4 ms·

> Well... how do we find these people? By looking at their resumes where they claim this? By contacting references who will attest to it? By trusting the intuit

by dom96 8y ago

> Well... how do we find these people? By looking at their resumes where they claim this? By contacting references who will attest to it? By trusting the intuition of subjective evaluators of the candidates? While not perfect I wonder if a person's projects are a good signal for this. There certainly are those who have developed a significant open source project but who get rejected by the FAANG companies, the author of Homebrew being a recent infamous example.

erik_seaberg 8y ago
In Howell's own words from https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...: > I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested.
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  From later in his same post... But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.
  - mullingitover 8y ago
    > I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things Having worked with people who are dicks but make really good things...I wouldn't want him on my team either. There are plenty of people who make really good things and aren't dicks.
    - torgian 8y ago
      Gotta agree. People sometimes underestimate the power of actually getting along with others!
jd20 8y ago
One unfortunate side effect of being at a FAANG company is that most of your best work is probably proprietary and you will never have the chance to show it to anyone outside the company, nor will you have much free time for personal projects. As an interviewer, I can definitely say that GitHub has become a bigger part of helping to evaluate people.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > As an interviewer, I can definitely say that GitHub has become a bigger part of helping to evaluate people. Many people can’t work on open source, either due to a lack of time or corporate policy.
saagarjha 8y ago
> There certainly are those who have developed a significant open source project but who get rejected by the FAANG companies, the author of Homebrew being a recent infamous example. It’s always possible that Google felt he wasn’t what they needed. And keep in mind that Howell ended up being hired by Apple and working there for a while.
QML 8y ago
Every time the interview story of the guy behind Homebrew gets brought up, there’s the reminder that he interviewed for a software engineering position while he would’ve been better suited for a product manager position — he also mentions this as such.
ummonk 8y ago
The author of Homebrew was rejected for software engineering at Google, which was perfectly reasonable given what he has said about his own skills. He has demonstrated very good product management aptitude on the other hand; it would be far more concerning if he were rejected from a PM role.
- hello_moto 8y ago
  > he has demonstrated very good product management aptitude on the other hand Not to diminish his accomplishment... he could be a good candidate for PM but his tool is more of a dev-tool (so I suppose this is a niche-ish?)

by dom96 8y ago

erik_seaberg 8y ago

In Howell's own words from https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...: > I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested.

Pharmakon 8y ago
From later in his same post... But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.
- mullingitover 8y ago
  > I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things Having worked with people who are dicks but make really good things...I wouldn't want him on my team either. There are plenty of people who make really good things and aren't dicks.
  - torgian 8y ago
    Gotta agree. People sometimes underestimate the power of actually getting along with others!

jd20 8y ago

One unfortunate side effect of being at a FAANG company is that most of your best work is probably proprietary and you will never have the chance to show it to anyone outside the company, nor will you have much free time for personal projects. As an interviewer, I can definitely say that GitHub has become a bigger part of helping to evaluate people.

saagarjha 8y ago
> As an interviewer, I can definitely say that GitHub has become a bigger part of helping to evaluate people. Many people can’t work on open source, either due to a lack of time or corporate policy.

saagarjha 8y ago

> There certainly are those who have developed a significant open source project but who get rejected by the FAANG companies, the author of Homebrew being a recent infamous example. It’s always possible that Google felt he wasn’t what they needed. And keep in mind that Howell ended up being hired by Apple and working there for a while.

QML 8y ago

Every time the interview story of the guy behind Homebrew gets brought up, there’s the reminder that he interviewed for a software engineering position while he would’ve been better suited for a product manager position — he also mentions this as such.

ummonk 8y ago

The author of Homebrew was rejected for software engineering at Google, which was perfectly reasonable given what he has said about his own skills. He has demonstrated very good product management aptitude on the other hand; it would be far more concerning if he were rejected from a PM role.

hello_moto 8y ago
> he has demonstrated very good product management aptitude on the other hand Not to diminish his accomplishment... he could be a good candidate for PM but his tool is more of a dev-tool (so I suppose this is a niche-ish?)