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> Classic bigotry. Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an ho

> Classic bigotry. Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. Jobs have soft skill requirements, and there is nothing bigoted about that.

re-thc 2y ago
> If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. This assumes that was the job? What if the job never talks or sits in a room with anyone? > Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. Then what is leet code about?
- motorest 2y ago
  > This assumes that was the job? What if the job never talks or sits in a room with anyone? That's perfectly fine. Some coding jobs also don't require deep knowledge on data structures. Each company and project has its own requirements. This does not reject the value of soft skills and being able to interact with other people. You can also frame this from another perspective. How far should a hiring manager go to accommodate antisocial and straight out toxic people? Does an eggregious backstabber have the right to advance in hiring processes just because others found him unpleasant to work with?
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    Sitting in a conference room under pressure after potentially flying out possibly hundreds of miles doesn't test your soft skills in actual day to day work. I've known many excellent engineers that buckle under that conditional.
    - motorest 2y ago
      > Sitting in a conference room under pressure after potentially flying out possibly hundreds of miles doesn't test your soft skills in actual day to day work. I've known many excellent engineers that buckle under that conditional. You're complaining about the hypothetical effectiveness of concrete hiring practices. You are not rejecting the value and importance of soft skills. Also, the ability to work under pressure is valuable skill. If you have a candidate that fails to perform when being in a room with someone else, I doubt you can argue that that's your hiring decision when other candidates are able to perform in similar circumstances.
      - sarchertech 2y ago
        Literally no other industry except for the performing arts interviews like this. No one else expects senior people to perform “work samples” under pressure, they just talk to them and dig into past work. All of the really damaging hires, I’ve seen in the last couple decades have been engineers with high negative productivity who were great at passing high pressure technical interviews. Also in a couple decades working everywhere from startups to big tech companies in staff+ roles, I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to a performative technical interview. Even when everything is on fire, it’s not even close to the same thing.
        ryandrake 2y ago
        I’ve always wondered: is there a LeetCode equivalent for doctors? When a hospital interviews a surgeon, do they roll out a cadaver and ask them to remove the gall bladder in 15 minutes while the interviewer scrutinizes how they hold the scalpel?
        Apocryphon 2y ago
        It’s because medicine, with its residencies and HN-mocked credentialism, is closer to traditional craftsmanship and the progression of apprentice-journeyman-master than the “every hacker for themselves” world of modern tech.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  > Then what is leet code about? At FAANG and friends? Discouraging job hopping to slow wage growth. Elsewhere? "FAANG does it and they're rich, so if we want to become rich we should also do it".
DaSHacka 2y ago
> Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. > Jobs have soft skill requirements, and there is nothing bigoted about that. Everything you just said also applies to someone who's deaf, blind, or physically impaired. Apply that same logic to someone with one of those conditions, and enjoy losing the discrimination lawsuit.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  > Everything you just said also applies to someone who's deaf, blind, or physically impaired. A blind person is not a good bus driver. A physically impaired person is not a good mover or yoga teacher. A deaf person is not a good session musician. A person who cannot function sitting in a meeting with 3 people for an hour is not a good employee where that is required. What makes the last one special compared to others? They can be a great yoga teacher/bus driver/session musician/mover, I just don't see controversy
  - watercolorblind 2y ago
    A physically impaired person can be a good yoga instructor: they'll suggest alternatives, different/better cues, or provide more accessible classes such as yin or seated yoga. Just because they are physically impaired now doesn't mean they were before, and an instructor won't necessarily move through the poses with the class since they can have 2-3 classes per day.
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      If you don't like yoga instructor just replace it with crossfit trainer or olympic athlete or tree surgeon or personal bodyguard Edit: replaced "triggered" with "don't like"
      - thunderfork 2y ago
ellen364 2y ago
I'm curious about this. When I've hired, I've always wondered how I can actually tell (a) what soft skills are required for the role and (b) whether a candidate has them. People sometimes think that's a silly thing to ponder: it's obviously obvious! But at most places I've worked, we spend lots of time defining the technical skills required for a job and handwave the rest. I guess people assume "they'll know it when they see it". But there's a lot of ambiguity. Parent comment suggests that being comfortable sitting in a conference room for an hour is an important part of their job. In some workplaces that would be an odd requirement. I've worked at places where the important thing was being able to go away and make progress on something for a few weeks. I suspect there are people with autism reading these threads and feeling disheartened. It would be easy to leave with the impression that neurotypical people expect you to make all the effort and they won't try to meet you half way. Some workplaces are like that. But in all the talk about neurotypical vs neurodivergent, it's easy to forget that neurotypical people are a varied lot, just like neurodivergent people. Workplaces are a varied lot too.
- sjamaan 2y ago
  I like this idea of making the soft skills explicit. Both to the interviewers and the candidate (i.e. in the job posting itself). This would save everyone involved a lot of time, too!
- housecarpenter 2y ago
  As somebody with autism, one thing I'd say from my experience (I don't know how many people will agree) is that interviewing has felt like a much more severe stress test of my soft skills than anything I've had to do while actually being employed. While employed, the vast majority of my social interactions are oriented around some technical task that I need to work on with other people, and conveying information effectively so as to bring about the completion of this task. This is precisely the kind of social interaction that I feel most competent in--I feel like I'm pretty good at it, actually! What I struggle with are social interactions that are more open-ended, that are more about emotional connections and getting people to like you, and I feel like interviewing is an interaction of the latter type. In this respect interviewing is a bit like LeetCode. LeetCode problems and writing code to satisfy business requirements are both "coding" but they're quite different kinds of coding; someone being able to do the former is probably good evidence they can do the latter, but there are also plenty of people who can do the latter without being able to do the former. So it is, in my view, with interviewing vs. interacting with people on the job.
baketnk 2y ago
there is a world of difference between interacting with three people you don't know for an hour for the explicit purpose of stress testing your experience and knowledge and interacting with three people that you talk to every day talking about a project that is well familiar to you.
lores 2y ago
There is a big difference between being in a conference room for an interview where you are judged, and on a regular work day. There is for me, and I'm old and have done dozens and dozens of interviews, largely successfully. Don't summarily judge people, especially if they're not neurotypical, as often happens in software.
jasonlotito 2y ago
[flagged]

re-thc 2y ago

> If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. This assumes that was the job? What if the job never talks or sits in a room with anyone? > Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. Then what is leet code about?

motorest 2y ago
> This assumes that was the job? What if the job never talks or sits in a room with anyone? That's perfectly fine. Some coding jobs also don't require deep knowledge on data structures. Each company and project has its own requirements. This does not reject the value of soft skills and being able to interact with other people. You can also frame this from another perspective. How far should a hiring manager go to accommodate antisocial and straight out toxic people? Does an eggregious backstabber have the right to advance in hiring processes just because others found him unpleasant to work with?
- fzeroracer 2y ago
  Sitting in a conference room under pressure after potentially flying out possibly hundreds of miles doesn't test your soft skills in actual day to day work. I've known many excellent engineers that buckle under that conditional.
  - motorest 2y ago
    > Sitting in a conference room under pressure after potentially flying out possibly hundreds of miles doesn't test your soft skills in actual day to day work. I've known many excellent engineers that buckle under that conditional. You're complaining about the hypothetical effectiveness of concrete hiring practices. You are not rejecting the value and importance of soft skills. Also, the ability to work under pressure is valuable skill. If you have a candidate that fails to perform when being in a room with someone else, I doubt you can argue that that's your hiring decision when other candidates are able to perform in similar circumstances.
    - sarchertech 2y ago
      Literally no other industry except for the performing arts interviews like this. No one else expects senior people to perform “work samples” under pressure, they just talk to them and dig into past work. All of the really damaging hires, I’ve seen in the last couple decades have been engineers with high negative productivity who were great at passing high pressure technical interviews. Also in a couple decades working everywhere from startups to big tech companies in staff+ roles, I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to a performative technical interview. Even when everything is on fire, it’s not even close to the same thing.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        I’ve always wondered: is there a LeetCode equivalent for doctors? When a hospital interviews a surgeon, do they roll out a cadaver and ask them to remove the gall bladder in 15 minutes while the interviewer scrutinizes how they hold the scalpel?
        Apocryphon 2y ago
        It’s because medicine, with its residencies and HN-mocked credentialism, is closer to traditional craftsmanship and the progression of apprentice-journeyman-master than the “every hacker for themselves” world of modern tech.
alabastervlog 2y ago
> Then what is leet code about? At FAANG and friends? Discouraging job hopping to slow wage growth. Elsewhere? "FAANG does it and they're rich, so if we want to become rich we should also do it".

DaSHacka 2y ago

> Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. > Jobs have soft skill requirements, and there is nothing bigoted about that. Everything you just said also applies to someone who's deaf, blind, or physically impaired. Apply that same logic to someone with one of those conditions, and enjoy losing the discrimination lawsuit.

throwaway290 2y ago
> Everything you just said also applies to someone who's deaf, blind, or physically impaired. A blind person is not a good bus driver. A physically impaired person is not a good mover or yoga teacher. A deaf person is not a good session musician. A person who cannot function sitting in a meeting with 3 people for an hour is not a good employee where that is required. What makes the last one special compared to others? They can be a great yoga teacher/bus driver/session musician/mover, I just don't see controversy
- watercolorblind 2y ago
  A physically impaired person can be a good yoga instructor: they'll suggest alternatives, different/better cues, or provide more accessible classes such as yin or seated yoga. Just because they are physically impaired now doesn't mean they were before, and an instructor won't necessarily move through the poses with the class since they can have 2-3 classes per day.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    If you don't like yoga instructor just replace it with crossfit trainer or olympic athlete or tree surgeon or personal bodyguard Edit: replaced "triggered" with "don't like"
    - thunderfork 2y ago

ellen364 2y ago

I'm curious about this. When I've hired, I've always wondered how I can actually tell (a) what soft skills are required for the role and (b) whether a candidate has them. People sometimes think that's a silly thing to ponder: it's obviously obvious! But at most places I've worked, we spend lots of time defining the technical skills required for a job and handwave the rest. I guess people assume "they'll know it when they see it". But there's a lot of ambiguity. Parent comment suggests that being comfortable sitting in a conference room for an hour is an important part of their job. In some workplaces that would be an odd requirement. I've worked at places where the important thing was being able to go away and make progress on something for a few weeks. I suspect there are people with autism reading these threads and feeling disheartened. It would be easy to leave with the impression that neurotypical people expect you to make all the effort and they won't try to meet you half way. Some workplaces are like that. But in all the talk about neurotypical vs neurodivergent, it's easy to forget that neurotypical people are a varied lot, just like neurodivergent people. Workplaces are a varied lot too.

sjamaan 2y ago
I like this idea of making the soft skills explicit. Both to the interviewers and the candidate (i.e. in the job posting itself). This would save everyone involved a lot of time, too!
housecarpenter 2y ago
As somebody with autism, one thing I'd say from my experience (I don't know how many people will agree) is that interviewing has felt like a much more severe stress test of my soft skills than anything I've had to do while actually being employed. While employed, the vast majority of my social interactions are oriented around some technical task that I need to work on with other people, and conveying information effectively so as to bring about the completion of this task. This is precisely the kind of social interaction that I feel most competent in--I feel like I'm pretty good at it, actually! What I struggle with are social interactions that are more open-ended, that are more about emotional connections and getting people to like you, and I feel like interviewing is an interaction of the latter type. In this respect interviewing is a bit like LeetCode. LeetCode problems and writing code to satisfy business requirements are both "coding" but they're quite different kinds of coding; someone being able to do the former is probably good evidence they can do the latter, but there are also plenty of people who can do the latter without being able to do the former. So it is, in my view, with interviewing vs. interacting with people on the job.

baketnk 2y ago

there is a world of difference between interacting with three people you don't know for an hour for the explicit purpose of stress testing your experience and knowledge and interacting with three people that you talk to every day talking about a project that is well familiar to you.

lores 2y ago

There is a big difference between being in a conference room for an interview where you are judged, and on a regular work day. There is for me, and I'm old and have done dozens and dozens of interviews, largely successfully. Don't summarily judge people, especially if they're not neurotypical, as often happens in software.

jasonlotito 2y ago

[flagged]