4 ms·

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 combi

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.

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.