4 ms·

I went through the interview process with them several years ago (when they were still called Top Hat Monocle). I basically got very positive feedback from the

by pyre 10y ago

I went through the interview process with them several years ago (when they were still called Top Hat Monocle). I basically got very positive feedback from the interview process, until I had to interview with the CEO. Apparently the reason given by the CEO for torpedoing me was that I didn't have enough projects on my Github account so I didn't "love the web" enough. Take from that what you will about their attitude towards hiring (taking into account that this was 3+ years ago). That said, I haven't met anyone from Top Hat that I personally had a bad opinion of.

surge 10y ago
Seriously? Not every project can be in a public repo, are all their projects on open repos? Some of us host our own or use different sites because we've been using git longer than github. Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Someone can be pro open source, and have lots of projects ongoing but host their own gitlab, IRC server, etc, they share with their community or started long before github was a thing. I also can't imagine someone whose in this field that doesn't "love the web". Github is good, but it's not the only way to do it.
- latch 10y ago
  I agree it's ridiculous to get to be turned down for that reason at that point. If that was their attitude, they could at least be efficient about it for their own sake and out candidates. But, in general, I think you should consider the other side of the argument. The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. And if you're looking at candidates and someone has code online that looks promising after a brief examination, I think it's reasonable to take that into account. It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web".
  - sidlls 10y ago
    If "It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web"." then why is it "reasonable to take that into account?" Those two sentiments seem to contradict each other. The real problem here is that there is now yet another terrible signal being used as a measure of acceptability in the vetting and interview process. "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises".
    - gregmac 10y ago
      > "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises". Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of acceptability. I think we are all agreeing that it's not reasonable to reject someone due to lack of published code. Latch is trying to point out the reality of the situation: > The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code. It's very hard to judge someone's work quality based on personality. I've hired people who seemed good when talking to them but turned out to be not very great developers. I've also hired people who seemed questionable when talking to them, but had decent code samples and/or published code and also turned out to be good or great developers. I guess to be fair I've never hired anyone who seemed like they'd make a poor developer, had no code samples to prove otherwise, and did badly on coding tests, so maybe I'm missing some great developers who aren't very personable or good under pressure. Frankly I'm okay with that, because I am absolutely positive most of the people in that category are in fact poor developers.
      - sidlls 10y ago
        > Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of noacceptability. Unless you have a way to verify the source of the code is the candidate with some level of confidence this isn't different from picking the office peacock for promotion. > If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code. How is it less risk, assuming one came to the "equal on every level" decision by some means that evaluates their proficiency reasonably well? The only thing having self-published code signals is a willingness and desire to have one's code public. I haven't seen an actual argument justifying your assertion regarding risk.
  - yannickt 10y ago
    It's one thing to prioritize a candidate with a public profile over one without when determining the order in which to interview candidates. But to reject a candidate, after he's interviewed by the CEO (so this would presumably be the last interview stage), because he doesn't have "enough" public projects and therefore doesn't "love the web" enough? I think that's stupid. Edit: misread the parent, we are actually saying the same thing.
    - latch 10y ago
      which is what I said.
  - evilduck 10y ago
    I don't think it's reasonable at all unless you equally weigh other sources of evaluating coding ability. IMO it's the same as assuming all managerial applicants also have volunteer charity experience as a manager that they can document and show. Very few careers hinge on what you do in your spare time as long as that spare time isn't spent being a criminal. edit: hell, it's also already a norm that you have to perform a pro-bono coding assignment as part of the interview process. It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      > It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview. It's a bit of a misnomer to think that businesses expect (or require, as some put it). In reality, they can only weigh their options. Of course, the more options they have, the more particular they can be. It is not unreasonable to think that they had many suitable candidates, and the one who had the most visible evidence of past work became the preferred choice of the group. Mentioning to the OP what helped cinched the deal for what candidate did get the job may have just been meant as a point of information. Of course, it's difficult to say what really happened without being an observer to the events that took place.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    That argument makes absolutely no sense. The candidate had made it to the point where they're being interviewed by the CEO. Any consideration of that has long since passed.
- plafl 10y ago
  Maybe the CEO made the decision subconsciously and later rationalized the decision
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Vast majority of people's decisions are made this way. CEO's are no different. Might be more so if they're moving super-fast managing a startup. So, this possibility should always be considered even if not stated as either the reason or a reason something happened.
    - omouse 10y ago
      The company's been around since 2009 apparently, I'm pretty sure they are no longer a startup, just a regular business that has to survive in the real world and all funding rounds are temporary loans.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Point still stands but without the rush factor of startups.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Quite recently, I had a conflict on social media, where some other programmer went halfway to doxxing me. Apparently, the worst thing he could imagine saying to someone was that "Your github sucks!" And in his mind that is sufficient for determining someone isn't a worthwhile person. I remember when SourceForge held the same sway. Now look where it is now. (That said, I do plan on putting some more stuff up there. Though it would be hard to tell, I do have some code that is used commercially, even now.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
nemild 10y ago
The other thing to be aware is that the rationalization may be different than the reality of why he didn't choose you. The CEO may have found this an easier way to reject you. In YC, there was this saying (in the context of VCs): believe the rejection, but not the reason. There's little upside in being honest.
wahnfrieden 10y ago
Hi, I'm Alex, on the engineering team @ Top Hat. I can't speak for back then (I joined after the Top Hat rename), but I'd like to clear up our current practices. We definitely appreciate when candidates have projects or code publicly visible, but understand that not everyone hones their craft through open-source work for one reason or another and would not hold it against someone if their coding contributions weren't public.
c2h5oh 10y ago
You are lucky - you could have been hired. It's a horrible place to work -I've got first hand experience.

by pyre 10y ago

surge 10y ago

Seriously? Not every project can be in a public repo, are all their projects on open repos? Some of us host our own or use different sites because we've been using git longer than github. Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Someone can be pro open source, and have lots of projects ongoing but host their own gitlab, IRC server, etc, they share with their community or started long before github was a thing. I also can't imagine someone whose in this field that doesn't "love the web". Github is good, but it's not the only way to do it.

latch 10y ago
I agree it's ridiculous to get to be turned down for that reason at that point. If that was their attitude, they could at least be efficient about it for their own sake and out candidates. But, in general, I think you should consider the other side of the argument. The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. And if you're looking at candidates and someone has code online that looks promising after a brief examination, I think it's reasonable to take that into account. It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web".
- sidlls 10y ago
  If "It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web"." then why is it "reasonable to take that into account?" Those two sentiments seem to contradict each other. The real problem here is that there is now yet another terrible signal being used as a measure of acceptability in the vetting and interview process. "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises".
  - gregmac 10y ago
    > "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises". Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of acceptability. I think we are all agreeing that it's not reasonable to reject someone due to lack of published code. Latch is trying to point out the reality of the situation: > The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code. It's very hard to judge someone's work quality based on personality. I've hired people who seemed good when talking to them but turned out to be not very great developers. I've also hired people who seemed questionable when talking to them, but had decent code samples and/or published code and also turned out to be good or great developers. I guess to be fair I've never hired anyone who seemed like they'd make a poor developer, had no code samples to prove otherwise, and did badly on coding tests, so maybe I'm missing some great developers who aren't very personable or good under pressure. Frankly I'm okay with that, because I am absolutely positive most of the people in that category are in fact poor developers.
    - sidlls 10y ago
      > Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of noacceptability. Unless you have a way to verify the source of the code is the candidate with some level of confidence this isn't different from picking the office peacock for promotion. > If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code. How is it less risk, assuming one came to the "equal on every level" decision by some means that evaluates their proficiency reasonably well? The only thing having self-published code signals is a willingness and desire to have one's code public. I haven't seen an actual argument justifying your assertion regarding risk.
- yannickt 10y ago
  It's one thing to prioritize a candidate with a public profile over one without when determining the order in which to interview candidates. But to reject a candidate, after he's interviewed by the CEO (so this would presumably be the last interview stage), because he doesn't have "enough" public projects and therefore doesn't "love the web" enough? I think that's stupid. Edit: misread the parent, we are actually saying the same thing.
  - latch 10y ago
    which is what I said.
- evilduck 10y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable at all unless you equally weigh other sources of evaluating coding ability. IMO it's the same as assuming all managerial applicants also have volunteer charity experience as a manager that they can document and show. Very few careers hinge on what you do in your spare time as long as that spare time isn't spent being a criminal. edit: hell, it's also already a norm that you have to perform a pro-bono coding assignment as part of the interview process. It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    > It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview. It's a bit of a misnomer to think that businesses expect (or require, as some put it). In reality, they can only weigh their options. Of course, the more options they have, the more particular they can be. It is not unreasonable to think that they had many suitable candidates, and the one who had the most visible evidence of past work became the preferred choice of the group. Mentioning to the OP what helped cinched the deal for what candidate did get the job may have just been meant as a point of information. Of course, it's difficult to say what really happened without being an observer to the events that took place.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  That argument makes absolutely no sense. The candidate had made it to the point where they're being interviewed by the CEO. Any consideration of that has long since passed.
plafl 10y ago
Maybe the CEO made the decision subconsciously and later rationalized the decision
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Vast majority of people's decisions are made this way. CEO's are no different. Might be more so if they're moving super-fast managing a startup. So, this possibility should always be considered even if not stated as either the reason or a reason something happened.
  - omouse 10y ago
    The company's been around since 2009 apparently, I'm pretty sure they are no longer a startup, just a regular business that has to survive in the real world and all funding rounds are temporary loans.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Point still stands but without the rush factor of startups.
stcredzero 10y ago
Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Quite recently, I had a conflict on social media, where some other programmer went halfway to doxxing me. Apparently, the worst thing he could imagine saying to someone was that "Your github sucks!" And in his mind that is sufficient for determining someone isn't a worthwhile person. I remember when SourceForge held the same sway. Now look where it is now. (That said, I do plan on putting some more stuff up there. Though it would be hard to tell, I do have some code that is used commercially, even now.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

nemild 10y ago

The other thing to be aware is that the rationalization may be different than the reality of why he didn't choose you. The CEO may have found this an easier way to reject you. In YC, there was this saying (in the context of VCs): believe the rejection, but not the reason. There's little upside in being honest.

wahnfrieden 10y ago

Hi, I'm Alex, on the engineering team @ Top Hat. I can't speak for back then (I joined after the Top Hat rename), but I'd like to clear up our current practices. We definitely appreciate when candidates have projects or code publicly visible, but understand that not everyone hones their craft through open-source work for one reason or another and would not hold it against someone if their coding contributions weren't public.

c2h5oh 10y ago

You are lucky - you could have been hired. It's a horrible place to work -I've got first hand experience.