half of the candidates based on a half-…

The first round of filtering is one of the jobs HR is supposed to do.

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

#535

Post by mrkurt »

baddox wrote: post #287
mrkurt wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually just append "... for the position" when you see "we only hire the best".

Or really, “we only hire the best given all our criteria and constraints.” Then it’s solidly in the realm of tautology.

Not all criteria is binary, though. It's perfectly reasonable to say that "we hire the best for our given criteria". And probably more honest than most job promos. In fact, most meaningful criteria _isn't_ binary.

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

#536

Post by lynnetye »

lr4444lr wrote: post #528
lynnetye wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say divisive things. This will allow job-seeke…

> Be honest. Say divisive things ... get sued or prosecuted by the EEOC. There are reasons things are stated in a certain way and the net has to be cast wider than necessary. First fix the landscape of U.S. labor law, and then a discussion of efficiency and values can be productive

Mmmm not quite sure what you're thinking of, but I'm talking about starting w/ baby steps.

"Do exciting work that has real impact, learn a lot, and have fun doing it."

Do you know how many companies say that on their job descriptions?! All of them.

Here are some examples of being (mildly) divisive and using strong language:

- "We consider it a disqualifier if a candidate does not value our mission to grow and sustain local food systems" (Good Eggs)

- "All of our communications are out in the open, and we have a rule that you cannot send emails to a fellow Remixer and instead must communicate over Slack where everyone can see. (Emails are only used for people externally.)" (Remix)

- "We advocate that everyone leans towards releasing and reverting. It is better to revert small changes than to spend time perfecting code. While this might rub some people the wrong way, we believe that the best way to learn is by doing." (Amplitude)

All of these things will either resonate w/ an individual and make them really excited about applying/joining, or turn them off because it doesn't quite align w/ their personal values/preferences/goals.

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

#537

Post by jedrek »

lr4444lr wrote: post #528
lynnetye wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say divisive things. This will allow job-seeke…

> Be honest. Say divisive things ... get sued or prosecuted by the EEOC. There are reasons things are stated in a certain way and the net has to be cast wider than necessary. First fix the landscape of U.S. labor law, and then a discussion of efficiency and values can be productive

I think they mean stuff like, "If you want the latest and greatest framework, you won't find it here. We use spaces and not tabs. Our stack is locked down."

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

#538

Post by throwayit »

compumike wrote: post #472
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 t…

If these heuristics are terrible, shouldn't these companies just throw away applications at random? At least this way you don't delude yourself in believing your heuristics are rational.

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

#539

Post by rhplus »

kccqzy wrote: post #421
smcl wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you determine that? I wrote mine in LaTeX but submit a PDF. Usually that default LaTeX font is a dead giveaway, but I find it to be pretty ugly so I switched it out.

It’s part of the metadata. Look for content creator and PDF producer fields. Or even more simply, just use your eyes. The superior line breaking algorithm is extremely obvious, with or without microtype. Then less obviously, look at ligatures, kerning etc.

The internal HR tools at some BigCo's may convert your PDF to plain text, so it's possible that a hiring manager will never even see your superior formatting. The interview tracking system at Amazon was doing this at couple of years back.

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

#540

Post by cwyers »

lynnetye wrote: post #509
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'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say divisive things. This will allow job-seeke…

Applicants do not self-filter. If you've ever read resumes for a job listing that haven't been prescreened, you'll be blown away by how many people refuse to self-filter even for basic fitness for the job. Put out a job listing asking for a college degree, and you'll get applicants who are still in school with their graduation date two years in the future looking for an internship. That's an extreme, but people will apply for jobs they are very much not fit for. Frustrated job seekers will often submit things under the assumption that "the worst they can do is tell me no" (they're not wrong). If someone is receiving unemployment benefits, they may have to apply to X number of jobs every week/month in order to qualify. The incentive of the applicant is to apply to as many jobs as possible and get one.
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