7 ms·

Misidentifying Talent (2022)

70 points by _xivi 3y ago

nine_zeros 3y ago
I feel like a lot of the tech industry misses the forest for the trees. They try to hire based on signals unrelated to the actual work - which is due to a combination of poor incentives, wrong skills and poor leadership that defines a hire/employee. Here are all the poor incentive systems in tech companies: 1. Technical sourcers look for keywords in resumes - they are already biased towards prestige such as top schools or past employers. Root Cause: Recruiters are incentivized to meet a hiring number. They don't want to take chances. They just want to meet their quarterly quota. Poor incentive system. No ownership among anyone in management to improve this. 2. Hiring process looks for leetcode ability - biased towards people who have time to practice these problems. These problems are completely unrelated to the actual work. Hiring managers have no incentive to do any better. Heck, managers are not skilled enough to do any better. Poor incentives. No ownership of this among hiring managers. 3. Performance reviews based on poor definition of performance - biased towards whatever garbage management is measuring, often secretly. Management is not skilled enough to understand projects, so they rely on proxies such as lines of code, number of commits. Engineers know these are poor proxies. Companies try to take biases out of this process by inserting hiring committees - who use these same properties to identify a new hire, or make a promotion decision. All they did was add a layer of bureaucracy by removing the power of hire/promo away from the actual manager. Ultimately, this industry is so delusional that they forget to ask simple questions such as "Is this person the hire we need? Will they be able to contribute? Do they have the potential to contribute?" And for performance reviews, asking questions such as, "Are our projects going to yield the right outcomes for the company? Have we staffed people into working towards these outcomes? Are they on track to achieving these outcomes? If they achieve it, can they be promoted for performing well?" That's all there is. But it requires good "leadership" that I have found to be missing in tech companies.
- derbOac 3y ago
  I agree, but for me I've gotten to the point where I dislike the "talent" paradigm in general. People are treated as marble objects, as if context in the past and future doesn't matter at all. I wish more focus were put on how someone would fit in a team, and what both the existing team and the hire would bring to one another.
  - nine_zeros 3y ago
    > I wish more focus were put on how someone would fit in a team, and what both the existing team and the hire would bring to one another. Management doesn't want to and doesn't have the skills to do this work.
    - ozim 3y ago
      We can nag about it but there is no real solution for management not having skills or will to double down. You know you cannot just hire "best of the best of the best" you most likely can hire best of your market and only if you have budget/resources for that. This counts also for management. Get a company of 100 employees, I don't see a realistic scenario where you could simply hire and retain competent enough people to have all of them on "perfect skill level" or "above average". For a company of 1000 employees, just hiring and building up to 1000 employees is years of work and people come and go. For a small company of 10-20 people it is super hard to get anyone because lots of above average people look at a big brands to work for.
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        I don’t know… small companies offer less bureaucracy and a higher code to meeting ratio and fewer whisper chains, which can be attractive
        commonlisp94 3y ago
        > higher code to meeting ratio My experience is the opposite. In small companies I become a source of expertise that must constantly participate in hiring, marketing, etc.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago
  We hired an open source maintainer with no degree and no work experience at our startup, and they're singlehandedly the best developer in the company. Meanwhile I've been doing Leetcode everyday for the last 2 years and have nothing practical to show for it (but I can sure crack any interview!)
- commonlisp94 3y ago
  > biased towards people who have time to practice these problems That sounds like a bias towards people who make time to learn, not to mention interest and academic aptitude. I don't know how you can frame this as something you wouldn't want to bias for. But I do acknowledge many great engineers will not have that skill.
  - Planktonne 3y ago
    "Make time to learn" and "make time to practice specific problems" are not at all the same thing; the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem.
    - commonlisp94 3y ago
      > the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem. It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills. Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?
      - Planktonne 3y ago
        > It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills It's no better than any other evidence of effort > Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire? I don't have to imagine; it tends to lead to hard-to-maintain 'clever' code, with little ability to deal with less-than-clear requirements.
        commonlisp94 3y ago
        > It's no better than any other evidence of effort I think one thing that's better is it has a hard IQ floor that can only be compensated with a huge amount of memorization and practice, but that's a worthwhile skill on it's own.
      - nitwit005 3y ago
        > Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire? I've gotten way better at these problems from practice. Am I suddenly an amazing programmer as a result? I wish that were the case, but sadly I don't believe my job skills are improved at all. That suggests we're measuring something fairly independent.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lapcat 3y ago
(2022) Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30423442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30423442
larryfreeman 3y ago
The best summer intern that I ever hired did not have any programming experience. He was a Berkeley student who had recently decided to change his major but hadn't started taking any programming classes. When we interviewed him, it was clear that he was a serious student, he was very smart, and that he would work very hard if we gave him the internship. As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience. I was overruled by our CTO. Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO and the CTO had strong confidence that he would learn programming very quickly. The Berkeley student was given the paid internship. In an 8 week period over summer, the candidate learned ios programming, identified a problem that was impacting customers, proposed a fix, and was able to release the fix to customers. When he demonstrated the issue and his fix to the engineering team, it was clear that he had spent long hours working with the app. My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper. More important is a very smart candidate who is willing to work very hard.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO > My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper. My lesson from this is that nepotism rules the world. There are countless unknown people out there who are very smart and willing to work very hard. Not many get the chance.
  - ozim 3y ago
    For me it would be nepotism if CTO would hire a family friend that was totally unqualified or somewhat unqalified and would cover his ass to keep him in company. Story in here is not nepotism, it is just that guy had more opportunities than others but that is just the way life is. That is why for example going to university is important - not for knowledge or lectures - but for getting to know people who will most likely be working in the same field.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      This so nepotism it could be the dictionary definition.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fredgrott 3y ago
I made a switch to the Jon Taffer Approach: 1. Figure out which personality traits work in the job and select for them in the first set of interviews 2. Then refine those candidates per skill sets as if they have the right personality sets than training can fill the skill gaps but if personality does not match the job no amount of training will change that bad fit into a good one.
- softsound 3y ago
  Perhaps attitude might make more sense then personality, as your personality can change over time/environment. Environment affects a lot of personality and how it's perceived, and expressed. A toxic workplace will make a lot of difference but people with more healthy attitudes will likely leave quickly, those with poor views on life or self image will likely stay. This would of course effect training and improving skills.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
One of my best employees, ever, was "B-team." He was my second choice, after #1 turned us down. I now think that he was much more qualified, on many levels, than #1. He was not particularly qualified, on paper, but his extracurricular stuff showed great initiative (or "agency" as the article likes to mention). Choice #1 had all the right qualifications, but they probably thought they could do better, elsewhere. They were probably right. My company didn't pay particularly well, so I spent a lot of time, looking for "raw material," and my management style was one that was geared towards keeping people for a long time. It seemed to work. I think a big "blocker," in misaligning talent, is "gatekeepers with a template." These could be HR, middle management, and, quite often, other team members, who are often asked "Could you work with them?". We have a "template," and reject anything that falls outside that. Here's an example, from me: I'm retired, and was looking to find ways to help others, coming into the field. There's a fairly well-known, and successful NPO that helps disadvantaged folks to become techhies. I really liked that, and thought it would be a perfect fit. I'm probably one of the better Swift programmers, around these parts, and have also had many years of experience doing seminars and short-form training exercises. People seem to like the way I teach. I don't really have any ego wrapped in it, and I'm not the world's best public speaker, but I also go to fairly extreme lengths, to ensure that my training is complete, well-supported, leveled to the student, understandable, and scoped. They wanted me to proctor JavaScript LeetCode tests. I was disappointed, and said "Thanks, but no thanks." It's not an ego thing. I would be a lousy JS proctor. That's not my area of expertise. There are, literally, tens of thousands of local folks that are better than me at that. It’s not a job. I’m not going to fight for it. If they don’t want me, they won’t get me. Simple. We'd just make each other unhappy. I can understand if JS was all they taught, but I already knew they would have definitely been able to use what I had. As it turned out, not doing that, cleared the decks for something much better. As a bonus, I’m actually able to mentor a couple of younger folks through the ins and outs of releasing software. It’s all good.
baalldaway 3y ago
[dead]
bettyfrank526 3y ago
[dead]

70 points by _xivi 3y ago

I feel like a lot of the tech industry misses the forest for the trees. They try to hire based on signals unrelated to the actual work - which is due to a combination of poor incentives, wrong skills and poor leadership that defines a hire/employee. Here are all the poor incentive systems in tech companies: 1. Technical sourcers look for keywords in resumes - they are already biased towards prestige such as top schools or past employers. Root Cause: Recruiters are incentivized to meet a hiring number. They don't want to take chances. They just want to meet their quarterly quota. Poor incentive system. No ownership among anyone in management to improve this. 2. Hiring process looks for leetcode ability - biased towards people who have time to practice these problems. These problems are completely unrelated to the actual work. Hiring managers have no incentive to do any better. Heck, managers are not skilled enough to do any better. Poor incentives. No ownership of this among hiring managers. 3. Performance reviews based on poor definition of performance - biased towards whatever garbage management is measuring, often secretly. Management is not skilled enough to understand projects, so they rely on proxies such as lines of code, number of commits. Engineers know these are poor proxies. Companies try to take biases out of this process by inserting hiring committees - who use these same properties to identify a new hire, or make a promotion decision. All they did was add a layer of bureaucracy by removing the power of hire/promo away from the actual manager. Ultimately, this industry is so delusional that they forget to ask simple questions such as "Is this person the hire we need? Will they be able to contribute? Do they have the potential to contribute?" And for performance reviews, asking questions such as, "Are our projects going to yield the right outcomes for the company? Have we staffed people into working towards these outcomes? Are they on track to achieving these outcomes? If they achieve it, can they be promoted for performing well?" That's all there is. But it requires good "leadership" that I have found to be missing in tech companies.

derbOac 3y ago
I agree, but for me I've gotten to the point where I dislike the "talent" paradigm in general. People are treated as marble objects, as if context in the past and future doesn't matter at all. I wish more focus were put on how someone would fit in a team, and what both the existing team and the hire would bring to one another.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > I wish more focus were put on how someone would fit in a team, and what both the existing team and the hire would bring to one another. Management doesn't want to and doesn't have the skills to do this work.
  - ozim 3y ago
    We can nag about it but there is no real solution for management not having skills or will to double down. You know you cannot just hire "best of the best of the best" you most likely can hire best of your market and only if you have budget/resources for that. This counts also for management. Get a company of 100 employees, I don't see a realistic scenario where you could simply hire and retain competent enough people to have all of them on "perfect skill level" or "above average". For a company of 1000 employees, just hiring and building up to 1000 employees is years of work and people come and go. For a small company of 10-20 people it is super hard to get anyone because lots of above average people look at a big brands to work for.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      I don’t know… small companies offer less bureaucracy and a higher code to meeting ratio and fewer whisper chains, which can be attractive
      - commonlisp94 3y ago
        > higher code to meeting ratio My experience is the opposite. In small companies I become a source of expertise that must constantly participate in hiring, marketing, etc.
OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago
We hired an open source maintainer with no degree and no work experience at our startup, and they're singlehandedly the best developer in the company. Meanwhile I've been doing Leetcode everyday for the last 2 years and have nothing practical to show for it (but I can sure crack any interview!)
commonlisp94 3y ago
> biased towards people who have time to practice these problems That sounds like a bias towards people who make time to learn, not to mention interest and academic aptitude. I don't know how you can frame this as something you wouldn't want to bias for. But I do acknowledge many great engineers will not have that skill.
- Planktonne 3y ago
  "Make time to learn" and "make time to practice specific problems" are not at all the same thing; the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem.
  - commonlisp94 3y ago
    > the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem. It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills. Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?
    - Planktonne 3y ago
      > It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills It's no better than any other evidence of effort > Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire? I don't have to imagine; it tends to lead to hard-to-maintain 'clever' code, with little ability to deal with less-than-clear requirements.
      - commonlisp94 3y ago
        > It's no better than any other evidence of effort I think one thing that's better is it has a hard IQ floor that can only be compensated with a huge amount of memorization and practice, but that's a worthwhile skill on it's own.
    - nitwit005 3y ago
      > Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire? I've gotten way better at these problems from practice. Am I suddenly an amazing programmer as a result? I wish that were the case, but sadly I don't believe my job skills are improved at all. That suggests we're measuring something fairly independent.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lapcat 3y ago

(2022) Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30423442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30423442

larryfreeman 3y ago

The best summer intern that I ever hired did not have any programming experience. He was a Berkeley student who had recently decided to change his major but hadn't started taking any programming classes. When we interviewed him, it was clear that he was a serious student, he was very smart, and that he would work very hard if we gave him the internship. As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience. I was overruled by our CTO. Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO and the CTO had strong confidence that he would learn programming very quickly. The Berkeley student was given the paid internship. In an 8 week period over summer, the candidate learned ios programming, identified a problem that was impacting customers, proposed a fix, and was able to release the fix to customers. When he demonstrated the issue and his fix to the engineering team, it was clear that he had spent long hours working with the app. My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper. More important is a very smart candidate who is willing to work very hard.

lapcat 3y ago
> Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO > My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper. My lesson from this is that nepotism rules the world. There are countless unknown people out there who are very smart and willing to work very hard. Not many get the chance.
- ozim 3y ago
  For me it would be nepotism if CTO would hire a family friend that was totally unqualified or somewhat unqalified and would cover his ass to keep him in company. Story in here is not nepotism, it is just that guy had more opportunities than others but that is just the way life is. That is why for example going to university is important - not for knowledge or lectures - but for getting to know people who will most likely be working in the same field.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    This so nepotism it could be the dictionary definition.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fredgrott 3y ago

I made a switch to the Jon Taffer Approach: 1. Figure out which personality traits work in the job and select for them in the first set of interviews 2. Then refine those candidates per skill sets as if they have the right personality sets than training can fill the skill gaps but if personality does not match the job no amount of training will change that bad fit into a good one.

softsound 3y ago
Perhaps attitude might make more sense then personality, as your personality can change over time/environment. Environment affects a lot of personality and how it's perceived, and expressed. A toxic workplace will make a lot of difference but people with more healthy attitudes will likely leave quickly, those with poor views on life or self image will likely stay. This would of course effect training and improving skills.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

One of my best employees, ever, was "B-team." He was my second choice, after #1 turned us down. I now think that he was much more qualified, on many levels, than #1. He was not particularly qualified, on paper, but his extracurricular stuff showed great initiative (or "agency" as the article likes to mention). Choice #1 had all the right qualifications, but they probably thought they could do better, elsewhere. They were probably right. My company didn't pay particularly well, so I spent a lot of time, looking for "raw material," and my management style was one that was geared towards keeping people for a long time. It seemed to work. I think a big "blocker," in misaligning talent, is "gatekeepers with a template." These could be HR, middle management, and, quite often, other team members, who are often asked "Could you work with them?". We have a "template," and reject anything that falls outside that. Here's an example, from me: I'm retired, and was looking to find ways to help others, coming into the field. There's a fairly well-known, and successful NPO that helps disadvantaged folks to become techhies. I really liked that, and thought it would be a perfect fit. I'm probably one of the better Swift programmers, around these parts, and have also had many years of experience doing seminars and short-form training exercises. People seem to like the way I teach. I don't really have any ego wrapped in it, and I'm not the world's best public speaker, but I also go to fairly extreme lengths, to ensure that my training is complete, well-supported, leveled to the student, understandable, and scoped. They wanted me to proctor JavaScript LeetCode tests. I was disappointed, and said "Thanks, but no thanks." It's not an ego thing. I would be a lousy JS proctor. That's not my area of expertise. There are, literally, tens of thousands of local folks that are better than me at that. It’s not a job. I’m not going to fight for it. If they don’t want me, they won’t get me. Simple. We'd just make each other unhappy. I can understand if JS was all they taught, but I already knew they would have definitely been able to use what I had. As it turned out, not doing that, cleared the decks for something much better. As a bonus, I’m actually able to mentor a couple of younger folks through the ins and outs of releasing software. It’s all good.

baalldaway 3y ago

[dead]

bettyfrank526 3y ago

[dead]