We only hire the trendiest • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#681

Post by crzwdjk » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:26 PM UTC

gtolle wrote: post #401

tptacek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone who's had to do a few take home tests as well as coding with someone looking over my shoulder, I am definitely not a fan of the latter. I prefer to sit down and think about a problem, maybe even read it and let it sit in my head for a day or two before I actually start the coding. I also feel like shortening the time and making it synchronous would remove the opportunity to revise and polish the code I've written, which is one of the advantages of the take-home test format.

My ideal interview format would involve a work sample test, followed by a code review of said work sample, and also a reverse code review (candidate is given some code to review). As an added bonus, all of this can easily be done over email without wasting too much of anyone's time, especially compared to an all day in-person interview with lots of whiteboard time.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#682

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:30 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, ...?}.

As a Midwesterner from the heart of Big Ten territory, I am often disappointed that Carnegie-Mellon, Northwestern, Purdue, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio State, and Indiana are seldom mentioned in such lists, despite all of them being world-class schools for computer science. Sure, the Ivy Leaguers and Californians, and the closer-to-the-coast schools are remembered (except maybe Georgia Tech, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Penn State, or Johns Hopkins), but it's like the space between the Appalachians and the Rockies is one vast flyover wasteland not worthy of notice (or venture capital).

Rice, Texas A&M, and Texas at Austin are also ignored pretty often, but Texans can be offended on their own behalf without my help.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#683

Post by tryitnow » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:39 PM UTC

This is the problem with overfunded startups.

You have engineering managers in charge who are too inexperienced to really have a good instinct for talent. So they just throw all of their investor's capital at a very narrow range of candidates - basically people who remind them of themselves.

This will sort itself out. Companies like Google and Facebook will continue to bloat themselves up, just like almost every single conglomerate in the history of business. Their products quality will start to deteriorate because their cultures are more interested in status signifiers than they are in great work.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#684

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:58 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #563

A lot of businesses which are basically web sites don't need high-powered technical talent. They just need competent people who can make the thing go. This isn't new technology any more. Don't overcomplicate things. Soylent is looking for a software engineer.[1] Soylent, as someone figured out a few months back, does about two sales transactions a minute. They now have all of two products. They should be using some o…

And, of course, said engineer needs to relocate to Los Angeles.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#685

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #621

epalmer wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in an organization where we used behavioral interviewing techniques to get to the core of how someone operates. "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. If they resist answering the made mistakes questions we prompted them to understand that an honest answer is important. If they could not do that then they were not considered. These were not developer roles but most were very technical / anal…

> "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. These types of questions probably cause me more stress than any other. Being asked to think of a situation where you felt a certain emotion or had a certain mental experience is not actually that easy for everyone. My memory is terrible at that kind of thing. It's like my memory lacks a necessary index for what you are asking. I can start going through every m…

I have the same problem. I couldn't think of these things on the spot for the life of me. So awhile back I googled 'Top Personality Questions on an Interview" and filled out prompts for each question way in advance, and then I review it each time before right before I go into a an interview. Made the rest of the process much simpler.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#686

Post by mdpopescu » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #413

euroclydon wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say I could detect it in the hiring process -- far from it actually. I just said that I care about productivity, as a counter point to your claim that most companies do not care. I can't agree to disagree about being called a liar. Can you be more specific about which "buzzwords" cause you to doubt which of my claims?

I didn't mean to call you a liar. You might believe you are screening for and prioritizing productivity. I'm saying that I don't believe that's actually what the hiring process you're a part of is screening for, even if the people who comprise that process believe it. Obviously, this is just my prior opinion, a default, since I don't have special evidence. Regarding your comment, the most major issue is with that ter…

This is one wall of text that is absolutely worth reading.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#687

Post by serge2k » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

e15ctr0n wrote: post #588

argonaut wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's process consists essentially of 2 meetings - phone screen, and onsites. You don't get engaged to someone after the second or third date. It's not about hours spent, it's also about hours spent reflecting on the relationship.

So right here is the mysterious reason why perfectly qualified people don't get hired at Google - they didn't spend hours reflecting on the relationship !!!

Oh, so that's why.

Here I thought it was their high false negative rate. I should have known it wasn't the google process.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#688

Post by serge2k » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

argonaut wrote: post #582

emcq wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many selective companies have many phone screens and coding projects, plus hours of on site interviewing. Google's process notoriously takes months. Some companies interviews likely take 10+ hours all in all. That's more like 3rd date territory in terms of hours spent together, and plenty of time to evaluate a hire, not some one shot thing.

Google's process consists essentially of 2 meetings - phone screen, and onsites. You don't get engaged to someone after the second or third date. It's not about hours spent, it's also about hours spent reflecting on the relationship.

Google's process is absurdly slow.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#689

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #642

lfx wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

poker face - is super cultural thing, I work with several Asians, most of them (not all!) sits _with_ poker face whole day. It is kind of hard to read people and understand if they got it when I'm explaining something. They are not even nod or smile. I'm European and sometimes it is super frustrating to not receive any body lang feedback. But when we close office doors they starts to chat, nod, laugh and what not. On…

Fun fact: There is a word in Japanese -- aizuchi -- for "meaningless nothings which you say during a conversation to let the other party know that you're actively engaged in the conversation." Sitting with a stone face during a meeting in Japan would be very not normative. Your counterparty would assume that either you're totally checked out, repulsed by what is on offer, or so ridiculously above their social standin…

My experience with Japanese people (I used to work in a Japanese company and attended a lot of meetings in Japanese) listening to someone else in meetings is a lot of "Aaaa, sou sou sou sou. Sou desu. Wakarimashita. Hai. Wakarimashita. Mmmm. Mmm Mmm. Sou desu." I eventually did some of it myself. Seems like a lot of aizuchi to me :P

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#690

Post by curun1r » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

koevet wrote: post #110

"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Where does this come from? I actually see a contractor as someone who had experienced way more "war stories" than the guy who has been sitting in the same chair for 10/20 years. As a contractor, you are exposed to more technologies, more business sectors, different working cultures.

It comes from the incentive structure of the recruiter and says less about the potential hire.

Recruiters are often paid a commission for every one of their successful hires and that commission is often split between an immediate payment and a payment (or payments) when the hire hits specific milestones (6mo, 1 yr, etc). Recruiters don't like trying to fit contractors into non-contract roles because they're worried about the contractor leaving before the recruiter's remaining commission is paid. If that happens, the recruiter puts in just as much work and gets paid less. They'd rather discard those resumes that they consider to be riskier and focus all their time on people with a history of staying at least 2 years in every one of their jobs.