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I hate this style of inductive reasoning when it comes to hiring. You start with an old-wives tale that is intuitive but not empirically verified and probably

I hate this style of inductive reasoning when it comes to hiring. You start with an old-wives tale that is intuitive but not empirically verified and probably wrong, like "B players hire C players" etc, and then extrapolate until your behaviour is asinine. The whole time it's justified with some bullshit about "the cost of a bad hire" (often by people who never see the financial numbers). So let's induce why this is ridiculous: Lets say I "only hire the best" and send my candidate through 8 interviewers. Each interviewer has veto power. Now I have a really good candidate. You can ask him ANYTHING about the whole of computer science theory (because that's how we cargo cult our interview process here at A-Player Corp) and he has a 95% chance of acing the interview without offending the interviewer by wearing the wrong coloured shirt or whatever. Only A players know salmon shirts are last year. Well I've now constructed a binomial trail with a 33.7% chance of one or more people failing the candidate. And that's for a candidate that can pass 19/20 of these quiz interviews. Zod help you if you're one of those dunces who can only impress 80% of these A-player interviewers. You have an 83.2% chance of failing the day of interviews in that case. Each of these days interviewing is a day you have to take of work in vacation time. 90% of the time I've gone through these interviews, when I ask what I'll actually be doing, it's usually really dumb shit dressed up as "We solve hard problems" OR the interviewer looks at you slyly and says "I'm not allowed to talk about what I work on" as if he's Nerd James Bond. At least in finance, the lower status the guy is, the more likely he is to pull a Nerd James Bond. Market data parser writers will always pull this shit while the chief strategist will gladly talk about all sorts of generalized alpha signals. The whole process is fucking broken. No other industry that I know of works this way. So I just get jobs via people I know.

strulovich 8y ago
I work at one of those big companies. Luckily, because we have all been “cargo culted” with silly subjects such as probability theory the process is built to accommodate a number of interview failures. I know of other big companies which practice similar processes for such reasons. I do assume smaller companies may fare worse on that, just because they didn’t have the time and resources to develop their interviewing process.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
benatkin 8y ago
> The whole process is fucking broken. No other industry that I know of works this way. So I just get jobs via people I know. This is why articles like his get to the front page. You may be more correct because you aren't making any claims, but I'd rather listen to an idea that's actionable. Especially one that is more likely to cause me to err on the side of not hiring a good candidate than it is to cause me to err on the side of hiring a bad candidate. If this article's correct, and I suspect it is, it's important for CTOs to read it, because this is the sort of thing that's better to not become official policy. If there's a team that has 75% A players, they should let the non-A players be involved in the interview process to keep the ship running smooth, but sneakily disregard their input.
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It's just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
flyinglizard 8y ago
In my practical experience in both sides of the table, it’s very unlikely that all interviewers across the process would be asking the same type of questions. Usually it’s one-three rounds of in depth technical material, but from there on you move onto HR and management people who mainly want to see your other traits and that you aren’t a psychopath. In non toxic environments, interviewers far along the process - which are usually more senior - also understand that by getting this far, it’s implied the organization wants the candidate and they would need a very good reason to overrule and eject; they adjust their thresholds accordingly.
clairity 8y ago
> ‘"I'm not allowed to talk about what I work on" as if he's Nerd James Bond.’ omg, that made me tear up with laughter! but yes, so much of these selection processes have devolved into justifying the puffery of the chosen. in many cases, once a minimum threshold of competence is shown, it’s a crapshoot on how well the person will do, since there are so many hidden variables to success (i.e., luck is a large part of it).
rightbyte 8y ago
Interviewing is like dating. If you aren't desperate but picky you will just turn down candidates untill you are desperate and just pick one and than dellude yourself into thinking you made a well informed choice.

strulovich 8y ago

I work at one of those big companies. Luckily, because we have all been “cargo culted” with silly subjects such as probability theory the process is built to accommodate a number of interview failures. I know of other big companies which practice similar processes for such reasons. I do assume smaller companies may fare worse on that, just because they didn’t have the time and resources to develop their interviewing process.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

benatkin 8y ago

> The whole process is fucking broken. No other industry that I know of works this way. So I just get jobs via people I know. This is why articles like his get to the front page. You may be more correct because you aren't making any claims, but I'd rather listen to an idea that's actionable. Especially one that is more likely to cause me to err on the side of not hiring a good candidate than it is to cause me to err on the side of hiring a bad candidate. If this article's correct, and I suspect it is, it's important for CTOs to read it, because this is the sort of thing that's better to not become official policy. If there's a team that has 75% A players, they should let the non-A players be involved in the interview process to keep the ship running smooth, but sneakily disregard their input.

CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It's just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

flyinglizard 8y ago

In my practical experience in both sides of the table, it’s very unlikely that all interviewers across the process would be asking the same type of questions. Usually it’s one-three rounds of in depth technical material, but from there on you move onto HR and management people who mainly want to see your other traits and that you aren’t a psychopath. In non toxic environments, interviewers far along the process - which are usually more senior - also understand that by getting this far, it’s implied the organization wants the candidate and they would need a very good reason to overrule and eject; they adjust their thresholds accordingly.

clairity 8y ago

> ‘"I'm not allowed to talk about what I work on" as if he's Nerd James Bond.’ omg, that made me tear up with laughter! but yes, so much of these selection processes have devolved into justifying the puffery of the chosen. in many cases, once a minimum threshold of competence is shown, it’s a crapshoot on how well the person will do, since there are so many hidden variables to success (i.e., luck is a large part of it).

rightbyte 8y ago

Interviewing is like dating. If you aren't desperate but picky you will just turn down candidates untill you are desperate and just pick one and than dellude yourself into thinking you made a well informed choice.