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I keep coming back to this phrase used in this post: "it was scary". Yeah, hiring is scary. Hiring is insanely expensive on all fronts. Firing people is diffic

I keep coming back to this phrase used in this post: "it was scary". Yeah, hiring is scary. Hiring is insanely expensive on all fronts. Firing people is difficult, it's expensive and legally exposing. Hiring the wrong person, allowing them access your systems and potentially exfiltrate your IP to them is a hazardous but necessary venture. The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI. People have been lying about their experience for literally centuries. IMO the advent of AI-laden candidates is going to nudge the hiring process back to how we did it 10 years ago, with a good old fashioned face-to-face interview and whiteboard questions. This means a lot of things that we've grown accustomed to in the past 5 years is going to have to melt. - people are probably going to have to fly out for interviews, again. - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Companies should consider reverting to forking the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year.

aaomidi 1y ago
> Companies just need to fork the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year. There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH. IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially start them out as remote so you're not forcing a lifestyle change for them if you realize you made a mistake.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that someone would become well-liked by people who never saw their code, who would then become distraught when the likable person vanished one day.
  - esafak 1y ago
    You should be giving constant feedback; firing should not come as a surprise. And if someone is not delivering, the people who depend on that output will know. Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > firing should not come as a surprise. The surprise was for the people around them, not the person being fired. > Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment. In the real world, they don't.
    - squiffsquiff 1y ago
      There were 30% layoffs at a company I worked at and one of the 'survivors' was so traumatised by it that they took their own life. It's a known phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt
      - aaomidi 1y ago
        Layoffs are generally random firing. Especially when we talk about % points.
        sethammons 1y ago
        What's your point? The thread is about how other people being fired is stressful.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      You might be surprised how many totally oblivious and un-self-aware people there are out there.
  - neilv 1y ago
    Excellent points. Building on that, if the people who are bothered by that leave or withdraw, won't the workplace come to be dominated by people who aren't bothered by that? If so, a question is why they aren't bothered by that. Is the culture then cold-hearted? Mercenary? Sociopathic? Oblivious?
- ghaff 1y ago
  If you won’t fly out for an interview you’re probably not that interested and the company probably shouldn’t be either. Pre-COVID this was absolutely the normal way interviews were conducted.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    If I'm not that interested in a company, I won't waste my time to contact them (or pay attention to their efforts to contact me). Having interest in them does not imply that I have an interest in travel, however. If I had an interest in travel, I'd have become an airline pilot or something like that instead. But if they think they need someone who has a secret desire to man a ship or be a touring musician – cool. A good fit isn't a good fit.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      It’s fine to have quirks. And yes that is largely a quirk. And it’s fine for others to decide that’s it’s more trouble than they want to deal with. I would probably be one of those people-/absent compelling reasons.
      - 9rx 1y ago
        > It’s fine to have quirks. Of course. If a company wants to be quirky, that is their choice to make. > I would probably be one of those people-/absent compelling reasons. Agreed. A job isn't usually all that compelling – there are jobs everywhere – but for the right business deal you can look past certain things.
  - spzb 1y ago
    What an arrogant, ableist thing to say. I hope you're not involved in recruitment. The world has changed. Location is not the barrier it was five years ago.
    - baq 1y ago
      Location isn't. Verification that you aren't a North Korea agent or just plain fraud is.
Aurornis 1y ago
> The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI I agree that lying was possible before AI, but something about AI has emboldened a lot more people to try to lie. Something about having the machine fabricate the lie for you seems to lessen the guilt of lying. There's also a growing sentiment online that using AI to cheat/lie is "fair" because they think companies are using AI to screen candidates. It's not logically consistent, but it appeals to people who approach these problems as class warfare.
- esafak 1y ago
  It definitely did change with AI. Imposters are becoming harder to detect, at a cost to the company.
  - xigency 1y ago
    With all the unemployed tech workers, would it just make sense to hire someone who knows their salt to do recruiting and interviews? Recruiters always seem to have a blast moving between random high-level companies and ghosting people over text, socials and the phone. If they lack both the social skills and the technical knowledge, I don't know what their value proposition is, but compared to chronic underemployment after actually learning Java, C, C++, they're clearly winning.
    - theamk 1y ago
      The problem is "knowing their salt to do recruiting" is very hard. In all places I've been, the kinds of interview we are talking about here (technical problems, etc...) are delegated to regular engineers. So those technical interviewers are likely great at reading and writing the code, but they many not be the best at spotting fake AI. (The recruiters only come in for non-technical parts like resume filtering, general information and benefits. Sometimes there is non-technical "culture fit" interview, that is usually some sort of middle manager from the department doing the hiring)
  - Arwill 1y ago
    Interviewing has also become harder too. You try to search the net during the interview, because you forgot the name of a thing, and the interviewer will assume you are running with an AI chat, and are cheating the interview.
ghaff 1y ago
And people may lean on their networks more (though they already do). I do agree that there’s no reason face to face interviews shouldn’t be the norm again after an initial screen. If some of those things don’t appeal to some candidates? <shrug> I don’t totally mean that. But some practices should be the default even if some candidates don’t really like them (and even if they’re less convenient or more costly for hiring managers.) Not sure about the suit at a lot of tech companies but dressing neatly and even throwing on a sports jacket probably doesn’t hurt.
- 9rx 1y ago
  > But some practices should be the default even if some candidates don’t really like them Employers didn't have a whole lot of choice in that matter for a long time. Candidates wouldn't show up if you tried to impose that upon them. Granted, nowadays it does appear that the tide has turned back to employers getting to call the shots, especially for lower-level positions. It is less clear how desperate the top talent is.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Seems pretty alien to my experience. A lot of senior talent was accustomed to traveling a lot anyway. I’ve certainly always interviewed in person and would probably turn down any company that didn’t offer as an option aside from COVID. But maybe there were a lot of companies that were willing to compromise on face to face so they could get any supposed talent to sign on the dotted line. Of course, they didn’t have much choice for a time even if they subsequently laid people off and/or largely froze hiring.
    - 9rx 1y ago
      > A lot of senior talent was accustomed to traveling a lot anyway. Where there was clear benefit to the trip, perhaps. Otherwise no – senior talent time is way too valuable to be jetting around the world on wild goose chases. The interview is the time to discuss if there is any benefit to be had. Maybe you'd consider the trip after everyone is generally happy, offers are on the table, and you feel the need for final due diligence. But you are past interview territory at that point. They'll come to you if face-to-face during the interview is deemed important.
MisterTea 1y ago
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No. Those are costumes that benefit no one but the seller of the costume. They wear the costume precisely once and never put it on again. It's an old classist ritual that forces people to spend money on clothes they dont want or need.
- roguecoder 1y ago
  You assume we aren't going to end up wearing them daily in order to get promotions. The same elitist power trip that drove RTO is also likely to produce the "dress like us & be rewarded" dynamics that push for conformity.
  - roguecoder 1y ago
    In more detail, in a glutted market with an unknown percentage of fakers, companies look for costly signals they can use to sort. This particular signal also indicates a willingness to set aside one's individual ego in order to assimilate in the workplace, which is especially valuable to the companies demanding developers abandon good sense in order to push AI adoption. If we want that signals to not be "a suit", it will need to be something else. But one advantage suits have is that they have served as that signal for so long that they are extremely accessible: just go to the thrift store, take what you find to a tailor and you are good to go. It is very easy to look up what is expected, and there are a variety of ways to trade money for effort or vice versa. The highest-paying developer jobs have always expected programmers to wear suits to the interviews: in a recession those things previously only top payers could demand cascade down market. I don't love it, but I don't think this prediction is wrong.
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      Man, as a 6'5" guy I wish getting a suit was that simple. > It is very easy to look up what is expected, and there are a variety of ways to trade money for effort or vice versa. This confuses me. Am I doing manual work for my tailor? Am I tailoring my own suit?
    - 1y ago
UncleOxidant 1y ago
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No, business casual is just fine. Who wants to try to do a grueling technical interview in a suit? No thanks. I sweat enough as it is in interviews.
jaredklewis 1y ago
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Others have already commented on this, but do you work in tech? IME getting interviewed by directors and even VPs in t-shirts is the norm. I’ve worn jeans to work my whole career. If anything, I think people in tech have a strong prejudice against people in suits (ie “obviously this person isn’t a real software engineer, they’re wearing a suit.”) Anyway, probably not good career advice to wear a suit unless dress codes at tech companies are suddenly subject to drastic changes.
- drivingmenuts 1y ago
  The general rule seems to be if you’re not customer-facing, then no suit is needed. Just wear clean, neat clothes and that’s usually enough. If a suit or uniform is needed, that would be noted up front.
  - sethammons 1y ago
    The general rule is to dress one step up from those in the role. Everyone in hoodie and shorts? Wear pants. Everyone in collared polos? Go business casual with maybe a blazer. Showing up a level lower makes you look unprepared. Showing up some levels higher, like in a suit to a hoodie shop, shows lack of research and reading a room. In start ups, I have seen candidates nearly rejected just on a suit alone. Def started them on the wrong foot impression wise.
    - j1elo 1y ago
      That's the point. One of my first interviews in tech was with a CEO who dressed with an Iron Maiden t-shirt. That settled to me the question about whether I would need to worry too much about looks at the office! :)
      - dagw 1y ago
        whether I would need to worry too much about looks at the office 'Uniforms' can go both ways. Would a person who only owns white Oxford shirts and monochrome dress pants have to go out and buy a new wardrobe he would feel very uncomfortable in if he wanted to work there? People who wear 20 year old band t-shirts can be every bit as judgemental about looks as people who wear tailored Italian suits.
eikenberry 1y ago
You are right about hiring not being that much different but your prognostications are way off IMO. > - people are probably going to have to fly out for interviews, again. Fly where? Many companies don't have offices anymore. > - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Ahh... the age old, "just do better" position for neurodivergent people. Classic bigotry. > - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Suits were out in tech 30 years ago when I first interviewed. They have only gone more out of style. Fashion doesn't work the way you think it works. My guess is that we'll see more contract-to-hire positions and "talking through code" style interviews. Though I think we'll see lots of things tried which will be a general improvement over what much of the industry was doing before.
- creato 1y ago
  Requiring people to be able to interact with other people is not "bigotry".
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    No, but ignoring their disabilities and saying to just learn to do better is not good enough. It is no different from telling a deaf person to learn to hear with their other sense, it doesn't make sense as their disability is what prevents it. People do need to be able to interact with other people, it just doesn't work like it does with non-neurodivergent people. It takes an effort on both sides. Quit putting it all on the person who cannot do what you want. That is the bigotry.
    - donnachangstein 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - eikenberry 1y ago
        Sorry for the offense, it is hard coming up with analogies that don't offend someone. Should probably just have left it out. But neurodivergense is not just a lack of social skills. Painting it this way is one of the reasons people don't understand it and act with bias against those suffering from it. It is a disability and is recognized by the ADA.
tartoran 1y ago
> - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again It's not like these are skills that they haven't learned, these are things that they have a hard time with. Expecting them to be 'normal' is like asking a person of medium stature to be taller. They could mask them but ultimately it's not who they are and expecting everyone to be the same is a fools errand.
- baq 1y ago
  It's not expectation of sameness, it's that they will be working with 'normal' people and need to meet some standard to not be a net negative for any team they're in.
  - tartoran 1y ago
    I think there's a tacit expectation to fit into a mold and that mold is heavily skewed towards extroverted neurotypical traits.
    - baq 1y ago
      Neurotypical means something, after all. Extroverted, I wouldn't say. Basic game theory, really. Business are not charities. Hiring a neurodiverse person is riskier than a neurotypical one.
godsinhisheaven 1y ago
Neurodivergent people have always had to learn social skills, plenty of people come off as weird/insane/awkward over zoom
no-dr-onboard 1y ago
Hm, it turns out suggesting that someone buy a suit for a job they need is a litmus test.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  You've had multiple comments about orgs explicitly not hiring candidates that show up in suits, yet call it a "litmus test" if someone doesn't? You sound like a typical classist MBA; don't you have Linkedin posts to make and employees to micromanage?
bluefirebrand 1y ago
> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit No company worth working for would refuse to hire someone just because they didn't wear a suit to their interview Dress nicely, sure. Wear a collar? Yeah probably. A tie? Meh. Let's get rid of this old fashioned boomer nonsense from hiring please
- pkaeding 1y ago
  My advice is to ask to hiring manager who invites you to come in about the dress code expectation / norms, and try to be on the higher end of the range they give, without going over. I agree no one will explicitly decide one way or another based on how you dress. But making everyone in the room feel comfortable with each other will help the whole process.
microtherion 1y ago
> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. At my previous employer, I had to convince several people in my team that wearing a suit was NOT a reason to reject a candidate out of hand. It's really difficult to gauge the expected dress code at a company beforehand, but it's not good advice to just blindly dress up.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Perhaps the suit wasn't the one level up that people are talking about? If you accidentally go 3 levels too formal, you've definitely ruined the initial impression. Me personally, I like working at places where people can wear shorts and flip-flops. One level up is "pants and shoes, with socks", not even a collared shirt. Maybe a single-color new T-shirt, to be safe. A full suit would be an alarmingly bad read of the culture, and at that point we'd have made you come eat lunch at a burrito place to get a read on whether you're really a bad fit or just socially awkward. The best thing I heard from an interviewee that was wearing a suit was that they interviewed elsewhere nearby that morning, and those people needed to be impressed with clothing.
Cyphase 1y ago
> People have been lying about their experience for literally centuries. Millenia. Just ask Nanni what happened when he trusted Ea-nāṣir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...
- LandR 1y ago
  Man, how annoyed do you have to be with someone to carve your complaint into stone!
  - defrost 1y ago
    Pressing an edged tip into damp clay to write a complaint or ledger is almost as fast as quill and ink writing, the clay takes longer to dry solid than ink though.
ozgrakkurt 1y ago
it is very easy to understand if someone is saying useless ai soup or he knows what he is talking about if you are good in your field. At least in software it is.
veunes 1y ago
I get where you're coming from, especially on the cost of bad hires: it really is one of the riskiest bets a company makes. But I'm not convinced going back to the "fly them out and grill them on a whiteboard" era is the right answer either.
- baq 1y ago
  There's an opportunity for wework for hiring - rent out a conference room for a couple hours and have a third party be present during the interview. The first one to figure this out and not go bankrupt a year or two later wins. Probably not a unicorn business, though.
throwaway2037 1y ago
In most highly developed countries, there is a probation period for 90+ days for new hires. During this period, you can be fired for any reason. It is not an expensive as people think to fire someone who deceived your hiring process. However, institution inertia is real. That said, I very much agree with your last paragraph. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a lot of hiring was done this way in the US.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > In most highly developed countries, there is a probation period for 90+ days for new hires. During this period, you can be fired for any reason. In an American context, this is generally true in 49 out of 50 states, except that the probation period covers the entire duration of your employment. The people who say firing is expensive are thinking about something else.
  - maxnevermind 1y ago
    Every big tech company in the US has their version of PIP, to protect them from potential law suits as I understand, that lead to a situation that low performers might occupy their positions for months and years.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      NCC Group fired me with no notice, no severance, and no stated cause. PIPs exist; that doesn't mean you have to use them.
- yardie 1y ago
  Unfortunately, in very large organizations the onboarding process can take a while. It can be months before you have credentials to the repository. By then, full benefits will kick in, worker protections, etc. And I’m a hiring manager. I’m trying to slot new hires with the training they will need and give them realistic tasks I know they can accomplish. And it’s not easy. I’m already 30 days in on a new hire that I’ve been able to peer with for 2 days. And I’m constantly apologizing for the lack of time.
prakhar897 1y ago
wrote something similar a while back: https://www.softwaredesign.ing/blog/ai-is-the-reason-interviews-are-harder-now https://www.softwaredesign.ing/blog/ai-is-the-reason-intervi...
pjc50 1y ago
The industry is probably going to have to consider the concept of a "qualification", that is a test you take once and then present to employers rather than have each employer make up a different one. I worry about the retreat to networks. I think it's an inevitable response to the rise of machine-generated fakes, that people are going to start strongly preferring to be physically next to someone talking to them simply in order to verify that they're real, not one of the billions of apparitions knocking on their virtual door. But it also pushes back to networks of preferred universities and preferred drinking societies within those universities. All of which have the opportunity to be little discriminatory clubs.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  I mean, aren't great degrees such tests, though they don't check the practical knowledge. We just need some sort of qualification which tests practical knowledge.
Lutger 1y ago
Did you ever work with developers? Maybe if you hire for consultants in some industries some of this is relevant (I doubt it), but with social skills + suit part alone will make sure you miss out on a significant pool of talent. I could even go further and say that NOT hiring anyone who shows up in a suit will give you better results than the other way around. You filter out a lot of career guys who are really poor programmers and will try to end up as mediocre middle management that way.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  I knew some colleagues who were alright as developers (maybe over-eager, e.g. building a microservices architecture by themselves when that didn't actually solve the real problems the company had) who had a suit phase for some reason.
deadbabe 1y ago
No Computer Science degree = forget about it. In the past we took a chance hiring people with non traditional backgrounds but now that everyone thinks they can do complex engineering with the help of AI, we need to know people have truly studied the fundamentals over a period of 4 years at a university.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  I'm inclined to agree, but at the same time, I've worked with people who proved themselves in the industry already. My senior developer at the time, had 15 years experience but no formal relevant education.
- sgarland 1y ago
  Except you can use AI (against the rules, but there is 0% chance they’re catching everyone) for a degree. The only way to be sure that I know of is to ask questions in-person. They don’t have to be absurd, just things that you should be able to answer if you understand fundamentals, like “describe the differences between a binary tree and a B-tree,” or “describe the fetch-execute cycle.”
- aforwardslash 1y ago
  Id say it depends on the specifics of the job role; In most cases, "the fundamentals" arent relevant at all; they are items on the runtime library of a given high level language of choice. There are exceptions, obviously, but you do not need to be a rocket scientist to maintain an ERP or an e-commerce application; on the other hand, there are plenty of "hard problems" where computer science is also mostly useless, because the steepness of it is advanced math, not algorithm design.
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
> it's time to buy a suit Yeah, no. I'd deduct points if the candidate wears a suit. What a huge red flag, missing all sorts of context and appropriateness cues.
- BhavdeepSethi 1y ago
  This is insane to read. You don't get brownie points for what you're wearing, but deducting points for someone trying to impress folks by dressing more formally than what you're typically used to?
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    Yes. I deduct points for people who can't into social cues and context. Such is life, we are social animals. I'd deduct points if a candidate showed up in beach shorts too. (A suit is as wildly inappropriate in this context as beach shorts.)
jillesvangurp 1y ago
In most countries, you have trial periods where you can terminate without too much hassle. Here in Germany, that's usually six months and I know of people in pretty senior positions that got screwed over and terminated towards the end of that period. The problem with hiring in IT is that it's a bit of a broken system. On one hand you have companies that are overly picky and are alienating good candidates with their convoluted/mildy unfair hiring processes. Being overly picky when it's hard to get good candidates to show any interest because they are in demand is of course counter productive. This has been the default for the last decades. Lots of demand, not a lot of supply of great candidates. And then on the other hand you have the recruiter / bodies for hire market with candidates that are maybe not that great being lined up with opportunities that are a bit ambitious for their skills. There you need good filters. I've been on both sides of the table. My process for hiring is: - Pre-screen CVs and look for smells (job hopping, a string of meh employers, poor technical skill match, lack of seniority, etc.). You can read a lot from a CV. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt here. But given 20 CVs, I'm not talking to 20 people. - Quick phone interview either with myself or somebody I trust to have good judgment. This is a critical call. Mostly this is to confirm the basics line up (availability, expectations, skills). - Interviews in person (ideally). At this point I either like the person or I really don't. Yes this is subjective. But initial impressions seem to have a strong correlation to long term outcomes. Again benefit of the doubt here. But I'm not going to pretend it's not influencing the outcome. - Decision to proceed with negotiations or not. Note I don't do any coding interviews whatsoever. I hate those with a passion. They don't tell me anything. I prefer portfolios (e.g. Github) or having candiates talk about something they did. I'm not going to probe them for encylopedic knowledge of algorithms, doing some shitty IQ test, or whatever.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >a string of meh employers What's a meh employer?
  - dagw 1y ago
    A lot of people look down on companies that solve 'boring' problems with 'boring' technologies. I guess it's an open question if having been writing in-house CRUD apps using a 10 year old tech stack for several years is a proxy for lack of competence.
subjectsigma 1y ago
AI has definitely changed the dynamic; more people think they can get away with lying without getting caught. They trust the AI’s ability to lie more than their own.
Bluescreenbuddy 1y ago
>And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Most of your points I agree with, but this? Cmon grandpa
dan_quixote 1y ago
> awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Whatever future interviews look like, I sure as hell hope we don't maintain this ^ attitude.
hansmayer 1y ago
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No man, it's not and never was - unless you are aiming for a "career" at JP Morgan and the likes.
martin82 1y ago
A suit is just another one of those lies that people have been doing for centuries.
mock-possum 1y ago
I’ve literally never, in almost 20 years in the industry, been asked to or expected to wear a suit. I’ve never ever had anyone say anything to me about my clothes period. It’s simply not a consideration in my experience. In fact the one time I worked for a place that had a dress code, it specifically exempted my department (software engineering) from the policy - and if that hadn’t been the case I wouldn’t have taken that job. The real answer here is: know the dress expectations of the place you’re applying to, and consider whether you feel comfortable working for a place that won’t pay you the courtesy of letting you dress yourself.

aaomidi 1y ago

> Companies just need to fork the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year. There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH. IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially start them out as remote so you're not forcing a lifestyle change for them if you realize you made a mistake.

Aurornis 1y ago
I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that someone would become well-liked by people who never saw their code, who would then become distraught when the likable person vanished one day.
- esafak 1y ago
  You should be giving constant feedback; firing should not come as a surprise. And if someone is not delivering, the people who depend on that output will know. Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > firing should not come as a surprise. The surprise was for the people around them, not the person being fired. > Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment. In the real world, they don't.
  - squiffsquiff 1y ago
    There were 30% layoffs at a company I worked at and one of the 'survivors' was so traumatised by it that they took their own life. It's a known phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt
    - aaomidi 1y ago
      Layoffs are generally random firing. Especially when we talk about % points.
      - sethammons 1y ago
        What's your point? The thread is about how other people being fired is stressful.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    You might be surprised how many totally oblivious and un-self-aware people there are out there.
- neilv 1y ago
  Excellent points. Building on that, if the people who are bothered by that leave or withdraw, won't the workplace come to be dominated by people who aren't bothered by that? If so, a question is why they aren't bothered by that. Is the culture then cold-hearted? Mercenary? Sociopathic? Oblivious?
ghaff 1y ago
If you won’t fly out for an interview you’re probably not that interested and the company probably shouldn’t be either. Pre-COVID this was absolutely the normal way interviews were conducted.
- 9rx 1y ago
  If I'm not that interested in a company, I won't waste my time to contact them (or pay attention to their efforts to contact me). Having interest in them does not imply that I have an interest in travel, however. If I had an interest in travel, I'd have become an airline pilot or something like that instead. But if they think they need someone who has a secret desire to man a ship or be a touring musician – cool. A good fit isn't a good fit.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    It’s fine to have quirks. And yes that is largely a quirk. And it’s fine for others to decide that’s it’s more trouble than they want to deal with. I would probably be one of those people-/absent compelling reasons.
    - 9rx 1y ago
      > It’s fine to have quirks. Of course. If a company wants to be quirky, that is their choice to make. > I would probably be one of those people-/absent compelling reasons. Agreed. A job isn't usually all that compelling – there are jobs everywhere – but for the right business deal you can look past certain things.
- spzb 1y ago
  What an arrogant, ableist thing to say. I hope you're not involved in recruitment. The world has changed. Location is not the barrier it was five years ago.
  - baq 1y ago
    Location isn't. Verification that you aren't a North Korea agent or just plain fraud is.

Aurornis 1y ago

> The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI I agree that lying was possible before AI, but something about AI has emboldened a lot more people to try to lie. Something about having the machine fabricate the lie for you seems to lessen the guilt of lying. There's also a growing sentiment online that using AI to cheat/lie is "fair" because they think companies are using AI to screen candidates. It's not logically consistent, but it appeals to people who approach these problems as class warfare.

esafak 1y ago
It definitely did change with AI. Imposters are becoming harder to detect, at a cost to the company.
- xigency 1y ago
  With all the unemployed tech workers, would it just make sense to hire someone who knows their salt to do recruiting and interviews? Recruiters always seem to have a blast moving between random high-level companies and ghosting people over text, socials and the phone. If they lack both the social skills and the technical knowledge, I don't know what their value proposition is, but compared to chronic underemployment after actually learning Java, C, C++, they're clearly winning.
  - theamk 1y ago
    The problem is "knowing their salt to do recruiting" is very hard. In all places I've been, the kinds of interview we are talking about here (technical problems, etc...) are delegated to regular engineers. So those technical interviewers are likely great at reading and writing the code, but they many not be the best at spotting fake AI. (The recruiters only come in for non-technical parts like resume filtering, general information and benefits. Sometimes there is non-technical "culture fit" interview, that is usually some sort of middle manager from the department doing the hiring)
- Arwill 1y ago
  Interviewing has also become harder too. You try to search the net during the interview, because you forgot the name of a thing, and the interviewer will assume you are running with an AI chat, and are cheating the interview.

ghaff 1y ago

And people may lean on their networks more (though they already do). I do agree that there’s no reason face to face interviews shouldn’t be the norm again after an initial screen. If some of those things don’t appeal to some candidates? <shrug> I don’t totally mean that. But some practices should be the default even if some candidates don’t really like them (and even if they’re less convenient or more costly for hiring managers.) Not sure about the suit at a lot of tech companies but dressing neatly and even throwing on a sports jacket probably doesn’t hurt.

9rx 1y ago
> But some practices should be the default even if some candidates don’t really like them Employers didn't have a whole lot of choice in that matter for a long time. Candidates wouldn't show up if you tried to impose that upon them. Granted, nowadays it does appear that the tide has turned back to employers getting to call the shots, especially for lower-level positions. It is less clear how desperate the top talent is.
- ghaff 1y ago
  Seems pretty alien to my experience. A lot of senior talent was accustomed to traveling a lot anyway. I’ve certainly always interviewed in person and would probably turn down any company that didn’t offer as an option aside from COVID. But maybe there were a lot of companies that were willing to compromise on face to face so they could get any supposed talent to sign on the dotted line. Of course, they didn’t have much choice for a time even if they subsequently laid people off and/or largely froze hiring.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    > A lot of senior talent was accustomed to traveling a lot anyway. Where there was clear benefit to the trip, perhaps. Otherwise no – senior talent time is way too valuable to be jetting around the world on wild goose chases. The interview is the time to discuss if there is any benefit to be had. Maybe you'd consider the trip after everyone is generally happy, offers are on the table, and you feel the need for final due diligence. But you are past interview territory at that point. They'll come to you if face-to-face during the interview is deemed important.

MisterTea 1y ago

> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No. Those are costumes that benefit no one but the seller of the costume. They wear the costume precisely once and never put it on again. It's an old classist ritual that forces people to spend money on clothes they dont want or need.

roguecoder 1y ago
You assume we aren't going to end up wearing them daily in order to get promotions. The same elitist power trip that drove RTO is also likely to produce the "dress like us & be rewarded" dynamics that push for conformity.
- roguecoder 1y ago
  In more detail, in a glutted market with an unknown percentage of fakers, companies look for costly signals they can use to sort. This particular signal also indicates a willingness to set aside one's individual ego in order to assimilate in the workplace, which is especially valuable to the companies demanding developers abandon good sense in order to push AI adoption. If we want that signals to not be "a suit", it will need to be something else. But one advantage suits have is that they have served as that signal for so long that they are extremely accessible: just go to the thrift store, take what you find to a tailor and you are good to go. It is very easy to look up what is expected, and there are a variety of ways to trade money for effort or vice versa. The highest-paying developer jobs have always expected programmers to wear suits to the interviews: in a recession those things previously only top payers could demand cascade down market. I don't love it, but I don't think this prediction is wrong.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    Man, as a 6'5" guy I wish getting a suit was that simple. > It is very easy to look up what is expected, and there are a variety of ways to trade money for effort or vice versa. This confuses me. Am I doing manual work for my tailor? Am I tailoring my own suit?
  - 1y ago

UncleOxidant 1y ago

> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No, business casual is just fine. Who wants to try to do a grueling technical interview in a suit? No thanks. I sweat enough as it is in interviews.

jaredklewis 1y ago

> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Others have already commented on this, but do you work in tech? IME getting interviewed by directors and even VPs in t-shirts is the norm. I’ve worn jeans to work my whole career. If anything, I think people in tech have a strong prejudice against people in suits (ie “obviously this person isn’t a real software engineer, they’re wearing a suit.”) Anyway, probably not good career advice to wear a suit unless dress codes at tech companies are suddenly subject to drastic changes.

drivingmenuts 1y ago
The general rule seems to be if you’re not customer-facing, then no suit is needed. Just wear clean, neat clothes and that’s usually enough. If a suit or uniform is needed, that would be noted up front.
- sethammons 1y ago
  The general rule is to dress one step up from those in the role. Everyone in hoodie and shorts? Wear pants. Everyone in collared polos? Go business casual with maybe a blazer. Showing up a level lower makes you look unprepared. Showing up some levels higher, like in a suit to a hoodie shop, shows lack of research and reading a room. In start ups, I have seen candidates nearly rejected just on a suit alone. Def started them on the wrong foot impression wise.
  - j1elo 1y ago
    That's the point. One of my first interviews in tech was with a CEO who dressed with an Iron Maiden t-shirt. That settled to me the question about whether I would need to worry too much about looks at the office! :)
    - dagw 1y ago
      whether I would need to worry too much about looks at the office 'Uniforms' can go both ways. Would a person who only owns white Oxford shirts and monochrome dress pants have to go out and buy a new wardrobe he would feel very uncomfortable in if he wanted to work there? People who wear 20 year old band t-shirts can be every bit as judgemental about looks as people who wear tailored Italian suits.

eikenberry 1y ago

You are right about hiring not being that much different but your prognostications are way off IMO. > - people are probably going to have to fly out for interviews, again. Fly where? Many companies don't have offices anymore. > - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Ahh... the age old, "just do better" position for neurodivergent people. Classic bigotry. > - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Suits were out in tech 30 years ago when I first interviewed. They have only gone more out of style. Fashion doesn't work the way you think it works. My guess is that we'll see more contract-to-hire positions and "talking through code" style interviews. Though I think we'll see lots of things tried which will be a general improvement over what much of the industry was doing before.

creato 1y ago
Requiring people to be able to interact with other people is not "bigotry".
- eikenberry 1y ago
  No, but ignoring their disabilities and saying to just learn to do better is not good enough. It is no different from telling a deaf person to learn to hear with their other sense, it doesn't make sense as their disability is what prevents it. People do need to be able to interact with other people, it just doesn't work like it does with non-neurodivergent people. It takes an effort on both sides. Quit putting it all on the person who cannot do what you want. That is the bigotry.
  - donnachangstein 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - eikenberry 1y ago
      Sorry for the offense, it is hard coming up with analogies that don't offend someone. Should probably just have left it out. But neurodivergense is not just a lack of social skills. Painting it this way is one of the reasons people don't understand it and act with bias against those suffering from it. It is a disability and is recognized by the ADA.

tartoran 1y ago

> - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again It's not like these are skills that they haven't learned, these are things that they have a hard time with. Expecting them to be 'normal' is like asking a person of medium stature to be taller. They could mask them but ultimately it's not who they are and expecting everyone to be the same is a fools errand.

baq 1y ago
It's not expectation of sameness, it's that they will be working with 'normal' people and need to meet some standard to not be a net negative for any team they're in.
- tartoran 1y ago
  I think there's a tacit expectation to fit into a mold and that mold is heavily skewed towards extroverted neurotypical traits.
  - baq 1y ago
    Neurotypical means something, after all. Extroverted, I wouldn't say. Basic game theory, really. Business are not charities. Hiring a neurodiverse person is riskier than a neurotypical one.

godsinhisheaven 1y ago

Neurodivergent people have always had to learn social skills, plenty of people come off as weird/insane/awkward over zoom

no-dr-onboard 1y ago

Hm, it turns out suggesting that someone buy a suit for a job they need is a litmus test.

DaSHacka 1y ago
You've had multiple comments about orgs explicitly not hiring candidates that show up in suits, yet call it a "litmus test" if someone doesn't? You sound like a typical classist MBA; don't you have Linkedin posts to make and employees to micromanage?

bluefirebrand 1y ago

> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit No company worth working for would refuse to hire someone just because they didn't wear a suit to their interview Dress nicely, sure. Wear a collar? Yeah probably. A tie? Meh. Let's get rid of this old fashioned boomer nonsense from hiring please

pkaeding 1y ago
My advice is to ask to hiring manager who invites you to come in about the dress code expectation / norms, and try to be on the higher end of the range they give, without going over. I agree no one will explicitly decide one way or another based on how you dress. But making everyone in the room feel comfortable with each other will help the whole process.

microtherion 1y ago

> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. At my previous employer, I had to convince several people in my team that wearing a suit was NOT a reason to reject a candidate out of hand. It's really difficult to gauge the expected dress code at a company beforehand, but it's not good advice to just blindly dress up.

yencabulator 1y ago
Perhaps the suit wasn't the one level up that people are talking about? If you accidentally go 3 levels too formal, you've definitely ruined the initial impression. Me personally, I like working at places where people can wear shorts and flip-flops. One level up is "pants and shoes, with socks", not even a collared shirt. Maybe a single-color new T-shirt, to be safe. A full suit would be an alarmingly bad read of the culture, and at that point we'd have made you come eat lunch at a burrito place to get a read on whether you're really a bad fit or just socially awkward. The best thing I heard from an interviewee that was wearing a suit was that they interviewed elsewhere nearby that morning, and those people needed to be impressed with clothing.

Cyphase 1y ago

> People have been lying about their experience for literally centuries. Millenia. Just ask Nanni what happened when he trusted Ea-nāṣir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...

LandR 1y ago
Man, how annoyed do you have to be with someone to carve your complaint into stone!
- defrost 1y ago
  Pressing an edged tip into damp clay to write a complaint or ledger is almost as fast as quill and ink writing, the clay takes longer to dry solid than ink though.

ozgrakkurt 1y ago

it is very easy to understand if someone is saying useless ai soup or he knows what he is talking about if you are good in your field. At least in software it is.

veunes 1y ago

I get where you're coming from, especially on the cost of bad hires: it really is one of the riskiest bets a company makes. But I'm not convinced going back to the "fly them out and grill them on a whiteboard" era is the right answer either.

baq 1y ago
There's an opportunity for wework for hiring - rent out a conference room for a couple hours and have a third party be present during the interview. The first one to figure this out and not go bankrupt a year or two later wins. Probably not a unicorn business, though.

throwaway2037 1y ago

In most highly developed countries, there is a probation period for 90+ days for new hires. During this period, you can be fired for any reason. It is not an expensive as people think to fire someone who deceived your hiring process. However, institution inertia is real. That said, I very much agree with your last paragraph. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a lot of hiring was done this way in the US.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> In most highly developed countries, there is a probation period for 90+ days for new hires. During this period, you can be fired for any reason. In an American context, this is generally true in 49 out of 50 states, except that the probation period covers the entire duration of your employment. The people who say firing is expensive are thinking about something else.
- maxnevermind 1y ago
  Every big tech company in the US has their version of PIP, to protect them from potential law suits as I understand, that lead to a situation that low performers might occupy their positions for months and years.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    NCC Group fired me with no notice, no severance, and no stated cause. PIPs exist; that doesn't mean you have to use them.
yardie 1y ago
Unfortunately, in very large organizations the onboarding process can take a while. It can be months before you have credentials to the repository. By then, full benefits will kick in, worker protections, etc. And I’m a hiring manager. I’m trying to slot new hires with the training they will need and give them realistic tasks I know they can accomplish. And it’s not easy. I’m already 30 days in on a new hire that I’ve been able to peer with for 2 days. And I’m constantly apologizing for the lack of time.

prakhar897 1y ago

wrote something similar a while back: https://www.softwaredesign.ing/blog/ai-is-the-reason-interviews-are-harder-now https://www.softwaredesign.ing/blog/ai-is-the-reason-intervi...

pjc50 1y ago

The industry is probably going to have to consider the concept of a "qualification", that is a test you take once and then present to employers rather than have each employer make up a different one. I worry about the retreat to networks. I think it's an inevitable response to the rise of machine-generated fakes, that people are going to start strongly preferring to be physically next to someone talking to them simply in order to verify that they're real, not one of the billions of apparitions knocking on their virtual door. But it also pushes back to networks of preferred universities and preferred drinking societies within those universities. All of which have the opportunity to be little discriminatory clubs.

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
I mean, aren't great degrees such tests, though they don't check the practical knowledge. We just need some sort of qualification which tests practical knowledge.

Lutger 1y ago

Did you ever work with developers? Maybe if you hire for consultants in some industries some of this is relevant (I doubt it), but with social skills + suit part alone will make sure you miss out on a significant pool of talent. I could even go further and say that NOT hiring anyone who shows up in a suit will give you better results than the other way around. You filter out a lot of career guys who are really poor programmers and will try to end up as mediocre middle management that way.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I knew some colleagues who were alright as developers (maybe over-eager, e.g. building a microservices architecture by themselves when that didn't actually solve the real problems the company had) who had a suit phase for some reason.

deadbabe 1y ago

No Computer Science degree = forget about it. In the past we took a chance hiring people with non traditional backgrounds but now that everyone thinks they can do complex engineering with the help of AI, we need to know people have truly studied the fundamentals over a period of 4 years at a university.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I'm inclined to agree, but at the same time, I've worked with people who proved themselves in the industry already. My senior developer at the time, had 15 years experience but no formal relevant education.
sgarland 1y ago
Except you can use AI (against the rules, but there is 0% chance they’re catching everyone) for a degree. The only way to be sure that I know of is to ask questions in-person. They don’t have to be absurd, just things that you should be able to answer if you understand fundamentals, like “describe the differences between a binary tree and a B-tree,” or “describe the fetch-execute cycle.”
aforwardslash 1y ago
Id say it depends on the specifics of the job role; In most cases, "the fundamentals" arent relevant at all; they are items on the runtime library of a given high level language of choice. There are exceptions, obviously, but you do not need to be a rocket scientist to maintain an ERP or an e-commerce application; on the other hand, there are plenty of "hard problems" where computer science is also mostly useless, because the steepness of it is advanced math, not algorithm design.

otabdeveloper4 1y ago

> it's time to buy a suit Yeah, no. I'd deduct points if the candidate wears a suit. What a huge red flag, missing all sorts of context and appropriateness cues.

BhavdeepSethi 1y ago
This is insane to read. You don't get brownie points for what you're wearing, but deducting points for someone trying to impress folks by dressing more formally than what you're typically used to?
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  Yes. I deduct points for people who can't into social cues and context. Such is life, we are social animals. I'd deduct points if a candidate showed up in beach shorts too. (A suit is as wildly inappropriate in this context as beach shorts.)

jillesvangurp 1y ago

In most countries, you have trial periods where you can terminate without too much hassle. Here in Germany, that's usually six months and I know of people in pretty senior positions that got screwed over and terminated towards the end of that period. The problem with hiring in IT is that it's a bit of a broken system. On one hand you have companies that are overly picky and are alienating good candidates with their convoluted/mildy unfair hiring processes. Being overly picky when it's hard to get good candidates to show any interest because they are in demand is of course counter productive. This has been the default for the last decades. Lots of demand, not a lot of supply of great candidates. And then on the other hand you have the recruiter / bodies for hire market with candidates that are maybe not that great being lined up with opportunities that are a bit ambitious for their skills. There you need good filters. I've been on both sides of the table. My process for hiring is: - Pre-screen CVs and look for smells (job hopping, a string of meh employers, poor technical skill match, lack of seniority, etc.). You can read a lot from a CV. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt here. But given 20 CVs, I'm not talking to 20 people. - Quick phone interview either with myself or somebody I trust to have good judgment. This is a critical call. Mostly this is to confirm the basics line up (availability, expectations, skills). - Interviews in person (ideally). At this point I either like the person or I really don't. Yes this is subjective. But initial impressions seem to have a strong correlation to long term outcomes. Again benefit of the doubt here. But I'm not going to pretend it's not influencing the outcome. - Decision to proceed with negotiations or not. Note I don't do any coding interviews whatsoever. I hate those with a passion. They don't tell me anything. I prefer portfolios (e.g. Github) or having candiates talk about something they did. I'm not going to probe them for encylopedic knowledge of algorithms, doing some shitty IQ test, or whatever.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>a string of meh employers What's a meh employer?
- dagw 1y ago
  A lot of people look down on companies that solve 'boring' problems with 'boring' technologies. I guess it's an open question if having been writing in-house CRUD apps using a 10 year old tech stack for several years is a proxy for lack of competence.

subjectsigma 1y ago

AI has definitely changed the dynamic; more people think they can get away with lying without getting caught. They trust the AI’s ability to lie more than their own.

Bluescreenbuddy 1y ago

>And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Most of your points I agree with, but this? Cmon grandpa

dan_quixote 1y ago

> awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Whatever future interviews look like, I sure as hell hope we don't maintain this ^ attitude.

hansmayer 1y ago

> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. No man, it's not and never was - unless you are aiming for a "career" at JP Morgan and the likes.

martin82 1y ago

A suit is just another one of those lies that people have been doing for centuries.

mock-possum 1y ago

I’ve literally never, in almost 20 years in the industry, been asked to or expected to wear a suit. I’ve never ever had anyone say anything to me about my clothes period. It’s simply not a consideration in my experience. In fact the one time I worked for a place that had a dress code, it specifically exempted my department (software engineering) from the policy - and if that hadn’t been the case I wouldn’t have taken that job. The real answer here is: know the dress expectations of the place you’re applying to, and consider whether you feel comfortable working for a place that won’t pay you the courtesy of letting you dress yourself.