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The vast majority of candidates are applying because they got bounced around and have to apply everywhere due to not being qualified. If you're a no-name firm p

The vast majority of candidates are applying because they got bounced around and have to apply everywhere due to not being qualified. If you're a no-name firm paying merely around market rate you're not even going to see the high performers because they've already been snapped up by bigger or higher paying players. I don't know a single person from my college days who I'd describe as a strong performer that would have taken a job from a random startup (i.e. no name recognition of founders or investors) for subpar pay. The people who ended up working at these no-name companies with subpar pay were almost always 1x or 0.5x programmers, whereas many of the people I knew who got A/A+ in OS and compiler classes were easily 10x programmers capable of building complex products from scratch. Not saying we don't need 1x programmers but if you're a startup I think paying 3x salary for a 10x programmer is a much better deal than hiring 3 1x programmers.

PiedPiper1337 5y ago
There are diamonds in the rough especially at university. I wouldn't consider myself as a "high-performer" but I did consistently get decent grades and I myself worked for below "merely" market-rate as we didn't have alot of big companies in my country. Now days I work at one of the most "prestigious" tech companies in the world that alot of people want to get into. So I wouldn't be jumping straight to the conclusion that all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate.
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  > we didn't have alot of big companies in my country I mean yeah, you were operating in a different talent market. If you are a U.S. based company it's going to be very hard to get high quality talent out of university as a rando company with median pay. If you are in Europe then it's a lot easier because there is less competition. > all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate Yes, there are going to be missed gems, but if you're looking to hire without going through a couple hundred bad candidates (not even an exaggeration) to find gems you need to stand out as a company. If you think about this from the employer perspective, there's no signal to go on to find these gems: people with decent, but not incredible grades, no prior internship history, bog standard side projects, etc. Now imagine those resumes are mixed in with a bunch of people with 0 side projects or work experience, subpar grades in core CS classes, etc. What do you filter on? What's your signal for hiring?
  - nnoitra 5y ago
    You filter on the number of projects on their GitHub?

PiedPiper1337 5y ago

There are diamonds in the rough especially at university. I wouldn't consider myself as a "high-performer" but I did consistently get decent grades and I myself worked for below "merely" market-rate as we didn't have alot of big companies in my country. Now days I work at one of the most "prestigious" tech companies in the world that alot of people want to get into. So I wouldn't be jumping straight to the conclusion that all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate.

e4e78a06 5y ago
> we didn't have alot of big companies in my country I mean yeah, you were operating in a different talent market. If you are a U.S. based company it's going to be very hard to get high quality talent out of university as a rando company with median pay. If you are in Europe then it's a lot easier because there is less competition. > all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate Yes, there are going to be missed gems, but if you're looking to hire without going through a couple hundred bad candidates (not even an exaggeration) to find gems you need to stand out as a company. If you think about this from the employer perspective, there's no signal to go on to find these gems: people with decent, but not incredible grades, no prior internship history, bog standard side projects, etc. Now imagine those resumes are mixed in with a bunch of people with 0 side projects or work experience, subpar grades in core CS classes, etc. What do you filter on? What's your signal for hiring?
- nnoitra 5y ago
  You filter on the number of projects on their GitHub?