4 ms·

Tech hiring has been broken for a long time and they keep looking to the government to somehow save them from their own incompetence in labor development. The "

Tech hiring has been broken for a long time and they keep looking to the government to somehow save them from their own incompetence in labor development. The "hiring" pipeline has been highly optimized for finding reasons not to hire a worker instead of finding suitable workers to develop. Each year this optimization gets closer and closer to its final goal of never being able to hire anyone. Meanwhile most companies would prefer to not give raises that keep up with inflation over having talent walk out the doo. They'll happily put themselves at the end of the "hiring" pipeline again where they will once again complain there are no workers despite having let many leave over small amounts of money that inflation adjusted is near zero.

shagie 3y ago
> The "hiring" pipeline has been highly optimized for finding reasons not to hire a worker instead of finding suitable workers to develop. The hiring pipeline has always been and continues to be hiring the least risky developer instead of trying to hire the "best" developer. When the applicants far out number the time it would take to give a more in-depth hiring review for each candidate the approach to hiring the least risky candidate is one of "remove everyone who is risky and then see what you've got left." This can look like "find reasons not to hire" ... but also consider that sometimes when you've got 300 applicants and even a simple test of programing capability rules out 270 of them (not exaggerating here) and the 30 that remain have unrealistic explications of compensation (not every company can match the pay of big tech) or have other red flags that make them a risky hire, well, that's a labor shortage. When the hiring pool is smaller and the stickiness of hiring a candidate is greater (a new hire jumping to big tech after getting 6-12 months of of experience is a common thing), then you can hire for the potential to develop a worker. Developing an employee for half a year and then having them leave means that you now need to switch (again) to a very risk adverse hiring approach.
- hellisothers 3y ago
  The inane questions asked during an interview don’t signal to me “risk mitigation”, they say “this what everybody else does and nobody got fired for doing the status quo”. Having done close to a hundred interviews as an IC it definitely seems like we, as an industry, are looking for why not to hire a given person.
  - shagie 3y ago
    If you have one open position and 500 applicants, you're going to have to figure out a "why not to hire" the vast majority of the applicants. If that is done in a way that isn't quantifiable you're going to get a hiring discrimination lawsuit some of the time. Spending 30 minutes per applicant gives way too much time commitment for the people doing the interview and way too long "candidate applied" and "narrowed down to less than five people" such that the best candidates have found a new job weeks before you're at that point. This isn't the best way to hire people - its the least worst when factors of hiring bias, timeliness of process, and risk reduction enter into how hiring is to be done.

shagie 3y ago

> The "hiring" pipeline has been highly optimized for finding reasons not to hire a worker instead of finding suitable workers to develop. The hiring pipeline has always been and continues to be hiring the least risky developer instead of trying to hire the "best" developer. When the applicants far out number the time it would take to give a more in-depth hiring review for each candidate the approach to hiring the least risky candidate is one of "remove everyone who is risky and then see what you've got left." This can look like "find reasons not to hire" ... but also consider that sometimes when you've got 300 applicants and even a simple test of programing capability rules out 270 of them (not exaggerating here) and the 30 that remain have unrealistic explications of compensation (not every company can match the pay of big tech) or have other red flags that make them a risky hire, well, that's a labor shortage. When the hiring pool is smaller and the stickiness of hiring a candidate is greater (a new hire jumping to big tech after getting 6-12 months of of experience is a common thing), then you can hire for the potential to develop a worker. Developing an employee for half a year and then having them leave means that you now need to switch (again) to a very risk adverse hiring approach.

hellisothers 3y ago
The inane questions asked during an interview don’t signal to me “risk mitigation”, they say “this what everybody else does and nobody got fired for doing the status quo”. Having done close to a hundred interviews as an IC it definitely seems like we, as an industry, are looking for why not to hire a given person.
- shagie 3y ago
  If you have one open position and 500 applicants, you're going to have to figure out a "why not to hire" the vast majority of the applicants. If that is done in a way that isn't quantifiable you're going to get a hiring discrimination lawsuit some of the time. Spending 30 minutes per applicant gives way too much time commitment for the people doing the interview and way too long "candidate applied" and "narrowed down to less than five people" such that the best candidates have found a new job weeks before you're at that point. This isn't the best way to hire people - its the least worst when factors of hiring bias, timeliness of process, and risk reduction enter into how hiring is to be done.