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I don’t care about my colleagues’ interests. I treat them decently and with respect when we’re working together, but at the close of business we go our separate
by maxaf 7y ago
I don’t care about my colleagues’ interests. I treat them decently and with respect when we’re working together, but at the close of business we go our separate ways and pursue our interests any way we see fit.
Likewise, I don’t expect my coworkers to care about my hobbies. Most of them would be horrified to find out.
- jakear 7y agoYeah. The person writing that resume doesn’t want to work for you, and you’d not hire them. The system works.
- maxaf 7y agoYou seem to be defending the perpetuation of bias: hiring based on properties of a person that are orthogonal to technical skill. Bias comes in many shapes and sizes. For example, hiring only white people would be a form of bias. Likewise, hiring only those who share the same interests as the hiring manager is a form of bias. Even looking out for the mere presence of an "interests & hobbies" section on the resume can be considered bias.
- jakear 7y agoIf you consider a persons contribution to a company to be purely technical, your argument holds. I take it you might feel that way, I do not.
- mancerayder 7y agoHow does a love of dogs and the outdoors (example above) contribute meaningfully to a tech role? How about a love of dance or photography? We go to work to get paid for our skills, not to go camping together or share our love of bird watching. What if a hobby included volunteering at a church, mosque, local GOP or DNC fundraising HQ, re-enacting War simulations or practicing at a gun range? I agree with the posters above who think this is, at best, useless and at worst, a potential for discrimination.
- 50656E6973 7y agoPerhaps it signals the person has a healthy work life balance. >We go to work to get paid for our skills, not to go camping together or share our love of bird watching. Some people prefer to work on teams where they're treated more like humans and less like cogs in a machine.
- yuhe00 7y agoTech roles comes in many forms. For example, I have worked a fair bit with graphics programming and VFX, where extensive knowledge of photography would be very useful. I can imagine tech jobs where most of the hobbies you've listed could be considered relevant. Dance? Biometric sensor tech. Guns? Video games. And so on...
- vharuck 7y agoEspecially because hobbies and interests are influenced by culture. Even if "Jeff the HR guy" isn't racist, if he likes applicants with similar hobbies, then chances are it's effectively an ethnicity filter. Bad things don't always come from malice.
- maxaf 7y agoSubconscious bias is the most insidious form thereof. This is why I'm a huge fan of stripping resumes of all but the most pertinent hard facts. Technical skills, projects worked on, publications are all relevant. Hobbies, family status, a photograph are all opportunities for subconscious bias to infiltrate the hiring process. Often even education is no longer a useful signal. I've found myself looking away from educational information on resumes for all but the most junior of applicants. A candidate with even a couple of years of experience is lightyears removed from the school that has granted their degree. Likewise, a person with a similar number of years on the job but lacking a degree is similarly removed from their humble beginnings. There's no need to flaunt education.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y agoYou forget that the resume works both ways, which is what GP was saying. You may want to only look at the facts that say if the candidate can do the job, but the candidate may want to know if, in a larger sense, you're the kind of company they want to work for. In that sense, he's right: that system works for both sides.
- yosefk 7y agoThe trouble with technical skill is that you can't measure it with anything like an ELO rating, and it's not easy to prove that knowing a given bit of technical trivia really helps you be productive, or that a given non-technical skill or trait really doesn't help you be productive. If you hire chess players based on individual performance and regardless of group dynamics, then an argument could be made (not entirely trivially in all cases but it could be) that looking at anything except their ELO is illegitimate bias (and in fact some famous players from Lasker to Korchnoi said themselves that it's this objectivity which attracted them to chess). With programming, or most professions involving something meaningful as opposed to a measurable but pointless (and usually measurable because it is pointless) activity aka sport, it's much murkier.
- iamaelephant 7y agoI'm not hiring purely on technical skill. Everyone I hire has to work with everyone else I've hired. There's more to that relationship than technical ability.
- astura 7y agoSure, attitude, work ethic, communication skills, and professionalism are required as well. Technical skills, attitude, work ethic, communication skills, and professionalism are really all you need to work with your colleagues successfully. Hobbies, pet preference, and exercise preference is irrelevant.
- bboygravity 7y agoDo you feel it is useful for you to go to an office at all? If you're not going to bother getting to know your colleagues (to make communication more efficient) than what's the added value of going to an office at all? Am I making wrong assumptions about the use of going to an office?
- maxaf 7y agoI work remotely 95% of the time, so no, there isn't any use in going to an office. But the office-vs-remote axis is a red herring IMHO. Communication happens via a variety of mediums, and remote workers aren't reclusive hermits who never speak to anyone unless it's via JIRA ticket.