4 ms·

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, produc

by ken 8y ago

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, product, technical challenges, or its work environment) is important. This frustrates me so much. What if I can't find a company that offers any such thing? This seems like anti-common sense to me. If you have skills at carpentry, and do a professional job, you can get a job at any construction site. Nobody cares if you have a "deep, enthusiastic, genuine interest" in the type of structure, or the challenges of woodworking, or the layout of the job site. If you have skills at programming, though, you might not even get a job these days if you can't demonstrate that you're sufficiently passionate about what exactly the company does and how they do it. This isn't a blue/white-collar distinction. I once talked to the industrial design lead at Fluke, and asked if he ended up there because he had a particular interest in test and measurement. He laughed at me and said no, not at all. He just liked industrial design, and didn't much care where he did it, or what he was designing. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounds like you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you. I don't know why else it would matter.

amorphid 8y ago
The way I think of it is that we haven't yet figured out concrete ways to assess whether someone can or can't be an effective developer on a team. So if you want me to hire you, and I can't directly measure your skills (because I'm a suboptimal interviewer?), then I need data points that increase my confidence that you are more likely to work out. This is a 100% contrived, but here's an example... - I run a dev team largely using Microsoft tech - You are a Java developer - I had a Java developer try out the Microsoft stuff, and quit because they decided they didn't wanna go all in on C# - If you're work experience in largely in Java, but I see you spending a lot of time writing C# in your personal time, or somehow demonstrating a passion for you, I'm more likely to think you'll be a fit. Maybe asking people to demonstrate a passion for tech is related to feeling defensive about that tech. Plenty of back-end-y developers trash talk CSS and JavaScript. Someone who works on front-end stuff all day long might not like that trend, so they filter for people excited about JavaScript, and I can't say I'd blame them for that.
- ken 8y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph! As an industry, we still don't have the first clue how to hire. It's not just you. Where I differ is with your (admittedly contrived) example. I've interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people over the years, and I can't say I've seen any correlation between passion and professionalism/competence/longevity. I think "Hiring for passion" is the new "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It's the CYA response. We have no clue if a hire is going to work out, but if they spend their weekends writing C# for fun, and they don't work out at our company, we can at least tell our bosses "They came across as so passionate during the interview -- we couldn't have known they would turn out to be a bad hire!"
  - amorphid 8y ago
    > Where I differ is with your (admittedly contrived) example. I've interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people over the years, and I can't say I've seen any correlation between passion and professionalism/competence/longevity. Makes sense. I think I was trying to say we come up with seemingly arbitrary reasons to hire & reject people. Before getting into software, I had expected the opposite. As far as I can tell, hiring would be more effective if we asked candidates to roll a d20 to make a charisma check w/ a difficulty modified by how we're feeling that day.
    - ken 8y ago
      Great point. The word "science" appears in the name of the field that I studied, yet I haven't seen any evidence that our current hiring processes in this field are better than random (i.e., the null hypothesis). If I made a software company who openly declared that their hiring process was purely random, would it work as a company? Would it be legal? For that matter, is a standard tech interview legally valid[1]? What if there is no known valid method? [1]: https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/facts-about-validation https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/facts-about-validation
      - amorphid 8y ago
        I'm imagining an overly academic interview question that goes something like this... "It's been determined that our CS interviews are both random and unscientific, and we'd like to reverse that trend. To give us more control of the outcome, and to help us be more science-y, how would you design a random number generator which can be made deterministic by giving it a seed value? We need one for our hiring process."
itronitron 8y ago
>> you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion. In my experience, the people with the greatest passion also turn out to be the biggest assholes and unnecessarily alienate their coworkers. Going with the carpentry example, imagine building a house with someone that insisted _everything_ be _perfectly_level_ and went around checking everyone's work every hour and reviewing their work. Culture fit could more effectively be restated as emotional/social intelligence which a small subset of software engineers severely lack. Hiring an excellent engineer that doesn't enable other team members is a net loss for the organization.
- FundThrowaway 8y ago
  "'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS" Funnily enough I always find it that the people with passion are the ones that get themselves all worked up and distracted with the BS, the rest just keep on chugging (assuming it's not so bad that they quit).
- ken 8y ago
  > I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion. Perhaps so. (Wanting people to regularly work unpaid overtime could be seen as an instance of "organizational BS".) In this case, it's a good signal to applicants like me that I wouldn't want to work there. Unfortunately, it's become universal across the software industry.
repolfx 8y ago
It is frustrating. I emphasise passion relatively little in my own interviewing process, but others in the firm can't quite get over the desire to do a "one last check" sort of interview. I don't stop them because, well, the harsh reality is that passion does help. Why? Because programming isn't carpentry. The difference between an average programmer and a great one is that the average one will build what you ask according to blueprints provided. The great one will come up with new ideas for how to make the product better, drive improvements throughout the team and so on. Building sites are hierarchical - by the time the carpenter turns up the plans are finalised and can't be changed so easily, but software is always in motion. Also, when I look back at the hires we had that didn't work out, "didn't appear to care about the job" is a common theme. Carpentry is a physical job out in the open where everyone can see if you're working or not. Programming isn't. If you're in front of your desk it can be hard to tell if you're working, or goofing off, and the much greater flexibility given to developers vs carpenters feeds into that (e.g. if you're goofing off temporarily we'll cut you some slack because you're a valuable employee). So in an environment where supervision is less rigid, the gap between most effective and least is high, and it's hard to tell when people are working, having an interest in the work (it doesn't have to be "passion") means you're much more likely to work out.
- ken 8y ago
  I notice that you focused in on my carpentry example, and ignored the industrial design one completely. Do you think ID is perfectly hierarchical, and doesn't involve changes to blueprints, and never looks like goofing off? Your hypothesis only fits 2 of the 3 data points I provided. Software is the only non-customer-facing job that I know of where passion is considered relevant at hiring time. The mathematicians I've known have all been somewhere between "moderately stoic" and "downright antisocial" and had no trouble getting hired, despite mathematics having all of the features you attribute to programming.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Your industrial design example was an anecdote. There are people who work for me who aren't passionate about the specific area we work in, they just like writing software. You seem to think passion is literally a job requirement, but I've never seen that. Employers like to see interest and keenness but they do hire people who don't have it, of course.
hekfu 8y ago
> If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounds like you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you. I don't know why else it would matter. Ding ding ding. Also in this category * We still shitcorp want the company to be a family * Believing in our vision * Want our employees to be caring about the customer * Have fun and pizza in the office Unless a) there are hard cash+ benefits b) there is equity c) there exists a formal incentive structure reaffirming the officially started desires It's all consciously or subconsciously a way to sucker people in and exploit them without pay. And some people go in knowing that and not caring they get exploited (nurses, some people better than me I know), some don't notice (mostly junior devs/consultants). But for both exploited they get
- mmirate 8y ago
  > equity AFAICT equity is a lottery-ticket at best, and is usually bubkes. What novel information do you have about equity?
  - hekfu 8y ago
    Two cases: 1. I'm talking about equity, not options. Aka, part of the company is yours. With voting rights, or in the case of e.g. Google, at least worth cash 2. In a startup, it is a lottery ticket. If the company is public, you can include it in compensation as there is a market value If the company actually gives you a meaning number of shares, they can expect you to care about the company beyond the paycheck... because it's your company. If they are Google and the stock is a way to chain you via vesting...at least it's golden chains
firstplacelast 8y ago
This is how you know your skills are no longer in high-demand. When employers want to select for ridiculous crap like that or use vague reasons for denying an applicant like “cultural fit” it’s because they have way too many qualified applicants. If your skills were truly in high-demand, they would verify that you could do the work and are easy to work with then they’d give you the job (see: Nurses).

by ken 8y ago

amorphid 8y ago

The way I think of it is that we haven't yet figured out concrete ways to assess whether someone can or can't be an effective developer on a team. So if you want me to hire you, and I can't directly measure your skills (because I'm a suboptimal interviewer?), then I need data points that increase my confidence that you are more likely to work out. This is a 100% contrived, but here's an example... - I run a dev team largely using Microsoft tech - You are a Java developer - I had a Java developer try out the Microsoft stuff, and quit because they decided they didn't wanna go all in on C# - If you're work experience in largely in Java, but I see you spending a lot of time writing C# in your personal time, or somehow demonstrating a passion for you, I'm more likely to think you'll be a fit. Maybe asking people to demonstrate a passion for tech is related to feeling defensive about that tech. Plenty of back-end-y developers trash talk CSS and JavaScript. Someone who works on front-end stuff all day long might not like that trend, so they filter for people excited about JavaScript, and I can't say I'd blame them for that.

ken 8y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph! As an industry, we still don't have the first clue how to hire. It's not just you. Where I differ is with your (admittedly contrived) example. I've interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people over the years, and I can't say I've seen any correlation between passion and professionalism/competence/longevity. I think "Hiring for passion" is the new "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It's the CYA response. We have no clue if a hire is going to work out, but if they spend their weekends writing C# for fun, and they don't work out at our company, we can at least tell our bosses "They came across as so passionate during the interview -- we couldn't have known they would turn out to be a bad hire!"
- amorphid 8y ago
  > Where I differ is with your (admittedly contrived) example. I've interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people over the years, and I can't say I've seen any correlation between passion and professionalism/competence/longevity. Makes sense. I think I was trying to say we come up with seemingly arbitrary reasons to hire & reject people. Before getting into software, I had expected the opposite. As far as I can tell, hiring would be more effective if we asked candidates to roll a d20 to make a charisma check w/ a difficulty modified by how we're feeling that day.
  - ken 8y ago
    Great point. The word "science" appears in the name of the field that I studied, yet I haven't seen any evidence that our current hiring processes in this field are better than random (i.e., the null hypothesis). If I made a software company who openly declared that their hiring process was purely random, would it work as a company? Would it be legal? For that matter, is a standard tech interview legally valid[1]? What if there is no known valid method? [1]: https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/facts-about-validation https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/facts-about-validation
    - amorphid 8y ago
      I'm imagining an overly academic interview question that goes something like this... "It's been determined that our CS interviews are both random and unscientific, and we'd like to reverse that trend. To give us more control of the outcome, and to help us be more science-y, how would you design a random number generator which can be made deterministic by giving it a seed value? We need one for our hiring process."

itronitron 8y ago

>> you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion. In my experience, the people with the greatest passion also turn out to be the biggest assholes and unnecessarily alienate their coworkers. Going with the carpentry example, imagine building a house with someone that insisted _everything_ be _perfectly_level_ and went around checking everyone's work every hour and reviewing their work. Culture fit could more effectively be restated as emotional/social intelligence which a small subset of software engineers severely lack. Hiring an excellent engineer that doesn't enable other team members is a net loss for the organization.

FundThrowaway 8y ago
"'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS" Funnily enough I always find it that the people with passion are the ones that get themselves all worked up and distracted with the BS, the rest just keep on chugging (assuming it's not so bad that they quit).
ken 8y ago
> I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion. Perhaps so. (Wanting people to regularly work unpaid overtime could be seen as an instance of "organizational BS".) In this case, it's a good signal to applicants like me that I wouldn't want to work there. Unfortunately, it's become universal across the software industry.

repolfx 8y ago

It is frustrating. I emphasise passion relatively little in my own interviewing process, but others in the firm can't quite get over the desire to do a "one last check" sort of interview. I don't stop them because, well, the harsh reality is that passion does help. Why? Because programming isn't carpentry. The difference between an average programmer and a great one is that the average one will build what you ask according to blueprints provided. The great one will come up with new ideas for how to make the product better, drive improvements throughout the team and so on. Building sites are hierarchical - by the time the carpenter turns up the plans are finalised and can't be changed so easily, but software is always in motion. Also, when I look back at the hires we had that didn't work out, "didn't appear to care about the job" is a common theme. Carpentry is a physical job out in the open where everyone can see if you're working or not. Programming isn't. If you're in front of your desk it can be hard to tell if you're working, or goofing off, and the much greater flexibility given to developers vs carpenters feeds into that (e.g. if you're goofing off temporarily we'll cut you some slack because you're a valuable employee). So in an environment where supervision is less rigid, the gap between most effective and least is high, and it's hard to tell when people are working, having an interest in the work (it doesn't have to be "passion") means you're much more likely to work out.

ken 8y ago
I notice that you focused in on my carpentry example, and ignored the industrial design one completely. Do you think ID is perfectly hierarchical, and doesn't involve changes to blueprints, and never looks like goofing off? Your hypothesis only fits 2 of the 3 data points I provided. Software is the only non-customer-facing job that I know of where passion is considered relevant at hiring time. The mathematicians I've known have all been somewhere between "moderately stoic" and "downright antisocial" and had no trouble getting hired, despite mathematics having all of the features you attribute to programming.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Your industrial design example was an anecdote. There are people who work for me who aren't passionate about the specific area we work in, they just like writing software. You seem to think passion is literally a job requirement, but I've never seen that. Employers like to see interest and keenness but they do hire people who don't have it, of course.

hekfu 8y ago

> If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounds like you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you. I don't know why else it would matter. Ding ding ding. Also in this category * We still shitcorp want the company to be a family * Believing in our vision * Want our employees to be caring about the customer * Have fun and pizza in the office Unless a) there are hard cash+ benefits b) there is equity c) there exists a formal incentive structure reaffirming the officially started desires It's all consciously or subconsciously a way to sucker people in and exploit them without pay. And some people go in knowing that and not caring they get exploited (nurses, some people better than me I know), some don't notice (mostly junior devs/consultants). But for both exploited they get

mmirate 8y ago
> equity AFAICT equity is a lottery-ticket at best, and is usually bubkes. What novel information do you have about equity?
- hekfu 8y ago
  Two cases: 1. I'm talking about equity, not options. Aka, part of the company is yours. With voting rights, or in the case of e.g. Google, at least worth cash 2. In a startup, it is a lottery ticket. If the company is public, you can include it in compensation as there is a market value If the company actually gives you a meaning number of shares, they can expect you to care about the company beyond the paycheck... because it's your company. If they are Google and the stock is a way to chain you via vesting...at least it's golden chains

firstplacelast 8y ago

This is how you know your skills are no longer in high-demand. When employers want to select for ridiculous crap like that or use vague reasons for denying an applicant like “cultural fit” it’s because they have way too many qualified applicants. If your skills were truly in high-demand, they would verify that you could do the work and are easy to work with then they’d give you the job (see: Nurses).