I don't hire unlucky people • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#81

Post by roguecoder » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 9:57 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #49

plinkplonk wrote: post #26

I agree with every point Reginald makes but (and I am being nitpicky here) the form of the story - the seeming overtailored parable nature of it, of the kind you'd find in the Reader's Digest or a religious tract - rubs me ever so slightly the wrong way. I could have done without all the fake (or seemingly fake anyway) dialogue between the Wooster/Oscar etc and would have preferred a straightforward "This is what I(R…

The writing style reminded me a lot of the book "Leadership and self-deception" ( http://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-out-... ) in which a guy shows up at a new job and gets a day-long welcoming from the CEO, during which they slowly go through the idea of putting people in boxes and what to do about it. The ending of raganwald's post especially was similar in tone with "You belong here. We'll do…

It seems very common among books targeted at CEO-types ("Be The Hero" being the one I read lately). I don't know what it is about managers that means they like stories more than explication, but it seems to be common perception.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#82

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 9:57 PM UTC

terryk88a wrote: post #50

Heh. My wife was turned down for a product management position because she did not send a thank you note. She forgot because she was (we were) so excited about the position. The hiring manager went back to the recruiter asking for somebody else "just like" my wife. (Loved the conversational format. "Bertie Wooster" is an inspired choice for that style of hiring...)

How did your wife find this out?

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#83

Post by brazzy » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

DarkShikari wrote: post #10

This article is superb. We tried placing ads for ninjas, rock stars, and so on, but I discovered this was the cultural equivalent of advertising for white males who drink dry martinis. Not that white males who drink dry martinis can’t do the job, but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people. Either way, you end up with fewer r…

The article is almost completely useless.

It claims you shouldn't throw out resumes based on simple heuristics and stuff that only correlates with programming ability because there are so few people applying who are any good, but has exactly one sentence to say about how to then actually find those few people: "I grill them, hard, on actual programming and actual software development."

Right. Sure. Every single one of the 500 applicants. Good luck with that. Get back to me in 6 months.

It's nice in theory to be super-inclusive about everything except "actual programming", but almost completely divorced from reality.

It sounds like someone who, hearing about heuristic solutions to the traveling salesman problem responds that "I cannot possibly accept a solution that may not be 100% correct! It's the computer's job to give me a correct answer, and I'm damn well going to wait for it, no matter how long it takes! Exponential, schmexponential!"

Heuristics have their place. Something that strongly correlates with what you're looking for but is much easier to test for can be very, very useful.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#84

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

alphakappa wrote: post #69

cookiecaper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My ad scoring program deducts 5 points and transparently kills off ads that contain terms like "ninja" and "rock star" because to my mind they indicate a propensity for either abuse ("a rock star should be able to code this in three days!!") or fad-following ineptitude ("rock stars are the coolest kind of programmers, I must have them! also, we write EVERYTHING in Ruby, it's like the Mac of programming").

Your program would do the same for an advert that said something along the lines of "We don't care whether you are a ninja or a rock star"?

[deleted]

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#85

Post by mathetic » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 9:59 PM UTC

karamazov wrote: post #39

mathetic wrote: post #20

The article summarizes the difference between British and American college entrance system as well. When you apply for CS in Britain (and I'm talking about Oxbridge), they care only about your experience with computers and mathematics. However, in HYPMS [1] the qualification is based on your irrelevant grades and your extracurriculars. You might be the most active guy and get a place but a poor programmer. [1] Harvar…

In the US, you don't apply to a school for CS - you just apply to the university as undergraduate. It's quite common for undergraduates to not know what they want to study as freshmen, and to change their minds over the course of university. That being said, HYPMS do want you to have good grades overall and solid extracurriculars, it's immensely helpful to be world-class in some activity; the particular activity does…

tl;dr: My recent observation is that for US universities it is better to be jack of all trades but master of nothing than having some degree of (relative) expertise.

You do not declare it officially and yes you have the flexibility to change it but every application asks you what major you want to study.

Besides by nature if you are already decided and experienced on the subject it is ridiculous to me to consider another applicant. Let's consider two candidates:

1) Super social kid with strong grades in all subjects and a good debater and organized few charity projects (at least on the paper) but no real programming or above average math experience.

2) Kid with good social skills with top grades in mathematics, physics, chemistry, cs etc. but slightly lower secondary language or history grades. This kid also has a Github account with quite a few commits and is hacking for few years now.

Now my recent observation is that (and not only for CS but for all other subjects too) if these two candidates declare that they want to study CS, then the first one is preferred in US and definitely the second one in Britain.

Now I understand not declaring your major at the beginning and being undecided but how can one eliminates the ones who already demonstrate work and passion on their subject but accepts the ones who are undecided and have not done on any specific subject.

As a result, American universities basically depend on "luck". They think the kid might be good based on generic projects, charity work and conferences.

By the way this is not a personal issue. I am accepted to the school I wanted to be in at the beginning but this is an observation through my high school years for over 200-300 well suited candidates for top ranking universities.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#86

Post by idan » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:00 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #77

idan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, we aren't doing any kind of indexing. If you apply for a position through our service, you give whatever information you want about yourself, and we check out your public data on those networks. If you don't want to share your twitter or stack overflow, leave those fields blank. We don't publish the details of the algorithm but in effects it would be fairly difficult to game. Either you have a solid histor…

I didn't actually see any way for me as a developer to use your service. Signing up for the beta looked like a way for an employer to sign up.

That's correct. We're a tool for employers.

We're thinking about allowing some form of "self indexing" but we aren't there yet.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#87

Post by roguecoder » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:02 PM UTC

robterrell wrote: post #38

dustingetz wrote: post #21

i know a guy running a software shop. he's an active participant in the local meetup community, and he cares about people. it's no surpise that he has all sorts of talented people trying to work with him, and not enough funding to hire them all . (at least, i think that's why he hasn't hired me ;) i also know a few other people running software shops, who don't participate in the local meetup community. none of the b…

Isn't that just another filter for luck? You're filtering out candidates who don't know about the meetup, or have kids and can't make the meetup's evening hours, or prefer another meetup that happens to be at the same time elsewhere, etc.

When you have a surplus of people who can do the job, then you can afford to filter based on luck. In this case, limiting interviews to people like you who you will end up being social with, instead of people who can just do the work.

The problem, of course, is that the odds are good he's hiring people who are less skilled than some people he's filtered out. In a perfect market his product would get beaten by whoever hired those better candidates he ignored, but we live in an incredibly imperfect market and it probably won't make a difference.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#88

Post by roguecoder » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

emmett wrote: post #43

This is the opposite of my experience. When we greatly narrowed the pool of applicants from "people who want to work on live video" to "people who want to work on live video for gaming", we saw a huge uptick in how many people were interested in working for us. TwitchTV is more attractive for programmers than Justin.tv ever was. There is something to be said for appealing to a smaller group of people more strongly.

That seems to be less a narrowing and more adding information to candidates about what the job actually will be. You've just added candidates who want to work for gaming and are able to do live video to the pool of people who can do live video and don't really care what kind of video it is.

Providing accurate information about the company allows job seekers to self-select, increasing the signal, and offering an interesting application is far more likely to attract top talent than advertising for code monkeys.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#89

Post by dhugiaskmak » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #57

rizzom5000 wrote: post #53

While I enjoyed the article and its message, I found the spelling error on the resume example underwhelming. A professional's resume is the veneer they present to strangers. It's like the login page for your app. Do you want a spelling error there when it is so easy to avoid? It screams sloppy and lazy in the same sentence. Maybe the general quality of professional devs is so bad that sloppiness and laziness are bett…

What is the difference between a spelling mistake and failing to wear a tie to an interview? I suggest nothing except for cultural standards. Once upon a time, they were both punishable by immediate removal from the process. Today one is tolerated but the other not tolerated. they both signal the same thing: “I meticulously went over my presentation to ensure that it meets your expectations.” Let’s be clear: I think…

To me, writing a document without running it through a spell checker feels like checking in code without compiling it. I think I agree that it shouldn't automatically disqualify someone from a job, but it also feels like something you have to go out of your way not to do.

Re: I don't hire unlucky people

#90

Post by swang » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:07 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #73

swang wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true at all schools in the US. At least not when I applied around 10 years ago. A lot of schools, especially the top tier CS programs told me that I would not be allowed to go in undeclared and then transfer into their CS program. I had to declare as a CS or I wouldn't get in. I knew some people were able to get away with not declaring and transferring in but I didn't want to risk it.

10 years exactly, or a bit more than that? The reason I asked is that CS enrollment changed dramatically after the .com bubble burst. When I applied to CS a little more than 10 years ago the bubble was in full swing, and only the top 1/4 of applicants to the program had a hope of getting in. Transferring in was a no-go. 2 years later enrollment had dropped so low that the quotas were gone and transferring in was easy…

Ah interesting point. I came into my CS program the first year after most people considered the bubble burst in 2001, (also obviously when 9/11 happened). Only a few companies were "left alive" so to speak so maybe my year was the last year that they did this.