4 ms·
Some time ago (~6 months) my company was looking to hire a programmer. We don't have a established process for this as it was some years since we hired a coder
by ericol 4y ago
Some time ago (~6 months) my company was looking to hire a programmer.
We don't have a established process for this as it was some years since we hired a coder, but then we are in the industry (hiring) so published a couple of adverts here and there and we got the thing rolling.
Most of the applicants were seriously under qualified, and my colleagues had to go through a lot of rubbish in the form of CVs in order to find suitable candidates.
But a few of them were good enough to at least make it to the interview step, and off the invitations went.
One of'em candidates - Let's call him "Rajeed" - promptly accepted the meeting, and due to the small amount of people that made it that far - let me remind you, first interview - my colleagues were slightly excited, but at the same time also weary as our experience with coders from India is far from stellar.
You can imagine my colleagues surprise when they opened the Zoom session and Rajeed was nowhere to be found. Instead, there were two person of whom we knew nothing about - apparently they were running some sort of coding shop - and when my colleagues asked for Rajeed they just said "Oh, it's OK, it's OK. You can talk to us."
For obvious reasons the meeting didn't last long.
We ended up hiring a coder from Poland that, even thought he was decent, was miles ahead of the rest of the candidates.
- dkarp 4y agoJust want to say that I work with and have worked with many stellar coders from India. I'd suggest not writing off over a billion people.
- replwoacause 4y agoYou’ve missed the point entirely
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post swipes to HN. It would be fine to explain what the point was, in a neutral way. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ericol 4y agoWell, lucky you! ;) I'm not "writing off" a billion people. But. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. I did some research when this happened, and they even have a name for this [1] Coincidentally, our experience with people from Easter Europe is quite the opposite: Of all the people we hired from there, all except one were stellar (And the "one" was also good, just that he had some greys ethically: Had a disagreement with our boss, and disappeared over a weekend after siphoning large amounts of data from our system) [1] https://thepolicytimes.com/chalta-hai-attitude-holding-indias-great-potential/ https://thepolicytimes.com/chalta-hai-attitude-holding-india...
- 2143 4y agoSomething you want to keep in mind is that stellar coders from India (I don't know if they're a huge majority or minority or whatever, but they do exist) already have stellar jobs and won't be up for hire. The random people who are up for hire from India — there's a good chance they're up for hire because they couldn't get anything else. You get what you pay for. And the best are probably not even in the market.
- thombat 4y agoMy UK employer in 2004 had the brilliant idea to save money by establishing a subsidiary in Bangalore. Find some awesome engineers and only have to pay Indian salaries & office rental! Took them a depressingly long time to understand that interviews are a two-way street and what most of the best candidates wanted was a multinational that would support them living and working in an exciting new environment for better money, i.e. moving to London and using the London salary to see the world and have fun. Some really good guys, but would have been cheaper and less disruptive just to recruit them straightforwardly. OTOH the director in charge of the project moved to Bangalore on a London salary with his housing costs and domestic staff paid for, living like a Maharajah and filing following progress reports. So the exercise wasn't entirely futile.
- ericol 4y agoI agree whole hearteadly with your comment. We don't pay good rates (at least compared to the US) so obviously we don't attract quality coders, at least from India. We've had very good success with people from the Eastern block, thought.
- mrweasel 4y ago> Something you want to keep in mind is that stellar coders from India already have stellar jobs and won't be up for hire. Precisely, and they know what they're worth, so they won't be cheaper anyway.
- victorclf 4y agoThere must have been a time in the past when those stellar coders were unemployed and up for hire...