4 ms·

Maybe you should have applied with smaller companies that don’t have bureaucratic hiring processes yet?

by Hermel 5y ago

epicureanideal 5y ago
Most small companies copy the bureaucratic hiring processes of the larger ones at this point.
- bob1029 5y ago
  I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. Some of our best employees are the ones who came in with the fewest credentials and the most to prove. There is no candidate I would refuse purely on the grounds of credentials. We are much more interested in side projects and work ethic than formal certifications or other pieces of expensive paper.
  - ivanbakel 5y ago
    >I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. But how are you meant to know "when it makes sense to"? I imagine that lots of small businesses are run by owners who don't necessarily have the confidence to strike a new path in every facet of the business. If you're investing a lot of time and effort innovating on your product/service, it can also make sense to import a tried-and-tested hiring model wholesale from somewhere else. Of course, in a less generous sense that could be maligned as "cargo-culting", but if at the end of the day the planes show up (you make good-enough hires), you're not going waste time introspecting on the process.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers. There are many reasons this policy is appealing. One is that there is a growing recognition that managers aren't meant the be too technical and gauging the technical skills is thus delegated to those people who actually know the tech (namely the devs). The other reason is that it's assumed that in order for a team to work well together you need people who like and respect each other, and this often means answering the question "would you like to work with this person?". This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!... I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Usually they copy them wrong and dont know why its not working
cableshaft 5y ago
Happens at smaller companies too. I just finished a round of job interviews, and interviewed at several smaller companies that didn't give a shit, they had their own pet processes for hiring and didn't care about anything I did beyond the most recent two jobs. At one of them the guy was the epitome of what I would call "friendly condescending", spending half the interview pontificating on why the vast majority of developers don't understand what they're doing and should spend all their free time having a deep philosophical understanding of their work and suggesting I might be amongst those idiots (I'm really not doing a great job of selling it, he went on and on elaborating all the ways in which all developers but him were lacking and how he couldn't find anyone worthy of working at the company), but with a smile on his face the entire time. To be fair he did call himself "the asshole at the company" during the interview, though. The two job offers I got were from larger companies, but I talked to some younger guys working there that liked video games and sci-fi novels and going to a summer camp hosted by a popular 80s/90s band and DSLR photography, etc. and being able to talk about those things even a little bit may have helped them get excited about me, actually :) Also helped I did well on their coding tests, though.

Maybe you should have applied with smaller companies that don’t have bureaucratic hiring processes yet?

by Hermel 5y ago

Maybe you should have applied with smaller companies that don’t have bureaucratic hiring processes yet?

epicureanideal 5y ago

Most small companies copy the bureaucratic hiring processes of the larger ones at this point.

bob1029 5y ago
I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. Some of our best employees are the ones who came in with the fewest credentials and the most to prove. There is no candidate I would refuse purely on the grounds of credentials. We are much more interested in side projects and work ethic than formal certifications or other pieces of expensive paper.
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  >I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. But how are you meant to know "when it makes sense to"? I imagine that lots of small businesses are run by owners who don't necessarily have the confidence to strike a new path in every facet of the business. If you're investing a lot of time and effort innovating on your product/service, it can also make sense to import a tried-and-tested hiring model wholesale from somewhere else. Of course, in a less generous sense that could be maligned as "cargo-culting", but if at the end of the day the planes show up (you make good-enough hires), you're not going waste time introspecting on the process.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers. There are many reasons this policy is appealing. One is that there is a growing recognition that managers aren't meant the be too technical and gauging the technical skills is thus delegated to those people who actually know the tech (namely the devs). The other reason is that it's assumed that in order for a team to work well together you need people who like and respect each other, and this often means answering the question "would you like to work with this person?". This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!... I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Usually they copy them wrong and dont know why its not working

cableshaft 5y ago

Happens at smaller companies too. I just finished a round of job interviews, and interviewed at several smaller companies that didn't give a shit, they had their own pet processes for hiring and didn't care about anything I did beyond the most recent two jobs. At one of them the guy was the epitome of what I would call "friendly condescending", spending half the interview pontificating on why the vast majority of developers don't understand what they're doing and should spend all their free time having a deep philosophical understanding of their work and suggesting I might be amongst those idiots (I'm really not doing a great job of selling it, he went on and on elaborating all the ways in which all developers but him were lacking and how he couldn't find anyone worthy of working at the company), but with a smile on his face the entire time. To be fair he did call himself "the asshole at the company" during the interview, though. The two job offers I got were from larger companies, but I talked to some younger guys working there that liked video games and sci-fi novels and going to a summer camp hosted by a popular 80s/90s band and DSLR photography, etc. and being able to talk about those things even a little bit may have helped them get excited about me, actually :) Also helped I did well on their coding tests, though.