[HN Gopher] How to hire low experience, high potential people
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How to hire low experience, high potential people
Author : chuckhend
Score : 280 points
Date : 2024-02-07 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worktopia.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worktopia.substack.com)
| garciasn wrote:
| This is exactly what I do with my team. I staff the upper levels
| first with people I trust (people have worked with me for 15
| years across 4 different companies now) and then start fleshing
| out the rest of the teams beneath them with high potential n00bs.
|
| Why? Because that's what I was when I started and now I'm paying
| it forward.
|
| It's been a very successful model and continues to be.
| jawns wrote:
| The list of indicators are great and spot-on.
|
| But in terms of how to assess them, a lot of the advice here
| boils down to "you'll know it when you see it."
|
| So I think this advice is best for seasoned hiring managers. If
| you're just starting out, it's going to be hard to accurately
| detect some of the nuance and subjective elements.
| duxup wrote:
| I like that this isn't your typical skills demo.
|
| I changed careers at age 40+, learned to code, now years later
| enjoying it. It just took someone who thought I could grow.
|
| Interestingly I was hired along side some capable, albeit green,
| college grads. The difference in terms of understanding how a
| business works, speaking to customers, asking questions / follow
| through to get down to the problem we're solving was enormous.
| They could code circles around me, but they also just wanted to
| be told exactly what to code and had no interest beyond exactly
| that.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I'm 36 And also trying to get my foot in. It's very hard, wish
| I could find someone who gives me an opportunity. I've been
| interviewed but it's always about the skillset you bring to the
| table.
|
| Can I throw you against a codebase and be productive quickly?
| Do you already have experience with this obscure library? I
| want to build now a website using React + Function Calling +
| Puppeteer, IDK what else to do to impress people.
|
| Same happening with my gf, who is a graphic designer + UI/UX.
| She has some experience but only as freelancer, she's never
| been hired by anyone because it seems never enough.
|
| I teached her HTML + CSS and she's been able to do this by
| herself (https://sofialenti.com/) so IDK what more a designer
| can learn. The only thing that's left IMO is to learn JS and be
| able to code some awesome stuff, but at that point she would be
| almost an unicorn.
|
| It seems the market is just too saturated, despite the frequent
| news about we need millions of people who can do X! It seems
| like a way to get cheap and disposable labor.
| chefandy wrote:
| Ambiguity and uncertainty are anathema to approaching problems
| from the classic engineering mindset. That's not a bad thing
| when used properly, and it's great in school where people hand
| you a stream of problems designed to be interesting in that
| mentality, but it's not the general-purpose tool for
| interfacing with all problems, as some imagine. I've worked
| both as a developer and designer, and with design tasks, you've
| only got a fuzzy sense of the wrong answers before you manage
| to craft a right one. Many, if not most engineers find it much
| easier to assume designers sit around all day moving things
| about as they fancy rather than imagining what it would take to
| solve ambiguous problems with no way to determine if you've got
| a really good solution until many people start interacting with
| it.
| poorman wrote:
| > Most smart people are actually terrible at having the
| drive/follow through to take things to completion. They'll
| usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or slowness.
|
| You can also hire that really "smart" person from a large co to a
| startup and watch them be extremely successful in a low-friction
| environment for crossing the finish line.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > > Most smart people are actually terrible at having the
| drive/follow through to take things to completion. They'll
| usually want to give up at the first sign of failure or
| slowness.
|
| Also, sometimes these people who don't follow through to take
| things to completion might "just" have something like ADHD.
| Struggling with finishing tasks is a very common ADHD symptom,
| and a good manager will help someone use the other "good"
| skills to compensate for such an issue. (Personally I believe
| the reason for this is perfectionism.)
| nradov wrote:
| Startups have just as much friction. The only difference is
| that the friction is more external than internal.
| rabi_molar wrote:
| What makes you think a startup is a low-friction environment
| rather than a different kind of high-friction environment where
| the corporate person could be absolutely miserable and
| unprepared for execution with resource constraints?
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's the difference between being blocked by a wall (with 'no
| trespassing' sign) and being blocked by a muddy field. Some
| people find the former more stressful; some the latter.
| simonbw wrote:
| Which one is which in this metaphor? Or is it just that
| they're different? My guess is that the wall is the
| startup, but I'm not quite sure.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I was thinking the wall is the corporate process and
| departmental silos, turf wars etc. Startup is the muddy
| field where you have no support, but nobody in your way.
| notpachet wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like I'm staring at a wall in the middle
| of a muddy field...
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| > the corporate person could be absolutely miserable and
| unprepared for execution with resource constraints?
|
| This is possible and even likely depending on how you hire.
|
| But I think the OP might be assuming you can onboard whomever
| you've hired and instead referring to the relative incentives
| in each environment. For example, big companies tend to plan
| quarter to quarter, while small companies typically have a
| pile of things they need done urgently and are incentivized
| to help folks move as fast as possible (company runway may
| only be 1 year). That sets up a dynamic where large companies
| make you spend time derisking new project proposals and
| getting buy-in, in a way that small companies don't (this is
| where the agility comes from). Bigco also may have higher
| standards for getting something off the ground and a lower
| tolerance for code that is likely to be thrown away, whereas
| at startups you often write a pile of not-so-great code just
| to prove the thing works + understand your customer, with the
| knowledge that you'll have to throw it away when it's time to
| grow and scale.
|
| One more annoying wrinkle: big companies sometimes have
| investments that mean you can't use the best tool for the
| best job. At Google you have to use borg and a very annoying
| deep stack of stuff to expose a service to the public -- you
| can't just buy a domain and spin up your website on a $10/mo
| server with nginx. You can't use React. You can't use PyTorch
| and just fork the hottest new model that came out -- you'll
| have to translate it into Tensorflow or JAX first. You also
| have to build using tools that assume and can handle scale,
| but sacrifice agility and developer ergonomics for that.
|
| Oh one more thing: people at big companies are so obsessed
| with level. If you have good ideas and want to try them out
| but you're underleveled, you're going to have an impossible
| time geting buy-in from leadership to let you lead or even
| try the thing. At small companies if you have an idea that's
| good for the company, it's obvious to your leadership and
| they're just like go do it, you're in charge of this project,
| show me what can happen in a week. And you can make stuff
| happen. Low friction. Big companies might also have an entire
| team of PMs trying to decide what to prioritize (all the
| while playing political games since it affects their standing
| in the company), who also have to sync with eng and design,
| and then some pushback between the two happen. At small
| companies the number of people to get on board is just
| smaller and it makes things go faster.
| duxup wrote:
| The idea of low friction and similar environments and someone
| being productive always trigger me a little. In the sense that
| I think MANY people get a lot of things done in a low friction
| environment... BECAUSE it is a low friction environment. And
| once you have a few people who have to deal with the results
| that come out of nowhere, that other person is the friction for
| everyone else.
|
| I've worked a lot of places where there's that special someone
| who gets to cowboy everything because they're "really good" and
| of course they look really good, because the rules or structure
| don't apply to them and they can move faster than anyone else
| by design. It's a never ending cycle.
|
| Meanwhile everyone else or people who come later have to deal
| with everything the special someone did / didn't think of and
| so on.
|
| I don't disagree with the premise, but there's consequences and
| a sort of inescapable feedback loop sometimes too.
| noamchomsky1 wrote:
| > "Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the
| chapter titles from your birth till now."
|
| Utterly ridiculous.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| This reminds me of an interview I have had in the past that
| made me very uncomfortable.
|
| They asked me the same question and I paused for a moment and
| replied "excuse me, but this question makes me feel
| uncomfortable; I'm here for an interview not for a date!".
|
| They realized they overdid it and asked me actual questions.
|
| Eventually decided I was the right candidate for them, but
| until they decided to reply back, I already had found job
| elsewhere.
|
| Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?!
| beretguy wrote:
| > Why do they ask such type of questions anyway?!
|
| They are incompetent at doing their jobs.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| "Well, I like to call chapter 7 'The Fuck Pig'. It'll make
| sense in a minute."
| kdazzle wrote:
| Dat you, David Cameron?
| trgn wrote:
| Really condescending way of talking to a person.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > Once you've gotten the overview, dive into each "chapter" and
| plumb the depths for their real stories. Go back to their
| childhood!
|
| Oh God. A job interview isn't a therapy session. Why would
| people ever feel this type of questioning is appropriate for a
| job interview? How would someone who's dealt with intense
| trauma during some of those "chapters" respond? Especially
| given the power imbalance in a job interview, and the pressure
| you feel to give an answer.
|
| I'd like to believe that I would be willing to politely decline
| to answer questions like this, thank the interviewer and tell
| them there just seems to be a mismatch, and walk out of the
| door. But I don't know if I'd be able to, due to the stress of
| a job interview.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| > "Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the
| chapter titles from your birth till now." Once you've gotten the
| overview, dive into each "chapter" and plumb the depths for their
| real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about
| their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball
| obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent.
|
| I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal
| information with a stranger on a job interview.
|
| Additionally, it sounds more like a psychological evaluation,
| than evaluation of a person's potential at a job. I understand
| that maybe that's exactly the writer's intention, but I'd
| personally be wary of companies which ask questions like this.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I don't think I'd be comfortable sharing this much personal
| information with a stranger on a job interview.
|
| Then lie and tell a good story.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Good point! Seems like the writer has accidentally optimized
| his interview for narcissists, psychopaths and pathological
| liers who excel at manipulation, instead of true high-
| potential young people :)
| paulcole wrote:
| Six of one, half dozen of the other.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Sure, if what you want is a toxic team.
| paulcole wrote:
| It's a job interview not a deposition. Isn't everybody
| just telling a good story to get the job?
|
| I will say that my general opinion is that people being
| interviewed should be accurate with the truth but can be
| flexible on the facts.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| So this is tuned to find the ideal corporate functionary.
| jjk7 wrote:
| All interviews except hard technical ones are optimized for
| liars.
| cpursley wrote:
| And even hard technical interviews greatly fail folks who
| don't do well under pressure (ie, not at all how typical
| software is written / projects are conducted in the real
| world).
| klyrs wrote:
| > Then lie and tell a good story.
|
| They'll review your story with your references; better hope
| your mom has a good sense of humor...
| paulcole wrote:
| I mean yeah that's a risk. But get it pretty close and pick
| the right references.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Yeah fuck that. Maybe those topics can come up after we've been
| working together for a while and have built up a strong rapport
| and trust (not a given). This feels totally inappropriate for
| an interview.
| duxup wrote:
| >it sounds more like a psychological evaluation
|
| Ultimately if you're talking about who you work well with, how
| you deal with frustration, adversity and etc, that's sorta what
| you're talking about.
|
| I am not a big fan of some of the questions, but ultimately
| when we think of how humans work together, well or not, it's
| often a social thing.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| None of my current co-workers, who I have now spent several
| years and get along perfectly well with, know about my
| childhood, and I will never tell them.
| notpachet wrote:
| It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of
| comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be
| written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick
| engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous
| organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from their
| day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is HN after
| all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut, especially
| when they absolutely can't be.
|
| For roles that require discontinuous improvement to company
| process or culture, it's necessary to get a glimpse into how
| someone thinks, and the elements that went into building their
| worldview. You need to know how they will react under pressure
| to an extent that I think is largely irrelevant for a lot of
| engineering roles.
|
| In other words, the difference between a psychological
| evaluation of an individual and that individual's potential to
| do this sort of work becomes very muddy and indistinct. You
| _want_ to have a picture of their psychology, because the
| problems you 're hiring them for are often psychological in
| nature.
|
| This is not a popular opinion among engineering types; we like
| things arrayed in black and white, passing tests and failing
| tests. But that's naive.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| I don't think "oh haha aren't engineers robotic
| personalities" applies here.
|
| Fucking nobody I know gives too much of their real
| personality at work, let alone when interviewing.
|
| But "haha aren't all engineers only friends with other nerds
| and barely live in the real word" so what do I know?
| em-bee wrote:
| _nobody I know gives too much of their real personality at
| work_
|
| i don't believe that. are you claiming that they are all
| faking it?
|
| i would not want to work in a place where people fake their
| personality just to fit in.
|
| my experience from working on FOSS projects suggests that
| the stereotypical behavior we see in some engineers is in
| fact real. not as exaggerated as people claim, but the
| signs are there.
|
| more importantly however is that among engineers i feel
| there is less expectation to conform to some kind of
| normalized behavior or personality. at best, certain
| aspects of someones personality don't get an opportunity to
| show. say for example how someone cares for their family or
| animals, or volunteers in non-tech areas.
|
| an alternative interpretation of your statement would be
| that people do not show all of their personality at work,
| but only those aspects that are relevant for the work. and
| that is just what is needed. showing someones full
| personality at work is not what is expected here.
|
| a more negative side of this is that in some places certain
| aspects of a personality are being actively suppressed.
| say, calling out problems that hurt the company, or trying
| to be helpful to others (and possibly hurting your own
| performance because of it)
| the_mar wrote:
| It's not really faking it, but it is surface level. My
| coworkers don't really need to know about my childhood
| trauma, my struggles or my hopes and dreams.
| em-bee wrote:
| ok, yes, putting it this way does make more sense.
| reality however is that at least for me, my childhood
| experience affects how i work. although i acknowledge
| that this is more about self reflection and not about
| actually sharing this with anyone at work. but it does
| deeply affect how i interact with them. for example as a
| team leader i can become very protective of those under
| me.
| the_mar wrote:
| Completely agree, it is very important to reflect on how
| your experiences shaped you and become self-aware.
|
| You may choose to share some of the deeper reasoning as
| to why you act one way or another, with certain people
| under certain circumstances. But it is a choice and not a
| requirement.
|
| "I tend to be very protective of my team" should be
| sufficient, especially in an an interview setting
| finnthehuman wrote:
| > i would not want to work in a place where people fake
| their personality just to fit in.
|
| You know that statistically some number of the people you
| work and collaborate productively with, and get along
| with. They would, if given the option, never interact
| with you again for the rest of their lives. You know
| this, right?
|
| I am a boring robot engineer because it's easy to do. The
| "how was your weekend" conversations are about tech
| hobbies because I'm not sharing the occasions I got
| drunk, took mushrooms and hung out in a pool full of
| naked people for most of a day.
| em-bee wrote:
| _You know that statistically some number of the people
| you work and collaborate productively with, and get along
| with. They would, if given the option, never interact
| with you again for the rest of their lives. You know
| this, right?_
|
| i don't know that because i don't care. what i care about
| is that we can get along at work. at that point that is
| all that matters. chances are that the longer we work
| together the more we get to know each other and the more
| we learn to respect each other and the more likely we may
| enjoy interacting outside of work.
|
| i think this goes back to the difference between
| europeans and americans:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39006092
|
| well, actually it is europeans and the rest of the world,
| because everywhere i have been to, north america, asia
| and africa, people are friendlier than in europe.
|
| but it can't possibly be true that the whole world except
| europe is faking being nice. it doesn't make sense. i
| rather think that people honestly believe that being nice
| is the right way how to interact with others, and that
| has absolutely nothing to do with being fake. it is the
| very thing that allows us to get along. whether i want to
| hang out with you after work is not a question of getting
| along or of our personality but one of having common
| interests or beliefs. and if someone doesn't want to hang
| out with me ever again, then it's not only because we
| really do not have any common interests or beliefs but
| also because that person is likely rather closed minded.
| (to be clear, not wanting to hang out is not a sign of
| being closed minded. they may simply have other
| priorities. not wanting to interact ever again for the
| rest of their lives however does look quite closed minded
| to me)
|
| people didn't join linus torvalds to develop the kernel
| because of his friendly personality or richard stallman
| for that matter.
|
| for sure, a friendly personality does make that easier,
| and a hostile one will put of some people for whom the
| personality does matter more, likely due to their own
| past experiences.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| i'm weird as hell at work
|
| i slowly show more and more of my personality
|
| not right for everyone but i prefer being me even if it
| costs $$$
| slibhb wrote:
| It's unclear to me how "non-engineering types" can make use
| of stories about e.g. "caring for a dying parent" in the
| context of a job interview. I mean, can anyone (layperson or
| not) actually "psychologically evaluate" someone based on
| anecdotes from their life?
|
| I also worry that this stuff can be gamed. If an applicant
| gains an advantage by telling a story about how he "cared for
| his dying aunt while finishing a degree and thereby learned
| what's really important in life," then you're just
| encouraging a confessional (and potentionally dishonest)
| style of approaching an interview.
| the_mar wrote:
| I have a ton of stories of a "cared for his dying aunt..."
| variety, 99% of the time when asked about personal stuff in
| the interview I am forced to lie, because otherwise the
| interviewer is coming out of that deeply scarred.
|
| So my perspective is that anyone who tells you a "cared for
| his dying aunt..." story is full of shit and definitely is
| playing you.
| hnfong wrote:
| I agree probing into the candidate's childhood is
| probably a bad idea as an interview topic.
|
| However, for sake of argument, given that your story is
| true, shouldn't it also be evidence that those _not_
| talking about "caring for dying aunt" is lying too? I
| mean, you told a story that didn't involve caring for a
| dying aunt, and that was a lie. We actually don't have
| evidence (either within your story, or in general I
| suppose?) that anyone would make up a story about a dying
| aunt to an interviewer...?
| the_mar wrote:
| Yes, I have a whole palatable origin story prepared, that
| lines up with what people want to hear and isn't
| traumatizing. So it is entirely useless as a signal.
|
| Not my fault that my life experiences aren't made for a
| casual conversation starter. Which is why I say this line
| of questioning isn't going to produce good outcomes.
|
| And of course we don't have evidence that people make up
| dying aunt stories necessarily. But if anyone tells me
| this is the kind of experience that made them realize
| what's important is at the very least embellishing the
| truth.
|
| When I was caring for my dying father, I learned how to
| function on autopilot, perpetually sleep deprived, in an
| emotional fog. I was also writing my master thesis and
| struggling to pay rent with shitty student jobs. Did it
| make me "realize what is truly important", hell no, but
| it did make me be ok with cutting corners, doing the bare
| minimum at work/school and striving for mediocrity
| because I didn't have physical or mental capacity for
| anything else. This isn't exactly the kind of thing
| employers want to hear, so I'd never bring this story up
| unless specifically asked. And then I'll tell you how it
| taught me about "what is truly important in life" which
| is disingenuous
| RogerL wrote:
| If you ask for a story, and the person needs/wants the
| job, that story is not likely to be accurate. You get
| some version of "my greatest weakness is I just work too
| darn hard and give to the company", pitched to whatever
| the question actually is. Sure, some people won't, but
| how do you know? Proxies and stories are usually a
| terrible way to interview somebody.
| bgirard wrote:
| > I mean, can anyone (layperson or not) actually
| "psychologically evaluate" someone based on anecdotes from
| their life?
|
| Doubtful indeed. They're more likely to just open
| themselves up to unconscious bias and prefer to hire
| candidates with similar backgrounds to them. 'Ohh this
| person started tinkering with technology in grade 8 in the
| basement like I did'. While passing up qualified candidates
| with backgrounds different than theirs.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I don't care about the details the questions are meant to
| generate discussions. We can have you do stupid personality
| quiz instead. There are no bad answers to Myers Briggs. The
| test is stupid but also just a jumping point to dig into
| someone's personality
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> We can have you do stupid personality quiz instead.
| There are no bad answers to Myers Briggs._
|
| Why is _that_ the alternative? All of the above sounds
| awful to me. Are you looking for an employer or signing
| up for a cult?
| Xelynega wrote:
| They're looking for legal reasons to choose candidates
| they've decided beforehand.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Yeah, it's a great question to select for good
| bullshitters.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > In other words, the difference between a psychological
| evaluation of an individual and that individual's potential
| to do this sort of work becomes very muddy and indistinct.
| You want to have a picture of their psychology, because the
| problems you're hiring them for are often psychological in
| nature.
|
| That might be true but if it's important then it should be
| conducted by a trained psychologist, not some random hiring
| manager.
| verticalscaler wrote:
| > You want to have a picture of their psychology, because the
| problems you're hiring them for are often psychological in
| nature.
|
| This reminds me of a blind date I went on in Korea. We
| somehow ended up kidding around about how some women really
| take astrology way too seriously only for her to demand my
| blood type later on in the evening.
|
| I never knew this, turns out in Korea your blood type is very
| important as it determines your personality traits.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Sometimes I think some people in business have a pathological
| need for things to be poorly defined. They dread a visit to
| the ontologist even more than they do to the orthodontist. I
| think some people just don't feel like things are in control
| unless they have a large arbitrary structure that confounds
| everybody else and lets them do whatever they hell they want.
| (Meanwhile, Steven Covey would say you should be proactive,
| begin with the end in mind, "Seek first to understand, then
| to be understood", and "Sharpen the Saw" all things that seem
| to make bad businesspeople melt the way the wicked witch
| melted when splashed by water in _The Wizard of Oz_ )
| tuatoru wrote:
| It's just that the real world is fractal. With apologies to
| Jonathan Swift, the exceptions have smaller exceptions that
| upon them prey, and they have smaller yet to bite 'em.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a subject (reasoning with defaults) that I've
| thought about a lot because it's a core part of
| commonsense reasoning. Back when production rules were a
| thing people never standardized a way of dealing w/
| defaults and one of very few default-oriented programming
| languages is
|
| https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/
|
| default-oriented programming might well resolve some of
| the conflicts involving object-orientation and its
| discontents. (e.g. defaults could be a better model for
| "inheritance" that works in more complex relationship
| graphs.)
| chefandy wrote:
| Conversely, some in the engineering mindset have a
| pathological need to nail down ambiguous things to a
| definition because it fits their style of reasoning. Nobody
| thinks it's easier to work with poorly-defined things--
| even with a well-defined overall goal, when the specific
| goals and risks in achieving it are a bit ambiguous, you're
| pretty likely to get it wrong if you try to stuff the
| problem into a neat little box, and in some cases-- e.g.
| teams with tight budgets-- getting it wrong is a huge
| problem. That sort of flexibility is what many developers
| lack when they get "promoted" to a managerial position
| because they're skilled developers rather than competent
| managers.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Any real revolution in living conditions (like being able
| to support 8 billion people on chemical fertilizers)
| always involved finding order in situations. Everything
| else is about as effective as pushing the deck chairs
| around on the Titanic.
| chefandy wrote:
| Order vs disorder is a false dichotomy. The vast majority
| of situations fall somewhere in between "math problem
| with a proof" and "random assortment of unrelated
| events." The processes required to make progress at one
| end of that spectrum are different than at the other end,
| though most problems worth solving have components at
| different places on that spectrum. Engineers making micro
| perfection in well organized pockets is only valuable if
| people working in the far more ambiguous surrounding
| areas can apply it to the larger context.
|
| People like thinking what they do is the most difficult
| and important part of any process, but most non-technical
| people can pretty easily look at technical work and see
| that they don't have the knowledge to do it-- the
| complexity and success/failure is very visible. Since
| other disciplines' obstacles and processes aren't so
| easily labelled and quantified, many engineers
| perennially fail to realize that their perceiving less
| difficulty and complexity in many other fields is because
| they lack the perception or experience to identify it.
| notpachet wrote:
| This is a very well articulated and nuanced comment. In
| the most pathological engineering organizations, that
| lack of perception can fester into active resentment of
| other disciplines.
| sesm wrote:
| Some people thrive by "catching fish in muddy waters". The
| real motives of people very often differ from declared
| ones, but at a workplace it's usually either getting
| promotion/pay rise or stealing from company in some way
| (kickbacks, bribes, benefits for their side business, etc).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yeah, the best thing those people have going for them is
| that they get old and die and turn to dust so they don't
| have to live with the effect that they have on other
| people. It's one reason why the ancients invented the
| idea of the afterlife, to put some fear into those
| people.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "But that's naive."
|
| Or perhaps we realize that company "culture" or "fit" are
| often used to discriminate.
| notpachet wrote:
| The verb "discriminate" has been (perhaps rightfully)
| saddled with negative connotations, but discrimination is
| exactly what any hiring manager is doing. You're
| discriminating between candidates on the basis of non-
| protected attributes. Obviously we don't want to
| discriminate on the basis of protected attributes, and it
| gets messy when there are areas of strong (often causal)
| overlap between protected classes of people and the non-
| protected characteristics that employers are looking for in
| candidates. But that doesn't obviate the need for
| discrimination along _some_ axis or other. (Hard technical
| skills being the example that is probably most salient for
| the HN crowd.)
|
| In an ideal world, anyone could do anything they wanted
| without impediment. But to quote Mr Lightyear, we're not on
| that planet. In _this_ world, if I 'm hiring you for a role
| where you're responsible for safeguarding the wellbeing of
| others (teacher, manager, doctor, whatever), then of course
| it's going to put downward pressure on my ability to hire
| you if you have a super fucked up background that makes you
| snap at people, attack them without provocation, jump at
| shadows, have traumatic flashbacks mid-sentence, whatever.
| I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. There are other jobs
| that are better suited for people in those situations.
|
| Regarding "culture fit":
|
| While we should try very hard to avoid promoting
| monocultures when hiring (for a whole lot of different
| reasons, particularly because diversity is crucial for
| organizational resilience and adaptability), the truth is
| that it remains a very subjective determination. It depends
| on your criteria for what constitutes a monoculture. You
| could say that we live in a monoculture with regard to our
| expectations for treating everyone in the workplace with a
| baseline amount of respect. But not everyone agrees where
| that baseline should be drawn. If you come into an
| interview and it's immediately clear to me that you're the
| kind of employee who's going to be disrespectful of your
| coworkers, and I reject your application accordingly --
| well, I'm promoting a sort of company monoculture in that
| sense.
|
| Then you can walk back from that into varying shades of
| grey regarding different individual's varying ways of
| signaling respect, or deemphasis of candor in certain
| situations, unwillingness to openly address issues, etc,
| and it gets very messy very quickly. Where is the line
| between avoiding hiring rude people and discriminating
| against people from backgrounds or cultures that have
| patterns of communication that others may perceive as rude?
| And so on. It requires great care.
|
| This is the sort of ambiguity I'm talking about. To think
| that this ambiguity doesn't exist, or believe that we can
| simply wish it out of existence -- that's why I reached for
| the word "naive" in my original post. I think a lot of
| engineers are fortunate to work in positions where they
| don't need to wrestle with this sort of ambiguity in their
| day-to-day.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And yet you don't need a bunch of personal background to
| "see how their worldview was shaped" in order to see
| their worldview and value to the company. The personal
| questions aspect of the interview is not very valuable,
| leads to the possiblity of more negative biases, and
| potentially opens the door to lawsuits if you ask
| specific things.
|
| Perhaps your view of us "naive" technical folk is itself
| naive.
| notpachet wrote:
| Well, I'm an engineer myself, albeit with a lot of
| sidecar management experience, so I like to (perhaps
| naively) think that I'm somewhere in the middle of the
| spectrum. I believe everyone is naive in certain
| respects; there are so many hours in the day and no one
| can be an expert in everything.
|
| But your larger point is fair: it's a very tricky and
| problematic area.
|
| I do think that it can help to see how people's worldview
| was shaped rather than just trying to get a one-shot
| sense of someone's worldview based on your static
| impression of them at this moment in time, though.
|
| It's analogous to asking someone to describe their prior
| technical work experience rather than just explaining
| what they know in this precise moment, and akin to
| someone showing their work when completing a math
| problem. It makes it easier to tell whether someone
| actually knows what they purport to know, or believes
| what they purport to believe, if they can show how that
| experience was derived.
|
| I feel this is especially true in the case mentioned in
| the original article, where you as the employer are
| essentially taking a minor leap of faith in hiring
| someone. You can't rely as much on their prior work
| experience as a "web of trust" evidence point that they
| know how to conduct themselves. You need to reach for
| other data points.
| the_mar wrote:
| "working on ambiguous organizational problems" is pretty much
| what I do. What's that gotta do with my childhood?
|
| I hate personal interview questions with passion, because I
| had an unusual upbringing, and I don't want to make it my
| entire personality. So with questions that personal you are
| either going to be forcing me to lie (and yes, I have had to
| make up a version of my life story that's not traumatizing to
| the listener) or you are coming out of that interview with an
| opinion about me that has very little to do with how I
| operate professionally.
|
| You can absolutely get a read on one's potential to do a job
| xyz without asking personal questions.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Yeah I've been interviewing and building engineering teams
| for teams for over 20 years at this point. Overall the
| article highlights a lot of valuable personality traits and
| signals you can pick up on. Asking about childhood is just
| weird though. I get that the target is low experience
| people, so there may not be sufficient work experience to
| fall back on, but at least keep achievement related (eg.
| tell me about something you worked on in a group lately...)
| Xelbair wrote:
| >It depends on the role you're hiring for. I suspect a lot of
| comments in this thread, echoing your sentiment, will be
| written from the perspective of sharp-end-of-the-stick
| engineers for whom the idea of working on ambiguous
| organizational problems is an abstract concept, far from
| their day to day. Not saying that's you per se, but this is
| HN after all. This crowd loves for things to be clear-cut,
| especially when they absolutely can't be.
|
| That's not really the core issue. Those are possible things
| they could use to manipulate me. I won't be giving them ammo
| for free. I wouldn't share those things easily on a first
| date, why would i share them with potential employer?
|
| Especially as a "unconventional" hire, because finding job is
| hard in such state, so they will have me metaphorically by
| the balls.
|
| My perspective might be warped by working in post soviet
| country.
| chefandy wrote:
| That probably makes perfect sense for you, and reflects
| most technical people's perspective, but it depends on the
| job.
|
| When I've interviewed developers and other technical people
| when I was in that business, I wanted to gauge if they'd be
| pleasant to work with, and vaguely "who they are," but
| that's about it. In a dev interview, I'd be suspicious of
| someone digging into what made me tick, if for no reason
| other than their lacking boundaries. But even in ambiguous
| green field coding projects, not having the most creative
| dev team could maybe result in longer design times, or
| overly prescriptive solutions, at worst, if they're
| technically competent.
|
| _Edit: (That said, in one technical role I was in, a
| technically competent new hire (that I didn 't interview)
| tried to bring a machete into work on their second day for
| reasons we never found out, despite our working in the
| secure block of a government building with metal detectors,
| man traps, etc. But I think that's probably a bit of an
| outlier. ;-)_
|
| However, if I was applying for a job at a creative studio
| doing deep creative work on amorphous topics with
| comparatively ambiguous definitions of success, like making
| a movie, designing a large brand/visual identity from the
| ground up, or similar, I might not even accept a job if
| they weren't digging into what makes everybody on that team
| tick. The difference between mediocrity and excellence at
| that stage is almost entirely based on the creative
| capability of the team as an entity. Someone that doesn't
| jibe with it will be a drag on everyone at best, or
| unintentionally dousing the creative flames with an
| unhelpful attitude and momentum-killing diversions at
| worst.
| Xelbair wrote:
| There's a difference into trying to understand what makes
| everyone tick, and going into deep personal details.
|
| It might make sense from employer perspective, but why i
| should put myself at risk? It is similar to prisoners
| dilemma.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >You need to know how they will react under pressure to an
| extent that I think is largely irrelevant for a lot of
| engineering roles.
|
| The problem is that not all pressure is considered
| acceptable. Others have mentioned examples of things that
| cause great pressure and trauma and can indicate a person is
| very resilient and able to recover and excel, but which would
| never be acceptable to bring up in an interview. While it
| isn't specifically the same thing as discriminating on a
| protected status, I see it as equally harmful form of
| discrimination (and a failing of law to discriminate between
| these groups).
| ElFitz wrote:
| > This is not a popular opinion among engineering types; we
| like things arrayed in black and white, passing tests and
| failing tests.
|
| This, however, seems to be a popular opinion. And one that I
| particularly hate.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _maybe their experience caring for a dying parent._
|
| Yeah, you would have to claw this out of me with a hammer.
| There's absolutely no way I would be comfortable sharing that
| level of intimacy with a stranger.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| That isnt everyone.
|
| Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK
| with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay
| others to listen to this and call it therapy.
|
| There are other ways to ask these sorts of questions: did you
| ever have a job that you dont want to go back to but would
| not give up the experience of? (Do you know how shitty a job
| can be, were you an amazon driver or a pickle shoveler)
|
| When they dont have that much experience you want to know
| that they can be mentored.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > That isnt everyone.
|
| > Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are
| OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people
| pay others to listen to this and call it therapy.
|
| Sure. But is "willing to talk about dealing with trauma"
| really a valid filter to sort potential employees by?
| eszed wrote:
| Ability to function during emotionally-difficult
| circumstances can be a job requirement. (Likely not
| software engineering, hence the scorn on this forum!)
| It's unlikely the interviewers are curious about the
| interviewee's story, but if a question about a traumatic
| experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be
| able to perform certain roles.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > if a question about a traumatic experience makes
| someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform
| certain roles
|
| What certain roles are needed to plunge into reliving the
| time they were raped or assaulted? When they were a war
| refugee? And while reliving being assaulted to navigate a
| professional space??
| the_mar wrote:
| Off the top of my head, working in an emergency
| department of any major hospital is guaranteed to be
| filled with emotionally-difficult circumstances. Yet we
| don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally
| invasive questions to determine their ability to do their
| job. For someone starting a job in an emergency
| department, having prior personal experiences with life
| or death situations is a very poor indicator of ability
| to handle that type of pressure in professional life. So
| why is that relevant to office jobs?
| em-bee wrote:
| _we don 't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally
| invasive questions to determine their ability to do their
| job_
|
| because we can just ask them how they dealt with with
| emotionally-difficult work situations in the past.
|
| is there any work where that is not the case?
| the_mar wrote:
| When it's your first job in the field? We still don't use
| personal experiences as shitty proxy for how you're able
| to handle work situations
| em-bee wrote:
| right, but for someones first job i would also not expect
| any experience how to handle work situations at all.
| regardless of how i would be able to find out it seems a
| bit much to ask.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| People are ok with talking about their trauma in an
| interview? Next time someone asks me "name a time you faced
| adversity" should I bring up navigating an eating disorder
| in a workplace where eating is done in view of your peers
| and it's socially acceptable to comment on food, socially
| unacceptable to refrain from a catered lunch?
| em-bee wrote:
| therapy vs sharing my experiences are very different
| things. when i am willing to talk to a therapist then it is
| because the therapist is not allowed to share that with
| others.
| mouzogu wrote:
| "dance monkey dance!!"
|
| was hoping for something insightful...
|
| we are truly in the worst timeline.
| siva7 wrote:
| I'd quit such an interview. Those questions are going over the
| boundaries of a strictly professional relationship. The thing
| with low-experience, high-potentials is that they may be bit
| more insecure than seniors and therefore might think that such
| questions are normal which they are not.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I am not sure if there is a name for
| the tactic but I had two girl friends that probed like that
| early on in our relationships and both times it turned out to
| bite me during and after our relationships. It is almost a
| cult-like tactic to get into someone's head.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Exactly. You are joining a company, not a cult. Basically
| they are filtering for people who can speak the same jargon
| correctly. I have heard a lot of stories about people failing
| DEI questions during an interview because they didn't know
| the "correct" phrases to use.
| greesil wrote:
| Who asks DEI questions? For engineering roles? As a
| sometimes hiring manager myself I'm genuinely curious.
| didntcheck wrote:
| Unfortunately unsurprising. A lot of "DEI" and related
| topics seems to largely consist of upper-middle-class
| people flaunting their prestige dialect and reciting their
| pious knowledge of fashionable beliefs. Whether deliberate
| or not, it's ironically quite effective at filtering out
| people from less privileged backgrounds _and_ insinuating
| moral inferiority in the process
| toast0 wrote:
| > The thing with low-experience, high-potentials is that they
| may be bit more insecure than seniors and therefore might
| think that such questions are normal which they are not.
|
| It's not about being insecure, it's that they are likely to
| lack the experience and knowledge about if those questions
| are normal.
|
| If you get those questions when you're going around on your
| first job interviews, and didn't get coaching on what should
| and shouldn't be asked/answered, you wouldn't know they were
| weird.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've noticed a trend where the lower the position, the more
| invasive the questions become. I think it's a power dynamic -
| they _can_ ask the questions because they know the applicants
| are more desperate.
|
| For example, before I was an engineer, I was scraping by on odd
| jobs after the 2008 crash. Around that time I applied for a job
| at Red Robin (basically a fast food restaurant for those who
| don't know).
|
| One of the questions was a huge list of various types of people
| - a priest, a school teacher, a police officer, etc. There were
| like 50 of them. I had to rank them by how "moral" I considered
| them to be. Aside from that, there were a bunch of other
| pseudo-psychological questions that tried to gauge my
| personality.
|
| All for a job paying $8/hr at a fucking fast food restaurant.
| bombcar wrote:
| Those are definitely interview questions "sold" to companies
| as being able to weed out undesirables (read: find the
| answers to questions they cannot ask because of anti-
| discrimination laws).
| tristor wrote:
| I hope that stuff has stopped somewhat but it was definitely
| all the rage during the mid-late 2000s. I applied for Best
| Buy GeekSquad when I was starting my career and "failed"
| their stupid hour long online psych eval that was probably
| (or should be) illegal. Considering my intelligence and the
| trajectory of my career they would have been lucky to have
| me, but I am glad I didn't get the job, so I would say these
| are red flags you don't want to work there anyway.
| robocat wrote:
| > I would say these are red flags you don't want to work
| there anyway.
|
| That's kind of ignoring OP's point: people that are
| desperate for income will put up with abuse to get work. Of
| course they don't want to work there and the working
| conditions are often stink.
| yterdy wrote:
| Nope. Had to take one for BB, CVS, T-Mobile, as late as
| 2022.
| nineplay wrote:
| There's a nauseating bias here against people who've had
| horrific childhoods.
|
| "Let me tell you about the years of physical/emotional/sexual
| abuse I've suffered though." That's just not going to happen -
| and if it did happen the interviewer is probably not going to
| come away with "What a brave person to overcome all of that!"
| but "What a damaged person, I don't need them around".
|
| Well done, you've weeded out people who've already suffered
| enough.
| the_mar wrote:
| Thank you. I found the part where the author throws in "cared
| for a dying parent" particularly distasteful, it's like a
| benchmark for "palatable damage"
| garciasn wrote:
| I could only see that being relevant when there are resume
| gaps that may be explained by being a SAHM or caring for a
| dying parent.
|
| But as it relates to actual work? No.
| the_mar wrote:
| I was told that asking about resume gaps is a very biased
| question and a no-no, especially if it is a single gap,
| as opposed to a pattern.
|
| Usually the answer to a single resume gap is something
| personal and none of my business as an interviewer, it's
| not my place to pry if you were raising children, caring
| for dying relatives or battling severe depression
| nineplay wrote:
| That whole line of questioning is a HR nightmare and I
| don't think they'd get away with it in any large company.
| You are _not_ supposed to ask open ended questions that
| could reveal a candidate as a member of a protected
| group. They tell you that their parents kicked them out
| because they were gay, they don't get hired, and they
| file a lawsuit saying that there were forced to reveal
| their sexual orientation and they were discriminated
| against because of it.
|
| It'd be a pretty easy win.
| bigtunacan wrote:
| This scenario is unlikely to be an _easy_ win in court,
| but presents enough headache and just the risk of the
| company losing in court would most likely result in a
| settlement offer.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| I actually took care of a relative, it wasn't the reason
| of the gap but it gave me some bonus points when I
| started my career.
| hdhdhsjsbdh wrote:
| This interview style seems bound to create a
| psychologically enmeshed workplace with no healthy
| boundaries. Or a workplace full of people with charming,
| easily-shared backstories and nuclear families but no yucky
| problems. Would not want to work here, personally.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Any competent HR department would have a fit if they knew
| these kinds of questions were being asked. It's way too
| easy to wander into illegal discrimination when you're
| making hiring decisions based on people's backgrounds
| like this.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You'd think this was true, but I've seen some crazy shit
| in interviews, even at companies that were big enough and
| had a robust enough legal team, where you'd think they'd
| have their shit together.
|
| I once interviewed at a medium sized, name brand Silicon
| Valley darling everyone on HN has heard of, where an
| interviewer outright asked me if I was married and if I
| had kids! Like, holy shit, just read your interview
| training manual! The very first sentence is probably "Do
| not ask any questions where the answer would even imply
| information about things that would get us in trouble
| discrimination-wise." Yet this person overtly asked! Here
| I was in the stairwell walking down to the second floor
| and she hits me up with one of the few totally forbidden
| questions! I thought about saying "What would HR think of
| that question?" but the asker was the HR manager! Totally
| bonkers.
| bbarnett wrote:
| And now, the company is filled with those willing, or not
| caring about HR abuse.
|
| An interesting strategy?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The way I understand it, you _can_ legally ask the
| questions, you just can 't consider protected status for
| hiring purposes. The interview guidelines prohibit asking
| because "we didn't ask" is a stronger defense than "our
| interviewers have mental firewalls".
|
| This case is strictly worse because the questions are
| explicitly being asked to evaluate eligibility for
| hiring.
| evilduck wrote:
| It's still a major blunder by an HR manager but maybe
| there's a chance that they had already decided to hire
| the person but hadn't made an official offer and it was a
| mistimed getting-to-know-you chat? I don't know, it seems
| insane to even ask.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| My wife was asked that question ("are you married, do you
| have kids?") in an interview with a tiny company 30 years
| ago. She attributed it to ignorance and replied "That's
| not a legal question to ask". The interviewer apologized
| profusely and he hired her. He turned out to be a really
| nice person who was unaware of what was out-of-bounds to
| ask in an interview. But that was 30 years ago, people
| should know better now.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| *Leans back and puts bare feet up on the table*
|
| Are you a virgin?
|
| https://youtu.be/fwYy8R87JMA
| bigbillheck wrote:
| This person came out of the Thiel Fellowship, the rules
| are different.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| The HR people often seem to be the ones that ask the
| psychological questions.
| emeril wrote:
| this 100% - you technically can't even ask someone how
| they are doing on an interview as that's not job related
|
| I could definitely see arguments for asking these sorts
| of questions in how they could be job related but not
| worth the legal risk
|
| I haven't had (nor ever likely will) have the luxury of
| working somewhere where potential/smarts is too relevant
| past a relatively low threshold
| Uinchuling wrote:
| >a workplace full of people with charming, easily-shared
| backstories and nuclear families but no yucky problems
|
| Are you suggesting that this is _bad_? What do you hope
| to gain by seeking out obnoxious people with traumatic
| backstories and broken families with yuck problems?
| Misery loves company?
| hdhdhsjsbdh wrote:
| Why should someone's present self be defined by things
| entirely out of their control (e.g. childhood trauma)?
| You seem to assume that "obnoxious people" and "traumatic
| backstories" go hand-in-hand; on the contrary, some of
| the most obnoxious people are those who have never faced
| anything in their lives other than minor and routine
| inconveniences. Neither person is inherently superior to
| the other, I'm just saying that I'd personally rather not
| work at a place that selects exclusively for "perfect"
| people along a metric unrelated to their job performance.
| testfoobar wrote:
| The author appears young. I would give them the benefit of
| the doubt. It has been my experience that people who have
| lived a fortunate, trauma free life cannot really
| understand the trauma experienced by others. They might
| appear to understand, say all the right words, and so on.
| Then a few days later or weeks later be confused or upset
| because of how you react to something. A good friend once
| said to me, "Wow, that is still upsetting you?" He wasn't
| being a jerk, he was just surprised.
| theonething wrote:
| > "Wow, that is still upsetting you?"
|
| If not a jerk, then grossly lacking in sensitivity,
| empathy and tact.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| At first I agreed with you, but then I remembered: Where
| is our sensitivity, empathy and tact for the person who
| said that, who may have their own trauma and own issues?
|
| The reality, the beauty of human relationships is that
| they are between people with all these issues and
| dimensions, all the nuance and detail that make up human
| beings. In the wild, there's no laboratory people - no
| clean, perfect specimens in simple environments.
|
| My rule is, I don't know what someone else has been
| through and is going through. Never, ever judge. If
| absolutely necessary (e.g., I need to decide to partner
| with them or not), make my best guess but don't judge.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| That may be true, but it doesn't mean that I have to
| submit to an interview with people like this who are
| lacking empathy. It also wouldn't be great if these kinds
| of interviews proliferate.
|
| Empathy comes from being able to put yourself in other
| people's shoes. Reading fiction has been shown to
| increase empathy. If so then these guys need to do more
| reading.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Yes - I agree - intrusive interviews are a terrible idea.
| My comment is an observation about how some people might
| arrive at such ideas.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Not just trauma necessarily, but many of our defining
| moments include things like, leaving a religious
| community we grew up in, coming out as LGBTQ+, being too
| broke to pay bills and taking out a risky loan,
| experiencing racism/sexism/ageism.
|
| Not things I'd be inclined to talk about when those
| things are ripe for opening myself up to discrimination.
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| Yes, I think I'd be fine weeding out people who can't read a
| social situation and decide to traumadump to their future
| coworkers.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Like the interviewer probing private traumatic experiences
| in a largely one-sided interrogation?
| joenot443 wrote:
| Surely you can understand the difference between a
| voluntary interview and an involuntary interrogation?
| This is a pretty poor comparison, I think.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| So the interviewee is stuck between a rock and a hard
| place.
|
| Between the need to have a job to survive, and the need to
| appease some self-important middle manager who took it upon
| them to perform a psych eval, with zero credentials, while
| controlling the future of the candidates, and their ability
| to put food on the table.
|
| Kindly, make your self as visible as possible so that I
| know to avoid you.
| rectang wrote:
| Exactly. I felt intense revulsion reading GP's comment.
| Collaborating in a team where there's zero concern for
| people's life circumstances is a no-go. It's impossible
| to maintain work-life balance when life can't even be
| acknowledged.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Nobody is asking anyone to do that. The bias here is that a
| person with a traumatic past might seem uninteresting
| precisely because they unlikely going to share as much
| detail as this interviewer might want.
| the_mar wrote:
| Ok so how should someone with a traumatic childhood answer
| questions about their childhood?
|
| You can change the subject or answer very surface-level and
| be labeled "unengaged" or "socially inept"
|
| You can answer truthfully and be judged for traumadumping
|
| You can make up a fake origin story that fits the
| interviewer's criteria and be disingenuous
| darkwater wrote:
| Remember that we are talking about a job interview here.
| the_mar wrote:
| Yes. Which is precisely why my childhood is irrelevant.
| darkwater wrote:
| I agree. I misinterpreted your answer, sorry!
| testfoobar wrote:
| I don't know about you or your story. I hope you're doing
| well.
|
| I've learned that the majority of people just don't want
| to hear anything negative or anything that makes them
| feel sad. If I want to have social, casual friends, I
| have to wall off parts of my life story.
|
| Thankfully, I have a couple of close friends and family
| who know the reality and that is enough for me.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I'm really glad I don't live in a country like this.
| em-bee wrote:
| that's no country. you find these kind of people
| everywhere. my theory is that the people who don't want
| to hear those things have not yet dealt with their own
| traumas (which can take decades).
| em-bee wrote:
| that's why i don't care about casual friends. i mean i do
| have some, but that's because we have some hobby that we
| share. the people in that group however are all
| replaceable.
|
| what's not replaceable is deep friendships with people
| that do care and are open to listen.
| nineplay wrote:
| ""Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the
| chapter titles from your birth till now.""
|
| Would you consider an accurate answer to that to be a
| traumadump? How quickly do you think people can make up
| happy childhood stories when put on the spot like this?
|
| It is a completely inappropriate question in a job
| interview.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Ok, you seem to have read this 'social situation' (more
| like economic extortion to me) differently to everyone else
| here.
|
| How would you handle this?
| lysecret wrote:
| Or weeded out honest people.
| losteric wrote:
| It's _literally_ selecting for people who can tell the best
| stories. Not great for any company dependent on moving fast
| with autonomy, with a genuine mission.
|
| Plus "looking for grit" really means "looking for someone
| to work long hours (typically without good odds of
| realizing fair equity)"... super unethical to even attempt
| to be selecting for people with trauatic and toxic Pasts.
|
| If they wanted to select candidates for learning quickly,
| being adaptive, whatever... just test for that.
| benreesman wrote:
| My youth was by no means exceptionally traumatic, but it was
| no fucking fun, and cumulatively amounted in me being a "from
| the wrong side of the tracks" figure in software, which was
| eminently doable when I was getting started and is still
| doable, but one works awfully fucking hard for the privilege
| as the ambient level of bad behavior well-concealed,
| cronyism, insularity, and utterly obliviousness about the
| public's feelings hits 88mph.
|
| I apologize to the author in advance if this assumption is
| off base, but the biopic at the beginning reads like the kind
| of life no one from my neighborhood had.
|
| What I will say to the author is: be a lot more careful with
| the power over people's lives afforded by your current
| privileged status, whether you earned it or not.
| chazu wrote:
| Absolutely - anyone who focuses this much on personal life
| during an interview is almost assuredly clueless as to how to
| manage people.
| mrandish wrote:
| > bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods.
|
| I didn't read this as a bias against significant prior
| challenges, in childhood or after. I certainly had such
| challenges and I've always thought most people have. Since
| the author's stated goal is identifying high potential, early
| career candidates in the absence of prior success or obvious
| metrics, it seems essential to look for resilience.
|
| To me, understanding how a person has contextualized and
| integrated prior challenges into who they are today is a key
| personality trait. So much of attitude is "the stories we
| tell ourselves to explain what happened to us." In my case,
| I've always felt my childhood had "some pretty rough patches"
| but in total "it wasn't too terrible." Yet, the few people
| I've shared the details with are usually aghast at how
| institutionally abusive it was. I don't deny the severity of
| it but it's pretty revealing about my personality that I
| don't now feel emotionally wounded by what happened. Perhaps
| it was just my coping mechanism but I've always felt "that's
| just shit that happened to me, it doesn't define me."
| fragmede wrote:
| I mean, sure, but for a job interview?
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > I certainly had such challenges and I've always thought
| most people have
|
| Just what the hell do you think emotional and physical
| abuse is? An overly strict parent? Perhaps you'd like to
| hear about what me and my siblings went through. It wasn't
| 'a challenge', it was a fucking deliberate attempt to
| destroy us as people and it succeeded. You want details?
| [Edit: don't ask for details]
| petsfed wrote:
| To sort of echo and expand on what you're saying here,
| there's a fair argument that if you do go through
| capital-A abuse, and don't think it effects you, you
| might just have made yourself blind to the damage _as a
| coping mechanism_.
|
| The most famous example that I can think of is Henry
| Kissinger, who fled Nazi Germany with his family, at age
| 15, to escape persecution as a Jew. He claimed, to his
| dying day, that he was not heavily impacted by the
| experience. Maybe he wasn't. But I wonder if any of the
| genocides laid at his feet were in part caused by his
| refusal to accept any impact his teenage experiences
| might have had on him.
|
| Demanding that people tell an interesting/engaging story
| about why they have C/PTSD, just to get a job, totally
| tracks for the late-stage-capitalism narrative though.
| swozey wrote:
| I'm not marrying my company.
|
| I want to hold it as far from my heart as corporately
| possible. I don't want to think about it after work, I
| don't want to work on it after work. I don't want it to
| know my secrets nor do I need to know its.
|
| I want to be able to say peace bro and walk away whenever I
| want with no thought of a sad feeling. Which unfortunately
| does happen but it's always coworkers or cool tech.
| bombcar wrote:
| Any company that _goes out of its way_ to try to _marry
| you_ is immediately suspect.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Word. Mine was nightmarish (siblings didn't have it any
| better either). Sounds like the Disneyfication of
| interviewing.
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree. This is very off putting. There should be boundaries
| btwn people we don't know. I'm not going to share personal
| experiences for a stranger and be their little zoo monkey
| they want to evaluate for the circus.
|
| This person is out of touch in such a bad way. Why would you
| put someone through such a cringeworthy exercise?
| ravenstine wrote:
| There can also be a bias against people who _haven 't_ had
| horrific childhoods or particularly interesting ones,
| depending on the background or attitude of the interviewer.
|
| _" If he hasn't struggled, then what does he really know
| about anything at all?"_
| the_mar wrote:
| All in all shit question to ask. And it's pretty obvious
| what sort of answers people are looking for.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Even if the candidate doesn't have a horrific childhood, the
| question is totally inappropriate and irrelevant. Like "get
| up and walk out of the interview" inappropriate.
|
| This, and the general level of mysticism throughout (really?
| "Spike potential" WTF), causes me to dismiss the whole
| article.
| RogerL wrote:
| Oh, but you just rely on your 'intuition' when
| interviewing. I'm sure that'll lead to no bias.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Shopify's made the Life Story a major part of their
| interview process for over a decade now, it doesn't as if
| they'd ever had problems attracting talent. [1] I think you
| might be in the minority if you feel that highlights from
| someone's past are irrelevant predictors in their future
| performance and that asking about them in an interview is
| inappropriate.
|
| Personally, I'm really glad I didn't "get up and walk out
| of the interview" when they asked me to talk about my
| youth, it ended up being one of my favorite internships and
| helped position me towards a career in big tech :)
|
| [1] https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/interview-
| candidate
| the_mar wrote:
| "At Shopify, all candidates begin the interview process
| with something called the Life Story, an interview in
| which the candidate sits down and discusses their work
| history, passions, and aspirations."
|
| None of that sounds like the actual stories about
| childhood. It's totally appropriate to discuss past work
| experiences, aspirations and passions as a "Life Story".
|
| Moreover the "Tell me a little about yourself" suggested
| interview opener is open-eded enough that the candidate
| can decide what they want to discuss and highlight.
| Majority of people do not answer that question with "my
| first memory was when father left when I was 3 years
| old..."
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah I was about to say this. "Tell me the story of your
| career" is a lot more appropriate.
|
| You're probably still going to get a lot of irrelevant dreamy
| passion bullshit with that question though when in reality
| 95% of candidates are just looking for exchanging skills for
| income and you as an employer need to accept that that's how
| the world works.
| dkarl wrote:
| I didn't have a particularly horrific childhood, but every
| chapter title would be about social struggles, anxiety, and
| depression. The positive stuff was random events, and the
| organizing themes were negative. Isn't that true for most
| people?
|
| I guess the question tests a person's ability to craft
| positive, attractive narratives about themselves. Maybe we're
| returning to a time when being outwardly happy is treated as
| a universal social obligation, like in the 1950s and 1960s.
| My parents' generation rebelled against the oppressive
| conformity of the post-WW2 era, and the tendency to value
| acceptance and emotional transparency continued through my
| generation (Gen X), but it could easily swing back the other
| way. Especially since all the stubborn problems in this
| country (resistance to awareness of racism, resistance to
| awareness of historic injustice, resistance to action on
| global warming, etc.) are seen as stemming from the unearned
| unhappiness of privileged people, I can see cheerfulness
| becoming obligatory, and lack of cheerfulness being openly
| stigmatized, instead of just passively and subconsciously
| discriminated against.
|
| Edit: The rise of social media influencers as role models
| would obviously be a huge factor in this, and in the
| increasing pressure on people who struggle with something
| (whether it's a societal issue like racism or poverty, or a
| mental illness) to live up to the "positive representation"
| of the influencers who earn the power to define the public's
| expectations by presenting themselves in a charismatic,
| consumable way.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Yup. I had a rough childhood. Not something i'm exactly keen on
| diving into, let alone sharing.
|
| _edit_ : Sidenote, i take real pride in knowing the little bit
| i contribute to our hiring process is nothing like this. Just
| help me understand if you know the tech i think you'll need to
| know. There's no gotcha questions, no arbitrary count questions
| you have to answer correctly to pass, etc.
| andix wrote:
| I like the general idea of this article. But that question
| would be a huge red flag for me. That's intrusive and I would
| consider such a question as offensive.
|
| But maybe this is a cultural thing, and works differently in
| other cultures (didn't check where the author is from).
| hedora wrote:
| This sort of question reminds me of the now-discredited
| "cultural fit" question in standard interview rounds.
|
| In almost all situations, it meant "are you of the same
| socioeconomic background as the interviewer?", so it ended up
| being incredibly racist and also ensured that teams had very
| little technical diversity.
|
| It did optimize for fun nights out with cliques within the
| teams (and epic political infighting) though.
| jmac01 wrote:
| Almost anyone can solve problems. You want to find someone who
| you actually want to work with. The days of the anti social
| "lone genius" are long gone.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Agree completely. This interview approach is going to lead to
| terrible biases coming to the forefront that have nothing to do
| with job performance.
|
| It also sounds like an HR nightmare in some states here in the
| US.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It's an HR nightmare in the entire country thanks to ADA. You
| really don't want to dig into someone's past and hit a mental
| health issue and then refusing to hire them because they
| didn't disclosure a disability to you.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Yes, this is creepy and would be a red flag for me too. People
| gives a lot of flak to big corps behing dehumazing and such,
| but at least they have standard processes and this type of BS
| is explicitly forbidden (well, at least where I worked).
| htrp wrote:
| You've never had to take a psych test before an interview?
| TylerE wrote:
| There's a difference between the results of a test and
| microanalysing the subject WHILE they're being tested.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| It's revealing that the author feels entitled to the
| interviewee just volunteering such information for the sake of
| a job.
| tussa wrote:
| Most people I know would walk out of that trainwreck of an
| interview.
| geonic wrote:
| This is highly inappropriate for a job interview at least in my
| country. You can't ask these type of personal questions. Who
| would feel comfortable sharing this with a complete stranger
| anyway?
| lumost wrote:
| This sounds like a "Like me" bias in hiring. Your looking for
| someone with a similar "high potential" upbringing as what the
| interviewer had.
|
| You could likely get a similar interview outcome with less
| interviewer bias by filtering resumes based on school/major/GPA
| + (alternate activity) + a battery of behavioral/tech
| questions. It's desirable by many employers to have a recipe to
| identify candidates who are less desirable on paper, but
| equivalent in role.
| swozey wrote:
| I was asked this question by (I believe) a very Christian
| burger company from Austin (Mighty Fine) at the start of my
| career interviewing for some sort of IT admin job with them. I
| think I was 22-25.
|
| He asked "So what extra curricular hobbies did you have in high
| school?" And I'll never forget that it was such a weird gross
| question to ask someone. What are you doing, judging whether I
| was in wrestling or theater? Judging if I didn't do any at all
| because I had to work after school? Judging if I took night
| classes and worked during the day? Judging if I'm not at
| christian school after class?
|
| Are you just being chatty and friendly? Weird question. I
| couldn't even remember. I DID play hockey and wrestle but I was
| so shocked by the question I didn't even think of those IIRC.
| Not sure what I said. Maybe I did say those and I'm
| misremembering because I'm not sure what else I would've said
| other than "no hobbies."
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| I have a large gap in my resume from a bout of depression that
| left me basically incapacitated for nearly 10 months.
|
| I get asked about it all the time in interviews.
|
| I just respond "I'm under NDA".
|
| I also get asked about GitHub profiles. I have a pseudonym on
| GitHub, and maintain a few projects. I dont divulge that
| information either.
|
| "I'm under NDA" or "I only work in proprietary code with many
| trade secrets involved so I can't"
|
| I've probably been screened out of plenty of processes just for
| that, but I don't care. I've been doing pretty good for myself
| without making my life an open book.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I'll have to remember that one.
| the_mar wrote:
| - "tell me about your childhood" - "I'm under NDA"
|
| thank you for a great laugh
| bombcar wrote:
| Hmmm, a parent can perhaps sign an NDA on behalf of their
| child, so could they sign an NDA with themselves?
|
| _To the lawyers!_
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's heartening to read the article, pause at that section and
| then see this comment here.
|
| Is some random interviewer going to be able to make deep
| psychological assessment of future performance based on the
| response? Even actual psychologists don't do that well at
| predicting an individual's future course.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| That reminds me of Shopify's "Story of your life" interview.
|
| Tell me everything about your life, what did you like in
| elementary school? High school? Tell me all...
| zebraflask wrote:
| +1 to the comments pointing out that these types of questions
| can easily veer into highly intrusive, if not overtly
| discriminatory, territory.
|
| This reminds me of LinkedIn pablum more than anything else.
| flerchin wrote:
| Aka interviewing for culture fit.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Aka veiled/implicit discrimination.
|
| Edit: why disagree? If you're ensuring cultural fit, that _is_
| discrimination. There are arguments to that discrimination
| being beneficial to the organization. The individuals may not
| see it that way.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| the common denominator is the author
|
| makes all else moot
|
| in hiring _at best_ you can avoid the bad, but knowing good is
| always a toss up especially for high autonomy roles
|
| i've seen good process for cookie cutter roles, but thinkers are
| idiosyncratic
|
| outside of, "avoid dishonest people" there's no general rule
|
| and the dishonest people can look very honest
| glitchc wrote:
| So you're looking for a creative, self-starting, committed, open,
| persuasive team-player that can go their own way and work with
| the team to achieve big goals. Got it. /s
|
| P.S. The /s is sarcasm.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| So you'd see applicants like those that the article describes
| as being very desirable?
| glitchc wrote:
| Sure, much like magic and unicorns are desirable. The kind of
| human they are looking for doesn't actually exist.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| Having worked predominantly in startups, we've almost always been
| cash-constrained in hiring. Some of the best hires I've found are
| highly motivated fresh grads or recent grads. I always look for
| the desire to prove themselves and take charge and full
| responsibility of a project; a majority of the times, money is
| secondary to these folks to the ability to make a difference and
| prove you're capable of completing something difficult. And
| ultimately, that's always something a startup can offer a young
| employee. That said, I've often had to teach them foundational
| things, but the desire to learn and get moving quickly outweighs
| any cons.
|
| When I've been at big companies, it's all about experience and
| grey hair, and people become more motivated by money and low
| risk. I find many times, the quality of the average person at a
| big company is lower than the average startup fresh grad.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "I find many times, the quality of the average person at a big
| company is lower than the average startup fresh grad."
|
| I wouldn't blame it on the people but on the environment. I
| have worked at both big companies and startups. In a lot of big
| companies it's actually quite hard to make a difference. There
| are lots of people who can say "No", raise concerns, ask for
| plans, but not many people who say "Yes". So after a while
| people learn that it's not worth the effort.
| faiD9Eet wrote:
| I would like to second that.
|
| Big corp introduces a constant uphill battle and people get
| minted to avoid conflict (Why do you want to spend money on a
| subject that is not on your bosses boss roadmap? Does this
| new service obey our IT-compliance-rules? I know a virus
| scanner on Linux is a bad idea, but compliance demands it. I
| do not care about your threat model, have you installed one
| already? Can you spend 30,000 Currency Units, but have it
| billed in November, accepted in December, and paid out in
| January next year? Answer me until end-of-business!).
|
| People want to have an impact on their environment and
| conflict is the wrong way to start with.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Hiring low experience doesn't make any sense because most places
| the salary difference is not worth the risk.
|
| Its just not a good deal for an employer.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Sometimes you just don't have the cash to hire for experience.
|
| IMO: It's important to hire all levels of experience. If you
| hire too many noobs, you get too many mistakes of inexperience.
| If you only hire experienced employees, you get too many people
| who are stuck in their ways.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Low experience correlates with young people, who are more
| likely to be healthy and less likely to have a family. The
| benefits cost saving can be large.
| thih9 wrote:
| > I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell
| me about your best X." If it's not good, you know that their best
| isn't good enough.
|
| Note that this approach, when not supplemented by other
| questions, favors outlier great results over consistent good
| results. E.g.:
|
| Distribution A: 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 100, 2, 1, 3; MAX(A) = 100
|
| Distribution B: 72, 73, 78, 79, 44, 75, 78, 79, 78, 79; MAX(B) =
| 79
| verticalscaler wrote:
| > "Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the
| chapter titles from your birth till now." Once you've gotten the
| overview, dive into each "chapter" and plumb the depths for their
| real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about
| their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball
| obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent.
|
| I actually have some great example recordings of just such
| interviews as described in the article if anybody wants some
| actionable pointers:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRg5PiovHQ
| smeeth wrote:
| People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough. I think
| a good process reduces down to something like:
|
| - Are they smart? (understands quickly + communicates
| effectively)
|
| - Are they cool? (won't put poison in the keurig + pleasant to be
| around)
|
| - Are they high energy? (initiative + action bias)
|
| - Do they have the experience needed to be successful in the
| role?
|
| Those are pretty strong priors for success. If you find someone
| with all the above, you've got an ~80% chance of a hit. No need
| to over-complicate.
|
| In my experience, adding more boxes tends to index towards box-
| checkers who grew up wealthy. That's how you miss the hyper-
| smart/diligent state school kids who happened to spend their
| summers working instead of doing model UN.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I have a 4-quardrant way of thinking about this that's similar.
|
| - Y-axis is "drive"
|
| - X-axis is "aptitude"
|
| - low drive + low aptitude: never hire
|
| - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases where
| you need expertise
|
| - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude
| growth
|
| - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot
|
| There's an indirect way of testing for this which is to test
| for curiosity and lack of ego. My experience has been that
| candidates with high curiosity tend to have low ego (they know
| what they don't know and are curious to learn). These
| candidates make great hires because you can teach them
| anything.
|
| Wrote about this a little bit here (with a handy diagram):
| https://charliedigital.com/2020/01/15/effective-hiring-for-s...
| powerset wrote:
| How do you test for curiosity?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| You take the person off the beaten path in the interview.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Curiosity and ego seem to be inversely correlated.
|
| If you ask relevant but technically hard and esoteric
| questions _without the expectation of an answer_ you can
| sometimes see it in the manner of the response. Do they
| probe the question? Do they explore the idea, even if they
| don't know the answer? Do they readily admit that they
| don't know?? Or do they become defensive? Do they fake
| their way through it? If they make a mistake and you point
| it out, how do they respond?
| smeeth wrote:
| I like this, but I do think it misses the social stuff. Just
| a few neurotic/unethical people can completely ruin a team
| and make all the best people quit. I find this to be extra
| true on diverse teams (all types of diversity).
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Yes, I now call this "vibes".
| jprete wrote:
| As nineplay@ remarked elsewhere, "there's a nauseating bias
| here against people who've had horrific childhoods".
|
| Unethical is one thing, neuroticism should not be a
| disqualifier from decent employment.
| 93po wrote:
| neuroticism, no. asocial or antisocial behavior, yes.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Asocial? I guess autistic people are out!
|
| I assume you're young: there are many reasons people
| might be perfectly good at a job but not want to
| socialize with those people, or any other people.
|
| This whole thread makes me sad as an unemployed autistic
| person. HN folks are horrible hiring managers!
|
| Edit: and now downvoted for showing you losers that your
| personal model of the world and the people in it might be
| lacking; fuck vc tech bros.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect you may be interpreting this a bit too broadly,
| and it's obviously personal for you. Part of work is,
| nearly invariably, social.
|
| Not wanting to get Friday beers with the team shouldn't
| really be a factor.
|
| Not being able to communicate smoothly and effectively
| with them in a work context absolutely is.
|
| I suspect the poster you are responding to is focusing on
| the latter, and you on the former.
| agumonkey wrote:
| out of curiosity, do you often run into low aptitude + low
| drive but highly politically skilled ? do they get caught
| early ?
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| It has happened. But generally, at least in tech, it is
| possible to filter this out with a good tech screen.
| ska wrote:
| > low drive but highly politically skilled
|
| These two don't really match up, they are just driven for
| different things I suspect.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Aren't these quadrants from about 100 years ago? Some
| Prussian General von Whatshisname?
|
| Edit: General von Hammerstein
|
| I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the
| clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Those who
| are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff.
| Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are
| stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for
| the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the
| mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid
| and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| They're simply 2-variable Karnaugh maps. Widely used in
| logic design in electrical engineering.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map
| walthamstow wrote:
| I mean the smart/dumb lazy/hardworking axes, not the
| underlying concept
| conro1108 wrote:
| It's a similar shape but with quite different conclusions
|
| - low drive + low aptitude: never hire
|
| Hammerstein thinks some use can be made of these folks
|
| - low drive + high aptitude: hire for targeted use cases
| where you need expertise
|
| Hammerstein has this group as high leadership positions
|
| - high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster
| aptitude growth
|
| These are the ones who Hammerstein avoids
|
| - high drive + high aptitude: hire on the spot
|
| These go to the "General Staff"
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > These are the ones who Hammerstein avoids
|
| My experience has been that aptitude can be developed. In
| the context of "low experience" (generally junior
| engineers), the ones that succeed are the ones that put
| the work in to learn and get better.
|
| But I can appreciate Hammerstein's perspective,
| especially if there isn't an added nuance of Carol
| Dweck's "fixed" vs "growth" mindset. A high drive, low
| aptitude individual -- seen through a fixed mindset lens
| -- is indeed dangerous!
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| "A high drive, low aptitude individual", even if they
| have the best mindset in the world, shouldn't be placed
| in a sensitive position. As even a small chance of
| messing up with 'high drive' will really cause a lot of
| issues.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| These are generally junior-level engineers so it's a non-
| sequitur.
| ska wrote:
| > Hammerstein thinks some use can be made of these folks
|
| In a military context it's plausible "don't hire" isn't
| an option.
| dboreham wrote:
| > Y-axis is "drive"
|
| Someone I learned much from way back called this "wattage".
| As in: "he's too low wattage".
| brianmcc wrote:
| High on both sounds like Spolsky's "Smart and Gets Things
| Done", and not surprisingly your conclusions rather agree :-)
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-
| guid...
| BeetleB wrote:
| > high drive + low aptitude: hire, train, and foster aptitude
| growth
|
| This needs to be subdivided. There are plenty of people
| who've had a lot of opportunity for aptitude growth, but they
| didn't grow. And having high energy in those circumstances
| really messes up a lot of stuff (they're incompetent, but
| jump into and be involved in everything, and you have to
| politely tell them to get off your project).
| gen220 wrote:
| This is The Way(tm)! I've heard this alternatively described
| as "slope" (for drive, which incorporates the curiosity, lack
| of ego, excitability) and "intercept" for "aptitude".
|
| Implication is that if you're high-slope, you'll eventually
| become high-intercept.
|
| If you're a startup, you want to bias towards a mix of high
| slope, low intercept and _positive_ slope, high intercept.
|
| I think it's also worth pointing out that people can have
| negative slopes (due to social reasons, ego reasons), and
| that slope is not invariant over a person's career but often
| changes.
|
| Ideally, you want to find people whose slope is positively-
| impacted by the environment of the company - a great hire is
| only a great hire if it's a great mutual-fit, in that way.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Both can definitely change over time and that change can be
| influenced by a variety of factors including the types of
| projects, company culture, "vibes" with the rest of the
| team, and so on.
|
| I think the industry really wants an objective, formulaic
| way of identifying these individuals, but the reality is
| that a lot of it does still come down to subjective factors
| since there's so much variability along so many different
| facets.
|
| What I can say personally is that I've had pretty good
| success hiring, but I wouldn't claim that my "intuition"
| can be systematically applied by anyone to achieve the same
| success.
| nerdponx wrote:
| But aptitude can be split into "experience" and "natural
| talent", which are different things and I think that's meant
| to be the whole point of the article.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> adding more boxes tends to index towards box-checkers who
| grew up wealthy. _
|
| Yeah, but that's the point. Those who come from wealth bring
| connections. Connections are what make or break a business. A
| mediocre worker with rich parents is _far_ more beneficial to
| the business than a standout worker that came from the slums.
| throw18376 wrote:
| i think that in the United States, this is simply not the
| case up until the true super-rich.
|
| the vast majority of rich people are not well-connected
| enough to drive any business your way. if you have a tech
| startup do you really care that you hired the son or daughter
| of a car dealership magnate from the other side of the
| country?
|
| in the USA it's possible and in fact more common to become a
| very wealthy without becoming hugely influential.
|
| they may be well-connected in their particular geographic
| region or within a certain business sector, but this would be
| a specific advantage which usually wouldn't benefit your
| business.
|
| this may be different in some other countries, where nearly
| everyone wealthy is part of the same national elite group.
|
| but generally, in America, you'd be better off hiring the
| better employee.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> if you have a tech startup do you really care that you
| hired the son or daughter of a car dealership magnate from
| the other side of the country?_
|
| Of course! That's an incredible resource. Even if they
| don't specifically drive business your way, having the
| person's ear is something that can be leveraged to great
| effect. You don't exactly become a car dealership magnate
| without knowing a thing or two about business and they can
| teach your startup a lot. A magnate is more likely to chum
| with investors who might be interested in helping your
| business. The list goes on and on. Unfortunately, at least
| statistically, the poor parents will never be able to offer
| the same.
|
| American individualism may be the American identity, but
| individualism doesn't get you far in business. America is
| not unique like you are trying to suggest.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Of course! That's an incredible resource. Even if they
| don't specifically drive business your way, having the
| person's ear is something that can be leveraged to great
| effect. You don't exactly become a car dealership magnate
| without knowing a thing or two about business and they
| can teach your startup a lot. A magnate is more likely to
| chum with investors who might be interested in helping
| your business.
|
| This is an enormous stretch. I highly doubt the son of
| the owner of Henrysburg Chevrolet in Henrysburg, Georgia
| is going to bring anything to the table that a startup in
| San Francisco needs, purely due to his dad. You have no
| idea if dad knows anything about business. And if he
| does, you have no idea if dad taught any of it to kid.
| And if he did, you have no idea if any of it is relevant
| to developing biotech software. Nobody in the company is
| going to care about dad's connections to the dude that
| runs Henrysburg Laundromat. But sure, go hire his kid
| because of some vague pedigree reason.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I highly doubt the son of the owner of Henrysburg
| Chevrolet in Henrysburg, Georgia is going to bring
| anything to the table that a startup in San Francisco
| needs_
|
| And what is it that you think this hypothetical startup
| actually needs? The most motivated janitor money can buy?
|
| _> You have no idea if dad knows anything about
| business._
|
| A magnate that knows nothing about business? That doesn't
| make any sense. A magnate is literally characterized by
| their involvement in business. Perhaps you mean that mom
| could be the magnate instead of dad? There was nothing to
| suggest that she isn't the magnate. It was never
| specified.
|
| _> And if he does, you have no idea if dad taught any of
| it to kid._
|
| And? You're not hiring the kid for his business acumen.
| You are hiring the kid for their mediocre capabilities in
| whatever work you need done _and_ using them as a
| connection to get in touch with the magnate of the
| family.
|
| A slightly better worker isn't significant like you make
| it out to be. In fact, even if you do find the 'magical
| rockstar', chances are they'll quickly move on to the
| next job anyway, and then you're back to dealing with
| mediocre. May as well design the company around mediocre
| from the start. Let's be real: Startups are generally not
| attractive places to work as compared to the alternatives
| the best of the best have in front of them. If the
| 'rockstar' really, truly, wants to live the startup life,
| they are going to start their own and eat your lunch in
| the process.
|
| _> And if he did, you have no idea if any of it is
| relevant to developing biotech software._
|
| But the advice of a welfare parent is? There are no
| guarantees in life, but when playing the odds that is who
| you are choosing?
|
| _> Nobody in the company is going to care about dad 's
| connections to the dude that runs Henrysburg Laundromat._
|
| Except for the person who actually has to make the
| business a success, not just collect a paycheck and get a
| new job if the business fails. They don't get to sit
| around writing code all day. They have to actually get
| out there and meet people who will move things forward.
|
| I get it, Field of Dreams is a fun concept... for a
| movie. But that's not how things work in the real world.
| Simply building it is not enough. Business is, at the end
| of the day, about people.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| How do you measure "are they cool" without just directly
| transforming all of your biases and stereotypes about the
| candidate into a numeric score?
| 946789987649 wrote:
| Have a diverse team and have them also score for cool?
|
| Of course a bit of a chicken and egg with hiring the diverse
| team.
| grdgyredb wrote:
| As long as you aren't illegally discriminating, it's more
| important that you avoid hiring shitty people than it is that
| you eliminate all bias.
|
| You can't single-handedly solve the systemic problem of
| unequal access to opportunity.
| klyrs wrote:
| I can't clean the world, but my kitchen is my
| responsibility.
| TylerE wrote:
| One bad apple poisons the whole team. It's totally morale
| destroying.
| Aurornis wrote:
| "Cool" isn't a good word to use, but it is important to
| filter for people who can get along with others.
|
| Some candidates can't make it through an interview without
| being condescending to someone, making snide remarks, being
| arrogant, trying to start arguments about trivial things, or
| other negative behaviors. If they're doing this during the
| interview, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It's
| going to be 100X worse when you have to deal with that person
| 5 days a week.
|
| Other candidates behave well during interviews but have a
| history of causing social problems at other companies. It
| takes some work to uncover these (and, importantly, validate
| their veracity). Some of the most toxic people I ever worked
| with were very charming in interviews. They swung from
| company to company, leaving a trail of unhappy coworkers
| behind them. They could only get hired into new companies
| where nobody knew any of their past coworkers, because a
| simple reference check would reveal how difficult they were
| to work with.
|
| Filtering this behavior out before someone joins the team is
| very important. Hiring a single socially toxic or subversive
| person into a team is like dropping a bomb on a healthy team
| dynamic. You may lose multiple good employees before you
| figure out what's going on and put together a case for firing
| the bad apple.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I completely agree that toxic people destroy teams. I just
| have no idea how to detect that in an interview. It
| definitely makes sense to immediately filter out anyone who
| sets off "this person may be an asshole" vibes, but beyond
| that, what can you do? Some sort of "probationary let's see
| if we get along" period would probably be pretty effective,
| but that's unfair to new hires.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Also culture plays a big part. If asshole behaviour is
| unacceptable all the way to the top it tends not to
| happen. Being the only asshole sticks out and if there is
| a safe way people can complain that helps. Worked at a
| wide range of cultures on the asshole scale. Being at a
| zero asshole company is why I will probably life it here
| even if it hurts TC.
|
| Asshole means different things to different people but if
| someone is power flexing, condescending, aggressive, uses
| process as a weapon, bullying etc. this is what I mean
| rather than say straight shooting and direct talk.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Probationary periods are pretty much standard in the
| Netherlands. First month you can leave or get fired for
| any reason, without delay.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Yes, but that's because in the Netherlands, after that
| period, you cannot fire an employee without cause, and
| firing for cause requires a sub-district court
| proceeding.
|
| In the US, if someone only reveals that they're a
| tremendous asshole to months into the role, you just fire
| them two months into the role.
| th3byrdm4n wrote:
| I think "cool" is synonymous with, "would they be a good fit
| for your team/culture" ... not a specific
| type/race/ethnicity/political persuasion...
|
| Are they someone that's going to disrupt your team's focus on
| product and execution. No? Cool.
| mixermachine wrote:
| > who happened to spend their summers working
|
| It is a super cool story to hear in what jobs somebody already
| has worked in and a good indicator. I worked as a dancing
| instructor assistant and learned so much about people. This job
| does not correlate with my current job as a Java/Kotlin/Android
| dev but was taken quite well by everyone the interviewed me 10
| years back.
|
| You just have very little time during a job interview and
| mistakes are costly.
|
| > Are they smart? > Are they cool? ... Are the right questions
| that need to be answered, but not asked directly. The article
| talks especially about what to ask to get meaningful answers.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > People's intuitions around hiring aren't Bayesian enough.
|
| People's intuitions around hiring are extremely Bayesian, which
| is why we have all sorts of laws and regulations and HR
| departments that try to counteract various prejudicial priors.
| s0rce wrote:
| This is pretty much how I hire but also try to gauge
| "conscientiousness". Some people are smart, cool, high energy
| and decently experienced but just don't seem to care about the
| success of the team and aren't the best for a lot of roles. Its
| hard to judge because extraversion/cool/high energy can appear
| similar in an interview.
| captainbland wrote:
| You wouldn't need to hunt so hard for someone who was "hungry" if
| what you were hiring for was meaningful work. As it goes this
| diseased process is the result of abstract BS profit hacking
| being a huge part of what people are hiring for.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Disagree and commit:
|
| I hate that this is such a common thought process. This is
| something that makes sense for soldiers in the military. But
| outside of this context (being a low-information cog in a
| gigantic machine), it's terrible. If you can't convince domain
| experts that the plan is sound, then maybe it's a bad plan.
|
| Honestly, disagree and commit goes against my...
|
| > Theory for excellence.
| trgn wrote:
| lol
|
| Disagree and commit is like your mom saying she'll forgive but
| won't forget. sounds good on the surface, but really slightly
| manipulative and rancorous.
| beisner wrote:
| > I hate that this is such a common thought process.
|
| In most teams, not everyone is on the same page:
|
| - There are people with varying levels of experience, some may
| not currently have enough background to fully understand all
| the aspects that a plan addresses.
|
| - Many/most people have the tendency to let their various
| biases creep into team-level decision-making. For instance, if
| someone had a bad experience on a previous team using
| technology X, they are less likely to support using X today
| independent of X's suitability for the current situation. And
| people tend to have a massive bias towards their own ideas
| rather than others' - so when two competing ideas are
| presented, one's own ideas are often preferred to others'
| ideas.
|
| - Especially in larger organizations, there may be political
| motivations for pursuing one plan over another plan - both for
| management and for workers. "Nobody got fired for buying IBM"
| and "resume-driven development" and "launches get promo more
| than landings" are a few examples that come to mind that I've
| seen.
|
| Unless you're on a golden A-team of contributors who are all
| incredible and on the same wavelength (this does happen
| sometimes! if so, cherish it!), you're going to have a mix of
| people with a mix of motivations+biases+experiences, incapable
| of reaching consensus around the "true" best plan in a
| reasonable amount of time.
|
| Making decisions in a reasonable amount of time is CRUCIAL to
| team performance. Obviously, sometimes you make a bad decision
| quickly when you might have arrived at a good decision with
| more deliberation+debate+waiting for consensus. But in my
| experience, the benefit of avoiding these "bad" decisions from
| time to time is dramatically outweighed by a team's ability to
| decide very on things very quickly and commit to a plan (and
| therefore execute).
|
| Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field
| Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an
| organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are
| kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise
| from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations.
|
| [1]
| https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Famously, section 5.11 of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field
| Manual [1] describes some pretty timeless ways to ruin an
| organization's productivity - all kinds of behavior that are
| kind of indistinguishable from the behavior I've seen arise
| from "disagreeing and not committing" in organizations.
|
| Honestly, it seems like "disagree & commit" facilitates these
| bad behaviors. An "individual's opportunity to make faulty
| decisions" is a lot easier when that individual has the power
| to say, "shut up and do what I say" without repercussion.
|
| A lot of these techniques are feigned incompetence. A manager
| can abuse D&C to facilitate a lot of these activities, for
| example by requiring a worker to use a tool that needs to be
| maintained.
|
| And D&C doesn't prevent things like, starting fires around
| munitions or putting sawdust in fuel. That's a security
| issue. And C&D can be used to justify bypassing security
| procedures. For example, a manager telling a guard not to log
| their entry into a secured building.
| em-bee wrote:
| for me disagree and commit only applies to team decisions.
| a dictatorial team leader or manager is an entirely
| different problem. in such a case it is up to the team
| under the leader to figure out how to deal with that.
| delecti wrote:
| Agreed. You eventually need to take _some_ course of action,
| so if you can 't get everyone on exactly the same page,
| someone won't get their way. Those people can either accept
| that their approach isn't being taken, and thus work towards
| the approach which has been decided upon, or refuse to
| cooperate, hurting the team in the process.
|
| The only real weakness with "disagree and commit" is if you
| have a deeply unreasonable leader, and then "disagree and
| commit" is the least of your problems.
| skellera wrote:
| If you trust that the people you are working with are working
| towards the same goal, disagree and commit is important. You
| are not going to be right 100% of the time.
|
| If the group is saying X is the right way to go and you've
| already given your reason why you think Y, you should disagree
| and commit. If you sit there complaining for weeks that they
| should be doing Y without any new information, you're just
| being a shitty teammate and dragging everyone down.
|
| The main point for the commit part is setting aside your ego to
| move the team forward. Most decisions are two way doors. If X
| doesn't work out then try Y but don't complain, work less hard,
| or sabotage because you didn't get your way.
|
| One big exception is if someone is making a decision that goes
| against company principles or morals.
| em-bee wrote:
| indeed, only working in unity allows a team to face and fix
| mistakes and bad decisions, because then there is noone
| shouting "i told you so" when something fails.
|
| unity in a team is more important than being right.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If you can't convince domain experts that the plan is sound,
| then maybe it's a bad plan
|
| The "disagree and commit" scenarios I see in the real world are
| usually one of the following:
|
| - Disagreements within a team. One "domain expert" disagrees
| with others about what should be done. The only way forward is
| to disagree and commit, or remove that person from the team (or
| company). So disagree and commit is the first choice.
|
| - Disagreements about NIH. Someone wants to build a custom
| framework or new library instead of using one off the shelf.
| Building things from scratch is fun, adapting existing things
| to your need is less so. Given limited resources and time you
| have to disagree and commit to using something off the shelf.
|
| - Disagreements about priorities. Someone thinks we need to
| rewrite the codebase or refactor everything or address a low-
| priority bug instead of working on important feature work for
| the business. There are cases where too much tech debt is bad,
| but often it's necessary to focus on what the business needs to
| keep moving forward. If someone can't disagree and commit to
| working on what the business needs, that's not going to work
| out.
|
| Some people simply can't commit to a plan they don't agree
| with, which means you're either letting them hold everything
| hostage to their own plan or you're going a different way while
| they sulk about it. Neither situation is good for planning.
| BeetleB wrote:
| You're not providing an alternative, though.
|
| You have a team of smart people. They come up with 3
| interesting proposals. You have the bandwidth to execute on
| only one of them. At some point, a decision has to be made (by
| you, by vote, whatever).
|
| Two guys on your team are going to hate that decision.
|
| Are you going to be OK with those two not contributing to the
| end goal (i.e. the "commit" part)? Are you going to be OK with
| them bringing it up in each team meeting and 1:1 over the next
| year?
|
| Are you going to be OK with them not voicing their opinions
| (i.e. the "disagree" part)?
|
| What's your alternative?
|
| As pointed out in a submission a few days ago, the worst
| experiences tend to be teams that always blindly do what the
| boss tells them, and at the other end of the spectrum, teams
| that question every little detail - all the time. Disagree and
| commit addresses the latter. I've been in that team - it sucks.
| Never again.
| anjc wrote:
| This reads to me like codified psychopathy. Maybe it's profitable
| to assess people's insecurities or "experience caring for a dying
| parent" when hiring, but I wouldn't be advertising it.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The succinct guidelines from "Mastering the Art of War" (Zhuge
| Liang, Liu Ju) for interviewing people are still among the best
| (c.200 / 1300 CE). This is also good practive for the
| interviewee, you want to assess whether or not accepting a job
| offer at Theranos is a good idea (#5 is perhaps questionable):
|
| Hard though it be to know people, there are ways.
|
| First is to question them concerning right and wrong, to observe
| their ideas.
|
| Second is to exhaust all their arguments, to see how they change.
|
| Third is to consult with them about strategy, to see how
| perceptive they are.
|
| Fourth is to announce that there is trouble, to see how brave
| they are.
|
| Fifth is to get them drunk, to observe their nature.
|
| Sixth is to present them with the prospect of gain, to see how
| modest they are.
|
| Seventh is to give them a task to do within a specific time, to
| see how trustworthy they are.
| rho4 wrote:
| "excellence does not mean having 100k followers on Twitter" -
| idk, seems like an arbitrary dismissal of what i perceive as
| quite an achievement
| devwastaken wrote:
| With drive, anyone can do anything. Almost everyone has had drive
| at some point. Those that no longer do were punished by the gamed
| system for trying to leave the socioeconomic caste they were born
| into. This applies to the wealthy just as well as the poor.
|
| Corps with "sane people" running them and hiring is very rare.
| It's against the rules of the game. It assumes that the people
| being hired are honest and aren't gaming _you_. The reason corps
| have all these large walls and barb wire fencing is to prevent
| the 1 /1000 people who may cause political turmoil, use Title IX
| to their advantage, steal business plans/tech, or otherwise act
| in ways harmful to the company. These cannot be predicted by
| "good behavior" because such people know the game and are acting
| that way.
|
| Large corps that have obfuscated hiring methods do it because the
| fed has set up the rules in this way. Larger scope of hiring =
| higher chance of a destructive hire. If we want hiring to be sane
| then the rules have to not be punitive.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Dig into their ability to learn. Not their education: there's
| many in our industry without college degrees who excel. Not just
| depth, but breadth: how quickly can they pivot? The key is
| finding those who succeed at not being confined to a given box.
| m0d0nne11 wrote:
| Great. As if age discrimination wasn't already blatant enough.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Agreed, it's important to combat age discrimination against the
| young.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > "Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the
| chapter titles from your birth till now." Once you've gotten the
| overview, dive into each "chapter" and plumb the depths for their
| real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about
| their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball
| obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent.
|
| God damn that sounds exhausting. How about let's skip to the
| current chapter, titled _I 'm Good At Computers And I Want A
| Job_.
| varjag wrote:
| She's clearly isn't hiring developers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Replace the subject matter with that of your own job, or
| pretend you are living inside the article and respond
| directly to the author if that feels right to you. Whatever
| gets you to seeing my point.
| varjag wrote:
| I didn't say that in a contrarian way, merely observed that
| literally none of the advice in the article applies to
| hiring computer nerds. Honestly I don't even know why this
| is on HN.
| BryantD wrote:
| The thing I really like about this piece is that it's a
| recommendation to apply DEI to the hiring funnel, although I
| don't know if the author realizes that.
| Shrezzing wrote:
| >"Tell me about you. If your life was a book, give me the chapter
| titles from your birth till now." Once you've gotten the
| overview, dive into each "chapter" and plumb the depths for their
| real stories. Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about
| their grit and commitment to excellence from their basketball
| obsession or maybe their experience caring for a dying parent.
|
| This paragraph starts bad and somehow gets worse until a
| spectacular crescendo of unapologetically shamefully exploitative
| nonsense.
|
| That it's posted in an article about techniques for interviewing
| 19-21 year olds makes it so much more insidious. The article in
| its entirity reads like a sociopath's guide to bullying
| teenagers.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Tip #1: You're never even going to get an application from these
| people if your job posting requires 7+ years with
| AI+Erlang+Azure.
|
| If your codebase is C#, would you hire somebody with some Java
| and Swift, but no C#? If the answer is no, then feel free to
| scare people away who are not C# experts. But if the answer is
| yes, reword your job posting. Sure, be clear that you have a C#
| codebase, but be welcoming to other skill sets.
|
| Just because you host your stuff on GCP doesn't mean that all
| applicants have to have experience on GCP. Unless it does. If you
| are trying to hire somebody who can jump in and solve a specific
| problem on day 1, then ok. But if you are hiring for potential,
| your new hire will be an expert in GCP two months after you hire
| them. You have a four month hiring process anyway. What's two
| more months?
| purpleblue wrote:
| Another garbage "how to hire!" article with no data to back it
| up, just a bunch of opinions. There's nothing to indicate whether
| what this person suggests has any success whatsoever and no data
| to back it up. How many times did she use this methodology and it
| didn't work out?
| dartharva wrote:
| Every time I read articles like these I cringe hard and feel sad
| about how far the youngsters of today have to struggle and bear
| bullshit just to get a good job and be financially independent.
|
| People just starting out with their careers do not deserve to be
| subjected to such horribly intrusive and manipulative approaches
| from recruiters. They are freshers goddammit, you are not
| supposed to hire them for leadership positions from the get-go.
| Treat them accordingly and give them space to learn on the job;
| and if your firm is not capable of doing that yet, go back to
| hiring based on experience. I have seen way too many large
| companies of today try to save labor costs by hiring fresh grads
| and then offloading the responsibilities of C-level leadership
| onto them so that they don't have to pay large salaries to the
| experienced candidates instead.
|
| I myself have been a victim of this pathetic practice - a large
| startup picked me right out of college and then made me lead the
| ENTIRE sales and customer experience wing of one of their
| divisions. With zero prior experience, zero training, just handed
| the reins from the get-go. This role involved hiring, training,
| deploying and managing literally a hundred sales executives (all
| of which had more ground experience than I ever did), chasing
| insane sales and customer acquisition targets, handling customer
| analytics for thousands of customers across diverse categories
| and segments _and_ planning and implementing outreach campaigns
| while desperately trying to learn the ropes at the same time. The
| job that I was handling was meant not just for someone more
| experienced, but for an _entire team_ of analysts, domain experts
| and mid-level managers. After a year of pushing myself and
| working literally 90 hours a week I gave up. This startup closed
| down that division the moment I left and lost ~60% of its overall
| valuation. From what I hear they have now fired everyone and are
| just looking for an exit chance. The whole thing was a F-ing
| nightmare that has scarred me from ever attempting to engage with
| startups in the future. I have joined a conventional consulting
| firm as an Associate currently and it's unbelievable how
| rudimentary things like employee training and mature, robust
| organization is making me feel.
|
| To any recruiters reading this, please stop going after low-
| experience candidates if your organization is not specifically
| mature and equipped enough to holistically train them.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is a pretty okay list of things to look for. It's hard to
| actually identify people who have these traits and people who are
| acting like they do during interview.
|
| The much more difficult issue is retaining people after you've
| trained them. I worked at a company early in my career that hired
| a LOT of young people. Most of them failed. A handful every year
| had rapid growth and would quickly be promoted.
|
| But it was really common for folks to leave once they had
| acquired more skills. Basically they had become mid/high
| experience, high potential people in 2 years and someone else
| would almost always pay them more to go work for them.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I've interviewed hundreds of people and participated in hiring
| decisions on 50 or more in various roles.
|
| The conclusion I've reached is that it's almost impossible to
| predict how someone will perform in a new role. You're always
| rolling the dice. You need to be willing to hire with an open
| mind, and fire quickly if it's not working out.
| dkasper wrote:
| Some of these questions may be borderline illegal. In my
| experience interviewing folks for Meta we are taught not to ask
| such questions because of the obvious bias. Even probing into
| what neighborhood someone lives in is dubious (oh you grew up on
| the wrong side of the tracks?). I don't even look at resumes
| anymore, although recruiters have to screen them. Focus on the
| job, if you are conducting a coding interview asking coding
| questions, maybe ask about something they built in the past for
| fun/work/learning . If you're doing system design ask them to
| architect something. If you're doing behavioral interviews this
| is trickiest but focus on the on the job behaviors, even if their
| previous job was not tech or they only have educational
| experience you can see how someone works with others on a
| project. Personal questions like this are a really bad idea.
| tiktaktow wrote:
| I tick a lot of boxes and I've always excelled beyond
| expectations when hired for positions that I did not have good
| match on experience. Hire me! My guarantee, I'll surprise you.
| lysecret wrote:
| Hiring for potential means to me, they didn't have the time to
| learn something yet. So, the most important thing is: How quickly
| do they learn new stuff? Are they excited about learning new
| stuff? You can figure this out by letting them talk about
| previous situations where they had to learn something new
| quickly.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| FWIW my advice on the same: Hire for intellect, doesn't have to
| be in the precise area you are working in. Some of the best
| people I've hired did not come from a CompSci or Informatics
| background. They were mostly STEM though. Hire for enthusiasm and
| energy. There are people who are radiators, and there are people
| who are drains. Don't hire drains. Hire for the soft skills.
| People who can communicate. People who you _want_ to help
| (because they will need help at least at the start). People who
| are easy to work with (because little is achieved in most
| endeavours by a loner these days).
| sevagh wrote:
| I think getting a no-hire signal after spilling your guts about
| your childhood, birth, and real stories would feel like shit.
| Same reason as not wanting to write cover letters anymore. If
| it's going into the shredder, who cares? Keep it light and airy.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| I never thought I'd say this, but... I'd rather grind Leetcode
| instead of being psychoanalyzed by a "Hip hop enthusiast
| masquerading as a San Francisco technologist".
| tinycombinator wrote:
| The comparison may be superficial, but this article really
| reminds me of the times when I wrote essays for college
| admissions (not in a good way).
| 34679 wrote:
| If anyone is actually interested in hiring a "low experience,
| high potential" person, I'm available.
| neilv wrote:
| With AR or HUD eyeglasses, there could be a stealthy app for
| interviewees, which does facerec of the interviewer across from
| you, quickly scours the Web for things they've written or been
| indoctrinated in during formative early career, for whatever pop
| psych, management fad, or astrological litmus tests they'll
| likely believe in for hiring, and then discreetly directs what
| notes to hit, outlines example 'life' stories, prompts when to
| make a particular facial expression, etc.
| txutxu wrote:
| This reminds me of "how to find future gems" between
| cryptocurrency small projects, or "how to analyze a good stock"
| in the stock market of smallcap companies.
|
| You can have your run book. Your check points. Your procedure and
| tools. Still, you're going to hit, surprise, a 1000/1 loss rate
| in the long run.
|
| At least from my point of view and past experience with hiring,
| young, inexperienced, but looking like a good fit.
|
| It's ok to hire people with low experience, and use them like
| such a resource while they acquire hands-on experience (and that
| is not 2 months).
|
| The real issue with this, is companies trying to cover
| experienced roles, with low experience people, from day one.
|
| People without experience, won't be able to do some things, in
| the same way than experienced people.
|
| And those more motivated, will make serious harm to projects.
|
| And those non-technical roles with decision power, listening to
| them (low experience) like if they were experienced, and
| pretending that they know the future problems of what they are
| doing/talking, will increase the effect.
|
| If you don't have money to invest in the strongest, or to hire
| experienced people... could you then put your money on an asset
| with dubious results and with a high probability of causing
| serious issues?
|
| It's ok, then play with your few money, the careers of the rest
| of the team, and your startup future, in the casino. You're of
| course free of doing it.
|
| IMHO The same way that you don't execute a random binary coming
| from a hacking forum, or a suspicious email, in the laptop of
| your bank accounts... you don't try to cover roles requiring
| experience and results, with low experience people.
|
| You do not deploy a random app, with random unsupervised code,
| into production, right?
|
| You hire low experience people, if:
|
| 1) You are willing to waste time of other (more expensive)
| persons into teach them a lot of important things
|
| 2) You have experienced people willing to do that
|
| 3) You have procedures and projects, to isolate their harm and
| what they do
|
| 4) You have procedures, to evaluate the evolution of those
| persons, during the months/years that you will be wasting the
| time of experienced people into teaching them those caveats that
| they don't know, or that will appear by first time in their face
| 11 months/years latter
|
| 5) You're not going to promote them before they are ready, for
| example if one experienced person from the same team, leaves the
| company. See point 4. You promote them when they are ready. Not
| by other reasons.
|
| Signed: a past victim of companies trying to lowcost the teams
| with low experience people
| freetanga wrote:
| Wow, the fun I would have in such a process. I would retell
| Oliver Twist meets Annie. Maybe with a musical number to jazz
| things up.
|
| More like /r/LinkedinLunatics than HackerNews material.
| humbleferret wrote:
| > "And of course, once you get one of these diamonds in the rough
| within your company, get ready to provide them with lots of
| mentorship - they're truly a lot of work to polish, but the best
| of them make it all worth it."
|
| This is true, they are a lot of work to polish. Overall, this
| hiring advice seems to apply to larger companies, where people
| have the time to polish these 'diamonds'. I would not follow it
| if working in a startup.
|
| I've naively hired 'diamonds in the rough' at smaller companies
| and startups before. While they were 'diamonds' and were very
| creative, often offering unique solutions to problems, they
| ultimately took so much effort and time to mentor that they were
| never able to reach their full potential. The lack of experience
| also meant things took longer than needed. In hindsight, my lack
| of time to mentor effectively was probably the issue.
|
| At a smaller team, say sub 10 people, I'd be reluctant to hire a
| 'diamond in the rough' again for that stage.
| tptacek wrote:
| We built Fly.io resume-blind and without interviews, hiring
| people at every level of experience without having to make
| decisions based on that experience. We did it by throwing away
| all this stuff, ditching interviews, and replacing them with
| work-sample tests. Some of the best people on our team, the best
| I've worked with in my whole career, are working here in their
| first job in our field.
|
| I'm a little grumpy about this "diamonds in the rough" shit. I'm
| more concerned about what's lurking in the diamond mines. If
| people can demonstrate that they can do the work, I don't much
| need to know if "they have a chip on their shoulders". More
| generally: I have zero faith in anyone's ability to learn much
| from psychological interviews.
| strich wrote:
| In a world where chat gpt exists I think even work samples are
| untrustworthy sources of excellence unfortunately. It would
| seem one has to either watch the process or devise unique and
| difficult to game tests.
| tptacek wrote:
| Work samples aren't all straight coding; in fact, only a
| small subset of ours are.
|
| _Later_
|
| I want to add: I fully believe LLMs can reliably knock out
| the code for most programming challenges, but a good coding
| work sample is as much about what you choose to code as it is
| about the code itself.
|
| If you're asking people to invert binaries trees or whatever,
| that's not a work-sample test, it's a coding quiz. Work-
| sample tests mirror the actual work you're doing; that's what
| makes them predictive. Writing a function to do X, Y, or Z is
| usually the easy part about building software; the hard part
| is deciding which X, which Y, and which Z, and how they fit
| together.
|
| We didn't deliberately set out to design work samples where
| the decisions we're grading are things LLMs don't just do for
| you; we do a lot of systems programming work and those kinds
| of decisions just dominate systems programming.
| xena wrote:
| As a fly.io employee, I can tell. I can tell fairly quickly.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Is this how Fly still operates? If you're hiring Rust
| developers, are you open to someone who has never touched Rust
| in their life?
| tptacek wrote:
| We wouldn't know if you've never touched it, only whether you
| can solve problems in it today.
| mcguire wrote:
| So, no?
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think this is a question with a yes/no answer? If
| you apply for a role that involves writing Rust and can't
| demonstrate the ability to solve problems in Rust, you
| won't make it far. But we don't even collect resumes, so
| you get to make that call for yourself; we don't divine
| it from signs and sigils.
| randomdata wrote:
| Implying that those who have never touched Rust cannot
| solve problems?
| swozey wrote:
| So you communicated via email and the only consideration was
| the quality of their sample?
|
| Nobody at any point literally spoke to this person?
|
| We've had a ton of issues at my corp of people having other
| people handle their interview questions, code, or having AI
| listen to the conversation and answer questions by text as if
| we prompted it. Then they show up online after being hired and
| they have webcam problems or never go on cam, talk as little as
| possible, basically never communicate to anyone really, miss a
| lot of meetings, etc.
|
| We've had probably 5 instances of this last year we're
| absolutely super strict about things now. Our assumption is
| that they want to get in, potentially get any bonuses if there
| are any, get a few huge (for their call center) paychecks until
| they get caught. Do no or almost no work. And it's a call
| center you can sometimes hear tons of convos going on in the
| background so they're just doing this en masse.
|
| This is happening ALL over since covid. I think some of them
| may have even filed unjust termination sort of things to the
| workforce commission but I may be wrong. Huge companies are
| dealing with this at a really rough scale.
| tptacek wrote:
| Our process runs mostly through email until the last
| challenge, which is interactive (for every role in the
| company we simulate some kind of design or problem solving
| exercise on Slack with an random member of our team, which is
| then rated based on a rubric by a panel that reviews the
| transcript; it differs from an interview in a variety of
| ways, most notably that the team member delivering the
| exercise doesn't ever interrogate the candidate).
|
| Most of our work sample stuff is design/architecture based.
| I'm not worried about how LLMs impact it.
|
| This is the sole way we've hired engineers at Fly.io since
| 2020 and we have never once brought someone on who turned out
| to be 3 raccoons in a trenchcoat. Raising the bar further on
| ourselves: we hire globally, at SF scale salary worldwide.
| potamic wrote:
| That's an interesting approach. In an interview, you
| generally drive the discussion a certain way to gather data
| points for your rubric. Wouldn't this happen in your case?
| If yes, how is it different from an interview? Otherwise,
| how do you evaluate candidates who solve the problem but
| don't seem to communicate much about it.
| tptacek wrote:
| Nope! It's complicated. We put a lot of effort into
| deprogramming candidates before the simulation (we call
| it a "workday"). If you join the Slack channel for a
| workday and wait for us to ask you questions, almost
| nothing will happen. The candidate drives, apart from the
| brief we provide at the beginning of the session.
|
| The rubric heavily draws from what questions the
| candidate asks, and which topics they choose to zoom in
| and spend time on. It's interesting; I warn candidates
| that studying for it ahead of time (for instance: for a
| long time our workdays were all based on a block storage
| problem) puts you at a disadvantage, by robbing you of
| good questions to ask. It's not a big disadvantage, but
| interview-style preparation isn't doing much to help you
| either.
|
| I'm always reluctant to talk too much about the workday
| process, in particular because the more I describe it the
| less chill it sounds. In reality, it's you joining a
| Slack channel with an engineer from our team and just
| shooting the shit about something we're (in the
| simulation) planning to build.
|
| A lot of what that challenge is evaluating _is_
| communication. We 're an all-remote company with team
| members in virtually ever time zone; being able to work
| out in the open in the environment we've created is
| important.
|
| I think our workdays are a pretty quirky feature of our
| process. You could instead do a scripted interview, where
| everybody gets precisely the same questions or prompts.
| The big thing we do with the workday that I think
| everyone should clone is: deliver the interview over
| Slack, and don't allow the person delivering the
| interview to grade it; instead, have someone else grade
| from the transcript. It was like a light went off (on?)
| for us when we figured out to stop having workday
| participants offer performance feedback about candidates.
|
| (One thing you _immediately_ get from it is a process to
| iterate on the quality of your staff delivering the
| workday /interview; you can immediately see which team
| members click with candidates and which don't, and then
| nudge people in the right direction. It is wild to me
| that people do free-form interviews without this kind of
| iteration system in place.)
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Could you give some exercise examples? How complex do you
| make? Does it feel like doing work for you?
| mplanchard wrote:
| Do y'all have any blog posts on this? Would be curious to know
| more about the work sample tests, and about the process in
| general.
| tptacek wrote:
| https://fly.io/docs/hiring/
| jefc1111 wrote:
| I don't know if I would hire like this, but I do think a lot
| about the current hiring landscape is pretty broken, so maybe I
| should! I expect an employer needs a certain amount of cachet
| before being able to do this or anything else similarly left-
| field.
|
| Side note - I started down two paths of significant new
| learning early last year: Security & Elixir / BEAM. I love
| Security Cryptography Whatever and had no idea you crossed over
| into the Elixir world (fly.io). Cool!
| tptacek wrote:
| I've been at Fly.io since 2020. I wouldn't describe us as an
| Elixir company so much as a company that appreciates Elixir.
| Some of our backend is in Elixir but the majority of it is
| Rust and Go.
| jefc1111 wrote:
| Some significant names from that world on the fly.io roster
| :) Like a lot of people I feel like Elixir / BEAM has a
| real value proposition that is unrealised in the wider IT
| landscape ... but maybe that's not such a bad thing from
| some perspectives.
| geor9e wrote:
| Plus you get a bunch of free work out of every applicant if you
| delegate real issues out as work-sample tests :P I'm pretty
| sure the new Audi A8 cup holders are from my mechanical design
| engineer third round volkswagen interview a couple years ago
| tptacek wrote:
| You do not in fact get free work.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's nearly impossible to scope useful, shippable work that
| can be accomplished in a job interview. Otherwise, you're
| asking for 20+ hours of work, which means that only fools /
| suckers will do your interview.
|
| Do you really want a company full of fools and suckers?
| i_h8_lc_grind wrote:
| This is good to know. I think a lot of people are tired of
| wasting their lifespan on grinding lc-medium/hards.
|
| Is there a website with a list of companies that don't
| participate in the leetcode/FAANG interview process? I feel
| like there is a need for one.
| em-bee wrote:
| i seem to remember an HN post about such a site, or at least
| one about a site that evaluates companies hiring processes.
| also related, about companies development practices.
|
| try searching the HN post history. (and report back if you
| find something :-)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Just remember that _all_ interview techniques have bias; what
| works well for one company / role may not work well for your
| company / role.
|
| That being said, it sounds like your interview technique works
| well for you.
| swayvil wrote:
| Speaking as an AS slacker with more gaps than not. Ho ho ho.
|
| _Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the
| shoebox at twelve o 'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with
| our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel,
| worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every
| six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two
| with a bread knife..._
| MichaelRo wrote:
| >> How to hire low experience, high potential people
|
| In other words interns. Wouldn't have guessed.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Hiring for entry-level engineers is so broken that "hey
| engineers fresh out of college are frequently good people to
| hire" is now novel and contrarian advice. Even before the
| pandemic, fresh graduates from non-target schools were sending
| out hundreds of applications to get their first job.
| very_good_man wrote:
| Oh I shouldn't cargo cult the biggest and most dysfunctional
| technology companies?
| wseqyrku wrote:
| > How to hire low experience, high potential people
|
| So basically, how to hire best for cheap.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Meanwhile, on tech Twitter, you have people loudly saying the
| opposite: That there do not exist diamonds in the rough, that the
| job market is perfectly efficient, and any effort spent trying to
| find these diamonds is wasted:
| https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1754614624446501347
| _Nat_ wrote:
| How could someone find a recruiter like the author?
|
| I mean, I'm just starting a job-search and the top HackerNews
| story's about how prospective employers ought to be looking for
| applications like mine! I'd love to talk to such prospective
| employers; I wonder how to make that connection?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Easiest way to hire a bunch of young, smart, ambitious people is
| to work at a place where young, smart ambitious people want to
| work. Anyone who's worked at such a place will tell you it's easy
| in that environment and difficult outside it. The deck is so
| stacked in your favor at the right place.
|
| It's much harder to keep the organization mildly functional so
| that such people want to stay. The number of highly capable,
| motivated people leaving orgs because "this place is a disaster"
| is astronomical.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Do an IQ test and a work sample test, everything else is cruft.
| stevengraham wrote:
| The irony of midwits running "talent acquisition"
| rednerrus wrote:
| "Tell me about/diagram a system you understand well." Ask follow
| up probing questions. How well people understand systems and how
| the pieces fit together is how you'll find untapped potential. It
| really doesn't matter what the system is.
| stemlord wrote:
| Sidenote: how does substack get my email address? I don't have an
| account with this site but they autofilled the "subscribe" field
| with my email address.
| neilv wrote:
| > _It's almost impossible to find the right inexperienced ones to
| do the former, who are inventive and original and yet also
| disciplined. They don't have any obvious past experience that
| helps you figure out how special they are._
|
| We're still in the introduction, and already flirting with
| ageism. Much of HR is about actively avoiding lawsuits, not going
| out of your way to invite them.
|
| > _I really like questions with maximalist qualifiers like "tell
| me about your best X." If it's not good, you know that their best
| isn't good enough._
|
| I really like interviewers who have a nuanced and humble
| understanding of the world.
|
| > _Go back to their childhood! I learn a lot about their grit and
| commitment to excellence from their basketball obsession or maybe
| their experience caring for a dying parent._
|
| Unless the candidate had a pretty enviable childhood, or they're
| already well-coached in milking a carefully-crafted origin story
| for college application and such... then I suspect it's very
| likely that this line of questioning is either going to get you a
| halfhearted "masking" response (which might not be gritty enough
| for a particular interviewer), or activate a lot of associations
| that have little to do with the job, and quite possibly could be
| traumatic. An interviewer shouldn't be a downer, nor be stumbling
| into psychological manipulation.
|
| > _This is one of the biggest mistakes I've made in the past - I
| found someone young, hungry, and wildly talented. However, they
| were also deeply insecure about their choices and prone to bouts
| of indecision and paralysis that crippled them._
|
| This can happen. But there's also an obligation to mentor,
| especially young people. Also, not all the rough spots are
| necessarily in an individual (it's not unusual for something in
| the org to be the cause of problems).
|
| > _If you're worried about negativity in the interview, know that
| it will only get worse over time._
|
| I'm wondering how accurate these confident universal assertions
| by the writer are. (For example, maybe they're coming out
| negative because an interviewer just dredged up some painful
| childhood experiences, see above. Or the cultist impression
| they're getting from their interviewer is souring them on a
| company that they were excited to join.)
|
| I have a few 'wise truths' of my own, so I shouldn't be too quick
| to judge. Reading this has reminded me that sometimes we need to
| explain when we say suspiciously tidy universals like that.
|
| > _Point out things that could be better about your company that
| could be in scope for their role -- great people are excited by
| the challenge, not by everything being perfect._
|
| This is related to something I like to do in interviews, which is
| to set a cultural tone of honesty, and to be honest about the
| situation and about helping find a mutual match.
|
| The writer seems to be using similar appearances tactically, to
| elicit more information about the interviewee, to evaluate them
| against interviewer's beliefs about right and wrong response.
|
| > _High EQ + Persuasion. People who have a clear-headed view of a
| situation, and the soft skills /influence chops to bend the
| environment to their will, are especially valuable. It's an
| underrated skill. What to look for: "Game recognize game" - it's
| all intuition. It's the feeling that you're engaged and enjoying
| the conversation with the person, but you can see the gears
| moving in their heads as they read the room._
|
| Of course the writer can't be expected to read the room of the
| entire Web, to know what "game recognize game" isn't going to go
| over well as a workplace culture with everyone.
|
| As a person who scores high on "intuitive", people sometimes
| exercise what the writer is talking about in a way that I
| personally find to be a turn-off. I try to get them to meet me in
| a genuine and honest mode, and most do. Not for us to riff
| together on some corporate game mode, when we're both aware that
| we both know what we're doing (there are moments, but that's not
| the top mode to select for). Nor do I want them to try to
| manipulate/persuade me when they think that we both _don 't_ know
| what the other is doing (sigh, not a good sign).
|
| > _What to ask: You know it when you see it._
|
| Out of context, this line at the end of the article isn't
| entirely bad advice for an experienced and thoughtful person.
| dkarl wrote:
| For hiring software engineers, something I read decades ago that
| has been a consistent indicator for me is Bjarne Stroustrop's
| observation that good programmers are almost always good writers
| in their native language.
|
| In my experience, this includes high level writing skills all the
| way down to sentence structure, but not including the ability to
| write in a formal or "educated" register. Basically, it shouldn't
| take a lot of effort to read what they write, on a macro level
| (what is this about? what are the points being made, and how are
| they related?) and the micro level (what does this sentence say?)
|
| This doesn't correlate nearly as directly with formal education
| as you would think. Some people with a degree and an impressive
| vocabulary write text that looks like a courtroom transcript of
| their train of thought, and some people with very little formal
| education write nicely structured text that is easy to read, even
| if their dialect of English isn't what you'd find in the New
| Yorker. It's less about formal education than it is about their
| ability to organize your thoughts and their ability to see their
| work from another person's perspective, which are important
| skills for many aspects of programming, including writing the
| code itself.
|
| The downside of this criterion is that if you don't read
| someone's native language, you can't judge them by it, so if
| you're looking at multiple candidates for the same job, it's
| problematic to give one candidate credit if you can't judge all
| of the candidates. On the other hand, writing well in the
| language the company works in is almost always a valuable skill
| in its own right, so it's rare that you would want to completely
| disregard a weakness in this area. You just have to be aware that
| an excellent engineer might struggle a bit in a language that
| isn't native for them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think there's a simple way:
|
| Hire a _lot_ of low experience people (right out of college) and
| work to identify and retain the exceptional ones.
| cjk wrote:
| I stopped reading when I saw the suggestion to avoid hiring
| people that are insecure. Some of the best software engineers
| I've ever hired lacked self-confidence and struggled with
| insecurity. In my experience, those folks tended to have
| extremely high standards for themselves, and did great work.
|
| Conversely, some of the worst software engineers I've ever hired
| were extraordinarily adept at projecting a high level of
| confidence without appearing to be overconfident.
| whoswho wrote:
| Judging by the comments here the article in question was intended
| to elicit a strong emotional response out of readers. A reflex
| that predominantly swings towards controversial.
|
| It succeeded in its supposed mission.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Meanwhile all the grads are on teamblind and grinding out
| leetcode. They know Amazon is easier to get a job at but will
| work you hard. They already know the system and are playing it.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| This is agitprop
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| +1 to looking for "wins above replacement" -- there are great
| players on mediocre teams and weak players on strong teams. The
| resume tells you what teams they were on but in an interview you
| need to determine what they really contributed.
|
| (One followup question I find myself asking a lot is "you said
| 'we' did X, tell me more about who was part of that" -- great
| people sometimes give away too much of the credit)
| l2silver wrote:
| It's easy enough to find high-potential people. The problem is
| how long they'll stay. If they stay for a couple of years, great,
| I'll take it. But anything less than that, and you're probably
| not recuperating the cost of hiring and training them. And the
| training cost can be extremely high if it involves the time of
| more experienced employees.
| tristor wrote:
| If someone asked me some of these questions in an interview I
| would laugh it off to try to help them save face, if they
| persisted in seriousness I would walk out. My interviewer is
| neither my better nor my therapist and has no business asking
| about my personal life or non-work past. That's bananas.
| precompute wrote:
| Off the top of my head, non-exhaustive.
|
| When hiring effective management, you should go with the
| sociopath:
|
| - whose objectives align with your own
|
| - who can effectively mask discomfort
|
| - who can light up a room or light a fire under someone's ass
|
| - who doesn't try to one-up you (assuming you're hiring for a
| subordinate / equal position)
|
| When hiring technical talent, I think the following are
| important:
|
| - Zeal for whatever they're doing : This means you don't get to
| employ a cookie cutter employee. Look at the technical things
| they do that don't qualify for a resume.
|
| - Ability to ingest information : This person you're hiring
| should be comfortable with a broad intake of information from
| various sources. This means someone you're hiring for a technical
| role should be able to tell you about (for example) the last Sci-
| Fi series he read and how it made him apply a certain idea from
| it to another domain. Doesn't have to be too hardcore. This weeds
| out people that only picked a certain discipline for the money
| and have no real interest in it.
|
| - The things they've made : Don't constrain them to the exact
| thing you're hiring for. Allow the candidate to veer.
|
| - The things they decided to drop : This tells you what they
| thought wasn't worth the effort, or what they managed to
| sidestep, and how. This tells you how well-developed their
| discernment for choosing / dropping parts of a technical problem
| is. This also tells you how lazy the candidate is. Laziness is
| better than over-engineering something (unless, of course, you
| can explain why you over-engineered it (assuming the candidate
| ideally understands said thing is over-engineered))
|
| - "If you were in management, what would you do differently?" -
| Vox Populi. Attitude towards those above him. You don't want a
| one-upper in a tight-knit, integral team. Likewise, you don't
| want an abrasive independent in a role that requires a lot of
| permission from management. Temperament must be matched to the
| existing team and sometimes this can be the deciding factor, an
| employee great at everything else but unable to work with the
| organization's modus operandi might require a different
| management style, or concessions that your organization might not
| be able to provide.
|
| Auxiliary characteristics for technical talent
|
| - Actual impostor syndrome : most people don't have impostor
| syndrome. They have the opposite, where they deep down know
| they're incompetent, but their ego can't take it, so they believe
| they need to calm down because they already know everything. When
| you find someone with actual impostor syndrome, you'll be
| surprised at the stark contrast between their accomplishments and
| what they claim to know. They'll be able to design complex
| systems but when scrutinized, will double-guess quite often. This
| can also be a great test for broad / "associative" thinking.
| Obviously, this is very different from someone that's lying on
| their resume and you'd need to weed out the liars in the
| interview. It's fairly easy once you've met someone that's the
| real deal.
|
| - Contrarianism/Skepticism : A healthy amount of skepticism is
| (IMO) necessary to keep the fires of technical work burning. Too
| much might mean your team would not be able to work well this
| candidate. More often than not, those with too much of this
| quality don't apply to jobs and prefer to do their own thing. -
| Work Experience : Not having any shouldn't be a deal breaker for
| junior positions. If they have worked in a technical position
| somewhere else, they should be able to explain what they did,
| what their contribution was and how this affected (if it did at
| all) the way they approach / engage in technical work.
|
| Obviously, giving these out before the interview would make
| detecting good hires much more difficult. It's also important to
| not linger on a question. Never making a question feel mandatory
| is also a great way to keep the interview honest. If you're
| hiring for management, make sure someone in a management position
| higher than the one the interview is for is alwyas present in the
| meeting. If you're hiring for a technical position, make sure a
| senior technical person is always present and has significant
| input, ideally the same person / group should invigilate through
| the (likely) multiple interviews. The interview should feel like
| a conversation and not an exam. Ten minutes of honest
| conversation that lays down the candidate's technical
| expectations is much more valuable than five rounds of leetcode.
| Nevertheless, it's important to save time and if someone doesn't
| have any real interest other than money, they should be dropped.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| "How to hire low experience, high potential people" who would be
| also okay with low compensation and great promises for the
| future?
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Usually the places that are trying to hire HiPos do IQ tests-
| once-removed like https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-
| prep. There is plenty of evidence that general cognitive ability
| strongly correlates with job performance.
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