4 ms·

You don't get it. It's about signaling. I sometimes hire. When I do, I want people that will do what I say. For the interview part, if they have the basic com

by 1996 6y ago

You don't get it. It's about signaling. I sometimes hire. When I do, I want people that will do what I say. For the interview part, if they have the basic competency I want, I couldn't care less about the actual skills of the person: if I later find they underperform, if I can't find a proper role for them, they will be fired. But that's a waste of my time, and also it can create bad blood. What I do care about is people who I can easily get to do what I want - not what they want, so I can redeploy them as needed. I don't want them to play with the latest framework: if I say it will be done in perl, it's going to be perl, end of the discussion. > just a waste of everyone's time. No, not a waste of my time, a waste mostly of the candidate time. I will spend at most an hour on the interview. The candidate will have spend days preparing. It's not a bug, it's a feature: a contrived interview process with a lot of hoops to jump and pointless trivia that requires days of preparation beforehand self select for me : - people who are willing to waste that much time in something that will be pointless later (so either they are gullible or desperate enough, both are fine for me) - people who will obey and follow procedures as complicated and pointless as they might be. See that like "proof of work" in crypto - they are demonstrating they will do what I want. That has yielded me the best employees. The next best are the hires straight from university: unexperienced and disciplined by years of training to do things like homework.

dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>It's not a bug, it's a feature. Agreed. >From your profile; >You say 'I can't do XYZ because I have kids and a mortgage?' - well maybe you should have thought about the long term ramifications of your actions. Lol, me child free here.
etothepii 6y ago
I sincerely hope this post has been written ironically. It may make sense but I really don't want to live in this world.
- 1996 6y ago
  > I sincerely hope this post has been written ironically. I'm sorry if it came as hurtful or mean. This was not the goal. I just wanted to share how it works, and why it's done, in the hope it could help others. > It may make sense but I really don't want to live in this world. Neither do I - which is why I'm mostly retired, an anomaly at my age, made possible thanks to crypto. In the early 2010s I was reading a lot of things on HN that I felt were very wrong: mostly people describing the world as they wish was, but not as it really is. I found out the truth by myself. In the process, I lost a few years not entering the crypto market early enough (my fault for trusting the HN zeitgeist) and I lost a bit of my soul (mostly my trust in people). Please do not make the same mistakes I did. Don't buy the lies, instead look at the world honestly and without sorrow, so you can change it for the better.
  - etothepii 6y ago
    My sadness was in wanting people who will do what you say. I'm just starting my business but if there's one thing I hate about computers it's the way they do precisely what I say. From what I've seen of the world over my almost 10 years in industry there are very few people who know what they want. The ones who want to hire a tech and tell them what to do usually know the least of all.
reidjs 6y ago
Agree with a lot of this. We're not always hiring for creativity. This especially applies to recent college grads, I'm not hiring you to critique the business, I'm hiring you to complete tickets assigned to you, be available during certain hours, and/or follow protocols.

by 1996 6y ago

dennis_jeeves 6y ago

>It's not a bug, it's a feature. Agreed. >From your profile; >You say 'I can't do XYZ because I have kids and a mortgage?' - well maybe you should have thought about the long term ramifications of your actions. Lol, me child free here.

etothepii 6y ago

I sincerely hope this post has been written ironically. It may make sense but I really don't want to live in this world.

1996 6y ago
> I sincerely hope this post has been written ironically. I'm sorry if it came as hurtful or mean. This was not the goal. I just wanted to share how it works, and why it's done, in the hope it could help others. > It may make sense but I really don't want to live in this world. Neither do I - which is why I'm mostly retired, an anomaly at my age, made possible thanks to crypto. In the early 2010s I was reading a lot of things on HN that I felt were very wrong: mostly people describing the world as they wish was, but not as it really is. I found out the truth by myself. In the process, I lost a few years not entering the crypto market early enough (my fault for trusting the HN zeitgeist) and I lost a bit of my soul (mostly my trust in people). Please do not make the same mistakes I did. Don't buy the lies, instead look at the world honestly and without sorrow, so you can change it for the better.
- etothepii 6y ago
  My sadness was in wanting people who will do what you say. I'm just starting my business but if there's one thing I hate about computers it's the way they do precisely what I say. From what I've seen of the world over my almost 10 years in industry there are very few people who know what they want. The ones who want to hire a tech and tell them what to do usually know the least of all.

reidjs 6y ago

Agree with a lot of this. We're not always hiring for creativity. This especially applies to recent college grads, I'm not hiring you to critique the business, I'm hiring you to complete tickets assigned to you, be available during certain hours, and/or follow protocols.