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Two personal counterexamples, whether right or wrong: Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best - project work that is not known in

Two personal counterexamples, whether right or wrong: Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best - project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people - looking for demonstrated desire to jump through the hoops and do the marginal work that makes you the "top" Software Engineering - some overlap with the reasons above - adds to the moat: if they're happy working for FAANG et al, competitors are priced out of getting the best - the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them - I'm interested in the sibling post referencing moneyball, this would be very cool to see applied to software engineers

zabzonk 6y ago
> you want to be perceived as hiring the best Only idiots perceive that consultancies hire "the best" - the best are off doing other things. > project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people No, you need a load of dimwits you can throw at a project and make some apparent effect.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  They literally hire the people with the best grades and test scores from the top universities. Idk how much better you can get than that.
  - mpoteat 6y ago
    It's well considered by a lot of people in the industry that a prospective's grades and even which school they went to aren't a good predictor of skill.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      Unless you have them actually work with you for a month, they're certainly the best predicators available for new grads with no portfolios right? FWIW, the most effective colleagues I've worked with all scored really high on standardized tests. They're a great predictor imo
      - codenesium 6y ago
        The best programmers I know didn't go to college. It's been my experience that degrees and standardized test don't tell you jack about how well someone will do a job.
        briefcomment 6y ago
        I bet if you gave them a standardized test (even any IQ test), they would crush it
        astrange 6y ago
        Most likely due to Berkson’s paradox. Short NBA players are just as good as tall NBA players but that doesn’t mean height isn’t good in basketball.
      - lmeyerov 6y ago
        for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and youth suggests dealing with uncertainty, but not as well as succeeding at difficult and fuzzily-defined projects. if they've done that before, better chance they'll do it again. outside of startups, priorities change. big orgs need people who won't risk the cash cow. consultancies need people with better credentials than their customers. etc.
        spdionis 6y ago
        The best programmers I know never had a portfolio.
    - tjpnz 6y ago
      Is the school thing a strictly American phenomenon? In New Zealand for instance all that tends to matter is which city/town you want to live in and whether the institution offers the field you want to major in (medicine for example is only offered by Otago IIRC). I've only been asked for grades once in the previous 12 years where at which point I withdrew my application.
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        In some cases, school is a legal way to discriminate. The top tier companies incorporate recruiting into their culture. If you recruit at Brown, you’re going to get a different candidate than some CUNY school. They all tested well in high school or have parents with good networks, and they tend to look and quack alike.
        delaynomore 6y ago
        "Culture fit" is just another way to discriminate a candidate based on race, age, or gender. HR from my company has explicitly told all interviewers not to use "culture fit" as a reason to disqualify a candidate presumably to avoid potential lawsuits.
      - astrange 6y ago
        Yes, America has more school inequality than other countries (although it’s not the only one, Oxford and Tokyo U also exist). Part of this is because they’re so good they suppress top international schools from forming in other countries. But also they teach in English and I assume it’s harder for international students to attend a French or Chinese school.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    You can get a lot better than that, and you actually reference it in a later comment -- you see how well they perform on an actual task. It's true that high standardized test scores and IQ test scores often come along with high performers, but it's at best a necessary but not sufficient condition. That's like saying the only thing you need to make great wine is good grapes. Plenty of awful wine has been made from excellent grapes.
  - WalterSear 6y ago
    > Idk how much better you can get than that. Don't hire recent grads.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    That is not an accurate description of management consulting companies hiring process. If you wants to know more look at Lauren Rivera‘s research. It’s about practically nothing else except professional firm’s hiring practices. It is not based on “top schools” as defined academically. and It is based on a certain set of two schools which are very good, and having at least reasonable grades. So what they look for is a certain minimum of grades and class markers. Getting a First will not get you much of anything over a 2:1 in hiring undergrads. Better to be on the crew team or fencing.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      I'm interested, do you have any particular studies in mind?
      - barry-cotter 6y ago
        Article Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms Lauren A. Rivera This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412463213 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000312241246321... The book https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pedigree https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pe... > Drawing on scores of in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices at some of America’s most prestigious firms, Lauren Rivera shows how, at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent—what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it—that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the “right stuff” that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents.
  - atat7024 6y ago
    George Bush is top shelf, in your book, then, due to the top university?
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      Test scores
Kinrany 6y ago
> project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people Don't you need the team to be versatile instead of individuals?
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  You can combine versatile individuals in versatile teams.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best This is not really a problem when all four of the companies in your industry use the same short list of universities for hiring. The reality would be even less of a problem with a broader selection of universities but the system works fine for the companies involved. > Software Engineering ... - the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them Why the hell are you insisting on someone really good to even start? The pool of people in any given domain with even hobbyist level expertise in ML/DL/AI and some domain knowledge is not usually shallow but non-existent.
marcinzm 6y ago
I'd argue that: a) You don't need really good unless you're doing cutting edge work at massive scales. There's lots of deep learning talent floating around that is good but not aligned with the FAANG interview process. b) If you interview process is a clone of FAANG then, well, you're not going to have a good time. See previous point and also you probably don't need a FAANG interview process unless you're at FAANG scale. c) If the company has other issues then, again, you're not going to have a good time but that's not due to how much you're paying but everything else.
- astrange 6y ago
  FAANG doesn’t have a single interview process - it’s pretty different at Apple Netflix Google as far as I know. Are there shared features they’re thought to have?
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    When I interviewed at all the local big tech companies the interviews were fairly similar down to asking identical questions sometimes. Very heavy on leetcode, some system design and a single behavioral interview. Generally looking for the same things in each interview across companies. They weren't identical but much much closer to each other than the interviews I got from startups.

zabzonk 6y ago

> you want to be perceived as hiring the best Only idiots perceive that consultancies hire "the best" - the best are off doing other things. > project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people No, you need a load of dimwits you can throw at a project and make some apparent effect.

briefcomment 6y ago
They literally hire the people with the best grades and test scores from the top universities. Idk how much better you can get than that.
- mpoteat 6y ago
  It's well considered by a lot of people in the industry that a prospective's grades and even which school they went to aren't a good predictor of skill.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Unless you have them actually work with you for a month, they're certainly the best predicators available for new grads with no portfolios right? FWIW, the most effective colleagues I've worked with all scored really high on standardized tests. They're a great predictor imo
    - codenesium 6y ago
      The best programmers I know didn't go to college. It's been my experience that degrees and standardized test don't tell you jack about how well someone will do a job.
      - briefcomment 6y ago
        I bet if you gave them a standardized test (even any IQ test), they would crush it
      - astrange 6y ago
        Most likely due to Berkson’s paradox. Short NBA players are just as good as tall NBA players but that doesn’t mean height isn’t good in basketball.
    - lmeyerov 6y ago
      for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and youth suggests dealing with uncertainty, but not as well as succeeding at difficult and fuzzily-defined projects. if they've done that before, better chance they'll do it again. outside of startups, priorities change. big orgs need people who won't risk the cash cow. consultancies need people with better credentials than their customers. etc.
      - spdionis 6y ago
        The best programmers I know never had a portfolio.
  - tjpnz 6y ago
    Is the school thing a strictly American phenomenon? In New Zealand for instance all that tends to matter is which city/town you want to live in and whether the institution offers the field you want to major in (medicine for example is only offered by Otago IIRC). I've only been asked for grades once in the previous 12 years where at which point I withdrew my application.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      In some cases, school is a legal way to discriminate. The top tier companies incorporate recruiting into their culture. If you recruit at Brown, you’re going to get a different candidate than some CUNY school. They all tested well in high school or have parents with good networks, and they tend to look and quack alike.
      - delaynomore 6y ago
        "Culture fit" is just another way to discriminate a candidate based on race, age, or gender. HR from my company has explicitly told all interviewers not to use "culture fit" as a reason to disqualify a candidate presumably to avoid potential lawsuits.
    - astrange 6y ago
      Yes, America has more school inequality than other countries (although it’s not the only one, Oxford and Tokyo U also exist). Part of this is because they’re so good they suppress top international schools from forming in other countries. But also they teach in English and I assume it’s harder for international students to attend a French or Chinese school.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  You can get a lot better than that, and you actually reference it in a later comment -- you see how well they perform on an actual task. It's true that high standardized test scores and IQ test scores often come along with high performers, but it's at best a necessary but not sufficient condition. That's like saying the only thing you need to make great wine is good grapes. Plenty of awful wine has been made from excellent grapes.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  > Idk how much better you can get than that. Don't hire recent grads.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  That is not an accurate description of management consulting companies hiring process. If you wants to know more look at Lauren Rivera‘s research. It’s about practically nothing else except professional firm’s hiring practices. It is not based on “top schools” as defined academically. and It is based on a certain set of two schools which are very good, and having at least reasonable grades. So what they look for is a certain minimum of grades and class markers. Getting a First will not get you much of anything over a 2:1 in hiring undergrads. Better to be on the crew team or fencing.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    I'm interested, do you have any particular studies in mind?
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      Article Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms Lauren A. Rivera This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412463213 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000312241246321... The book https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pedigree https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pe... > Drawing on scores of in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices at some of America’s most prestigious firms, Lauren Rivera shows how, at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent—what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it—that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the “right stuff” that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents.
- atat7024 6y ago
  George Bush is top shelf, in your book, then, due to the top university?
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Test scores

Kinrany 6y ago

> project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people Don't you need the team to be versatile instead of individuals?

EvilEy3 6y ago
You can combine versatile individuals in versatile teams.

barry-cotter 6y ago

> Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best This is not really a problem when all four of the companies in your industry use the same short list of universities for hiring. The reality would be even less of a problem with a broader selection of universities but the system works fine for the companies involved. > Software Engineering ... - the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them Why the hell are you insisting on someone really good to even start? The pool of people in any given domain with even hobbyist level expertise in ML/DL/AI and some domain knowledge is not usually shallow but non-existent.

marcinzm 6y ago

I'd argue that: a) You don't need really good unless you're doing cutting edge work at massive scales. There's lots of deep learning talent floating around that is good but not aligned with the FAANG interview process. b) If you interview process is a clone of FAANG then, well, you're not going to have a good time. See previous point and also you probably don't need a FAANG interview process unless you're at FAANG scale. c) If the company has other issues then, again, you're not going to have a good time but that's not due to how much you're paying but everything else.

astrange 6y ago
FAANG doesn’t have a single interview process - it’s pretty different at Apple Netflix Google as far as I know. Are there shared features they’re thought to have?
- marcinzm 6y ago
  When I interviewed at all the local big tech companies the interviews were fairly similar down to asking identical questions sometimes. Very heavy on leetcode, some system design and a single behavioral interview. Generally looking for the same things in each interview across companies. They weren't identical but much much closer to each other than the interviews I got from startups.