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Hiring people (mostly engineers) has been my full-time job now for about 15 years and I found myself emphatically agreeing with a lot of Matt's criticisms of mo

by Peroni 2y ago

Hiring people (mostly engineers) has been my full-time job now for about 15 years and I found myself emphatically agreeing with a lot of Matt's criticisms of modern hiring. Most tech interviews are as relevant to job performance as if hiring a baker required interviewing them about how electron orbitals bind worked gluten together then rejecting bakers who don’t immediately draw a valid orbital configuration. Matt's analogy works well for transactional hiring like hiring contractors but doesn't really translate well to situations where the mutual expectation is that we're going to spend a lot of time working together for at least the next few years. Most companies that are hiring engineers often need teams of people to bake bread. Sometimes those teams are huge and often the bakers in those teams are responsible for granular (pun intended) steps to ensure the bread is the best bread it can be. So, if I want some good bread and I intend to have a team of 40 bakers with individual strengths and disparate responsibilities baking that bread, then soon enough the responsibilities will become so granular that actually, I do need at least one baker capable of drawing a valid orbital configuration. Now that I've found a baker with strong quantum mechanics skills, I now need to figure out if they are going to be a horrible human to work with. This is why referral hiring always has been and still is king. There's no greater hiring test than working with someone for a few years before deciding if they are any good at their job.

tennisflyi 2y ago
> Most tech interviews are as relevant to job performance as if hiring a baker required interviewing them about how electron orbitals bind worked gluten together then rejecting bakers who don’t immediately draw a valid orbital configuration. That's the thing now. That's how they interview for bakers
- colinstone 2y ago
  After working under them for two decades I’ve come to realize GenX is gripped and captivated not by traditional religious story, but recent American history. I’m early 40s, of the Xennial persuasion and mostly work with under 35 year olds now. The number of under 35s who openly admit they don’t believe any of this bullshit about tech, who see it as just marketing and advertising is wild to me. GenZ are way different people than GenX who mumble something about the greatness of capitalism unironically and just shuffle over to their laptop and ignore how tired they are of pretending their make work job updating some SQL is the future of technology; Hiro Protagonist and Capt Kirk are their spirit animals GenX just the latest middle management to demand the kids likewise fill the hole in their souls with boring API config and repetitive leetcode to addict people to screen use, a toxic energy hog. Line must go up! The catechism’s and chants of MBAified American Civic Life: The Religion must be recited! No physics demands this routine of is just socialized ramble, so it’s religious belief in that it’s decoupled from reality outside us. It’s tribal nonsense It’s super corny obsession with pop culture memes of the last 50 years, outdated belief ST:TNG is right around the corner if we believe hard enough
bedobi 2y ago
except that referral hiring isn't a thing almost anywhere I know because I've referred people I KNOW are great SE's and I'm literally willing to vouch my own employment for, and they still get treated no different to any other candidate
- Peroni 2y ago
  I'm not saying referral hiring is executed well. It's really poorly executed. When I look at the data of companies I've hired for and tracked the success rates of referral hires, they systematically perform better than average.
  - jldugger 2y ago
    Those people pass both tests -- referral and standard hiring. To me the question hinges on whether people refer people who might fail standard screening, or if they're just cherry picking in ways your analysis "discovers." The difference to employers might be moot I suppose, but if you want to substitute referral for standard hiring screens you kinda need to get at something like this to know if referrals are contributing any new information or just boosting hit ratios on existing tests.
    - Peroni 2y ago
      The latter is the assumption most of us are making. People tend to refer people based on an intrinsic understanding that 1) I know what my friend likes and I think they will like working here and 2) I know what my employer likes and I think they will like my friend. No2 is usually formed by a good understanding of how a company measures success in any given role. You'll find the same principle applies to good recruiters. The more a recruiter understands about how your company measures success, the more likely they are to submit candidates that will pass your interview process.
  - kelseydh 2y ago
    There can be an element of politics to rejecting a referral hire. Your coworker may not want you to be stacking the team with "your people". Petty and sad but it happens.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
5350-uiop-1130 2y ago
> I do need at least one baker capable of drawing a valid orbital configuration. this way of thinking that contributes to such a toxic job market. there's too many people applying for too few jobs. that's it. this bullcrap about inflation, baking bread, interest rates, team building are all symptoms of entitlement. if you only had 2 applicants you wouldn't be thinking that way.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  Asking people irrelevant questions and rejecting them on irrelevant grounds is a lot sillier than just rejecting people because you have too many applications.
- Peroni 2y ago
  if you only had 2 applicants you wouldn't be thinking that way. Well, yes of course. As you said yourself, there's an abundance of people applying for jobs. When you have two bakers apply for your job, you'll keep things simple and hire one. When you have two hundred bakers apply for your job, you can introduce levels of complexity in the hope it will help you identify the best bakers of the 200.
  - 5350-uiop-1130 2y ago
    > you can introduce levels of complexity yes, which is why the job market sucks for most people. being able to do the job is no longer good enough.
dakiol 2y ago
Unless you are one of the top 1% tech companies out there, what you said doesn’t really compute. All tech companies out there think they need to produce the “best bread” therefore they need the best bakers. It’s not realistic, but hey if investors are giving you millions to spend, sure thing you need to spent that money somehow.

by Peroni 2y ago

tennisflyi 2y ago

> Most tech interviews are as relevant to job performance as if hiring a baker required interviewing them about how electron orbitals bind worked gluten together then rejecting bakers who don’t immediately draw a valid orbital configuration. That's the thing now. That's how they interview for bakers

colinstone 2y ago
After working under them for two decades I’ve come to realize GenX is gripped and captivated not by traditional religious story, but recent American history. I’m early 40s, of the Xennial persuasion and mostly work with under 35 year olds now. The number of under 35s who openly admit they don’t believe any of this bullshit about tech, who see it as just marketing and advertising is wild to me. GenZ are way different people than GenX who mumble something about the greatness of capitalism unironically and just shuffle over to their laptop and ignore how tired they are of pretending their make work job updating some SQL is the future of technology; Hiro Protagonist and Capt Kirk are their spirit animals GenX just the latest middle management to demand the kids likewise fill the hole in their souls with boring API config and repetitive leetcode to addict people to screen use, a toxic energy hog. Line must go up! The catechism’s and chants of MBAified American Civic Life: The Religion must be recited! No physics demands this routine of is just socialized ramble, so it’s religious belief in that it’s decoupled from reality outside us. It’s tribal nonsense It’s super corny obsession with pop culture memes of the last 50 years, outdated belief ST:TNG is right around the corner if we believe hard enough

bedobi 2y ago

except that referral hiring isn't a thing almost anywhere I know because I've referred people I KNOW are great SE's and I'm literally willing to vouch my own employment for, and they still get treated no different to any other candidate

Peroni 2y ago
I'm not saying referral hiring is executed well. It's really poorly executed. When I look at the data of companies I've hired for and tracked the success rates of referral hires, they systematically perform better than average.
- jldugger 2y ago
  Those people pass both tests -- referral and standard hiring. To me the question hinges on whether people refer people who might fail standard screening, or if they're just cherry picking in ways your analysis "discovers." The difference to employers might be moot I suppose, but if you want to substitute referral for standard hiring screens you kinda need to get at something like this to know if referrals are contributing any new information or just boosting hit ratios on existing tests.
  - Peroni 2y ago
    The latter is the assumption most of us are making. People tend to refer people based on an intrinsic understanding that 1) I know what my friend likes and I think they will like working here and 2) I know what my employer likes and I think they will like my friend. No2 is usually formed by a good understanding of how a company measures success in any given role. You'll find the same principle applies to good recruiters. The more a recruiter understands about how your company measures success, the more likely they are to submit candidates that will pass your interview process.
- kelseydh 2y ago
  There can be an element of politics to rejecting a referral hire. Your coworker may not want you to be stacking the team with "your people". Petty and sad but it happens.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

5350-uiop-1130 2y ago

> I do need at least one baker capable of drawing a valid orbital configuration. this way of thinking that contributes to such a toxic job market. there's too many people applying for too few jobs. that's it. this bullcrap about inflation, baking bread, interest rates, team building are all symptoms of entitlement. if you only had 2 applicants you wouldn't be thinking that way.

nerdponx 2y ago
Asking people irrelevant questions and rejecting them on irrelevant grounds is a lot sillier than just rejecting people because you have too many applications.
Peroni 2y ago
if you only had 2 applicants you wouldn't be thinking that way. Well, yes of course. As you said yourself, there's an abundance of people applying for jobs. When you have two bakers apply for your job, you'll keep things simple and hire one. When you have two hundred bakers apply for your job, you can introduce levels of complexity in the hope it will help you identify the best bakers of the 200.
- 5350-uiop-1130 2y ago
  > you can introduce levels of complexity yes, which is why the job market sucks for most people. being able to do the job is no longer good enough.

dakiol 2y ago

Unless you are one of the top 1% tech companies out there, what you said doesn’t really compute. All tech companies out there think they need to produce the “best bread” therefore they need the best bakers. It’s not realistic, but hey if investors are giving you millions to spend, sure thing you need to spent that money somehow.