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Inside the Mirrortocracy

carlos.bueno.org

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Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#91

Post by facepalm »

opendais wrote: post #80
rayiner wrote: post #60

> “Well, I grabbed coffee with the founder, and I had dinner with the team last night, and then we went to a bar together.” I'm no teetotaler, but bars can be uncomfortable to downright hostile places for the majority of people (women + people who don't drink for religious or health reasons). It's absolutely inappropriate and unprofessional to incorporate one into an interview. This is typical "old boy's club" shit,…

Yep. I'd decline and not get the job. I know that already [hint: I don't drink]. It is quite amazing how many people are completely oblivious to their own biases.

Who says they are oblivious? Maybe they just don't like to hire people who don't drink. Why should they be obliged to hire them?

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#92

Post by facepalm »

KaiserPro wrote: post #55
CmonDev wrote: post #31

"It's hard to find good people to hire" Oh, come on! Where is this myth coming from? I don't know about USA, but here in London there is an over-abundance of IT workforce (what else would justify the sub £60k senior dev job offers).

Yeah but none of them are 25, thin, tall, tattooed and have boyish mustachios. don't be hatin' bro, or what ever the vernacular is.

Heh you are not supposed to judge people based on such superficial traits. Programming skill is all that counts (according to the people who dissed me in this thread anyway).

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#93

Post by gretful »

pdkl95 wrote: post #7

> It’s not that we’re so petty or strict about the dress code > that we are going to disqualify him for not following an > unwritten rule, but we know empirically that people who come > in dressed in suits rarely work out well for our team. I suggest comparing this...umm... shallow attitude with this example from a very different end of the economic spectrum (which was a link I found here on HN late last year): http:…

It's funny, really. Even poor white men are treated this way. People judge by appearances. People want to be around people that are like them. They want a 'tribe', not diversity. It's human nature.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#94

Post by facepalm »

watwut wrote: post #78
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why should it be good for me to work with somebody who only cares about Java? And what would you take about during lunch - Java development? Knowledge depth, for one. The time you spend reading about new trends and languages is time not spent getting deeper knowledge about the skills you already have. Maybe you spend just as much time as he does gaining knowledge depth in your chosen language and spend some of your…

@facepalm I would much rather hire someone who reads in-depts books that those shallow blogs. Too much time spend on blogs and discussion forums is not that great thing.

Well you can get Joel's posts as a book: http://www.amazon.com/Joel-Software-Occasionally-Developers-...

You are right about forums. Although I have the impression many of the people who are very frequent writers on HN are also very good developers. So at least it's not necessarily a negative signal.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#95

Post by facepalm »

facepalm wrote: post #76
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why should it be good for me to work with somebody who only cares about Java? And what would you take about during lunch - Java development? Knowledge depth, for one. The time you spend reading about new trends and languages is time not spent getting deeper knowledge about the skills you already have. Maybe you spend just as much time as he does gaining knowledge depth in your chosen language and spend some of your…

"for no more work than it took to read a blog." But it shows you are willing to read blogs to further your knowledge. Presumably even voluntarily. Would you really say that is just a weak signal, especially in a profession that changes as quickly as IT?

Well I initially said "if somebody doesn't know Joel or Graham, I would probably count it as a minus", not a deal breaker. But why should it not matter to my estimate whether somebody knows that or not. Would you believe somebody who claims they are passionate about physics but have never heard about Einstein (to make an obvious example)? How would you go about probing a candidates enthusiasm and determination?

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#96

Post by dkarapetyan »

facepalm wrote: post #74
danielweber wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. "I do/am X ." 2. Just-so story about how X is essential for good programmers (which, by definition, I am.) 3. "Therefore I interview for developers who do/are X ."

How do you propose to hire somebody you don't understand? It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know. If you believe X is important for programming, why on earth would you hire somebody who doesn't like/know about X? It's possible that you are mistaken about X being important. But then you are screwed anyway. But if you start hiring based on things you don't know, you are also scre…

I think you're missing the premise of the article. It doesn't say don't hire qualified people based on a set of characteristics. The article brings up various examples where people are totally confused about what those signals and characteristics of qualification actually are. Dress code, common taste in music, beer, literature, etc. are definitely not those characteristics.

The article also doesn't say don't hire people you will get along with. You should try to hire such people but a workplace is a professional environment and not an extended family like some places like to paint themselves. First of all such places should be avoided because no workplace is an extended family and second because they are being unprofessional and exploitative if they pain themselves that way. The recent github fiasco is a good examples of what happens when people forget that workplaces are professional environments and github is actually one of the better places where work and life balance is highly valued. So yes if you're hiring a Rails developer then you should look for someone that understands Ruby and Rails but you shouldn't really care if they are a devout follower of the church of DHH because that has no bearing on their ability to do the job.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#97

Post by seestheday »

CmonDev wrote: post #31

"It's hard to find good people to hire" Oh, come on! Where is this myth coming from? I don't know about USA, but here in London there is an over-abundance of IT workforce (what else would justify the sub £60k senior dev job offers).

Every time I hear about salaries in London it makes me mad. Why is the pay so bad? How is it possible that the value isn't recognized? Are you able to demonstrate the value that you bring, or is it so much an old boys club that dev's are thought of as factory workers?

On a related note - why aren't there more senior software dev's building their own businesses? It seems like you have so little to lose.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#98

Post by coriny »

facepalm wrote: post #79
coriny wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been quite a bit of research into group composition and dynamics and their effect on problem solving. In short, the main body of research seems to suggest that diverse groups show a higher group intelligence than homogeneous groups (have a search on google scholar). This is likely to do with a diverse group having a wider range of experiences, and more view points, to draw on in solving a problem. Ultimately,…

That's just a handwavy reply (look up the research). I know the kind of research, and it is very hard to separate the ideologically motivated one from the worthwhile ones. "Just hire good professional people, surely?" So why have any hiring process at all, if it doesn't matter who works for/with you? Some people realize they spend most of their waking hours at work, so they want to get along with the people they work…

I don't know what's going on with the 'reply' button, but I don't seem to be able to reply to your latest comments.

Firstly, "google it", well actually "google scholar" it. Go to the public research body rather than the general internet and spend some time finding some reviews (I mean proper peer-reviewed reviews), look for ones that are highly cited and ~5-10 years old. Then start following up, with standard procedures. This seems an important topic to you, and you're unwilling to follow the modern wisdom - which is completely fine, no criticism from me over that. So I would recommend spending at least a couple of weeks on this, go down to the primary experiments that the reviews draw on and see what the researcher's are really debating with each experiment. Look how the experiments being done have informed recent reviews and why viewpoints are changing. Make sure everything you're reading is peer reviewed, or you will waste a lot of time. Without two years+ in a subject, filtering the bull is hard.

I would also be very careful about whether the researchers are indirectly or directly being paid by the recruitment industry rather than centrally funded, since commercial funding makes the validity of the results more uncertain.

So I'm not saying "Google it". I'm saying do some bare minimum reading on the research corpus.

----- Just to go back to the above message. I'm not saying have no hiring process, obviously you need to evaluate the candidate. But for me, once I've checked for egregious personality flaws, they don't need to be my friends. Think of it this way: falling out with friends is terrible and likely to be very destructive to morale on your team - people will take sides and within the space of an hour your company has been ripped apart. Office politics will be much greater, while bad decisions based on emotion - "can't fire him, we had a real heart to heart last night", "let's do this because I like x more than y" are much more likely.

If you're pros, then melodrama becomes much less likely. Furthermore, you know you've been hired to be great at your job rather than because you behave in a certain way. Better motivation to focus on the job rather than the politics.

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#99

Post by [deleted] »

austinz wrote: post #3

That linked 42Floors blog post is terribly self-unaware. > Most startups take the building of their culture very seriously, especially when the culture is still new and quite fragile. If your culture is so fucking fragile that a guy wearing a suit (as opposed to a T-shirt and jeans) poses an existential threat to it, you need to re-evaluate whether you are actually building a company 'culture', or just some random ag…

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Mirrortocracy

#100

Post by [deleted] »

austinz wrote: post #3

That linked 42Floors blog post is terribly self-unaware. > Most startups take the building of their culture very seriously, especially when the culture is still new and quite fragile. If your culture is so fucking fragile that a guy wearing a suit (as opposed to a T-shirt and jeans) poses an existential threat to it, you need to re-evaluate whether you are actually building a company 'culture', or just some random ag…

[deleted]
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