7 ms·

Why is it best to give Codeacademy the benefit of the doubt? They likely hire by committee, like any tech company. In that scenario it's entirely dependent on w

by mylons 5y ago

Why is it best to give Codeacademy the benefit of the doubt? They likely hire by committee, like any tech company. In that scenario it's entirely dependent on who the committee is. It's not like Codeacademy, or any company for that matter, has some idempotent interviewing process. If you changed the interview panels, or some of the questions, the candidate may likely have received an offer.

pkrotich 5y ago
Have you hired anyone? Asking because your comment make it sounds like there's science to it. I don't like the committee hiring as well but team or manager level hiring can segment the company culture. Also individuals can be biased and hire based on vibes or who is like them etc. - committee brings a check to that, that's why it's common. The truth is - you'll miss some great candidates because they simply interview poorly and of the flip side sometimes get a professional interviewee that cannot deliver once hired. You can also get a brilliant 10x candidate but a complete asshole (e.g CEO wanna be) that will destroy your team once hired.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Hiring is hard. We, as an industry, simply cannot interview. We don't know how to accurately gauge a candidates experience, personality or knowledge. We can only make them perform monkey-see-monkey-do on a whiteboard or through stupid, asinine puzzles and leetcode style exercises. To make matters worse, we often place our most senior software developers on interview circuits. For better or for worse, engineers trend towards more anti-social traits. It makes the whole process of understanding one's personality, how they think, and whether or not they'll be a fit for the company a complete crap-chute. This is literally the only industry I have been apart of that sucks this bad at a process that is so fundamental to professional life. I would rather interview at McDonalds or for a call center (having had both of those jobs).
  - boneskull 5y ago
    it’s “crapshoot” as in the game of craps, meaning “it’s a gamble” but crap-chute is pretty good too. just not for this sentence
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      > > the whole process of understanding one's personality, how they think, and whether or not they'll be a fit for the company It's a chute you shovel crap into (or out of), with no justifiable expectation of useful results. The interview process as a whole is a crapshoot, but the process of understanding the candidate is a crap chute.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      It's a crapshoot whether or not you end up in a crap chute of a company.
- KerryJones 5y ago
  I have -- quite a few times in quite a few different jobs. There actually is a lot more science to it than we usually take credit for. There have been studies that our typical interview process gives us 17% predictability of how they will perform, but if we do a contract-to-hire (of just one week) that improves to 80%. We have proven time and time again that certain times of interview questions are not helpful. If you look at the best investors, their job is similar, I would say that most notably as YC being crazy successful and found similarly in my own hiring is that passion for a given space is one of the best predictors of success.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    > improves to 80%. Sounds interesting. If you happen to have links to any articles about that, it'd be interesting to read
    - KerryJones 5y ago
      I wish I kept the references, I didn't think they would be hard to refind but they have been. This is a reference I just found that's more recent (I found the others around 2016): https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/truly-predictive-software-engineering-interviews https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/truly-predictive-softwar...
      - cutemonster 5y ago
        Thanks! I've seen that article, it was posted at HN 1.5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704116 Turns out I still had it open, half read, in one of my 100+ browser tabs :-) Nice to hear that you recommend it. (Hmm I wonder if maybe some of the other things you've read were also based on Schmidt & Hunter, 1998?) I have in mind to do as they recommend (incl work sample tests and structured interviews and work knowledge tests), when/if later on I'll look for people to help me with the software I'm creating. I wonder b.t.w. if you know about any automatically generated GMA tests? (Edit: I found some, I can post a link if you want.) It'd be nice if there were ways to auto generate GMA tests. Then maybe it could be just fine if everyone was allowed to practice as how as they wanted -- if there was an unlimited supply of new questions, because they were auto generated. Maybe something with generating random 3D shapes and applying rotations. But then it seems to me it's necessary to measure how well begin good at such things, correlates with being able to learn and get good at software, and scrap any poorly correlated tests.

by mylons 5y ago

pkrotich 5y ago

Have you hired anyone? Asking because your comment make it sounds like there's science to it. I don't like the committee hiring as well but team or manager level hiring can segment the company culture. Also individuals can be biased and hire based on vibes or who is like them etc. - committee brings a check to that, that's why it's common. The truth is - you'll miss some great candidates because they simply interview poorly and of the flip side sometimes get a professional interviewee that cannot deliver once hired. You can also get a brilliant 10x candidate but a complete asshole (e.g CEO wanna be) that will destroy your team once hired.

dimitrios1 5y ago
Hiring is hard. We, as an industry, simply cannot interview. We don't know how to accurately gauge a candidates experience, personality or knowledge. We can only make them perform monkey-see-monkey-do on a whiteboard or through stupid, asinine puzzles and leetcode style exercises. To make matters worse, we often place our most senior software developers on interview circuits. For better or for worse, engineers trend towards more anti-social traits. It makes the whole process of understanding one's personality, how they think, and whether or not they'll be a fit for the company a complete crap-chute. This is literally the only industry I have been apart of that sucks this bad at a process that is so fundamental to professional life. I would rather interview at McDonalds or for a call center (having had both of those jobs).
- boneskull 5y ago
  it’s “crapshoot” as in the game of craps, meaning “it’s a gamble” but crap-chute is pretty good too. just not for this sentence
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > > the whole process of understanding one's personality, how they think, and whether or not they'll be a fit for the company It's a chute you shovel crap into (or out of), with no justifiable expectation of useful results. The interview process as a whole is a crapshoot, but the process of understanding the candidate is a crap chute.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    It's a crapshoot whether or not you end up in a crap chute of a company.
KerryJones 5y ago
I have -- quite a few times in quite a few different jobs. There actually is a lot more science to it than we usually take credit for. There have been studies that our typical interview process gives us 17% predictability of how they will perform, but if we do a contract-to-hire (of just one week) that improves to 80%. We have proven time and time again that certain times of interview questions are not helpful. If you look at the best investors, their job is similar, I would say that most notably as YC being crazy successful and found similarly in my own hiring is that passion for a given space is one of the best predictors of success.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  > improves to 80%. Sounds interesting. If you happen to have links to any articles about that, it'd be interesting to read
  - KerryJones 5y ago
    I wish I kept the references, I didn't think they would be hard to refind but they have been. This is a reference I just found that's more recent (I found the others around 2016): https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/truly-predictive-software-engineering-interviews https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/truly-predictive-softwar...
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Thanks! I've seen that article, it was posted at HN 1.5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704116 Turns out I still had it open, half read, in one of my 100+ browser tabs :-) Nice to hear that you recommend it. (Hmm I wonder if maybe some of the other things you've read were also based on Schmidt & Hunter, 1998?) I have in mind to do as they recommend (incl work sample tests and structured interviews and work knowledge tests), when/if later on I'll look for people to help me with the software I'm creating. I wonder b.t.w. if you know about any automatically generated GMA tests? (Edit: I found some, I can post a link if you want.) It'd be nice if there were ways to auto generate GMA tests. Then maybe it could be just fine if everyone was allowed to practice as how as they wanted -- if there was an unlimited supply of new questions, because they were auto generated. Maybe something with generating random 3D shapes and applying rotations. But then it seems to me it's necessary to measure how well begin good at such things, correlates with being able to learn and get good at software, and scrap any poorly correlated tests.