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We only hire the trendiest

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#701

Post by jacques_chester »

shawn-butler wrote: post #612
donw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hiring processes spend gigantic amounts of effort to see how a candidate works as a member of the team, without actually having the candidate... work as a member of the team. I suspect that the reason why, is that so few engineering teams do pair programming full-time, complete with daily-or-more rotations. Pairing gives you the ability to spin somebody up rapidly enough to see how well they do on real code, and…

Pivotal is the new Thoughtworks. Arrogant absurd process with no basis or evidence in reality. You either drink the kool-aid and march in line or you are "not with the program" Someone who will donate ten hours to an interview is someone that is "malleable" enough to be told how to think.

> Arrogant absurd process with no basis or evidence in reality.

Do you sell t-shirts? I would like to buy one.

In fairness, though, most people who decide to take an offer have self-selected. Malleability might be one reason. Another could openness to new experiences.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#702

Post by jacques_chester »

johnloeber wrote: post #424
donw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hiring processes spend gigantic amounts of effort to see how a candidate works as a member of the team, without actually having the candidate... work as a member of the team. I suspect that the reason why, is that so few engineering teams do pair programming full-time, complete with daily-or-more rotations. Pairing gives you the ability to spin somebody up rapidly enough to see how well they do on real code, and…

Pivotal forces you to sign an NDA for an interview? Won't this discourage some substantial fraction of applicants?

It does.

However candidates for Labs will see stuff our clients consider commercially sensitive (sometimes their mere existence is commercially sensitive), sometimes candidates for Cloud Foundry will see stuff that is commercially sensitive for Pivotal.

Mind you, I did a round of interviews a few years ago and everyone had an NDA at the door. I read them and none of them were silly, so I signed them.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#703

Post by jacques_chester »

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…

> If the company embraces a "full-stack" "we're lean so everyone wears many hats" attitude, it's an overt admission that the company couldn't give two shits about what you're actually capable of doing for them, and instead only cares that you do what they happen to tell you to do right now, even if it's hilariously underutilizing you or is hilariously inappropriate for someone with your particular skills, or is using in a way that fails to address critical business needs you've identified.

Another possibility is that the value of shared context and mutual learning is seen as desirable outcomes, on par with production outcomes.

I'm not saying specialisation is unnecessary. But it comes with costs of its own, so some overhead from wasting the specialist's time is worth it.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#705

Post by gearoidoc »

bobwaycott wrote: post #606
gearoidoc wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web developers don't need to know how a keyboard works. Nothing much more complex than key press down/up anyway.

Nobody was discussing how a keyboard works, but how the web works after you press return on the keyboard. And it's sad that too many web developers in general[1] seem to have the weakest understanding of such basic principles. [1] super-anecdotal self-selected data points from hiring and conversations

The parents parent comment discusses keyboard drivers. They wouldn't operate very well without them.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#706

Post by grappler »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #641
grappler wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to propose a better approach...

yeah I'm pretty sure that any approach I proposed, on a spur of the moment answer on an HN thread, without spending years of research and data analysis with a team of diverse experts in the field, would end up being a method to hire people who were more like me.

Not as if I had time to do that kind of research either :)

That'd probably always hold for some definition of "like me". However, my approach has resulted in thumbs ups for people different than me in ethnicity, age, gender, and career background, which should count for something I think.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#707

Post by aagha »

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, but I think you're missing something much more basic: commute time. All of the above are great, but if someone's commute time to work (and home again) are intolerable, they will not last.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#708

Post by abossy »

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…

How much time do you give candidates to complete their work samples? I'm curious whether work-sample tests filter out, say, parents with young children, in which a company with a 4-6 hour technical interview might be preferred over an unbound take-home assignment (in addition to the possibility of more interviews).

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#709

Post by nommm-nommm »

rmc wrote: post #658
grandalf wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about the possibility of bias creeping in. On the other hand, humans are biased, so understanding how to hire for success within your own (or your organization's) biases is useful. Some people would want the opposite candidate to the one I described. Resourcefulness is more of a mindset. New parent? OK, what have you discovered about childrearing that you didn't anticipate? What will you do differently next t…

Yikes! Asking about what they've learned as a parent is walking yourself into a nice big lawsuit. Don't do it! There is essentially no way to you can ask or solicit for information about their family status. Don't even go there.

Not only a lawsuit it's just totally inappropriate, invasive, and rude.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#710

Post by argonaut »

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 !!!

I realize you're trying to mock me, but you've totally failed because that's exactly my point. If your interview process consisted of a 6 month work trial period for every single candidate (and assuming no candidates dropped out), you would pretty much be able to detect nearly every single qualified person. Of course, this is not feasible in practice, so we settle for interviews.
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