[HN Gopher] John Carmack on Hiring
___________________________________________________________________
John Carmack on Hiring
Author : tosh
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-09-07 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| kator wrote:
| I have always focused on hiring for attitude and aptitude. If you
| have the attitude to learn, and the aptitude to grown your
| skills, then you'll do great at anything you're passionate about.
|
| I literally hired a guy who was a part-time computer hobbyist
| but, a full time pool man. I told him "hey how would you like to
| spend 40 hours a week learning more about computers." Today he's
| working as a leader in his company's security group. He often
| thanks me for the job, and I always remind him "you did the work,
| all I did was give you the opportunity".
|
| Sadly as stated in the thread linked, its hard when you have 10k
| applicants, to treat each as a potentially amazing member of the
| your team. I still try hard to look for that attitude and
| aptitude, and if a candidate demonstrates this in our dialog, I
| will do my best to find a path for them to connect with other
| opportunities if they're not a strong match for roles I'm filling
| on my teams.
|
| What I know is we're born to this world knowing how to eat,
| breathe, cry, and a couple other things. The rest, all of it,
| we've learned on our way to this day. Just because the person in
| front of me didn't have the same path as me, doesn't mean they
| won't learn to have an incredible impact going forward. Searching
| for this potential and type of partnership at scale is hard. My
| heart wants to say it can be solved, but my calendar is an evil
| overlord that only allows me only so many hours a day to invest
| in growing my teams...
| jstx1 wrote:
| You have a bright career as a LinkedIn influencer ahead of you.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" You have a bright career as a LinkedIn influencer ahead
| of you. "_
|
| I am not sure exactly what you meant to say, but this came
| off as a bit snide (to me).
| pc86 wrote:
| LinkedIn is full of completely farcical stories about
| recruiters who had the prescience to hire someone even
| though they were 30 seconds late for an interview or didn't
| wear a tie or hadn't graduated from an Ivy League school or
| some other such nonsense. And because of this HR drone's
| largesse, this person later did their job satisfactorily.
|
| I honestly can't tell if the GP meant it in a snide way
| (like my example above) or as an honest compliment. It
| could be either, really.
| ta988 wrote:
| What the person means here is that on Linkedin there are a
| lot of (usually staged) comments or videos of people that
| "saved the life of that person that had $X and nobody
| employed and (s)he is now the best $Y". These posts are
| highly shared and commented upon. I don't think the comment
| was mocking you really, it was just a funny parallel (hope
| I'm not wrong).
| nickff wrote:
| > _" I don't think the comment was mocking you really"_
|
| I did not make the top-level comment.
| bob1029 wrote:
| This is pretty much where I am at now. Attitude, open-
| mindedness and general ability to endure pain are what I look
| for.
|
| I can teach 100% of the tech stack to a total noob in a matter
| of weeks. Trial by example is my lesson of choice these days.
| The good apprentice will absorb these like a dry sponge to
| water.
|
| It also really helps that our tech stack is simple and fits on
| 1 computer. It is not bullshit abstraction either - You install
| 3 things on a fresh Win10 box to promote it to "Official
| Developer Machine" status. None of these things happens to be
| Docker or any other containerization tech, so even junior
| developers are expected to understand how the product runs on
| the bare metal/vm. Spoiler: It's 1 process & 1 service so they
| learn it fast.
|
| Basically what I am trying to say is that your ability to
| consume non-PhD candidates is partially predicated upon how
| you've decided to run your tech business. If you (ab)use
| enterprise arch like message buses, event sourcing, et. al.,
| you are going to find that it requires additional mountain
| ranges worth of background knowledge to understand how these
| things fit together. If your tech stack can be considered
| within the context of a _single process_ , the margin of
| understanding becomes much more practical to work with in my
| experience.
|
| Honestly, I almost prefer to start with a blank slate these
| days. Don't know how a computer works? Fucking fantastic! I can
| probably still get you productive in my simple C#/SQLite tech
| stack faster than if I had to de-program some web-scale zealot
| for the same purpose.
| rigel_kentaurus wrote:
| Thanks for the insight, I agree with you.
|
| What's hard is to interview for attitude and aptitude, and
| scaling that so other people know how to interview for those
| traits. Would you mind sharing some insight on what type of
| interview, green flags, things you are looking for, or process?
| Hopefully it's not only gut feeling :)
| yupper32 wrote:
| Just a reminder that most requirements on job postings can be
| ignored. You can still apply and get through pretty often if you
| don't fit the requirements perfectly. There's almost no downside
| to applying.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It can be discouraging to apply for jobs and not get even a
| callback.
| chongli wrote:
| That goes down with volume. If you apply to a large number of
| jobs then you won't worry about those who didn't call you
| back because you'll be too busy scheduling and attending
| interviews.
|
| Of course, if you apply to a large number of jobs and don't
| get any callbacks then that's a strong signal that you either
| need to update your resume, update your credentials, or seek
| employment in another field.
| [deleted]
| jstx1 wrote:
| In turn this gives companies a reason to apply strong filters
| just so they can reduce their shortlist to a manageable size.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Yup. But at the same time, in the current environment, the
| person who applies to 100 places will more often be better
| off than the person who applies to 10 places.
|
| If you need a job, you gotta play the game. Mass applying is
| the current meta game.
| dvogel wrote:
| While I don't advocate for mass applying, I have always
| believed that most top candidates for a position will only
| hit approximately 5/8 desired experience/skills points. As
| Carmack says in the thread, the labor force simply has a
| perpetually non-optimal distribution of skills.
|
| After seeing it from the hiring side for the past 7 years,
| I can also say that there's usually a few extra unlisted
| criteria that would more than substitute for the skills you
| don't match on. The content of job listings is largely true
| to the desires of the hiring manager but also incorporates
| some organizational inertia. It takes a while to get new
| technologies incorporated into the practices of recruiting
| offices. Many managers are usually informally hiring for
| skills that have not yet achieved enough of a foothold to
| be a screening criteria.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| In my decades experience hiring, there are only three archetypes
| you want to avoid:
|
| - Someone who has no clue. This is rare but it does happen. I
| have seen some fly through interviews and then literally do
| nothing until they leave for another company as we are set to
| fire them.
|
| - Assholes. Everyone is nice in the interviews. Not everyone is
| nice during code review. There is a sub-archetype of asshole
| called The Complainer. They can live in pairs, but if there is no
| Assholes, a true Complainer will find a way to turn someone into
| one. They are two sides of the same coin.
|
| - My way or the highway types. Your team uses Design Patterns and
| Unit Testing. Bob says that is overengineering and refuses to be
| a team player.
|
| Interviews focus on the first one, which is honestly simple for a
| relatively experienced interviewer to weed out. I don't believe
| in 10X rockstar ninja programmers. Either someone has the ability
| or they don't.
|
| The real keys to great hiring are good managers and cheap firing.
| Good managers are hard to come by, but they can be built fairly
| easily. Cheap firing is usually easy, if that is your goal. Some
| locales restrict this legally, but there is always a loophole.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've learned to run from anyone who blames everyone else for
| their problems. Sooner or later they'll blame me.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely
| quickly. My rough rule of thumb is that for anybody who was
| even marginally liked who gets fired, expect one of your best
| people to leave.
|
| On the other hand, if there is someone who people don't like,
| who visibly avoids work, and the rest of the team resents them,
| then firing is actually a really positive thing.
| gremloni wrote:
| As a hiring manager, the hardest people to fire are the ones
| that try hard, always show up on time but still end up doing
| terrible work. The best way I've found to do this is 9 box
| them, unfortunately point out how they're holding back the
| team to the other people on the team (ie talk shit) and then
| formal review followed by firing.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What is 9 boxing?
| gremloni wrote:
| Basically a matrix between potential and performance.
| It's easier to look up.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/
| Datenstrom wrote:
| > point out how they're holding back the team to the other
| people on the team (ie talk shit)
|
| It is terrifying to think that you are in any kind of
| leadership position. I instantly lose respect for anyone
| who "talks shit" about team members, especially leaders. If
| I found out anyone was talking shit, especially someone in
| a leadership position in my company I would fire them on
| the spot. Well, I would first ask to speak privately so
| that they could still have the dignity they were denying
| their former team.
|
| There are no bad teams, there are only bad leaders.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yep. My company seems to fire fairly regularly. Always a
| whole bunch of people who depart right after.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely
| quickly.
|
| Conversely, keeping clueless people around is demoralizing
| and insulting to the people actually doing the work. I don't
| mean junior folks who get it but are building experience. A
| company I worked for hired a junior against the advice of the
| team (red flag anyone?). We spent 6-8 months with this
| individual spinning their wheels. They just did not get it.
| It created more work for the rest of the team to help them,
| redo the work correctly, etc. Did they fire him? Nope...they
| transferred him to another group within the company. And of
| course he's not doing well in that group either. Why should
| people work their butts off if it seemingly makes no
| difference?
|
| I've since left that company - this wasn't the primary
| driver, there were lots of other supporting reasons, but
| ultimately it came down to my loss of faith in management's
| ability to steer us in the right direction.
| ddek wrote:
| The obviously clueless are rarely controversial fires. The
| problem is when leadership have a different opinion of the
| employee than workers.
|
| I'm on my notice right now. I started hunting a new job
| after the company fired their recently hired well-liked VP
| Product. Most of the organisation believed this guy had
| made a substantial positive impact, and the firing reasons
| were concocted. They weren't entirely unjustified (he was
| too expensive, and focus wasn't aligned), but I still
| disagreed. I've heard both sides independently, and nowhere
| near enough effort was made to find a better way.
|
| When people see good people fired for weak reasons, they
| become concerned for their own role. As a senior engineer,
| this is particularly worrisome. A huge part of my job is to
| disagree with people. Junior engineers want to reinvent
| wheels, project managers want to impose pointless
| deadlines, the (barely) technical co-founder just read an
| article about grpc; I have tools to constructively push
| back in all these cases. If I see people getting fired like
| this, then my career becomes a factor in my decision
| making.
|
| Ultimately, this firing has cost a small engineering team
| both it's senior engineers. I'm gone, so is the other
| senior (for the same reason). The CTO is management
| focused. There are a few other reasons I won't go into, but
| this team is in a very difficult position.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| > Conversely, keeping clueless people around is
| demoralizing and insulting to the people actually doing the
| work.
|
| I think this is only true in the most egregious of cases. A
| somewhat counter-intuitive thing I've learned is that
| highly productive programmers _like_ working with less
| productive programmers. They 've spent a lot of time with
| this person, maybe got to like them on a personal level.
| But beyond that, they don't have to butt heads all the
| time, it's one more person to stamp your diff without
| excessive nitpicking, someone to bounce ideas off of,
| someone to handle the more mundane coding work, someone to
| share blame with. Almost like an assistant programmer. A
| backfill will have to trained and knowledge-transferred
| again from zero.
|
| This isn't to say the organization is best served by
| keeping low-performers around at full salary to keep their
| high performers happy. That depends on higher level
| organizational goals. My point is to support GP's quoted
| statement in your post, that firing is dangerous and can
| demoralize teams.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Any non net-negative developer being fired risks
| demoralizing the team. If they are net 0.1% as productive
| as a typical developer, but not preventing anybody else
| from getting their work done, they are a cost to the
| company, but not to the remainder of the team.
| cebert wrote:
| I would argue not firing is dangerous and demoralizing. Who
| wants to work on teams full of dead weight?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > interviewing prospects is a very non-trivial cost to an
| organization
|
| Yet, a lot of companies would rather not give you that trivial
| raise to retain you, but spend that non-trivial cost to hire
| someone else at a higher rate.
| smusamashah wrote:
| When hiring for senior positions, its probably more easier to rig
| the system. At the level no one even thinks of checking if
| someone can code. I worked for someone like that to do their job
| for them. This person was hired on a 7+ year xp position for a
| job and only thing they knew is how to answer questions in an
| interview. I use to get the shared screen from their work
| computer and use to work for them.
|
| My only guess on how they got the job was that the resume was
| saying so much that no one bothered to ask them to write the
| code. How do you get a high paying dev job when you can't write
| method, don't even know what return is? but you have degrees and
| all that fluff written in your resume. I don't understand.
| Dyac wrote:
| How did the arrangement work between you? Were you full-time
| helping them? Are you in a poorer country?
| smusamashah wrote:
| It was occasional, I don't have stamina for part time regular
| job along with day job. Sometimes few days in a row for 1-2
| hours a day. And yes, the person I was doing it for was in
| some corp in US.
| madrox wrote:
| The most influential essay I've ever read on hiring was titled I
| Don't Hire Unlucky People[1]. At the time, I was struggling to
| build a mobile dev team, and I could always find reasons to not
| hire anyone in the pipeline. However, there came a point where I
| had to apply the secretary problem [2] to my situation and
| realize it was costing me more to not have these positions
| filled. To that end, my only hard requirement became whether I
| left the interview with them feeling like this was someone I
| could manage and grow.
|
| The irony is that once I embraced this, I ended up with a pretty
| diverse team almost as a side effect. It made me realize that
| most "unspoken disqualifications" are usually anti-diversity in
| practice, though I don't think that's done consciously.
|
| 1: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-
| unluc...
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
| wisty wrote:
| The alternative is that you nitpick, and toss out all the ones
| that don't tick the right boxes.
|
| This means you either get people who have good attention to
| detail, or people who have had plenty of failed iterations to
| polish their approach.
| madrox wrote:
| That's essentially the point of that essay. That, and most of
| those boxes you want ticked are artificial means of whittling
| down candidates and not hard criteria for whether someone can
| do a job.
| dleslie wrote:
| I prefer working with, and hiring, the sort of people that FAANGs
| would never look at: diverse and weird education or experience be
| backgrounds, grossly unrelated hobbies, and pressing personal
| responsibilities like a band, family, or sport.
|
| Some of the best programmers I've worked with were ex high school
| teachers, military, set designers, nurses and such.
|
| I _want to believe_ that folks like this trend towards
| flexibility and teamwork. That they're at work for the purpose of
| earning, and work with the goal of delivering. They'll
| collaborate when possible, and cut features when necessary.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| So... willing to be underpaid and work long hours?
| azornathogron wrote:
| What makes you think FAANGs "would never look at" such people?
| I expect all the FAANGs have some form of DEI targets by now
| which probably translate into - among other things - making
| sure they get people from diverse/"non traditional" backgrounds
| into the interview process.
|
| https://www.apple.com/diversity/
|
| https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/landing_pages/diversity-and-in...
|
| https://diversity.google/annual-report/hiring/
|
| https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/diversityandinclusion
|
| I have no way to judge if these programmes work or if they're
| empty words. But I think it is probably wrong to assume that
| the big companies just discard applications from people if they
| don't have the "right" background.
| alberth wrote:
| I wonder how folks will compare Carmack's views to hiring, with
| how Google hire's (only top school with top grades).
| [deleted]
| autotune wrote:
| That's how Google hired before introducing LeetCode to the
| process, from my understanding.
| americafails wrote:
| At least you all admit that college is a scam considering you
| don't hire people based on skill and education.
|
| I have never had a job in tech because I have no idea how to
| communicate skill and passion outside of being good at cramming
| and faking my knowledge. Since I won't do that, I will most
| likely never get a job.
|
| What a waste of time
| boplicity wrote:
| > Hiring is an obvious example, with "requirements" that filter
| out large chunks of applicants that don't have some kind of back
| channel
|
| In my experience, it is very tempting to filter for the most
| qualified candidates, and that _should_ happen. However, there
| should also be a filter for the most _dedicated_ candidates, as
| that can also lead to very good outcomes. Many of the best
| employees don 't look that great on paper, but love their jobs,
| and are very motivated to excel. The same is not always true, at
| all, for "qualified" people.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| My old company used to hire broke, desperate, and
| underachieving college students out of the local university for
| that exact reason - desperate people are often the most
| dedicated people.
|
| The scheme worked something like how the New England Patriots
| run things: keep a solid core of veterans well-paid and happy,
| then use them to train the hell out of new hires. Later, make
| sure those new hires get excellent jobs elsewhere in 4-6 years
| and repeat the cycle, ensuring that you never have to pay for
| premium talent since you can develop it at budget cost in-
| house.
|
| When I say "train the hell out of", I mean each new dev had a
| senior dev dedicated to _just_ them who would criticize
| everything about their code and workmanship like a Mr. Miyagi.
| Every email that dev sent also got CC 'd to that senior dev and
| the senior dev always knew what they were working on, how long
| such a thing should take them, and knew what
| questions/difficulties were likely to come up and when during
| the process of that item. Good mentorship cannot be substituted
| for during the training process.
|
| The system fell apart once management got flipped and forgot
| what made them successful in the first place.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Sounds like the traditional trades system applied to tech.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Gods I wish I'd started my career at your company
| oblak wrote:
| Before or after the whole thing fell apart?
| imbnwa wrote:
| Before, mentoring was something that was only present
| when I started for less than a year but I could've used a
| more persistent program like this, I think, to help
| rectify a number of long-standing problems I'm only now
| starting to perceive and take action for much later.
| pkaye wrote:
| > When I say "train the hell out of", I mean each new dev had
| a senior dev dedicated to just them who would criticize
| everything about their code and workmanship like a Mr.
| Miyagi.
|
| The management should also be aware that senior dev
| productivity will also go down in order to train the junior
| devs. Schedules should be adjusted to accommodate this.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| That is impressive actually.
| bennysomething wrote:
| How do you keep a senior Dev happy whos cc d in on every
| email a junior sends?
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Dedicated here sounds like coded language for "will work the
| longest hours"
| k__ wrote:
| In my experience "dedicated" means "put up with our BS"
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Wouldn't dedicated candidates generally hit up someone on
| LinkedIn to get put into the backchannel? Heck, people on HN
| have generously offered to put me into their company
| backchannel, so it doesn't seem to hard to get into it if you
| really want it.
| the_only_law wrote:
| What's the chance that me hitting up some rando on LinkedIn
| isn't just gonna result in them ignoring the connection or
| telling me just to line up at the front door.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Most people reply to me. I am currently job searching and I
| have one who didn't reply? Don't target the CTO as he
| probably gets barraged, but a fellow guy with 2-3 years
| experience? They reply. Random people off Hacker News? They
| reply.
| munk-a wrote:
| I ended up being hired directly from university for my first
| position - another student in my algorithms class was a local
| company's VP. That said, I absolutely loathe back channels as
| they are a highly effective tool for discrimination. I don't
| hop jobs all that often but when I do so I do it via a
| recruiter and isolate myself from potential companies before
| the interview. I personally find leveraging back channels
| extremely distasteful.
|
| There are some good ways to gain that level of contact though
| - directly reaching out to current employees is pretty
| effective with very few downsides as failing to get the job
| means they aren't going to be your coworkers anyways.
| However, I think even these approaches make the process
| overall less fair and equitable.
| bennysomething wrote:
| hiring someone you know, trust, like and you've seen their
| ability is no bad thing. Don't think there is any reason to
| loathe this. Lots of people network at meet ups to find
| positions this way.
| munk-a wrote:
| It is a safe bet for the employer and ends up benefiting
| the employee chosen - the issue is that it can leave
| folks stuck "outside". Hiring is a messy process and
| anyone who says they only hire the best is lying to you -
| sometimes folks interview poorly due to having a bad day
| or end up being screened out due to automated software
| not seeing necessary keywords in resumes by blind chance.
|
| However, the more you limit your hiring pool the more
| you're missing out on good folks and you can end up
| breeding a culture of nepotism within the company if
| you're not careful - where those folks that make it in
| from the outside are outside of the social group you're
| drawing from and end up leaving because it's cliquish.
| Jnr wrote:
| We have hired those "rough diamonds" through "back
| channels" even though they have had terrible interviews
| due to lack of communication skills. They probably would
| not have been hired in most places. And it turns out they
| are good at their work and also loyal since they are a
| bit afraid of jobs interviews.
|
| If a good employee vouches for someone, there is big
| chance we will give it a try. :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree that it can be less fair and equitable, but it's
| factors more effective in terms of conversion to productive
| employees.
|
| If I ever decide to go out on my own and form a startup, my
| co-founder will 100% be an ex-colleague. Is that fair?
| Dunno, but it's the only reasonable choice IMO.
| foobarian wrote:
| Not only does the backchannel save a company many man hours
| of senior engineer time (which has the bonus effect of not
| upsetting said senior engineers), companies often give
| substantial cash rewards to employees who's referrals get
| hired and stay for some period of time. I'm talking tens of
| thousands of dollars, it's pretty insane.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| That might explain the willingness of random people to
| shove my resume in the referral bin.
| oblak wrote:
| Never done this myself and I find the very notion off putting
| and dangerous. Sounds like diet nepotism to me.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Enjoy missing out on the good opportunities then; most
| don't even hit the job sites before they're filled.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I think a lot of it is cultural or learned. It doesn't occur
| to some people that you can do things like reach out on
| LinkedIn or do things beyond just checking the careers page.
|
| I read about people who fill out hundreds of applications and
| never get a response. I know it's a numbers game, but that is
| absolutely wild the amount of effort people put into a
| strategy that clearly isn't working.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Random applications are working great for me too. I just do
| the inside track for really interesting roles.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| How do you determine who is a dedicated job applicant? First,
| everyone shoots their resume and maybe cover letter into your
| black hole. Are the dedicated ones the ones who actually
| included a cover letter? Or is it how enthused/personalized the
| cover letter seems? A qualified individual should do that,
| perhaps even better since they have experience and talent, if
| they're indeed qualified.
|
| Next, they have to go through interviews. Are they expected to
| fully research the company and its methods before the initial
| round? Or how about coding questions: Would you take someone
| who spent 3X the time on leetcode but only got 50% as many
| coding answers as the qualified person? Do you purposefully
| choose those who you deemed "worked harder" or "wanted it
| more"? Are things like follow-up emails, thank you's, further
| reflections, are these things how you determine dedication? Or
| do you purposefully over-look those you think are well
| qualified, ruling them out in favor of those "trying harder"?
| boplicity wrote:
| No, we don't do any of that.
|
| We have a variety of low-commitment projects that we pay
| people to do. These projects add value to the company, of
| course, but they also allow us to get to know a variety of
| people who can become more involved with us. In other words,
| we've found ways to take risks on people, and get to know
| them, without hiring them outright. We _hope_ to hire them,
| but they still _do_ need to go through our filtering system
| first. It may not work in other fields, but it works well in
| the field we 're in.
|
| Of course, we also have a more traditional path, including
| resumes, interviews, etc. It's good to have multiple methods
| for finding employees, IMO.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Do your low commitment projects actually pay a reasonable
| amount?
| fb03 wrote:
| They usually pay the standard rate that would be applied
| for the expected amount of hours of completion of that
| task, with a small plus. this way, even if you don't land
| the job you still don't get out of it feeling like you
| lost invaluable time of your life.
|
| But in my own experience I have once worked for free on
| those tasks, hoping to get hired, and when it didn't pan
| out it made me a bit sour. Won't do that again.
| jpindar wrote:
| How can I find companies who do that?
| zz865 wrote:
| Add to the list that the people who are best on paper and are
| good at interviewing will probably be looking for a new job in
| a year and/or when things get tough.
| atirip wrote:
| We always look for "rough diamonds". It is a creative process,
| lots of tea leaves reading, but will yield excellent results if
| you have the ability to read these tea leaves. I am not sure we
| ever hired "the best on paper" candidate. But we have had great
| success with people who had no knowledge of out stack, down to
| the programming language.
| BackBlast wrote:
| I've always thought that there is undue emphasis on the tech
| stack and the language. I've always felt that filtering for
| raw engineering ability, thinking prowess, and attitude would
| get you farther in the long run.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| https://twitter.com/UnderdogDevs just links to a youtube channel.
| Assuming this is basically a pitch for UnderDog Devs... if you
| want to actually hire UnderDog Devs how do you learn more about
| that?
| paxys wrote:
| Agree with this, but the thread doesn't really add anything to
| the discussion other than "hiring is a hard problem for both
| sides". People should upvote based on content, not the profile of
| the author.
| ericsoderstrom wrote:
| I think the interesting addition is his point that adding some
| amount of literal randomness to stages of the process would be
| a good thing, if the culture around interviewing could change
| to accept it
| hhmc wrote:
| I think he's specifically alluding to doing something like
| Bayesian exploration/exploitation -- which would be very
| interesting. Unfortunately, you'd need to hire at huge scale
| to assess the outcome of the experiment, and - as he mentions
| - it would be hard to get hiring departments to accept.
| sharken wrote:
| I much prefer the approach also mentioned in that thread.
|
| Here a hiring process was adjusted so that good current
| employees could actually pass the hiring process.
|
| Of course that doesn't solve the issue on how to get the
| first few hires.
| [deleted]
| hwers wrote:
| I feel like this is going to blow up into a thread with a ton of
| comments about peoples own personal opinions on hiring - while
| the actual content of this tweet thread barely flesh much out
| about the topic.
| aynyc wrote:
| When I was interviewing for a job, I complain about potential
| employers with their craziness.
|
| When I was interviewing to fill a job, I complain about potential
| employees with their craziness.
|
| Edit: I don't have a solution. I have all but given on the
| traditional method of applying for jobs via websites.
| Fortunately, I have enough network to help with my referrals and
| recruiters have been calling.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I too have found applying for jobs via web sites to be a
| complete waste of time. Every job I've gotten in the past 20
| years was either through a personal contact or a recruiter who
| reached out and contacted me based on my LinkedIn.
| sharken wrote:
| My experience exactly, it was only after actually calling a
| company about a job that everything clicked.
|
| Sending an application using a recruitment website is like
| buying a lottery ticket with the same poor chance of winning.
|
| And the easiest way to get a job offer is to know someone
| within the company that can recommend you.
| briffle wrote:
| I've been on both, but I also realize companies putting out a
| list of almost silly requirements that just about no person
| ever could meet has made many people 'stretch' their
| qualifcations too..
|
| I have programmed against and Oracle DB becomes Oracle DBA
| experience, etc. Because when you do want an actual DBA that
| has a bit of programming background, you get so many
| applications for the first type.
|
| Additionally, things like a Linux Systems Administrator can
| come in many different strenghts, and your going to attract a
| different level of skill by posting your salary range as
| 60-80k, than if you post 120-140k. But many employers don't
| want to post it at all, and then it seems you only get the low
| end guys applying.
| artful-hacker wrote:
| One of the few actually useful functions recruiting companies
| can do is get the job salary range in agreement with the
| candidates desires before wasting anybody's time.
| EricRiese wrote:
| WSJ just posted a story about this yesterday:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-need-more-workers-why...
|
| I think a company could do well by teaching HR about game theory:
| take into account what your competitors are doing for hiring and
| the best candidates they're skipping over when coming up with
| your own strategy.
| jpindar wrote:
| Alternate non-paywalled link:
|
| https://archive.is/V7Gxv
| jpindar wrote:
| From that story:
|
| >Many company leaders--nearly nine out of 10 executives
| surveyed by Harvard--said they know the software they use to
| filter applicants prevents them from seeing good candidates.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wouldn't mind rolling a D20, it's transparent and honest.
| Zababa wrote:
| As long as we consider 1 the best result and 20 the worse,
| since my luck often work this way, I'm fine with it.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| This is pretty vague, doesn't really say much about anything.
| gfodor wrote:
| If enough state about a person is public and verifiable, then
| hiring can become algorithmic. As a bonus, if this is publicly
| disclosed, then the applicant can walk the path to close the gap
| to be hired at places they wish to work.
|
| The catch is capturing and verifying the relevant info. It may
| not be tractable, to put it mildly. But it's a useful thought
| exercise to think about what it would take for such an approach
| to be sane.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| People here are saying that Carmack isn't really saying much
| (quantity-wise he's not) or giving their own personal anecdotes,
| but he's touching on information theory for imperfect markets.
|
| Basically the employer and candidate screw up the signals to each
| other about buying/selling of labor today, and it creates costly
| overhead for both parties. In a perfect market, employers and
| candidates know everything about each other and quickly fill- or
| land-in the best possible positions (respectively).
|
| Not sure if the startup he's promoting, or throwing in random
| population sampling, solves this problem though. Seems like the
| random sampling is only a temporary fix to uncovering missed
| positive signals in candidates.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| How does one get in touch with this UnderdogDevs group without a
| twitter account, or otherwise public account? I haven't seen an
| email address anywhere but am probably just missing it.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Genuine question: I don't understand the post, what is he saying?
| It's something to do with hiring ex prisoners?
| jstx1 wrote:
| This is a long and polite way to acknowledge the UnderdogDevs
| group and not say much else.
|
| Companies have a very strong incentive to miminise the false
| positive rate and the tradeoffs that they make there mean that
| they increase the false negatives because the cost of a bad hire
| is so much higher than the cost on missing out on someone good.
| In other words they're optimising for precision. I don't know how
| you start helping these disadvantaged groups without taking on a
| lot more risk and higher cost.
| boplicity wrote:
| The risk of hiring mediocre people who don't really care is
| invisible. Eventually, it becomes part of the fabric of the
| company, and the result, of course, is obvious. I suppose most
| large organizations can handle this particular risk because
| they've lucked onto a large cash-cow, such Google's ad-
| dominance.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > because the cost of a bad hire is so much higher than the
| cost on missing out on someone good
|
| Is this true? Organizations I've been a part of the best hires
| were game changing for the company, and the worst hires just
| got fired after 6 months.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, it's true. Even if you remove the bad hires after six
| months, that's six months of wasted mentoring effort and six
| months of of not being able to fill that position with
| someone who can do better.
|
| That's also six months that the bad hire's coworkers have to
| put up with a bad employee on their team. They're going to
| wonder if bad hires are the new norm and take it as a sign
| that it's time for them to move on.
|
| Bad hires have a lot of ripple effects. Most employees aren't
| isolated islands within a company. Their coworkers suffer the
| most.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >because the cost of a bad hire is so much higher than the cost
| on missing out on someone good
|
| The founders of WhatsApp for example applied to Facebook but
| got rejected. Facebook then had to acquire WhatsApp for 20
| Billion, pretty expensive false negative. You can afford a lot
| of bad hires if a few of them hit big. That's basically the
| whole premise of venture capital and silicon valley, majority
| fail but a few unicorns pay the bills. Logically companies
| should be offering some sort of alternative short term "prove
| it" offer to people who are borderline for being hired.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| We have to be realistic with WhatsApp founders from FB
| perspective when they did not hire them. They missed on good
| eng managers who may have grown to directors by now. There is
| about zero chance that they would have built WA inside FB.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| I don't like this example because it assumes that the
| Whatsapp founders would have had the same billion $ impact at
| FB, or that FB would not have just acquired whichever app
| that would have filled the market potential otherwise.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Not to mention this is extremely rare.
| swman wrote:
| If you want to actually empower people, just do it.
|
| These companies have billions in cash reserves. If you don't want
| to wire me that money, then at lease use it to set up
|
| A shadowing program for ex cons to spend a month with one your
| engineering teams. See how software gets built, and also be a
| part of it asking questions and hanging out with the team.
|
| Create programs that train adults to perform various jobs that
| are open. For example, many people would be willing to do any job
| at a tech company - it's a booming industry. Why not have a
| pipeline for people to enroll to learn how to be a BDR, customer
| service, test engineer, etc. that results in them being placed at
| a job?
|
| Or seriously give me the money and I'll help set it up for you.
| All these people and companies talking about this stuff is
| annoying. Y'all are smart and resourceful so just do it and show
| us.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Companies that have these kind of resources are hamstrung by
| process and budgets and review meetings to prevent fraud and
| abuses.
|
| Companies that have these kind of resources and aren't
| hamstrung are ripe with fraud and abuses.
| hmahncke wrote:
| "just tossing out all the ex-cons is an easy call" - it might be
| an easy call, but it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| It isn't that easy to do. Anyone advertising their ex-con
| status is sabotaging themselves. So what signal do they use for
| every inbound resume?
|
| So the company can't just trash the resume. After the
| interview, if things are moving forward, the candidate can
| inform the hiring manager of the situation. But if the company
| doesn't do background checks, they don't ask so you don't tell.
| kennywinker wrote:
| BG checks are pretty common in tech, in my limited
| experience.
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| Given some of the shenanigans Carmack himself got up to back in
| the day (including B&E), I'm not sure he's saying it's the
| right thing to do, only an easy, commonly used and widely
| considered unobjectionable first-level filter.
| breckenedge wrote:
| Yea that's what he says in the thread, it's a negative example.
|
| "Thinking about this while considering the challenges that
| @UnderdogDevs face in trying to help the previously
| incarcerated into software jobs."
|
| Here's a link to the Underdog Devs organization:
| https://www.underdogdevs.org/
| hmahncke wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out - great to see someone is
| working on this.
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