6 ms·

> Hiring is an obvious example, with "requirements" that filter out large chunks of applicants that don't have some kind of back channel In my experience, it i

• jimbob45 5y ago
  My old company used to hire broke, desperate, and underachieving college students out of the local university for that exact reason - desperate people are often the most dedicated people. The scheme worked something like how the New England Patriots run things: keep a solid core of veterans well-paid and happy, then use them to train the hell out of new hires. Later, make sure those new hires get excellent jobs elsewhere in 4-6 years and repeat the cycle, ensuring that you never have to pay for premium talent since you can develop it at budget cost in-house. When I say "train the hell out of", I mean each new dev had a senior dev dedicated to just them who would criticize everything about their code and workmanship like a Mr. Miyagi. Every email that dev sent also got CC'd to that senior dev and the senior dev always knew what they were working on, how long such a thing should take them, and knew what questions/difficulties were likely to come up and when during the process of that item. Good mentorship cannot be substituted for during the training process. The system fell apart once management got flipped and forgot what made them successful in the first place.
  • nickstinemates 5y ago
    Sounds like the traditional trades system applied to tech.
    • walshemj 5y ago
      More like an advanced apprenticeships where like me you'd be doing 1 day a week and possibly an evening at community collage and that is in my case was a four year. The trouble is the cohort that would be ideal candidates now go to university as those roles are now degree entry.
  • imbnwa 5y ago
    Gods I wish I'd started my career at your company
    • oblak 5y ago
      Before or after the whole thing fell apart?
      • imbnwa 5y ago
        Before, mentoring was something that was only present when I started for less than a year but I could've used a more persistent program like this, I think, to help rectify a number of long-standing problems I'm only now starting to perceive and take action for much later.
  • pkaye 5y ago
    > When I say "train the hell out of", I mean each new dev had a senior dev dedicated to just them who would criticize everything about their code and workmanship like a Mr. Miyagi. The management should also be aware that senior dev productivity will also go down in order to train the junior devs. Schedules should be adjusted to accommodate this.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    That is impressive actually.
  • bennysomething 5y ago
    How do you keep a senior Dev happy whos cc d in on every email a junior sends?
    • sleepybrett 5y ago
      I've seen places where the juniors don't even really send email. They are essentially apprentices for their senior in like the medieval blacksmithing tradition. Working the bellows while the senior pounds out the sword. Eventually they graduate up but at first they aren't really trusted with anything but the most basic tasks.
  • shultays 5y ago
    Expecting a new graduate/junior to stay at the same (probably his first) company for 4-6 years seems a bit optimistic. The companies often pay shit to such people and even if they excel at what they do, that additional +X% performance impact on their salary will barely matter if their starting salary was shit. Often job hopping is needed for any significant bump.
    • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Well this approach doesn't work unless you actually promote people once they're no longer junior. In my time at a FAANG, I got a 33% pay rise nine months in along with a promotion. That kind of behaviour engenders a lot more loyalty than CPI adjusted raises when an employee is clearly killing it.
  • emptysongglass 5y ago
    That sounds awful for the morale of the juniors. Juniors should feel empowered to take their own initiative and find their own groove. Having trust put in me when I was a greenhorn made all the difference to my verve and drive at the company. The times where I was castigated and hounded over every little style choice made me loathe the company and the senior doing it.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  Wouldn't dedicated candidates generally hit up someone on LinkedIn to get put into the backchannel? Heck, people on HN have generously offered to put me into their company backchannel, so it doesn't seem to hard to get into it if you really want it.
  • oblak 5y ago
    Never done this myself and I find the very notion off putting and dangerous. Sounds like diet nepotism to me.
    • wayoutthere 5y ago
      Enjoy missing out on the good opportunities then; most don’t even hit the job sites before they’re filled.
  • dghlsakjg 5y ago
    I think a lot of it is cultural or learned. It doesn’t occur to some people that you can do things like reach out on LinkedIn or do things beyond just checking the careers page. I read about people who fill out hundreds of applications and never get a response. I know it’s a numbers game, but that is absolutely wild the amount of effort people put into a strategy that clearly isn’t working.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      Random applications are working great for me too. I just do the inside track for really interesting roles.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    What’s the chance that me hitting up some rando on LinkedIn isn’t just gonna result in them ignoring the connection or telling me just to line up at the front door.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
• zz865 5y ago
  Add to the list that the people who are best on paper and are good at interviewing will probably be looking for a new job in a year and/or when things get tough.
• atirip 5y ago
  We always look for “rough diamonds”. It is a creative process, lots of tea leaves reading, but will yield excellent results if you have the ability to read these tea leaves. I am not sure we ever hired “the best on paper” candidate. But we have had great success with people who had no knowledge of out stack, down to the programming language.
  • BackBlast 5y ago
    I've always thought that there is undue emphasis on the tech stack and the language. I've always felt that filtering for raw engineering ability, thinking prowess, and attitude would get you farther in the long run.
    • nnevod 5y ago
      While I tend to agree, there's obviously jobs where familiarity with stack, tools and best practices is more important than engineering ability. They may not be interesting, but they do seem to comprise the majority of openly availible jobs. My current job has minimum emphasis on language (C#, targeting original Framework 2.0, no new features) and zero tech stack. On the one hand it is interesting - not enterprise stuff - and puts the brain to real use often, on the other, I think it doesn't provide anything market worthy to my CV. As most of my collegaues work for over 7 years there, it really seems to be so.
      • BackBlast 5y ago
        If you don't mind humoring me. What kind of slot is better for a plodding dev who checks all the tech boxes?
  • sneak 5y ago
    What do you mean specifically by reading tea leaves? What things do you seek out and what things are disqualifiers? How do you know that your style of tea leaf reading is effective? ngl, the way you describe it makes it sound super cargo-culty, but if there is something more to it I'd love to hear it.
• WhompingWindows 5y ago
  How do you determine who is a dedicated job applicant? First, everyone shoots their resume and maybe cover letter into your black hole. Are the dedicated ones the ones who actually included a cover letter? Or is it how enthused/personalized the cover letter seems? A qualified individual should do that, perhaps even better since they have experience and talent, if they're indeed qualified. Next, they have to go through interviews. Are they expected to fully research the company and its methods before the initial round? Or how about coding questions: Would you take someone who spent 3X the time on leetcode but only got 50% as many coding answers as the qualified person? Do you purposefully choose those who you deemed "worked harder" or "wanted it more"? Are things like follow-up emails, thank you's, further reflections, are these things how you determine dedication? Or do you purposefully over-look those you think are well qualified, ruling them out in favor of those "trying harder"?
  • boplicity 5y ago
    No, we don't do any of that. We have a variety of low-commitment projects that we pay people to do. These projects add value to the company, of course, but they also allow us to get to know a variety of people who can become more involved with us. In other words, we've found ways to take risks on people, and get to know them, without hiring them outright. We hope to hire them, but they still do need to go through our filtering system first. It may not work in other fields, but it works well in the field we're in. Of course, we also have a more traditional path, including resumes, interviews, etc. It's good to have multiple methods for finding employees, IMO.
    • HWR_14 5y ago
      Do your low commitment projects actually pay a reasonable amount?
      • fb03 5y ago
        They usually pay the standard rate that would be applied for the expected amount of hours of completion of that task, with a small plus. this way, even if you don't land the job you still don't get out of it feeling like you lost invaluable time of your life. But in my own experience I have once worked for free on those tasks, hoping to get hired, and when it didn't pan out it made me a bit sour. Won't do that again.
• k__ 5y ago
  In my experience "dedicated" means "put up with our BS"
  • boplicity 5y ago
    I think it's a matter of how a company is run. Some like to exploit their employees, while others value them, and want them to be happy for the long term. In the long run, my hope is that the people we work with will believe they're getting the better end of the deal, and that (if they're employees), they are given stability and support for the long term. It's a matter of respect, responsibility, and commitment.
• JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Dedicated here sounds like coded language for "will work the longest hours"